Chapter Five

By Katherine Albin

They’ve been watching me?  For a while? Who are they?  Why are they watching me? What help could I be to them?...I still don’t know who they are…

A flood of questions were spinning through his mind as he followed Keah into a meeting room.  His face was flushed and his brain was in a haze.  His confusion only let him focus on the words that Keah had hastily left him with.

He felt a sharp pain come from his left pointer finger.  Shane looked down to see that he had picked the skin around his finger nail raw to the point that it was bleeding.  The old habit seemed to do the trick and snapped him out of his fog.  Shane was surprised to find that he was sitting in a chair, which was probably a good thing with his current mental state.  He glanced around himself to survey his surroundings.  The room wasn’t all that big, but was full of chairs in neat rows facing the front of the room.  Keah was sitting to his right and they were in the third row off to the side.  The only light in the room came from the flickering fluorescent lights on the ceiling.  The walls were covered with slightly faded and yellowed posters, the inspirational kind with the big picture and the caption underneath.  Looking around more, he noticed that most of the seats were filled by a strange mixing of people.  There was something a bit…off with a lot of them, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.  Tate was at the front of the room shuffling some papers around.  As he was watching Tate, something in the front row caught his eye.  A ponytail swished, and he cocked his head a bit.  I know that ponytail…why is it so familiar?  The girl that the hair belonged to, turned her head to see something next to her, and Shane was able to see a bit of her profile.  KIM!!  What is she doing here?!  Is this a weird coincidence?

Keah noticed the direction of Shane’s baffled and intense stare and elbowed him hard in the ribs.  Despite the sharp pain in his side, he was not able to pull his eyes away from his ex-girlfriend that he hadn’t seen in months.  Everything was going in slow motion for Shane as Kim turned her head, just enough to skim her eyes past him.  She turned her head back towards the front, her ponytail swinging like a shampoo commercial model’s hair.  After a second, she must have processed what she saw and did a double-take.  Keah was busy scribbling on a scrap of paper torn off a form on her clipboard.  Shane and Kim locked eyes.  Even though they hadn’t been with each other for a while, they still seemed to be able to read each others’ faces.  Kim was just as confused and out of place as Shane was.  Shane was more lost than ever, so much for Camp Peace’s claim to help you “find who you are.”

Keah stuffed the crinkled slip of paper into Shane’s palm, and dug her nails into his skin until he was forced to pay attention to her.  He shot her the dirtiest look he could muster, but did start to smooth out the paper after sneaking one last glace at Kim.  “You can’t act like you know her either!  It’s very very important to our cause!” the note read in handwriting that could have been ascribed to a doctor is was so messy.  Before he could question Keah, he was interrupted by Tate calling the meeting to order.

“Howdy, everybody!  Welcome to Camp Peace.  We are so glad that y’all have joined us this summer.  We’re now gonna start with the much anticipated beginning.”