“I don’t remember having a say in that,” Brie said, closing her eyes again.
My fists balled at my sides, her complete disregard for anyone but herself wearing a serious hole in my nerves. “Look,” I said, taking a deep breath. “You can either pry yourself off that chair and get to the amphitheater, or I can get Loraine and she can handle it instead. What do you want to do?”
“Snitches get stitches,” Brie said.
“Hit me and you’ll get some too,” I said, shrugging.
“All right, all right. We’ll go,” Jess said, padding barefoot against the concrete surrounding the pool. She wrung out the bottom of her shirt, leaving a trail of water as she walked. “We both know this place, despite being a little uptight, is way more lit than life back home. Give us fifteen and we’ll be there. That will give Brie enough time to finish off this tanning rotation, and it gives me the chance to get in more dive practice. Deal?”
“No,” I said. “You don’t get fifteen minutes. You don’t even get five. You can pick up your crap, right now, and get back to the amphitheater before Steff and Jules realize you skipped on yoga to have a private pool party. Got it?”
“Don’t test me,” Brie said, yanking off her sunglasses. “You’ll end up with a cabin full of girls whose mission will be to make your life miserable. That sound like fun, Alex?”
“Sounds like a good way for you to go home,” I said.
“Take it from me when I say it’s so much easier for the counselors who just get along with their cabins,” Jess said, stepping between us. “We’ll wrap it up now, okay?”
“I never agreed to that,” Brie said, shaking her head. “I need at least seven more minutes on this side.”
I threw my hands up and turned, leaving the pool before any more interaction with Brie fried my brain cells. She didn’t get the point and she didn’t care to listen. Unless she wanted to listen, talking to her was pointless.
I stalked back to my cabin and grabbed my sketchbook and a pencil from my suitcase. Grant could keep his yoga. This was my only way to channel animosity and frustration, without flying off the handle and creating more drama.
I plopped onto the counselor bed, the springs creaking underneath me as I settled in. Without rhyme or reason, the pencil found its way to the paper and started furiously scratching lines across it.
“Threaten me,” I grumbled, drawing harder. The paper ripped beneath the force of the pencil, going through the next sheet and out the other side. “Son of a—”
“Paper say the wrong thing?” Kira said, pulling my attention toward the door.
I paused for a moment, scowling at her before tossing my notebook to the end of my bed. She was supposed to be my go-to person for positivity. Positivity would be great right about now.
“How do you handle campers who don’t respect you?” I said, crossing my arms.
“That’s a loaded question,” she said, crossing the threshold. “And I wish I had an answer, but I don’t.”
I let out a long sigh as her sandals flip-flopped against the wood floor. She settled on the bed across from me, shaking her head.
“Things haven’t gotten better since yesterday?”
“Unless threats have become a new kind of compliment, I’m going to go with no,” I said. I rested my head against the headboard, staring at the ceiling. “Do you think I’m incapable of doing this job?”
“I don’t know you well enough to decide that,” Kira said.
“Neither does Grant, but he had no problem telling me that I am,” I said.
Kira chuckled, drawing my attention. At least someone found the situation funny. Wish I did.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a minute. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just picturing Grant saying something like that. Once upon a time, he would’ve been the camper starting the fights. He’s come full circle with this counselor gig.”
“What was he like as a camper?” I said.
Images of a younger version of Grant spun through my mind. Him in all his sarcastic moodiness trekking the dirt paths of camp while grumbling about how incapable people are would’ve been amazing.
“It was a long time ago,” she repeated. “It’s really not my story to tell, but you should ask him about it sometime. There’s a reason he’s good at his job. Seeing the other side of it probably helps him relate to the campers.”
“What did he do?”
“His story. Not mine,” she repeated. She leaned over, grabbing my notebook from the end of my bed. “Anyway, I wasn’t trying to interrupt your drawing sesh. I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing after yesterday’s fight.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, taking the notebook as she extended it my way. “I’ll just take out all my aggression on this book and hope I have a few pages left to actually draw something on.”
“We have arts and crafts,” Kira said.
“And put myself around campers more?” I said, quirking a brow. “Uh-uh. I’ll stick to drawing in isolation. At least this way I can curse at them in peace.”
“Well, I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”
“Thanks, Kira,” I said.
She nodded and stood, adjusting the hem of her shirt as she crossed the cabin. Once she was outside, I opened the notebook again and stared at the torn page with too many haphazard pencil marks.
If I could survive a car accident and the aftermath that followed, I could survive a handful of bratty teenagers with chips on their shoulders. I was one of them. Whether they wanted me to be or not.
