Rome

Life of Gris, honestly

My eyes light up back at the being’s words. “You remember me?” I ask, voice as light as a feather because I do not want to scare this apparition off.

The head, accompanied by a full-body cloak the color of a deep shimmering amber. At the bosom, where the etchings of breasts lay, I swear I can hear her heartbeat stronger than a drum. Her head c***s just gently, studying me like a dog does when they find something they don’t know. “Of course,” she says, staring deep into my eyes. “But you shouldn’t… you shouldn’t be seeing me…” her words are mumbled, falling away. Frustration falls on her face in the form of a knotted brow, head still cocked slightly.

“I don’t understand?” She’s inches away, I can feel her breath on my skin whenever she talks. It smells like the forest, like the sun warmed leaves and the creek and everything I’d ever wanted in life. It’s like she bathed in the earth for a straight fortnight, and has traded molecule with the forest. I wonder who she is.

Her attention is grabbed, and her eyes turn livid and fearful once more. “We are interrupted, I must go.” What’s bothering her, I don’t know. For me, we are alone in this forest. Two souls, two apparitions looking into each other.

“Will I ever see you again?” I blurt, watching as her body is already turning to liquid.

“You already have, human.” Then her fingers go to her lips in a motion of quietness, and she slinks back into the trees. My eyes do not leave her frame, but she disappears before I have time to recognize she’s gone.

Human, I think to myself as I crumple to the ground, the apparition lost. She called me human. Moments later the silence is lost, and I hear what she must’ve heard. Leaves cracking by something heavy, and then whistling. If someone saw me in this state, crumbled in on myself and looking at the ridge with a raging desire of discovering the unknown, they’d think I was a lunatic. I go over to see who robbed me of my meeting with the unknown.

It’s a girl with dark skin and hair that looks like my mother. I know who she is the second I lay eyes on her: a counselor that worked last year named Aztec. She’s like me, immigrant mother and American father. I look more like my dad, pale with fine caucasian features. I have dark eyes and hair like my mother though, unlike my older brother and younger sister who both have blue eyes.

When she looks at me, her brow knots in confusion. “Kevin’s younger brother… ?” She asks me, my face not as apparent to staff.

One summer, when me and Kevin were both at camp, him and her had a fling. She’s two years younger than him, but I remember them sneaking off into the woods to do naughty things. He never worked here, always too busy with school and his desire to become lawyer to focus on temporary things that didn’t force him in some direction. Right now he’s halfway across the country, working on this third year at some prestigious school. We only really see him for Christmas, as he spends his summers there taking more classes. He doesn’t need to come home, with me working here and my sister and mother spending their time doing things. My father works full-time, and so he only requests time off when Kevin’s in town.

I nod to her, “yea. But you can call me Gris.”

“Isn’t that your real name?” She asks me, three bags hanging from around her neck and another two clasped between her hands. She’s always been one to overpack, I’ve heard.

My head shakes, “no. I have a normal name like Kevin.” Since I’ve always wanted to work here, I’ve always had people call me Gris. Given for Leviathan, who actually needs to know my real name, no one else really needs to. It’s the nickname given to me by my mother, so it’s the nickname I’ll retain. “But I go as Gris.”

“Cool I’m Aztec, but you can call me Maya.” She says, trying to push the information of my real name out. I laugh internally at that, because no one really gets to know my name, regardless. I’ve been Gris as long as I’ve been Josh.

My mom was an immigrant from Mexico when she was 20, came here illegally with her two twin younger brothers. She worked two jobs to support them, get them through high school then college. In one of her waitressing jobs she met my father, the son of a minor state politician but with money in their pockets. My father always said she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and he didn’t care she didn’t have a high education, barely spoke english and had forged papers. He legalized her and her brothers and married her. They’ve been married twenty-five years, and have been together for thirty.

My dad named me and my brother after his relatives, old blood. My mother refused these names, called us by colors instead. My sister’s color is her actual name, but me and my brother have been Rojo and Gris longer than we’ve been our born names.

So in the end, it is my name.

“I, uh, saw someone else coming down the road when I checked in so maybe they’re coming here.” She says, smiling, trying to change the subject.

“Cool,” I say, my hands in my pockets.

“So where’s your cabin? First one I assume since you got first pick?” She laughs nervously. I’ve annoyed her or something, can’t tell.

“Number Six, way in the back against the canyon wall.” I watch her reaction of intrigue and disbelief. Since walking is such an ever present hassle everyone wants the closet cabin. Cabin Number One is a luxury. I’ve heard stories of people trading in a portion of their weekly salary for one.

