Response: Alyson Smith's "Kids"

“Kids” is a story about a group of young teens at church camp and the narration is given from the perspective of one of the campers, a young girl named Jenny, who is different from the other girls in her cabin because she is more interested in fantasy movies and books than her appearance or boys. On one particular day of camp, Jenny comes across one of her bunkmates having sex with a boy that some other girls were interested in. Then the story abruptly ends after we discover this isn’t the first time she has done something like this.

My first thought when I finished this was, holy crap, do 13 year old girls really act like this in real life? What a bunch of sluts. Overall I found it very funny and I really like how you set up the chaotic opening scene as well as providing us with realistic, albeit disturbing characters, but it was a bit overwhelming trying to keep up with who was who, especially with a couple of the characters having names similar to one another. Also, it tripped me up when I found out Chandler was a girl. 

Your descriptions and imagery are spot on and very believable coming from the eyes of an awesome 12 year old. My favorite part was how she described the smell of the lake, “dead fish, water, and gasoline” which gave off a foreboding sensation and I was expecting the story to take a drastic turn similar to a Crystal Lake type fiasco, but the conflict that takes place in the end doesn’t affect the narrator directly, it concerns the other girls and Jenny’s curiosity is merely peaked by the incident.

I don’t think the story is quite finished. Our main character never really experiences any change and the only tension that is apparent is when her bunkmates appear to be jealous of Jeremy’s attention towards her and when she catches the counselors smoking, but either Jenny doesn’t understand or doesn’t care enough to get involved. Personally, I would like to know more about why she is so detached from the other girls around her age. Why is she at a bible camp to begin with instead of a regular summer camp? Is she being punished for something or did she want to go? Little things like that would give us more insight to why she is the way she is.