Rich was normally one of the last ones to arrive at Second Horizons, but this year… something was a bit different. This year, he found himself excited to be heading to the camp, so much so that he left almost a week early, and by the time his fellow campers started flooding in, he’d been at the camp for a few days already. When he’d arrived so early, more than one of the counselors had given him a bit of a look, and watched him a bit more closely than he would have hoped, but… He couldn’t blame them. He’d be the first to admit he’d been a real asshole in his previous years of camp, and a reputation of being the local problem child wouldn’t go away overnight. No, Rich was going to have to work for that — and probably work hard for it.

Acting out for attention was the old Rich. Shooting smuggled fireworks at younger campers was old Rich. Breaking into the Lodge and nicking alcohol from the director’s personal store was old Rich… okay, the last one might still be the Rich of today, but the important thing was Rich wasn’t going to go out of his way to make a scene for the counselors at every possible turn. This year, he was determined to swing everyone’s opinions of him from… well, he assumed from negative to hopefully positive. Looking back, the staff of Second Horizons had always tried hard for him, so now he figured it was time to repay the favors.

One way or another, Rich Griffin was going to figure out how to make himself look as good as possible when it came to being a counselor the next time Second Horizons was in session.

After a few days of hanging out at the camp by himself, Rich was happy he’d finally made it to the day when his peers would start to arrive. Would there be familiar faces from the years past? Or mostly new people? At least the counselors were the same for the most part — although at least one of them had shifted cabins around, which was kind of a let down for Rich. He’d wanted to impress Nick with the fact that he’d been doing his best to spin on his heel and be a good guy now, but Nick had left them for the Pink cabin.

Pink? As he walked out of the Blue cabin and toward the arrival area, Rich took the time to think about it some, Nick did kind of seem like he belonged in Pink, didn’t he? Between the way Nick had a habit of hooking up with people at the camp, and the way he seemed to actually take it to heart when Rich had given him some choice words… Yeah, Nick in Pink made sense.



Christ. In the dynamic duo of Nick Walters and Mike Carter, if Nick had been misplaced… Mike certainly couldn’t have been more accurately placed. Who gave him a megaphone? Rich knew Mike well enough to know he sure as fuck didn’t need to be using a megaphone to be heard, but this… this just made it worse. Or, at least, it used to. Now, though? The message kind of had an infectious bit of enthusiasm to it.

Maybe this would finally be the year Mike and Nick got him to watch that Chinese cartoon bullshit. After all, he’d already started playing the games.

Fuck, was the therapist right the whole time? Was being a happier, nicer person really as easy a one, two, three… and then you were in? All Rich had done was try really hard to feel like he wanted to be in camp, and now?

Rich turned his attention to Fiona and Alex, and asked them a simple question: “How come neither of you have a megaphone? Seems to work for Mike.” Wait did he come off like a douche? Shit. “Just a, like, suggestion. I'm sure you guys got it under control though..."