“You’re kidding me right?” Her eyes light up because she knows the treat she’s in for. She’s almost jumping at the cabin. My head shakes and I tell her no, and the next thing I see is her walking briskly away with all of her big gigantic bags.

I’m left in the solitude of watching the empty unit building creak and groan from the wind that’s pounded down the road. I think the girl in the woods, and wonder when I am going to see her again. My pondering doesn’t last long, because like Aztec foretold, a car pulls up the dusty road. Out exits another woman, older than Aztec. I don’t recognize her.

I really hate being the welcoming party, but here I am, meeting the people I am to spend the next three months of my life with. She’s pale with sandy red hair that’s straight and ends in bangs. Big blue eyes that are sunk into her face lightly. They will be ugly when she gets older, as they’ll become one with the wrinkles. Tight lips, angular chin. She’s not wearing any makeup, but doesn’t need to because she already expresses an air of control and command. I automatically know she’s the Unit Director. I'll be under her wing for the next three months. My shoulders perk up and a smile crosses my face.

“Nice to meet you,” I say to her once she parks. I go to her car, offer to help her with her bags, and she gratefully obliges. She sleeps in a cabin off the unit building that has four beds, one for her and two others for the unit aides, which arrive two days later than everyone else because they can start when they’re sixteen. I never had any desire to do it. I always wanted to work here, but not deal with childhood fecal matter and clean the bathrooms.

She shakes my hand, “names’ Seven. And you are?”

“Gris.” I help her take her bags the several feet over to the building. She has many things exposed, like coloring books and big tarps of color. She’s going to be fun, I think to myself. I begin to wonder if there are any other guys as well.

“Is this your first year working here?” I ask her once we’re finished.

“Yea! I’ve worked at other camps when I was younger but I’m getting my PhD in behavioral science so I thought something like this would be cool. You?”

“I’ve actually gone to camp here for the last ten years, but this is my first year actually working.”

“Oh cool.”

“Yea.”

After I help her I check my watch, and realize there’s only an hour and a half till the meeting. When I arrived I didn’t so much as unpack my stuff but rather put them into my cabin and ran to the cliffs. I decide to then go work on my unpacking, because I might as well have the cabin look… nice.

Campers aren’t coming for three weeks. The first two weeks are spent bonding with each other, learning how to be successful staff. I have no idea what to expect, what Leviathan has in store for us.

When I go back to my cabin I look at the cliffs with a longing expression. I want my answers, but I guess they’ll to wait. I don’t do much decorating, simply hang up this old tie-dye sheet I found at a thrift store several years ago. It goes over the door, a beige thing with a wired window. Lazily from the roof a spider hangs.

Camp Red was built over fifty years ago on the outskirts of the woods. Not much has changed. There are no bathrooms in the cabins and my own bed isn’t removed from the children’s. It’s the bottom bunk in the right corner, with my own little closet built into the wall. Two more are on either side, between the two sets of bunk-beds on either corner. In total, there are four bunk-beds and eight beds. Cabins usually only fill up from about five to six campers, but it depends on the week. Some weeks I’ll have three, some I’ll have seven.

None of the buildings are different than when they were from fifty years ago. Each unit gets a bathhouse which has four stalls for boys and four for girls, and eight sinks right in the middle. There are two shower houses, one on each side of the camp. They each have six shower stalls per gender, and one toilet.

Everything’s rustic here, but I like how little things have changed. The only things that have changed are the staff. My mind relates back to my favorite staff that have long since left for better things. One of these days I will become a ghost like them.

My bed made, I lay on it until it’s ten minutes to go. It’s a ten minute walk from my cabin to the lake, which is where I assume the meeting is being held. The lake, which wasn’t a real lake but took ten years to make it, is the landmark. Camp Red is actually Camp Red Creek, because there’s a red clay in the creek and lake that give it an almost blood-like tint.

I heard people pile in but I took no attention to it, because I know I will meet them sure enough. I heard yells and screams, people having not seen each other in some time and being reunited. I have two friends that I know are here, their camp names being Blue and Hydro, but I didn’t hear their voices so I’ll see them when I do.

When I leave my cabin I take one last look at the beige building. Something that wasn’t there before, a golden coin on the windowsill that shimmers. I practically pounce on it, grabbing it, and analyze it. It’s golden with silver undertones, a roman face molded into it on one side, and a roman letter on the other side surrounded by laurel imprints. My eyes trace the cliff's-edge, and I swear I can see two dark eyes piercing into me from far away.  

Author's Note

Please ignore grammar