Chapter Text
Prep week at camp always was a blur. Training counselors and setting up camp always felt so fast when everyone was looking to the annual party held before the campers got there the day after!
Time for the party came quickly. The campfire was set and brightly roaring, the counselors (and the older camp heads) all gathered around and chatting. Earlier that night they had paired up and made matching friendship bracelets. For first time counselors Robert Floyd and Mickey Garcia, there’s just been an air of excitement. The two, being the only new faces that year, had chosen to stick together like they used to as kids—they had each already made a few friends but it was always nice to know that they had each other’s backs.
As the sun sank below the horizon and the group had finished a couple of songs, the two camp directors had stood up. “Now, time for every returning counselor’s favorite activity—the naming of our two new additions!” Director Pete Mitchell—everyone called him Maverick , if Robert and Mickey’s memory served them right—had announced. “There’s only two this year, so this shouldn’t take an hour like the previous years.”
Mickey and Robert shared a glance. They had known everyone had their own nicknames, but both shared the thought of ‘ I thought we got to pick them ourselves ’. The other camp director—Tom Kazansky, nicknamed Iceman —had smiled towards them, seemingly picking up on their confusion. “Every year, the night before camp starts, all new counselors get a name. Same thing goes for you two,” Iceman says to Robert and Mickey. He then turns to the returning counselors. “I take it you’ve all talked throughout the week and come to your decision in private?” The counselors nodded or replied with some form of a yes, all with wild grins on their faces.
“I’ll admit it was a lot harder for us to name you two than most of the other counselors we’ve had here,” one of them—’Rooster’—had started to say. “But we figured it out! Let’s get this started!” Rooster and a couple other counselors got up, went over to Robert and Mickey, and dragged Mickey to his feet. Bringing him closer to the center of the circle, Rooster and the two others hoisted Mickey onto their shoulders.
Pretty much everyone but Robert started chanting. “Fanboy! Fanboy! Fanboy!! ” Over and over again, louder every time. Robert had even started chanting along, and Mickey— Fanboy —was laughing and clapping from atop the shoulders of the counselors. At some point they dropped him down and did the same for Robert.
“Bob! Bob! Bob!! ” Repeating and increasing volume the same as with Fanboy. They quieted down as Bob was dropped from their shoulders. He turned to face the counselors that held him up mere seconds ago.
“Bob, really? That’s the best you got for me?”
“I did say that it was super hard to agree on names for you two... and now you’re stuck with it!” Rooster beamed. “At least for Fanboy we knew he was a huge fanboy of certain things, it’s been such a long time since a counselor went by a shortened version of their name.”
Fanboy patted Bob on the back in reassurance. “Could’ve been worse, man! At least you’re Bob and not something like ‘local cryptid’,” Fanboy quipped. It got a laugh out of Bob.
The rest of the celebration went well after that, some of the counselors sharing the stories behind their names. Some of them were really funny—like Rooster’s, who had apparently always woken up early even in his days as a camper, and when he got older he had climbed onto the roof of the dining hall and had slammed pots and pans together to wake up (now retired) counselors before he had become one himself. Or like Phoenix, who had accidentally burned herself while trying to use a makeshift blowtorch (a febreeze can and lighter) to scare away some animals that got too close.
Some were more simple. There was Harvard and Yale, named after the colleges they were recently accepted into, and there was Coyote who was known for ‘howling’ with laughter and staying up late (apparently ‘wolf’ was taken by a counselor named Wolfman way back when).
It got later and later into the night, and everyone went to their assigned cabins as the embers of the fire were put out. The group had a big day ahead of them, and then roughly three months of shenanigans to come.