Camilla: An Array of Tests of Patience and Abilities

“If you’re so st-strong, why don’t you carry anything?” I huff. Christian had made good on his promise of making me go to the mall with him after school, but it wasn’t how I exactly imagined it going. I didn’t expect Christian to be gentlemanly and carry my bags for me, but I didn’t expect him to be so lazy! He wouldn’t point me in the direction of any store, even the stores that he wanted to go to. He just expected me to keep up the pace, be able to find locations quickly, multi-task, and think on the fly. To make matters worse he kept looking at his phone!

Now I’m carrying what must be a thousand different bags on my own, struggling to keep my composure. I feel like I’m about to fall over from all the work he’s forcing me to do. He starts muttering something to himself, but I’m so tired from all the walking around that I don’t care about whatever it is he has to say to himself. He walks over to me, before taking some of the bags away. My legs feel like jello, my back feels like a pencil that’s been broken in half a few hundred times, my head is covered in sweat, and I just want to sit down. He gets onto the escalator and I slowly follow behind him, trying not to collapse. Falling down a flight of escalator stairs doesn’t sound all that good right about now.

“You’re being a little dramatic, chamomile” he says. It takes everything in my mind, body, and soul to keep from yelling at him or swinging at him. (Or maybe both if he keeps this shit up).

“I hate you.”

“I know you do.”

Luckily, for both him and me, he has a change of tune once we get to the food court. I don’t know if it’s because my dad said he’d be there soon or if it was because of the food, either way he was acting like a gentleman once we crossed the threshold. If I wasn’t so ridiculously tired I probably could’ve leaped at him. I wouldn’t beat him, but getting a few hits in would definitely help my mood. I’m still considering it. Nope, too tired.

I feel like I’m about to pass out. I can’t tell if it’s exhaustion or how dumbfounded I am by his stupid behavior. Could be both. This has to be his worst plan ever, and I don’t know anything about his other plans. I rest my head on the table and let my mind wander onto something else. What could going to the mall have to do with his “grand plan”.

“You did better than I thought you would. I was half expecting you to collapse” He says. I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not, but I don’t care. “Because I was about to collapse” I grumble.

He lets out a sigh, then he looks down at his phone again. What does he have to be upset about? It’s not like he was carrying anything! He didn’t even ask ‘Hey do you wanna do this?’, he just told me to. It’s not like I could just drop everything on the ground somebody had to carry it. “I do everything I do for a reason. I wasn’t so eager to come here just so you could buy some more clothes and to watch you carry bags”. He seems genuine again, but whenever he seems that way it’s always just a joke. Also, realistically speaking, what could carrying a bunch of bags do? How is this helping his dumb plan? And why wouldn’t he tell me his plan ahead of time?

“I didn’t want to tell you because you’d either overexert yourself or you wouldn’t want to do it at all and refuse. The real reason I brought you here was to test your endurance before the big event” He explains. The big event? I try to think back to what he told me about the program. I remember he said that we’d most likely have to do something in gym, and we did have that assembly for when we were first chosen to be UABs. Nothing that I knew was sticking out to me. All of it was just very basic information, nothing connecting to some event.

“Did you seriously not pay attention to anything–”
“I got you two pizza. It’s the only place that wasn’t woke by Christian’s mother’s standards”

I sluggishly lift my head to look up at my dad whose carrying a tray that has a box of pizza and three drinks resting atop it. He places the tray on the table and I get enough strength to sit up. Christian scoots over so my dad can have some room at the table. I look down at the pepperoni pizza slice and strawberry smoothie that my dad bought my. I love smoothies, but not even a good smoothie can keep me from being pissed off about this.

Christian gets that look on his face again, that disappointed look. I don’t remember why he can’t eat at most of the places there, I don’t think he remembers either, but the fact he can’t bothers him. I know my dad is about to ask a question that’ll set him off or remind him of his mother. “Pizza’s good. Probably better than whatever else they have here anyway” I blurt out.

“You two want me to stay here or should I go to the next table over?” My dad asks.

“We’re fine on our own, thanks for asking though, Mr Fractor” Christian says.

Christian reaches into the small backpack he had brought with him, and pulls out a notebook. It’s hard to tell at first, but it’s the same notebook he used earlier today. When he was explaining the first part of his plan. Whatever it may be. “They didn’t give us a lot of details in the emails or their website, but they did include the reward. Four hundred points for the team in first place.” He mutters. I nearly choke on my smoothie when I hear that. Farming points isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but four hundred points is a big deal.

“We need a thousand points to complete our first year of the program. Considering we went to the mall together that should already give us a few points” I mumble to myself. For the first time in, well ever, Christian and I are on the same page. He keeps drawing out whatever he’s thinking about. He finally stops writing and he just looks over what he wrote. “We’ll still be partners, but they’ll loosen the time we’re mandated to spend together. It’s too good to be true though. Giving any student the chance to leave earlier, especially when it just started, is either a front to make parents feel better, or….”

“It’ll be ridiculously hard to do” I respond with a sigh. He nods his head, while I take a bite out of my pizza with a disappointed expression spreading across my face. He starts eating as well, but he’s less disappointed and more deep in thought. I wanna say I have faith in Christian, because if I don’t then I’m screwed, but he said it himself. The government's ‘unity commission’, doesn’t say anything about the event on their website. How can we train for something we don’t know about.

Thoughts about the event stay in my mind for the rest of the day. I plop down in the chair that sits in front of my vanity. Time for makeup removal routine, which feels like it takes a lifetime to accomplish. Like always, I pour some makeup remover onto a cotton pad and start wiping off my mascara and eyeliner.

YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO TASTE

Why does my ringtone seem louder whenever I’m doing something? I nearly fall off my chair, but I manage to maintain my balance and answer the phone. Scott started a group call with Miranda and Asher. “We have to lock in for these exams!” Miranda shouts. I have a feeling I already know what she’s talking about. “You mean that event?” I turn my focus to my phone, then back to the vanity after I ask her. I hear a little ‘mhm’ come from the phone. “I’ll do anything for some more points. I can’t stand the bitch I got paired with, I got an overly sensitive girl” Asher whines. Since Asher was deemed an apolitical he was bound to be paired with either extreme. They were treated like they were supposed to ‘fix’ the kids they were paired with because they had ‘the gift of neutrality and common sense’.

Miranda was a typical center-left girl so she got a farther right boy, and Scott….um. We all feel bad for Scott to say the least. “You act like you got Megan the mistress of sensitivity” I giggle. Everybody has a nickname for Megan. The eldritch horror of annoyance, the goddess of destruction of enjoyment, the wicked witch of twitter, and the most annoying bitch in school.(Listen, they can’t all be interesting and creative, you eventually run out of ways to say ‘this bitch is annoying’ with mystical fantasy titles).

“Ohhh” Miranda sounds like she’s grossed out just because she heard her name.
“I feel so bad for Mason” Scott sighs, sounding like he genuinely feels hurt for Mason.

I’m not any better though, I feel the same way. Poor Mason. “Yeah yeah, you don’t have any issues because your ‘bully’ treats you like his pet and buys you shit. Not all of us can have partners who have crushes on us.” Asher scoffs. My face starts to flush from the anger and embarrassment. Me and Christian? HELL NO! It could never happen, and even if it did….no it wouldn’t even happen. I focus back on my vanity. He wouldn’t like a girl like me. He wouldn’t. “She has to worry about it too Asher. We need to have a gameplan for this.” Scott debates, trying to diffuse the tension that had brewed. I find myself thinking about the same issue I had with Christian earlier.

How do you plan for something you don’t know anything about?

And what will these tests entail?