1
Laina
I wasn’t outdoorsy. At all. I never joined Girl Scouts growing up, and the few family vacations we’d taken were all to theme parks. Not the wilderness. How I ended up camping in the middle of nowhere was a mystery. I must’ve been lonelier than I realized. That was the only excuse I could come up with for why I had let two of my co-workers talk me into joining them on this trip.
“How much farther is it to our campsite?” I swiped my arm across my forehead. Although I wasn’t a fan of exercise, I’d thought I was in good enough shape to handle the trek through the woods to the spot where we would pitch our tent. The fact that it was big enough to fit all three of us had been one of the reasons I’d agreed to come. No way in heck did I want to put a tent up all by myself. Or sleep in one alone in the middle of nowhere. With my luck, I’d end up getting eaten by a bear.
Sally paused to glance at me over her shoulder. “Just past that clump of trees ahead of us.”
“Thank goodness,” I muttered.
“You’re doing great for a first-timer. I thought I’d never make it all the way up here when Sally introduced me to camping.”
I looked back at Bess and wished she’d warned me how hard the hike was. When she gave me an encouraging thumbs-up, I sighed and faced forward again so I could follow Sally the rest of the way. The pack she was carrying was twice as heavy as mine, but she hadn’t broken a sweat. Meanwhile, I could barely see straight due to the perspiration dripping into my eyes.
I glared at her back while trudging along behind her until we finally reached a clearing and she announced, “This is it.”
I was breathing too hard to speak, so I just sat down on a log and slid my backpack off. Bess stopped next to me and pushed on the middle of my back. “Put your head between your legs. Trust me, it’ll help.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever trust anything either of them said to me ever again, but I was relieved to discover she was right about bending forward. A few minutes later, I wasn’t feeling light-headed and had managed to catch my breath. Lifting my head, I was surprised at how much my two co-workers had accomplished in such a short time. The tent looked as though it was already halfway set up. “Was I out of it longer than I thought?”
“Nah.” Bess shook her head and pointed her thumb over her shoulder toward Sally. “She’s just really good at this.”
Sally shrugged and inserted a long pole into a flap on the top of the tent, sliding it through before putting the end into an eyelet at the corner. “I have lots of experience.”
“And I’ve gotten better over time.” Bess circled around so she was on the opposite side from Sally. Then they lifted the poles to raise the tent and attached plastic hooks to the frame to keep them in place. Once that was done, they staked it into the ground.
When Sally had invited me to come on their trip, she’d said there was plenty of room for me since she had a four-person tent. The structure in front of me was a lot smaller than I’d expected. Getting up, I walked over and peeked inside. The floor was about sixty square feet, which meant we’d barely have any room between us when we slept. Then I realized there would be even less space than I thought when Sally tossed my pack inside.
Although I’d been working at the diner with Sally and Bess for the past six months, I didn’t know them well enough to want to wake up and find myself cuddled up against one of them. I’d never shared a bed with anyone before. As an only child, I’d had my own bedroom growing up. We used sleeping bags on the floor during sleepovers when I was a kid. And I’d never had a boyfriend, so there hadn’t been any guys in my bed when I moved out of my parents’ house. Now that I knew I would be spending two nights in such close quarters with two other people who were more acquaintances than friends, I regretted my impulsiveness in accepting their invitation.
“Are you sure we’ll fit with all of our stuff?”
Bess laughed as she bent over to dig through her pack. “Once we’ve unpacked all the stuff we need to set up camp, the bags will take up hardly any room.”
“Yours has most of the stuff that we don’t need right now,” Sally added.
When we met up at Sally’s place this morning, she had redistributed all of our stuff into the backpacks so that mine would be the lightest. It mostly had clothes, camping pillows, and sleeping pads. Nothing that weighed a lot.
Bess nodded as she set up the camp chairs and table around the firepit. “And we won’t be spending a lot of time in there anyway.”
“Why would we when there’s so much nature to explore and enjoy?” Sally agreed with a smile.
I slapped at the mosquito that landed on my arm and mumbled, “Just not too much nature, I hope.”
Bess tossed me an orange silicone bracelet. “Put this on. It’ll help keep the bugs away.”
I lifted it to my nose to take a sniff. “Mm, smells nice.”
“They have essential oils like citronella and lemongrass,” she explained as she slipped on a pink band before throwing a green one to Sally. “Bugs hate ’em.”
Since I had sensitive skin, I wasn’t a fan of spray repellent. I always felt as though I needed to jump into a shower to wash it off as soon as I put it on. If the bracelet worked, it was a much better option. “Cool.”
“While we finish getting the camp set up, could you gather some tinder and kindling for the fire?”
When Bess didn’t respond to Sally’s question, I glanced at her and realized it had been aimed at me instead. “Um, sure. But what exactly is tinder and kindling?”
“Just look for small twigs, dry leaves, needles, and some small sticks,” she instructed.