Kurt has this annoying habit of thinking in random ridiculous sentences and having to write them down somewhere. Her school copybooks are covered in various one-liners like, 'how can my brother think Brigitte Bardot is ugly. You can see we weren't raised together' or 'french ironic rap music has changed my ways of perceiving the world. it is the biggest evil of them all.' Kurt's childhood, until the end of middle school, is a nightmare of teachers wanting to check her work or for various reasons just look at her copybook. She couldn't even avoid the issue by having a notebook solely devoted to this purpose, because she ended up losing it, forgetting to take it with her, or even just forgetting she had it at all. And one minute, a handful of moments, would be enough for the lesson to be interrupted by an over thought sentence of Kurt's careful handwriting.

Until it stays written, tough, preferably in discreet places, it's okay; the problem is that sometimes Kurt can't prevent herself from saying stuff like that out loud. She has painful memories of having friends drifting away from her because in moments of confusion and distress she has mumbled 'I wish my dress was a helicopter' or equally embarrassing out-loud thinking.

That's why when she arrives at the camp, and has a staff member with a fake and enormous smile plastered on his face hand her a brochure that reads, 'welcome, young student !' in capital and cheerful letters, and she comments, 'I feel like I've just received my letter from Hogwarts', she knows that shit just got real. The attendant just looks at her, not really understanding, and looking really concerned about Kurt's mental health. Kurt bits her lower lip and mutters an apology before closing up her mouth by effectively snatching one lip on another, biting them on the inside to make sure they stay still.

The rest of Kurt's introduction to the camp is almost as embarrassing, for it is the same guy that gets to show her around, and he keeps looking over to Kurt with a worried expression, like she needs professional help. He also doesn't get her request to be called Kurt, and keep saying 'Elizabeth' in a carefully articulated way, that sounds almost like 'Elisabeth', like she is trying to teach a really small child to say his own name.

Only Kurt doesn't consider it as her own name. The thought that people don't consider it as a valid reason to call her like that, by the name she feels is really hers, does hurt her more than she thought. Lima, Ohio, may be bad, and she may get numb there often, like there's a weight keeping her from breathing properly, but at least no one there has already this deliberately ignored Kurt's own name. She may have gotten ugly looks, and worried stares, but the fact that she wants to be called like that is, over there, enough for people to comply.

And she doesn't get why it should get any different over here, when it's not even that far from where she lives: it is still the same state; it is still good, old Ohio, and the sadly familiar appearance to it.
But it's less of a home than home, if that even makes sense somehow.

She rooms alone, and the thought of being there every night for a month, with no company whatsoever, with only books and depressing music, is sadder than anything she has seen until now. She knows she is supposed to come back to the main building for activities and ice-breakers, but she doesn't feel like being social. She feels like lying on her bed and blasting music full-volume until she is comfortably numb. She knows it isn't logical: being sad because she is alone, therefore wanting to stay there alone. But Kurt isn't usually very logical in a daily basis, and she's also afraid that the said ice-breakers are just a way to trick her into doing some kind of crazy chemistry experiences, and she's afraid she'll blow everything up.

Which wouldn't be so bad, come to think about it, because then she would have to be sent home.

The morning after is spent in a sleepy haze, as Kurt walks through the camp — from breakfast to lessons — almost sleepwalking, her eyes red and puffy. For her first night, Kurt spends hours rolling around, from side to side, or just staying still staring through the windows. She is incapable of falling asleep in that unknown environment, and she wishes she had a teddy bear, or a blanket — something from home to hold on to. Maybe it's just the loneliness that makes her feel that way, and she hopes she doesn't have to feel like that ever again. She is really scared of dying alone.
Well, Kurt is scared of a lot of things, really.

The lessons are… well, she can't say she didn't expect it, but they're atrocious. Kurt is put on the lowest group level, with a red-haired girl that looks like she can't be more than twelve and this short, puffy boy who gets absurdly green when asked to speak up and has trouble reminding his own name. Even if she knows she really sucks at sciences, it still hurts that she is that bad: Kurt has never been the kind of person that is proud of having bad grades or brags about them.

There's only one person in her group that she might consider talking to : a short, thin girl, with curly black hair and soft hazel eyes — Kurt should really not be noticing things like that — also looking like she's bored out of her mind and sort of mirroring Kurt's attitudes, she notices. She doesn't look shy, just maybe sad and ill-at-ease, and Kurt decides she might as well talk to her. No one said she should spend an entire month on her own, after all, and getting a friend, — maybe not a friend, just someone to talk to during lessons, she reminds herself sternly — getting a friend can't do any bad.
She almost convinces herself that's the reason, not the way the girl bites the end of her pen looking out the window, or tucks her hair back behind her shoulder, or the way the cinnamon-toned skin of her forearm looks in the sun — because that would be bad.

Really bad.

Kurt doesn't manage to catch the girl's name during the call, be it that day or the following. That makes her anxious, to say the least, and even if she persuaded herself she would go and speak to her, she doesn't dare do it without at least knowing her first name. She feels it would seem stalkerish to go and speak to her for the first time, and calling her by her name without being introduced, but at the same time, she already is shy enough to add this to the list of things that makes her nervous. She needs something that will comfort her.

