@Lady Arya@Ducksworth

Max had been about to reply to Piper when she heard a loud thud, and looked behind her to what was a very strange scene. Most of the room hadn't reacted yet, some kids had turned their heads. Apparently, one kid had cut himself doing something or another, Max thought she'd saw him grab a knife when she had walked in. The kid who had cut himself was apparently being attended to by another kid, taller and rambling about something. Max couldn't really hear what they were saying over the noise coming from all other corners of the room. Stick a bunch of kids in a room and it's bound to be a bit noisy. Especially since there were approximately ten different conversations happening at the same time. Max kept looking around for the source of the loud thud, which appeared to be another kid that had...face planted the floor? Huh, maybe he didn't handle blood so well.

Max shook their head and looked back at Piper, "I guess we should consider ourselves lucky for choosing painting. Only cuts we're gonna get are paper cuts. Though, I got this one between my fingers once...nasty. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy,"

They shook their head again and sighed, turning their attention back to the paper in front of them, wondering what to paint. They still hadn't even made a single brush stroke. Some crafts time this was turning out to be, though, she wasn't surprised. She was just simply not a crafty person, why couldn't their mom have sent them to skateboard camp instead. Was skateboard camp even a thing? Max wasn't sure, but they already missed the feeling of the board underneath their feet, the feel of the wind in their face. There was just something serene about riding a skateboard while the music blared in your ears as you whipped around the pavement and just enjoyed life. It was the one place Max felt nothing could touch her, nothing could hurt her...well, except her own stupidity or lack of awareness. She'd hurt herself plenty of times just not reacting fast enough.

Max turned back to look at the kids that were bleeding, and then sighed. She had bandaids in her bag, she really should offer them..

"Be right back, don't let anyone steal my seat," She said and then sighed softly, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder and walking over to where the boy lay on the floor. She reached down and grabbed his arm, trying to help him into a standing position.

"It's alright, I got ya. Take it from someone who has fallen off their board many many times, you're gonna be fine. But ya can't just lay there forever," She said and then smiled softly, rolling her eyes in a playful manner. "I've got bandaids in my bag. Do ya want rainbow or tye-dye?"

Barely inside the door, Matt took another step into the Recreation Cabin when one of the other camp counsellors, a girl in a yellow shirt, hurried toward Brody and pointed back at the tables.

“That’s your crew,” she said with a relieved chuckle. “JJ’s got a gash in his arm, and Dexter just found out he doesn’t like the sight of blood.”

Before she could finish, Brody was already moving, weaving between the tables, off to check on the boys.

Matt stopped beside the empty spot on the bench Brody had pointed out for him and watched the commotion unfold. Unsure what else to do, he slipped his left hand into his baseball glove. With his right, he began working the baseball into the pocket of the worn leather mitt, squeezing, pushing, and twisting, the way he always did when he was thinking or worried.

He studied the scene in front of him. The younger boy with the cut was already being looked after by an older camper and that girl with the skateboard, the one he had noticed earlier.

Another boy was lying on his side nearby, a counsellor offering him a paper towels for his nose. Brody had his full attention on him and Matt watched as the boy's eyes slowly opened before squeezing shut again a second later. If it had been the first time Matt had seen something like this, he probably would have been worried. Bloody noses weren't that uncommon but last summer, one of his teammates had collapsed in the outfield during a baseball tournament. Heat stroke someone said. Then, just a few months ago, one of the girls in gym class had taken a dodgeball to the head and crumpled to the floor. Everyone had said it was a concussion.

Now, watching the boy on the floor, Matt noticed him rubbing the back of his head. He couldn't help wondering if this kid had a concussion too. Holding the bloodied cloth to his nose, Matt knew the boy had to be suffering right now.

Restless and needing something to do, Matt started wandering around the cabin. He knew enough to stay away from the huddle of campers and counsellors that had gathered around the injured boys, so instead he drifted from table to table, sizing up the other campers, checking out the art projects spread out in front of each and every one of them.

He chuckled to himself when he spotted one boy sketching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When the boy glanced up, Matt smiled.

“That's really good. Raphael’s the best.”

At another table, a couple of girls sat weaving brightly coloured strands of thread into friendship bracelets. Matt recognized them right away, the girls at school were always making them for one another.

Off to the side, he noticed another camper, a red-haired girl, probably about his age. She was looking out the window, but it wasn’t her that caught his attention. Matt’s eyes moved instead to the painting she had been working on at the easel.

He had been impressed by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drawing earlier, but this was different. The painting was detailed in a way that made him pause. He remembered something his teacher had once said about real artwork having “intricate details,” and he knew this was exactly what she meant.

