Four Weeks, Five People

BEN

I’m Ben. Sixteen. From the suburbs of New York. I guess I would say that my happy place is...being in a movie theater. You know, like, the minute the opening credits roll. Which is, uh, which is kind of like the moment you disappear from this world, into another, if you think of it that way...

And why I’m here. Uh.

BEN (V.O.)

And just like that, I’m panicking. What other personality traits do you have, Ben? Intimately acquainted only with fictional characters? Literally incapable of human interaction? Caught between an endless string of down days and up days and days when you don’t feel anything at all?

* * *

Josh strokes his beard thoughtfully. Jessie raises an eyebrow. Mason looks terribly, terribly above it all. Stella makes an “And...?” face.

BEN (V.O.)

Say something say something say something—

BEN

I’m horribly emotionally unstable.

* * *

I stop.

Everyone is still looking at me.

BEN

Except for when I, like, don’t feel anything at all.

* * *

Continuing expectant silence.

BEN (V.O.)

Here is a list of things I do not say:

I do not say: I am sorry. I am sorry that introduction was pointless and I am sorry I couldn’t come up with anything more interesting to say because it is one of those times when I don’t feel anything at all.

And I do not say: It’s not always like this; I’m not always so far away. Sometimes life is real to me, and I’m sorry this isn’t one of those days.

And I do not say: But the truth is I’m not sorry. The truth is that sometimes it is easier to not feel, to pretend we’re all just actors waiting for the credits to roll and disappear forever, than to be a cocktail of feelings waiting to burst into flames. The truth is that this is one of those times.

BEN

That’s it.

* * *

Here is the falling action:

BEN (V.O.)

I am trying to stay with the moment, but I am rapidly losing focus. The camera pans from one person to the next and I just can’t will myself into believing that it’s any different from an on-screen fight that falls flat, or a miscued pseudoromantic beat. I rewrite the lines I’ve already said six, seven, eight times in my head, as if the director will shout, “Cut,” at any moment and I will get the chance to say them again, but better this time.

This is the moment everyone always worries about, because I could do anything—because anyone could do anything—and it would all feel equally trivial to me. Stella could punch me, I could slice my wrists open, the Asian girl currently talking could melt into the ground and disappear, and I just wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t care, because—

* * *

Here is the denouement:

BEN (V.O.)

I am waiting for the screen to fade to black.

STELLA (#u85ce315e-2639-5880-bef7-3e6507af0eb5)

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN awful at this first-day-of-camp business.

Even in middle school, way back when “camp” was still synonymous with rope swings and tennis courts and swimming pools, I was always the girl scowling through introductions and rolling my eyes every time anyone said anything particularly stupid—which, because this was middle school and middle schoolers are uniformly idiotic, was pretty much the entire time. Now camp is synonymous with being cut off from the rest of the known universe and being yelled at by therapists who won’t even let us swear, and it’s even worse. The problem with the first day of camp, see, is that I’m always the only one who’s realized how utterly miserable camp is going to be, and done the logical thing and just given up. Everyone else is all bright-eyed and hopeful as we introduce ourselves and get to know each other and learn about our next four weeks at camp! We’re supposed to put in a good-faith effort to be positive and friendly, which is sort of a problem for me on account of the fact that I am not very good at positive and downright terrible at friendly.

Needless to say, I’m pretty relieved when we finally finish introductions. “Does everyone remember each other’s names, or do we need to go over them again?” Jessie asks, and I have to resist the roll of my eyes and get myself yelled at again. Clarisa is the one who stammers through most of her introduction and has to be asked to speak up five times, Andrew is so skeletal that it’s not exactly a mystery what his issue is, Mason has the most punchable facial expressions I’ve ever seen in my life, and Ben looks so zoned out it’s like he’s on a permanent acid trip. There’s five of us. It’s not exactly rocket science.

After Jessie is done extorting deadpan yeses from all of us, she and Josh walk us all to The Hull, which is what everyone calls the residential building. “The Hull” sounds like a really, really stupid nickname for a building, I know—but once you see it, everything makes sense. For starters, it’s literally shaped like a ship’s hull: only five floors tall, but seems to extend on and on forever from one side to the other. Second, the entire thing got painted over in a really tacky wood stain when they started Ugunduzi so that it would fit in with the whole “camp” theme, but whoever was in charge of painting the building over didn’t do a very good job: the paint is completely uneven, and there are patches where it’s peeling off completely to reveal the gray, occasionally mossy, occasionally moldy blocks of concrete behind it. Needless to say, the building is fucking hideous.

Each floor of The Hull is designated a number and divided into a left wing and a right wing. Our group name, 1L, means that we’re housed on the first floor, on the left side. Like I said: the Ugunduzi founders may have been kindhearted and well-meaning and all that bullshit, but they sure as hell weren’t very creative.

Jessie and Josh lead us into our common lounge—where there’s a pool table, a bunch of sofas, and a kitchen area—and tell us that we can hang out until dinner and “bond.” I, of course, would rather impale myself on the pool stick they’ve left unwisely unattended, but my plan to spend the time sitting by myself and making a comprehensive list of all the ways I might be able to escape is ruined when Andrew plops down on the couch next to me.

“Hey,” he says, as if we’re two old friends hanging out in someone’s living room and catching up. It takes me a minute to realize that I am not, in fact, hallucinating.

“Hi,” I say flatly.

“So...” Andrew says. He bites his lip nervously. I’m starting to get the idea that Andrew is coming to me with the hopes of getting some sort of wisdom or advice, which is sort of a bummer for him, because I have no wisdom, I have no advice, and I have no inclination to share anything of the sort with random strangers I’ve just met, anyway.

“So...” I say back, hoping he’ll leave.

“So what’s it like here?”

No dice.

“Hmm,” I say. “Exhausting. Aggravating.”

I give it a few more seconds of thought.

“And soul-suckingly oppressive,” I add.