She had imagined stepping up to the girl in a confident way, something way too clich� for it to actually happen, when she is having a good hair day and it is perfectly groomed, maybe styled into a braid, and her make-up looks flawless. In her head, she sees it as that overused kind of 'boy meets girl' scene, where the boy (and stereotypically enough, that would be Kurt), rests his hand on the wall next to the girl's head, legs crossed and a confident smirk on his lips.

There is something about the girl that makes Kurt feel her name is something sweet and old, with a rosy smell to it, the kind of name made to be written in a careful and stylish hand on the first page of a copybook. Something like Madison maybe, or Chance. When Kurt was little, her first-ever babysitter was called Chance, and even though she can't remember anything about her, except maybe blond hair and a sweet smell of verbena, this is one of her favourite names ever. It's vintage and careful, like her parents wanted to give her the best possible start in life. There's not really an actual reason to it, but when she fantasizes about talking to the girl, she calls her like that, even though there's really slim chance (and she chuckles at the phrasing) it turns out to be her actual name.

***

If Kurt overthought things and spent every day in a construing mist, Blair, on the other hand, seemed never to think about them enough. If her parents had told her beforehand that she would be staying at the camp for a whole month, Aunt Patti having broken her leg tripping over her cat or something, she didn't seem to have understood the implications of it. She presumed she'd be hanging around on her own, watching shows on T.V. for hours on end – maybe doing a Grey's anatomy 48-hours-marathon like two summers ago – or laying down on the grass, watching the clouds slowly drift by. Never had she thought she'd be attending the lessons, which in hindsight was, actually, abnormally dumb of her.

So when her mother waked her up loudly on that morning, banging the door with her elbow again and again and again – and Oh, the headache she would have later on – Blaine had no idea what had just hit her or what she had been suddenly thrown into.

She spent the hour destined to the completion of the level exam in a sleepy haze, in that state somewhere in the scale between sleep and awakening where everything you normally acknowledged as normal suddenly revealed its true nature and evident awkwardness. There was a girl, on her left, two rows up, that was combing her hair with a round hairbrush, and suddenly that object in itself stoke her as utterly bizarre. What was that act even destined to, she could only imagine. She didn't even bother to try and fill in the multiple grids on the paper, and limited herself to cross multiple-choice answers by chance, her eyes drifting close and her head lowering dangerously, almost hitting the desk. She randomly switched between periods of stoned amazement and complete shock, wincing each time a noise louder than the others managed to wake her out a bit more.

Somewhere along that time, she persuaded herself somehow that everyone was staring at her. Blair thought she must have looked pretty high, and from now on she felt the urge to fake a yawn when she crossed someone else's gaze. Overall – and she would suffer from enormous secondhand embarrassment later on – she managed to make a fool of herself.

The lessons aren't much better, and she tries to forget about them.

During lunch break, she ran back to her room, somehow managing the time to take a steaming hot shower, dress into acceptable clothes—well, more or less: she ended up settling for throwing on her Dalton uniform, it being the first thing to pop out; it was comforting and adequate, and technically, she was still on school grounds, right?—, put on actual make-up and braiding her hair up her head messily, tangling it as quick as she could. She thanked god for the stack of junk food hidden under her bed and, as she packed a small bag with school furniture, she shoved and apple in her mouth.

It's fifteen minutes until she has to get back for lessons when her phone rings. She sighs, but then it's Nicole and she can't ignore her, so she rolls her eyes, smiling fondly, and answers.

Nicole's voice is muffled and she can hear some background shuffle, like she is too excited to hold the phone still. She greets her friend with an eager and piercing shrill, and Blair knows for sure something has happened. She tortures Nics for a few minutes, talking emptily about outfits and weather, not letting her speak or say anything, until she can hear her friend getting upset, so she smirks and says, 'Tell me, Nics'

She needs to turn her ear away from the speaker, as Nicole makes the vocal equivalent of a lengthy, incoherent keysmash and begins to blabber hysterical nonsense about trees and restaurants and Jen's boobs, and somehow Blair manages to get she's talking about her first date with the blonde girl.

—Hey, Nics, wait—you went on a date with Jen ?

The request is ignored as Nicole goes on, in a mist of happiness and excitement, not making any sense. Blair doesn't understand anything new, but she settles on her bed and laughs delightfully with her friend for a while.

She is still listening to Nicole's rendition of the fairytale she's going to live with Jen— now that the girl finally came to her senses and admitted to being head-over heels for Nicole—when her gaze meets the old ticking clock on her wall and realizes she's already ten minutes late.

Hell.

She mutters some nonsensical apology and goodbye to the girl before hanging up and running out the door, her bag hanging over her shoulder. She wonders if this is what her month at the camp will be like: running around in a hurry, always late, always lost—talking solely to her school friends and meeting no one new, be it by fear to let someone in or to have to come out again.

Blaine hasn't run back into the closet for a long time, and as she runs through the campus, the mere thought makes her throat close up, tighten in a painful grip, and it's hard to breathe. She's panting from the run, and the sudden pain on her right side, and her vision clouds up in a mist of unshed, hot tears.

She has to stop, and she stumbles forward, almost tripping, trying to catch her breath—and that's when she hits someone.

***

That's definitely not how Kurt had imagined their first meeting to be.