Green Hair, Wild Truths

My hair was supposed to be electric blue. Midnight rebellion, right? Instead, it came out this murky swamp-green that made me look like I'd been dipped in radioactive waste. Mom's fault, technically—she bought the discount dye kit. But somehow I was the one suffering through orientation week at Camp Pinecrest looking like a walking vegetable.

"Just take your vitamins, Maya," Mom had said, shoving a bottle of neon gummies into my hands like they'd fix everything. Like they'd fix Dad leaving, or my social anxiety, or the fact that I was desperately trying to reinvent myself three states away from anyone who knew me as 'the quiet girl.'

The vitamins sat in my cabin's bathroom cabinet, untouched. Until Sasha, my bunkmate with the perfect golden curls and effortless confidence, spotted them.

"Ooh, gummy vitamins?" She'd popped two before I could protest. "My mom stopped buying them because I 'never remember.' You're literally my favorite person right now."

By day three, half the cabin was pilfering my vitamin stash, and I was the weird girl with green hair who also happened to be a hero. Not exactly the glow-up I'd planned.

Then came the bear.

It was midnight cabin raid—Sasha, Chen, and I sneaking to the lake to meet boys from the boys' camp. We'd barely made it past the mess hall when we heard it: branches snapping, something massive moving in the darkness.

"Bear," Chen whispered, grabbing my arm so hard I'd have bruises later.

A real bear. A massive black bear, maybe thirty feet away, rummaging through the outdoor trash bins like it owned the place. It turned, caught us in its beam of flashlight reflection, and I swear it looked right at me.

My legs weren't working. But then Sasha's hand found mine, Chen's breathing synced with mine, and somehow we weren't three separate terrified girls anymore. We were a unit.

We stood there, frozen, watching it eat someone's discarded pizza for what felt like hours but was probably minutes, until it lumbered off into the woods. Then we ran back to the cabin, adrenaline making us giddy, collapsing on our bunks in hysterical laughter.

"You know," Sasha said the next morning, examining her reflection in the mirror while applying mascara, "your hair's actually kind of growing on me. It's... unexpected. Like you."

I looked at my green hair in the mirror. Maybe swamp-green wasn't so bad. Maybe neither was being the girl who shared her vitamins and faced down bears with newfound friends who liked her exactly as she was.

I texted Mom that night: *Love you. Send more vitamins.*