Camp Firefly Sisters

Chapter 13
Camp Firefly Sisters, Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Rachel must have already had an idea in mind, since she and Bailey were the ones who initiated the private conversation about these challenges. “Let us pour sand down your swimsuit before the next round,” she said.

Right. These were middle school girls. I was used to dares that were a little more intense, though that didn’t necessarily mean that the innocent task given to me would be easy. Running with sand stuck between my body and my one piece would certainly be uncomfortable during the coming race, plus I was already worried about washing it all off with a single shower. Sand had a way of lingering no matter how thoroughly one worked to get rid of it.

“Fine,” I reluctantly said. Part of me wanted to use my pass, especially since we had a chance of winning this ranked game. If we came in second, or Mckenna needed a bit to sort out how she was going to send me home, I didn’t want to be stuck with something even more difficult in the meantime. And, for all I knew, I was going to have to deal with all the challenges in a single day. Although probably not. Part of the fun of such hazing, I assumed, was to stretch it out. Five cabin mates meant five tasks that were essentially immature dares.

“Okay!” Bailey grinned, “Turn around, Maddie.”

I did as I was told, feigning a half smile for the sake of playing nice with the girls. This was the first time Bailey had acted more like her bubbly self all morning, too. Winning the first round must have woken her up, annoying as her perky energy could be, it was what I was more familiar with at this point. Not that I could blame her for being tired. These mornings were painfully early.

She and Rachel whispered to each other for a moment, sharing a few hushed giggles as well. While I wasn’t looking, Bailey scooped up an enormous pile of sand with both of her hands. Then Rachel gripped the top of my one piece and pulled it away from my back, giving Bailey room to dump all of it inside.

I gasped at the sheer quantity, definitely expecting more of a basic handful or something like that. “Hey!” I exclaimed, when I felt most of the sand caught around my mid-back due to the one piece being flush with my skin when not being tugged back by a girl.

“Wait, don’t move,” Bailey insisted. One of them pinched the middle of the pink swimsuit and once again pulled it from me. Before I knew it, the sand was continuing its downward journey and collecting around my ass, plenty of grains finding a spot between my cheeks. And that was when I was standing still; I could only imagine how it would feel once I started moving and gave the sand more room to shift around down there.

Despite Bailey’s directive, I continued to squirm a little bit at the awkward feeling of the sand below my waist. To make matters worse, Rachel circled around to face me and, with no warning, she pulled the front of the one piece away from my chest and dropped a handful of sand between my breasts.

“What-” By the time I processed what she was doing, it was way too late to say or do anything to stop her. The moment she was done emptying her hand, Rachel let the top of my swimsuit snap back into place. While the quantity working its way down my abdomen wasn’t nearly as excessive as what had been dumped down the back, I was still going to have to deal with sand all over my crotch sooner rather than later.

Rachel stepped back and dusted off her hands. “How’s that, Maddie? Part of the challenge is that you’re not allowed to touch your swimsuit until it’s time for us to change back into our regular clothes. If one of us catches you doing that, we get to add more sand!”

But- That was going to be a difficult rule to follow. As soon as I started feeling itchy from all the sand in the one piece, I was going to both consciously and subconsciously feel the need to fiddle with it. That, and tugging at the leg holes would be a good way to release some of the sand that would eventually lump at the bottom. Of course, that was the whole point of Rachel’s rule; it’s what made this more of an effort than simply letting them pour sand down my swimsuit.

Suggesting an alternative way for me to deal with my current state, Bailey circled around and propped her elbow on Rachel’s shoulder, “But you’re allowed to move around to adjust things. You should probably start with the sand in the back; it kind of looks like you pooped yourself right now.”

I couldn’t help but blush at that comment. It didn’t help that Bailey said it so nonchalantly, rather than teasing me about it. “Umm, right,” I muttered, turning my backside away from the other girls on our team. Had anyone been watching this? I was too distracted by everything with the sand to really pay attention to the others. The other Cabin Four girls were going to have a chance to give me their own challenges, and would probably hear about this one from Bailey and Rachel. Wait, was I the only new girl in our cabin? I couldn’t remember; my aversion to socializing more than necessary, as well as how often I was spacing out and thinking about how to deal with this ‘camper’ trick Mckenna had sprung on me, made it so I only knew so much about the girls I spent a decent amount of time with.

Lifting one leg and then the other, I tried to adjust the sand without being too awkward or noticeable with my movements. It was kind of like trying to unstick an outfit piece that was sitting incorrectly on my body, but in a less subtle manner and without using my hands at all. I didn’t feel like I was making much progress, and not having a mirror or anything else to check my reflection meant that there was no way of knowing for sure. Well, except for asking. “Better?” I asked, turning slightly to let the two of them see.

“Hmm, I guess,” Bailey shrugged, “Come on, we should get back to the others.”

Wait, but- I wasn’t given any more time to get used to the uncomfortable sensations down there. And, unlike previous instances of following the girls from my cabin, I wasn’t allowed to trail behind like I usually did. Not when I had a ‘no touching’ rule to follow, which required someone in on the challenge to have their eyes on me at all times.

It was nearly our turn for the race that would determine first and second place. Most of the campers on our team were excited about everyone’s standings at the moment. The circle that had won Dodgeball had only gotten third today, meaning that even if we lost the coming relay triathlon, we’d be in third place overall with only a small gap between us and the older teams. Except I didn’t care about our ranking for some stupid trophy; I was still crossing my fingers for first place right here and now.

