The Summer I Woke Up

The papaya sat on my breakfast plate like an alien spaceship, all orange-fleshed and weirdly gelatinous. Camp Whispering Pines had assigned me to Table 4 with the cool kids, of course. Jordan and her squad were already laughing about something on their phones, completely ignoring me.

"You gonna eat that?" Jordan asked, nodding at my plate.

"Maybe," I lied. I'd never even seen papaya before. My family's idea of exotic fruit was "the red grapes instead of green."

The counselors announced today's activity: the annual Zombie Survival Simulation. Basically, we'd spend four hours in the woods pretending to escape a zombie outbreak while doing team-building exercises. Cool kids loved it. I, who had approximately zero athletic ability and maximum awkwardness, was already dreading it.

But then came the announcement: "Stay together, and remember—there's a mama bear spotted near the north trail, so stick to your assigned routes."

Great. Zombies AND bears. My social anxiety was already zombie-like enough on its own.

The simulation started. Our group had to "escape" to the safe zone while solving puzzles. I kept zoning out, thinking about how I was basically going through life like a zombie—just showing up, going through motions, never really feeling anything except the constant pressure to be someone I wasn't.

Then we heard the snap.

A twig broke nearby. Everyone froze.

"Is that part of the game?" someone whispered.

Then came the huff. A massive brown bear lumbered out from behind a pine tree about thirty feet away.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might actually break a rib.

"What do we do?" Jordan whispered, actually sounding scared for once.

"Back away slowly," I said, surprising myself. "Don't run. Make noise. Let it know we're here."

"Since when are you the bear expert?"

"Since I watched a lot of nature documentaries instead of going to parties last summer," I shot back. Something about the danger made me stop caring about being cool.

We backed away, me leading, everyone following. The bear sniffed the air, looked at us, then wandered off in another direction.

When we were safely back at the main lodge, Jordan actually high-fived me. "You were kind of badass."

Later that night, sitting by the campfire, someone handed me a piece of fruit. "Leftover papaya. You want?"

I took a bite. It wasn't bad. Different, kinda sweet, not at all what I expected.

"Yeah," I said. "I think I'm done being scared of trying new things."

The zombie survival game had been fake. The bear was real. But somehow, facing the real thing made all the fake stuff I'd been worrying about seem suddenly small. I wasn't a zombie anymore. I was awake.