Thunder in My Chest

The summer before sophomore year, I got stuck as a counselor-in-training at Camp Pine Ridge, which was basically social suicide according to my group chat. Maya, who'd been practically ghosting me since she made varsity cheer, was there too, of course. She'd upgraded from friendship to "polite waves in the hallway."

My campers were middle schoolers who thought they were too cool for everything. I spent my first week playing mediator between Skylar, who wouldn't stop vaping in the bathroom, and Jordan, whose mom had packed literally twenty bottles of supplements. "You need your vitamins," Jordan kept saying, shaking these neon gummies that promised to fix everything from acne to anxiety. Meanwhile, I was popping Vitamin D like candy because apparently sunlight wasn't enough.

Then the storm hit.

We were on an overnight hiking trip when the sky turned that sickly purple-gray color. The lightning started cracking across the sky like something had ripped the atmosphere open. My campers were freaking out—Skylar was crying, Jordan was hyperventilating, and I was trying to remember literally anything from the counselor orientation video I'd half-watched while texting my ex.

That's when we saw it. A black bear, massive and oblivious, lumbering toward our campsite. Not a Disney bear. A real one, with shoulders like boulders and zero interest in our existence.

"Everyone stay absolutely still," I whispered, my heart hammering like I'd drunk five energy shots. The bear sniffed our food hang, looked at us with these bored eyes, and kept walking.

The storm broke right after. Rain came down in sheets while lightning flashed so close I could taste ozone. We huddled in the tents, and somehow—maybe because we'd almost died, or because Skylar was done pretending not to care—we ended up talking about everything. Real stuff. Not the curated Instagram version.

Maya texted me that night. "Saw your story. The bear looked fake lol."

I didn't reply. Some people stay stuck in middle school forever. The rest of us move on, collect our scars, and figure out who we actually are when the lights go out.