Kalina continued to lie there by the waves, soaking in the sunlight and, admittedly, very close to dozing off, despite her rather loud music which partially obscured the lulling sound of the tide. Her eyes were closed, though she was still aware of her surroundings. She could hear the distant chatter of people farther in the camp who were arriving just like her. She wondered if any of them had the same idea as her to go to the beach, but no one had said anything to her thus far.

Just then, the volume of her music dropped suddenly, then picked back up again at its normal tone. One of Kalina’s eyes fluttered open and, through the intense glare of the sun, fixated itself on her phone. With a grunt, she sat up and plucked it off from the towel and read the notification that flashed across her screen. It was an unknown number, but she knew who it was. The message read: “Welcome to Camp Corona! There will be an optional orientation for you to meet other campers in fifteen minutes. Please gather by the Activities Center if you would like to join.”

Kalina rolled her eyes. She forgot that campers were required to give their numbers to the camp. She didn’t know that’d be their personal notification medium. As terribly lame as an orientation sounded, she convinced herself that it was probably for the best to meet some other people, even though she would be perfectly content with not having to socialize at all and just stay where she was all day.

So with that, she packed up all her things and trudged back up to her cabin, which thankfully wasn’t even that far. As she walked back, she caught sight of just a few other people sitting around, mostly by themselves. She wondered curiously if everyone came here without any friends. It’d be interesting to see who would get along with who.

When Kalina got to her cabin, she unlocked the door and strolled inside, still her in bikini. Thankfully, her short walk through the grass was enough to get rid of any rogue grains of sand that stuck to her feet, so she didn’t track any inside. As she entered, she immediately noticed two things—one, she wasn’t alone; and two, it would see her two other cabin mates had already arrived in the time span she had spent sunbathing. Kalina assumed the girl that was reading was one of her cabin mates. She had dark brown hair and electric blue eyes; Kalina could only assume she was probably an intellectual given that she was reading a book on marine biology in her free time.

“Oh, hey!” Kalina called out to her cabin mate as she walked in. There was a tone of surprise in her voice, as she hadn’t expected the others to arrive so quickly. “I guess you must be my cabin mate,” she said, slightly awkwardly, dropping her stuff on her bed and heading over to the dresser into which she had put away her clothes earlier. She pulled out the outfit she was wearing previously and slipped it on over her bikini, as she figured she’d be heading back to the beach anyway and it’d save her the time to change.

Kalina walked into the bathroom but continued to talk to her cabin mate.

“My name’s Kalina,” she told her, making her voice louder so Colline would still be able to hear her. She checked her hair in the mirror and touched up her make up a bit. “I just got a text from the camp saying there’s some kind of orientation thing over at the Activities Center.” When she was content with her appearance, she hurried back into the main room and grabbed her phone from her bed.

“Anyway, I’m heading over there right now,” Kalina continued, in an obvious hurry. She didn’t really want to be stuck there having an awkward conversation with someone she barely knew. She reminded herself that she’d have to eventually, but that could wait until later. “I’ll catch you there if you decide on going.” With that, not bothering to give a proper good-bye, Kalina hustled over to the door and walked out. 

After walking a few minutes, she regretted acting like that in front of someone who could’ve possibly been a new friend, but oh well. She was too nervous to care at that point. When she arrived at the Activities Center, she took a seat at an outdoor picnic table by herself. After looking around, she began to scroll through her phone to look occupied, occasionally playing with her hair nervously.