“Hey,” a voice called cheerfully, the feet finally showing in my peripheral. They were covered in black Converse with leopard-print laces and no socks.

Of course.

They had sent the “rebel” to woo me into joining the group. Admirable, I suppose. “Send the girl in the Converse to convince the sad girl that the rest of us don’t bite. They’ll have an understanding. I mean, look at those shoes…”

It was that very line of presumptuous thinking that would keep me staring at these trees until August.

“Hi,” I said, refusing to meet her eyes.

Who needed them anyway, with such amusing shoelaces?

Apparently she had counted on the conversation flowing easily after her successful “hey” because she was quiet for awhile after that. I continued staring at the trees. It was a boring activity, as they never changed or faltered in their staring back at me. There was no proclamation of a winner. It was boredom that finally made me glance toward where I imagined her anxious face would be.

She took this as a signal of some sort.

“I’m Kyla.”

“Spencer.”

“I know. They told me,” she said, gesturing back to where our cabin sat on its wooden stilts.

“What else did they tell you, Kyla?”

“Just your name…and that you had been sitting out here for awhile. We thought you might like to come back to the cabin and meet everyone. I mean, we don’t have much time right now because there’s a big hike in like, thirty minutes. But that’s plenty of time to get to know everyone’s name, right?”

“I don’t want to.”

She seemed surprised by this. As if the new, sad, lonely girl was only those things because she had been waiting all her life for a Converse-clad stranger to invite her back to an ill-constructed cabin for a meet-and-greet session with a strangely bonded collection of cheerleaders, class presidents, and class clowns.

I can assure you this is not the case.

“Why not?” she asked, looking hurt.

“Kyla, look…I’m sure you’re a really nice girl, okay? I’m sure you all are,” I lied, gritting my teeth in order to withhold the truths I wanted to spew, “but the thing is, I don’t want to be here. I just don’t. And giggling with the girls isn’t going to change that. Eventually I will meet everyone. I have no choice. But until then, I just want to sit here by myself and pretend like none of this is happening to me.”