The summer before I was supposed to attend university, I worked at a sports camp in Greece, about twenty miles outside Athens. It was to be unpaid, charity work, mostly, and I was really looking forward to it. The kids who came back from the June trip (I was for August) came back with tanned and muscular bodies, photos of the crystal clear Aegean, and stories of sailing at night to Euboea, which is the big island across from the bay where the camp was. As the weeks turned into days, and my envy of other people’s stories turned into plain eagerness to make my own, I packed up my belongings and on the appointed day drove to a camp in upstate New York to meet the team before flying out. We spent several weeks getting to know each other, there. There were five girls and just one other boy: Bonnie (short, with four or five long dirty blonde braids dangling from her head), Sarah (short, olive complexion, and at times tomboyish), Catherine (tall, blonde, and very shy), Emily (a tall, thickset, brunette), Tiffany (very short, black-haired, and very spunky), and Roy (two years my senior, and an east-coast surfer kind of dude). Though we got on, and worked kind of well together, in a general way I couldn’t help but feel some disappointment at the ragtag bunch of knobheads we seemed to be, and probably were.

When we arrived at the airport, we took a bus to the camp. The air along the roads was like the dry breeze in Arizona, though the sky was clear cerulean, and almost cloudless. I looked around me, and a feeling of general euphoria gripped all of us as we breathed the clean air and set our eyes over the rolling, scrubby landscape. When the bus stopped, we all departed together and took a raft over a bay to the sports’ camp. Squatters’ huts circled around the watersides, and a few palatial summer homes glimmered in the distance, as though they were signaling us. Sarah held her hand in the water the whole time we were ferried over, and I think that was the first time she interested me, the first time that I realized I wanted to get to know her. Bonnie and Tiffany became fast friends, Catherine tried and usually failed to hold Emily in conversation, and Emily and Sarah were still learning about each other. Roy and I got along well, for the simple reason that we were the only two guys there. But we clicked at some level: I appreciated his laid-back, devil-may-care attitude toward life, and he liked the fact that I took things seriously. We accepted those things about each other, and so we got along.

But I’m finally getting into the story, now. At the camp we met a number of different people. Two French girls were there, bronzed by the sun and a  little unkempt in appearance, though the disorder in their dress had its pleasing aspects. I liked them, and we also got along. There were several people from Texas and Arizona. Finally, there were about fifty Greek kids there for our two week assignment. Ages ranged from 15 to 19, and for every one boy there were about 2 girls. During the course of those two weeks, we met a lot of people, and made a number of friends, but there was one girl there, in particular, ‘Nia’ by name, who always seemed to approach me more often than the others. 

“Theodore,” she said. She called me by my full name. It was never "Theo" or "Ted." “Help me with this dive.” And I would climb up the twenty foot ladder and stand behind her, telling her where to put her hands, and when to jump, so that she wouldn’t flop over into the water, or hurt herself. “Theodore,” she’d say another time, “where do I put my hands on this bow?” Or “Theodore, show me again how to do the breast stroke.” After singling me out, day after day, activity after activity, Nia gradually upped her game. She sat by me at dinnertime, or she stayed with me after the day was finished. The issue came to a head when, one night, Sarah suggested a number of us walk over the mountain to buy some beers at one of the squatters’ huts on the other side. We all agreed, but when we were just on the skirts of camp, I heard someone running and panting behind us, through the brush. I shone a flashlight into Nia’s face. She immediately tried to swat the thing away. I pointed it into the brush to her side, and she apologized for surprising and ambushing us like a puma. We let her come along, and made her happy. 

So we drank for a bit, and then started to walk back, I with Nia at my side, and Sarah, Bonnie, Roy, and the other three girls up ahead on the trail. When we reached the rocks of the beach, something strange happened. Against the glow of the moon over the water and the boulders, other lights, revolving, shone around us, and a piercing siren shattered the silence of the night. I ducked down, underneath a boulder, and the last thing I saw, before I lost consciousness, was Nia swiveling around, spotting me, and running toward me.

When I woke up, it was daylight, and I was laying on something very warm and soft. “Theodore!”

There were no sounds from the camp, and no one was training, talking, or playing by the water. “Theodore!” Something, something alive, brushed my head. I waved my arms about in a panic, and pivoted—but there was friction, and my legs gave way under me. I stumbled. When I opened my eyes, I saw the sky, and right next to the sun, a pair of long-lashed eyes, looking concerned. “Theodore!”

“Yes?!” I gulped. It was Nia, and I was sitting in her hand. 
“You fell asleep.”
“I fell asleep?”
“Last night, yes. There was a kitchen fire last night, and the alarm started to ring. You hid under this boulder. “
I felt the skin of her palm, and then slapped my face, hard. “I’m not dead. How am I not dead?”
Nia was amused, and stood up. “We have to walk back. I will not explain this to you now. Later will be a better time.”
 “But can you explain how this is possible? The nucleus of an atom can't be shrunk. A cell can't be shrunk. I’m an impossibility. I must be dreaming.” She opened up one of her breast-pockets, and dropped me inside. We walked back to camp. She ducked under the flap of the French girls’ tent, and my story begins there.

And so I, along with two other people from camp, including Roy, met the gods and became a missing person for the rest of my life.