Even the short walk over to the group of girls served to work the sand more deeply into my more private areas. Sand in my ass, sand all over my crotch. The only relief was how every step did a better job of making the pile shift downwards than my active attempt to do so a minute ago did. It would be so easy to give the base of the one piece a tug and let the majority of the sand fall out, yet I obviously couldn’t just do that; maybe I’d get a chance while running in the near future. Or, better yet, the event would end with all the campers getting to swim for a little while.

When it was time for the runners and the swimmers to make their way to their other side of the lake, my main focus was staying towards the back to keep anyone from seeing the awkward lump Bailey had teased me about. That, and I was walking with slightly wider steps in an attempt to avoid getting a rash down there from the sand rubbing against my skin with every movement. Of course, I wouldn’t get to be so careful when it was time to run with the part of my team that was taking part in that leg of the race.

Once everyone had been separated by the counselors, to avoid confusion once the canoes were approaching the shore, all we could do was wait. There wasn’t really any trash talking between the two teams, playful or otherwise; instead, the girls continued to strategize here and there, as if you could really overthink something as simple as a race.

Before too long, things were getting started across the lake. The sun was actually out now that it was mid-morning and, though there was a considerable distance between us and them, we could see all the girls climbing into the canoes. It was also impossible to miss the splashing from their paddles when they began.

Despite how the counselors had organized us on the shore, there was just as much chaos upon the arrival of our teammates as there had been when I was on the other side of things. The 8th grade campers made it there first, at which point they all jumped out of the canoe to tag the hands of the girls waiting to run. Meanwhile, my team was all yelling at our rowers who were maybe ten or twenty seconds behind. It was just as shrill as their cheering, though I couldn’t blame them when I was just as eager to win.

Following the lead of the girls around me, I moved forward to get my hand tagged by someone. The moment I did, my other hand was taken by somebody else. “Let’s go, Maddie!” It was Ally, making sure I didn’t dawdle in the slightest. She and the others had discussed pairing the more athletic girls with the weaker links, but I must have missed the part about literally dragging those girls along to pressure them to keep up the pace.

As expected, running with all that sand clumped around my private areas was all kinds of difficult and uncomfortable. Tempted as I was to do something about it, one or two of my cabinmates were on the swimming team and potentially knew about the challenge and the specifics involved. That, and there were so many campers around; I was pretty sure the sight of sand falling out of my one piece as I tugged at it with my free hand would be more obvious than the pile clumped between my thighs as I did my best to match Ally’s speed.

Being barefoot didn’t help. So far, I had really only been by the lake. And although the path the race was taking was pretty much dirt, that had probably been marked as safe to run on without shoes by the counselor, I much preferred doing active things in shoes.

Ally eventually let go of my hand. She and another girl darted ahead, leaving me and one other camper in the rear of our group. Our chances of catching up with the other team were looking slim; even so, I pushed myself to run a little more quickly while ignoring the discomfort to the best of my ability. If we didn’t win, I was going to be stuck as a camper for another full day. The least I could do was beat the one other slow runner on our team, to avoid being judged too badly.

By the time the remaining relay batons came into view, along with a counselor who was there to make sure no one was cheating by grabbing all of them at once for their side, the entirety of the other team’s runners were already making their way back to the lake. So were everyone but me and the other straggler, many of whom told us to hurry up.

I grabbed one of the batons a few seconds before the other girl, swiveling on my heel and chasing after the girls I could see ahead of us. By the time the lake came back into view, I was thoroughly winded. Though I did some light cardio back home, that didn’t really prepare me for an extended sprint. 

Just as I reached the edge of the forest, I ran into what felt like some kind of string or rope or something that I wasn’t expecting. I flew forward and downward with absolutely no grace, completely eating dirt–well, eating sand–from how my momentum basically threw me at the ground thanks to whatever it was that had tripped me.

There was a good amount of laughter from how I face planted, with a bit of urgency from the girls on our team who were still clinging to the hope that we could win. The girl behind me stopped to help me up as I squinted and brushed the sand off my face to avoid getting it in my eyes. The last two swimmers grabbed the batons from us and jumped into the water, not that they were ever going to catch up; maybe there was a penalty for giving up or something, and this was just seeing the race through.

A nearby counselor checked in to see if I was alright, which didn’t help things. I wasn’t hurt; I was embarrassed. Especially since everyone seemed to think that I tripped over air as I was running, which absolutely wasn’t the case. I tried to defend myself, about how someone must have set up some kind of trap to sabotage our team. Except the other girl took the exact same route and didn’t have a problem. And, when I went over to check, I didn’t see anything there.

By the end of my brief investigation, I looked like both a klutz and a sore loser, not to mention how I had probably earned the spot as ‘weakest link’ despite how I had managed to be a little faster than one of our teammates. But there was no way I had imagined that. I wasn’t sure how, but somebody must have tripped me and then covered their tracks afterwards.

I was still under the impression that it was one of the older girls, assuring their victory by making sure we couldn’t manage a comeback at the end. What I didn’t consider, even with the sand in my swimsuit, was the idea that one of the girls from my cabin might have been responsible.