Four Weeks, Five People. Jennifer Yu
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JESSIE
On the other hand, we are not here to be your best friends. We will not turn a blind eye to misbehavior or any dangerous, illicit activity. We are here to keep you safe and healthy. Is that clear?
* * *
No response. Jessie tries again, the question sounding considerably more like a demand this time.
JESSIE
Is that clear?
* * *
This time, we all get the memo. A chorus of dutiful yeses fills the air. But no one looks particularly happy about it. Jessie’s an obvious reminder that as hard as we might try to pretend, this isn’t exactly the kind of camp you go to when you want to have a summer of fun and games.
JESSIE
Excellent. Now we can proceed to the introductions that matter—yours. Stella, will you start us off?
* * *
Not really a question. Stella glares at Jessie, who looks back calmly. There’s clearly history there. A beat. Two beats. Three beats.
STELLA
(“fuck you”)
I’d love to. What exactly do you want me to say?
JESSIE
Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. Why don’t we do—name, age, hometown, what brings you to Camp Ugunduzi. Anything else I’m missing, Josh?
JOSH
Mmm. Happy place.
* * *
Confusion flickers briefly over Jessie’s stern expression. Stella buries her face in her hands.
JESSIE
Sorry?
JOSH
Happy place. Where is your happy place? The place where you feel most at home. At one with yourself. In line with the rest of the universe. At peace—
JESSIE
Right. Happy place. Of course. Go ahead, Stella.
STELLA
I’m Stella. Seventeen. From Wethersfield, Connecticut. My happy place is... Well, it’s definitely not here, I can tell you guys that much.
JESSIE / JOSH
Stella! / Hmm.
JESSIE
Is this really the note you want to start camp on, Stella?
STELLA
Well, I didn’t really want to start camp on any sort of note, thanks very much. Or at all. But since no one asked me, I guess this is the note we’re all stuck—
JOSH
Hmmmmmm.
* * *
Josh’s voice is so deep and mellow and pleasant that both Stella and Jessie stop arguing.
JOSH
If you could be anywhere else right now in the universe—feel free not to limit yourself to this world!—where would it be?
STELLA
Running. Well, that’s not a place, but—On the road, I guess. On the road, running.
* * *
Josh looks at Stella very seriously.
JOSH
Hmm.
JESSIE
And why you’re here.
STELLA
And why I’m here.
* * *
Deep breath.
STELLA
I don’t know. I used to be this normal, happy-go-lucky kid. But then at some point I couldn’t remember the last time I felt normal or happy-go-lucky. I couldn’t remember the last time I even wanted to get out of bed.
* * *
For a moment, Stella looks surprised at her own honesty. Then she pulls it together and makes the bitchiest face imaginable to compensate.
STELLA
The point is, I couldn’t bullsh—oops, I mean BS—about feeling fine well enough to get my psychologist to believe me. Whatever. You go.
* * *
Stella turns to the BLOND GUY next to her, who is tall and blue-eyed and tan in a way that makes me hate him instantly.
ANNOYINGLY ATTRACTIVE TEEN
Mason. I’m seventeen, and I’m from Bethesda, Maryland. My parents are idiots, is basically why I’m here. My happy place is...a land...governed...by rationality.
* * *
He pauses every few words, an obvious (not to mention incredibly irritating) effect meant to demonstrate how profound he is. I watch Stella’s eyes get narrower and narrower until they’re barely even slits.
MASON
Somewhere where people use logic instead of succumbing to blind emotion.
* * *
Mason sighs, as if the burden of being the lone rational agent in a dumb, emotional world is heavy on his shoulders indeed.
MASON
So, sure as hell not in that world. Oops, sorry, that might have been a little aggressive.
BEN (V.O.)
Mason is so into himself that it’s terrifying. Mason is Patrick Bateman in training. Oh, and if cinematic precedence means anything in the real world, it’s that Mason is so going to hook up with Stella by the end of Week 3.
* * *
Mason shrugs, then looks over at me, expectant. I realize, suddenly, that I am standing next to Mason, that the camera has panned left and I am on-screen with absolutely zero lines written and a captive audience. I take a deep breath and swallow hard.
* * *
Here is the anticlimax:
BEN
I’m Ben. Sixteen. From the suburbs of New York. I guess I would say that my happy place is...being in a movie theater. You know, like, the minute the opening credits roll. Which is, uh, which is kind of like the moment you disappear from this world, into another, if you think of it that way...
And why I’m here. Uh.
BEN (V.O.)
And just like that, I’m panicking. What other personality traits do you have, Ben? Intimately acquainted only with fictional characters? Literally incapable of human interaction? Caught between an endless string of down days and up days and days when you don’t feel anything at all?
* * *
Josh strokes his beard thoughtfully. Jessie raises an eyebrow. Mason looks terribly, terribly above it all. Stella makes an “And...?” face.
BEN (V.O.)
Say something say something say something—
BEN
I’m horribly emotionally unstable.
* * *
I stop.
Everyone is still looking at me.
BEN
Except for when I, like, don’t feel anything at all.
* * *
Continuing expectant silence.
BEN (V.O.)
Here is a list of things I do not say:
I do not