He leaned a little closer, studying it more carefully. The brushstrokes weren’t messy like his would have been, and there weren’t any drips of paint running down the page. Not a single stick figure. Not even a bird that looked like a V in the sky.

“Wow,” he said quietly. “That’s… really really good.”

He hesitated, then added softly, “Like… way better than mine.”

The sound was loud enough to make Matt jump. One long, loud blast boomed through the camp, and with the sound of the bullhorn, campers jumped from their seats and everyone started teeming toward the doorways.

“Canoes,” called out one of the girls.

Two of the boys nearby answered back, “Come on, let’s get to the red one. It’s the fastest.”

Unsure what to do, Matt looked back to Brody, hoping for some direction, but the counsellor was still focussed on the injured boys, helping them get to their feet. Turning back to the doorway, he saw every other kid moving through the doors and heading down to the beach. Squeezing his baseball glove a little harder, he pushed the ball deep into the palm and started to follow the crowd.

Shuffling slowly, Matt made his way through the door and down the stairs of the recreation cabin. Pausing for a moment, he watched the red-haired girl with the crazy-good artwork pass by, adjusting her backpack on her shoulders, knowing exactly where to go. Turning around, he looked back at the cabin. No one else was coming, and there was no choice but to continue.

Holding the baseball in his hand, Matt began to toss it into the air. Keeping one eye on the path ahead, he continued along the winding trail, but every step or two he lobbed the ball upward and counted the seconds until it landed back in his mitt. Distracted for a moment by the towering evergreen tress and the sights around him, he paused to take it all in. One more time, he threw it a little higher, and when it landed easily in his glove he looked up and noticed he had lost sight of the artist girl. He gripped the ball and started to jog a little faster toward the docks.

The winding trail began to slope downhill toward the lake, and the campers gathered together in groups, laughing and calling out to one another. With his destination in sight, Matt relaxed again, and every now and then he tossed the ball a little higher, his eyes following it before dropping back to the path.

Ahead of him, he spotted the red-haired girl from the crafts cabin. She walked at her own speed, her backpack slung over one shoulder, seemingly in no hurry to reach the docks.

Matt quickened his pace when he saw the canoes and heard the excitement near the water. Just as he reached the bottom of the hill, another kid darted across the trail in front of him. Matt sidestepped to avoid him, but his toe caught a tree root hidden beneath the pine needles, and he stumbled forward.
The baseball popped out of his hand, bounced once on the hard-packed path, skipped between two pairs of feet before rolling to a stop against the heel of the red-haired girl's running shoe.

Matt froze for half a second, wondering if anyone else had noticed.

Matt watched as the ball rolled towards the girl and settled at the heel of her shoe. He could almost hear the voices of his two best friends teasing and making their opinions known.

Tobias would have cringed, reminded him that girls have cooties, and that the ball would need to be disinfected. Mackenzie, on the other hand, would have laughed, said something like “smooth,” and then told him to go talk to the girl, maybe ask her out.

Matt knew everything was changing in his world. He wasn’t like either of his friends. Mack, who was exactly four months older than Matt, was always talking about girls now, especially Kelly Kapowski from Saved by the Bell. He wanted to watch MTV all the time and kept talking about going to the mall to check out the girls who worked at Orange Julius.

Tobias wasn’t ready for any of that. He only wanted to play sports. Girls still had cooties and definitely germs. When Melissa Jameson told him she liked him, he stayed home from school for three days, five if you include the weekend, and he didn’t want anything to do with her after that.

Matt was somewhere in the middle, he figured girls were... well... just girls. He wasn’t afraid of girls like Tobias, but he wasn’t like Mackenzie, ready to have a girlfriend and hoping every birthday party would be a boy-girl party and include seven minutes in heaven.

When the red-haired girl turned around and picked up the ball, Matt was ready to apologize, but when the girl asked if he had lost the ball, he only nodded, and before he could say sorry, she tossed it back with an easy underhand throw, and it landed in his glove.

He was surprised when she asked if he was the new kid. It wasn’t the question that surprised him, but that she had noticed him. He looked at her again and nodded. “Yeah, I just got here today. I’m going to be here all summer.”

When Piper laughed about the chaos in the recreation cabin, Matt let out a small breath and chuckled back. “There was a lot of blood. When that one kid fainted, I…” He stopped, realizing how silly it probably sounded, but he saw the red-haired girl was still waiting for him to finish. “I thought we were going to need an ambulance or something.”

As soon as she introduced herself, Matt answered back. “I’m Matt ... and I’m sorry about the baseball. I didn’t mean to hit you with it.”

Before Piper had a chance to reply, he looked at her and then bit his lip. After a second, he asked, "I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to do now. Do I need to find a counsellor, or do people just grab a canoe?"