#lil 14/15 yr old psychos in the making

[godlizzza]

if you’re still taking prompts, maybe teen danbert at summer camp?? :o

Herbert sighed as he slipped his feet into the cool water of the lake. He leaned back against the soft birch behind him, the warm breeze blowing off the water rustling the branches above him. He stared out at the pier where a group of campers were laughing and jumping into the lake, swimming between posts and splashing each other. Herbert observed their grinning faces, hair plastered to their wet skin, and delighted squeals as they attempted to wrestle each other into the water. He watched on and shrank back further against the tree.

His parents had seemed to treat science camp as a last-ditch effort to get him to make friends before he started high school in the fall. Herbert, however, was treating the experience as a mission: get in, get out without being noticed. So far, he'd been successful. Everyone else seemed to have grouped up already, braiding friendship bracelets and sharing ghost stories around the campfire, leaving Herbert blessedly alone.

Just six more weeks, Herbert thought, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the soft bark.

"Hey there!"

Herbert startled violently at the voice suddenly in his ear. He scuttled backwards like a crab, nearly pitching over into the water, until his shoulder hit a root snaking out of the ground, and he fell back on his butt in the dirt.

"Woah, sorry!" said the same voice and Herbert found himself blinking up into a pair of warm brown eyes. His assailant was a boy of about his own age with floppy brown hair and an uncertain smile. He held a hand out to Herbert. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Herbert squinted at the offered hand and sat up on his own, ignoring it. As he dusted the dirt off his shoulders, he tried to quell his racing heartbeat, but this boy wouldn't stop looking at him.

"If you didn't mean to scare me then why did you sneak up on me?" Herbert snapped.

The boy blinked down at him before drawing his hand back. "I wasn't trying to sneak up on you, you just didn't hear me. You looked like you were falling asleep."

"I wasn't," Herbert hissed, crossing his arms over his chest with a huff.

This was what Herbert had been worried about. People talking to him. Expecting him to talk back. Making conversation.

Except Herbert was terrible at making conversation. He could never seem to muster up the effort to pretend to care about whatever the other person was saying. Forcing a polite smile and nodding along weren't skills he had in his wheelhouse.

"Well, anyway," the boy went on. "You're, uh, Gilbert, right? I'm Dan."

"It's Herbert," Herbert corrected and Dan flashed him an apologetic smile.

"Right. Sorry. Well, uh, you left your notebook in the mess hall last night," Dan said, fishing the spiral notebook Herbert had been searching for all day.

Herbert gasped at the sight of it and swiped it out of Dan's hands. He cradled it close to his chest, the knot of anxiety that had been sitting beneath his ribs loosening until he could breathe easy.

"I thought you might want it back," Dan explained, scratching the back of his neck and glancing off to the side.

Herbert peered up at him, frowning at the spots of colour dotting Dan's cheeks. "How'd you know it was mine?"

Dan looked back at him and coughed into his fist. "You were sitting at, like, the table next to mine and all I could hear all through dinner was this scritch, scritch. Every time I looked over at you, you were writing something."

Herbert didn't reply. He'd been writing theories about how alien life could exist without sunlight, something dumb he'd never admit to anyone else, and here was some stranger who'd had his notes for almost a full day.

"I read some of it," Dan said, causing Herbert's brain to skid to a halt. But when he looked at Dan the other boy was grinning at him. "I don't think I understood all of it, but it sounded really cool!" He dropped to sit beside Herbert, shucking his own shoes and dipping his feet in the water. "You really think it's possible that aliens exist?"

Herbert was slow to reply. "Well...yes. Theoretically, almost anything is possible. It's possible that if you jump out of a tree, the particles of your body and the particles of the ground will line up in just the right way that you'll fall straight through the earth. It's unlikely, but possible."

"Woah," Dan breathed. "That'd be wicked."

"I'd be worried about where I'd get stuck," Herbert, who had spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating this, said.

Dan nodded and they sat in silence for a moment before Dan was sidling up to him, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "You know, there are stories that a UFO crashed here."

This caught Herbert's attention. He sat up straighter, leaning into Dan's space. He suddenly forgot all about how much he hated talking to people, interested instead with the way this guy was vibrating at talk of aliens and UFOs.

"Really?" Herbert asked.

"Yeah!" Dan exclaimed. "My uncle was a camp counsellor here when he was in college. He said people would talk about this weird crater in the woods and how if you went near it, you'd start sleepwalking in the night. Like the aliens could get in your head or something." He sounded out of breath with how delighted he was. "So cool, right?"

"So cool," Herbert agreed, and before his brain could catch up with his mouth he said, "Maybe we could try and find it."

Dan's face lit up like Herbert had just promised him they'd go to the moon itself.

"Yes!" he nearly shouted and when Herbert flinched he cleared his throat and said again, in a more level tone, "Um, yeah. That'd be cool."

Herbert ducked his head, trying to hide the grin threatening to takeover his face. He thumbed the pages of his notebook and echoed, "Cool."

The two of them remained there, sat at the edge of the lake, talking about aliens while the others played in the water.