Caleb sat propped up in his bunk, fiddling with his flashlight. His long brown hair hung down in front of his face, and though he was often asked how he could see through it, he insisted he could see just fine. He waited for the rest of his bunkmates to return from using the bathroom before retiring to the cabin for the night. The flickering of flashlights on the gravel path leading to the cabin told him when they were coming.
“Close the door quick, or you’ll let the mosquitoes in!” he urged Robert as he opened the door. The teenager complied quickly, wanting to spare himself and the rest of the cabin the annoyance of the little bugs buzzing around and biting all night. As each camper returned they were all encouraged to close the door fast, and they all complied.
The last to enter was the counselor, Jay. He was a bigger guy with brown hair, though you couldn’t see much of it beneath his cap, and a beard, and he looked older than he actually was. The boys had tried to guess his age at dinner and it took them awhile to hit the magic number, as they kept shooting too high. He closed the door behind him without the prompting from his campers; he was an experienced counselor and as such he beat them to the punch.
“Okay boys, everyone into your bunks. I want to have a chat with you.” Some of the boys were already sitting on their sleeping bags. Robert’s feet left the ground as he floated up to his bed. A bright flash of light signaled Chad’s teleport across the room.
“So, I want to hear about everyone’s first day of camp. Who wants to start us off?” asked Jay. He waited a few moments, and unsurprisingly, none of the teens volunteered. “Are you guys going to make me choose someone?”
The boys looked around the room at each other. “Looks like,” said Caleb finally.
“Alright then, let’s start with, oh, how about Mike?”
The boy in the bunk across from Jay and up a level sat up a little straighter. “Umm, well, my day was good, I guess. Dinner was awesome,” said Mike. The boys in the room all agreed, taco salad was one of the best dishes ever created.
“What was your favourite skills class?” prompted the counselor.
“Archery was pretty cool.”
“Carl’s teaching that, right?” checked Jay.
“Yeah. He nailed a dragonfly to the target from 50 yards away with his off-hand. He’s got some crazy skills with that bow. Some of the guys nicknamed him Trickshot.” Mike paused and thought some more. “The singing was really fun too.”
“Yeah, Sarah and Melodi did a really good job with the program this evening,” concurred Jay. “It’s too bad they can only be here for a week. I hope I can do even half as well next week when I’ll be running it, especially since I won’t be choreographing any dance numbers like that. Anything else Mike?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Alright. Who’s next? Shane?” Jay looked to the boy in the bunk next to his. Shane paused in thought for a few moments before answering. “I really liked wilderness survival with Greg and Bill. Greg showed us how to make a trap and then Bill actually got caught in it!” The whole cabin laughed.
“Okay-Hey, Caleb, no fire in the cabin, remember?” said Jay sternly as he caught his camper. One of the few rules he insisted upon in the cabin was no fire, even though some counselor’s allowed it against the rules set down by the camp.
Caleb extinguished his hand. “Sorry.”
“Apology accepted. You wanna go next?”
“Okay. Drama was awesome today. We played a game where you have to try and keep a straight face while someone tries to make you laugh, and nobody could even come close to withstanding our instructor, Kirk. Well, except the other teacher, Whitney. She could. But otherwise, yeah, he was great at it.” Caleb seemed to be done, but then he had an afterthought. “Whitney had to tell him to watch his language a few times though.”
“That sounds like Kirk all right,” agreed the counselor. “Who else has a highlight? How about you, Robert. Whaddya got?”
“Nature appreciation was fun. Pillar knows a lot about bunnies, though I didn’t know there was such a thing as purple ones. Mark pretended that he knew a lot about the trees and stuff, but other than the 10 minute speech on ferns he didn’t actually know a lot.” As an afterthought, Robert added, “He really hates beavers too.”
Jay thought back to staff orientation where Mark had attempted to destroy a beaver dam by ramming it with his canoe. “Yeah, that’s very true. Okay, who’s next? Chad?” asked Jay. The tall, lanky kid fiddling with a guitar looked up from replacing the strings.
“Uh, sure, I guess. Mountain biking was pretty neat. Our instructor, Al, he showed us how to soup up our bikes. Mine flies now and can dimension hop, but I’m not allowed to until Thursday because I forgot to wear my helmet today.” Chad grimaced a little at that; he had been looking forward to visiting this cornfield he’d heard about that went on forever. He figured it’d be a good place to hide out when his parents were ragging on him.
“Did you guys actually ride your bikes?” asked Jay. He remembered when the skill class assignments had been given out his surprise that Al, a non-athlete by admission, had been named the mountain biking instructor.
“Well, we did. We haven’t seen Al on one yet though,” Chad answered.
“Okay, who’s left? Andrew, highlight of your day,” prodded the counselor.
“Arts and crafts is where it’s at! I never knew you could create an explosion with sequins, a hot glue gun, and popsicle sticks. Jamie is the best instructor ever! Umm, sports was okay, but we kind of had to run our own class since our teacher, Josh, kept flirting with the camp nurse.”
Jay frowned when he heard that. Uhuna and Josh had been warned about that whey they filled out their staff applications. He made a note to have a talk with Josh the next day, even though he knew he wouldn’t enjoy it.
“Hey, what skill are you teaching?” asked Mike. The question jarred the rest of the cabin as they realized none of them had had their counselor in a skill that day.
“Me? Well, remember when we broke the whole camp into power sets?”
“Sure. Flyers represent!” crowed Robert. He slapped hands with Chad, as teleporters had been lumped together with the flyers.
“No way, it’s all about the energy wielders,” disagreed Caleb, as he punctuated his retort with a small burst of flame from his hands.
“Caleb…”
“Sorry, sorry, no fire in the cabin, I know, I know! Energy wielders are still gonna take everyone down! Right Shane?” asked Caleb. Shane looked up from the psionically arranging his bunk.
“Umm, yeah, sure!”
“No no no, physical abilities, that’s where it’s at!” shouted Andrew. He picked up his brother, Robert, enthusiastically and began to toss him around nonchalantly. Mike, a speedster, raced around the cabin excitedly.
“Okay, okay, everyone back in their bunks!” shouted Jay. “You’re not going to be teaming with campers of the same powers. At least not all of them. My job this week, since we’re a little short staffed, is to run Recreation. I needed to find out what range of powers we have so I can make teams. I’ll be putting you in teams, with staff members as well, for those big camp-wide games I told you about. I think we’ll probably try Capture the Flag tomorrow.”
“Cool!” shouted the boys.
“So everyone had a good first day at Becoming Champions Betterment Camp?”
“Yeah!” agreed the cabin.
“Great! Okay, we’re going to talk about Adam the camp speaker’s speech, but first let’s get this mosquito coil lit. Caleb, would you mind?”
“You said no fire in the cabin.”
“Just light the bloody coil.”
END
*NOTE: I was at Beaver Creek Bible Camp this summer, or BCBC for short. Hence the really bad name of the camp; I wanted it to have the same initials. 