8
Fix It
Three days and one nearly destroyed sketchbook later, channeling my frustration into drawing was doing nothing but ruining my only emotional outlet. Dr. Heichman, for all the therapy crap he’d spewed at me, hadn’t equipped me to handle four teenagers caught up in themselves twenty-four seven. I could barely handle and process my own emotions, much less theirs.
Grant, on the other hand, seemed to be having zero problems with his guys. All six of them listened when spoken to, were respectful, and acknowledged his position in their cabin. He had the magic formula for cooperation, while I was hanging on to order by a thread.
“If he can relate to his campers, I can relate to mine,” I said, looking out the window.
Rain dripped from the roof, clink-clanking against the windowsill. Every counselor had a night for counselor duties. It figured rain would dampen mine, drenching camp with more than three inches of water just after dinner.
The girls’ junior counselor, Erica, knocked on the door just after nine-thirty. She was in charge of my cabin for the night. If she was lucky, the girls wouldn’t give her too hard a time.
Erica poked her head inside the cabin, her face visible beneath the hood of her rain jacket. “I’m here if you want to head out,” she said, smiling. “I’m a bit early, I know, but Louis was already headed to Grant’s side. I didn’t want to be the slacker JC.”
“It’s fine,” I said, shifting on the bed. I pulled on my shoes and slipped on a gray hoodie I’d left at the end of my bed.
“Scale of one to ten, how wet is it outside?” I said, tugging it on.
“It isn’t a monsoon or anything, but there are huge puddles on the road leading to the junction,” Erica said, entering the cabin. She slid her shoes off beside the door, leaving mud where she was standing.
“If it helps, I think this is the worst it’s supposed to get,” she said, crossing the room. “We might get another storm tomorrow, but tonight is supposed to be small showers. Hopefully.”
I scrunched my nose and straightened. “I’ll take small showers over strong thunderstorms, but it would help if it didn’t rain at all,” I said, tugging my hair into a ponytail.
“Guess you’ll have to stay dry,” Brie said, glancing at me as I crossed the room. The smile on her face could’ve curdled milk.
I mentally flipped her off, then headed for the door. Grant was on the porch, zipping a rain jacket.
&nb
sp; “It’s wet,” I groaned, pulling my sleeves so they covered my hands.
“It could be worse. It could be lightning,” he said, handing me an umbrella.
He opened his and neared the steps, me following behind. With my luck, a random bolt of lightning would come out of nowhere, striking me down for the heck of it. That seemed to be the theme of this week. The theme of this summer, really.
Water drenched my feet the minute I stepped onto the road. Erica hadn’t been playing about the puddles. They speckled the ground like impending craters of doom.
“What do we have to do?” I said, looking at Grant as he took the lead.
“We make sure there aren’t campers out after curfew,” he said. “First we’ll check all camp boundaries. After that, we can pick and choose where to go and when.”
“So, if I choose to go back to my cabin I can?” I said, looking at him.
“Doesn’t work that way,” he said, grinning.
Rain dripped off the end of his umbrella, hitting his track pants as he walked. Gray with black stripes, the pants showed every drop of rain that hit them. They were the worst wardrobe choice in the history of man, if you didn’t count my own stupid choice to wear shorts.
Mud splashed onto my legs as I crossed the dirt, creating crusty red lines along my skin. I stopped, trying to swipe it off while Grant quietly waited.
“What on earth possessed you to wear shorts?” he said, shifting the umbrella to his other hand.
“I thought it would be warmer out here,” I said, cringing. “I also thought it would keep me from having a ring of water at the bottom of my blue jeans. Nothing says uncomfortable like wet jeans.”
“Nothing says uncomfortable like getting mud all over your legs, while trying to keep yourself dry despite a rainstorm,” he said, arching a brow. “You want to go back and change?”
“And prove you right? Absolutely not,” I said, shaking my head. I swiped the rest of the dirt off and started walking again, my plan failing as more dirt kicked onto my legs.
“Besides, I don’t think the girls want me around any more than I have to be,” I said. “Not that the feeling isn’t mutual. I don’t want to be around them either, if I can help it.”
“They’re so bad you wouldn’t go back to your cabin for sweats?” Grant said after a minute. “You do realize you’ll be out here for the next however many hours?”
I contemplated the answer for a minute, caught between being honest and being a snitch. It would be easy to detail the day-to-day power struggle among Brie, Jess, and me, but I wouldn’t. Not when he had things so easy on the guys’ side.
“I’m fine in shorts,” I said.
Grant chuckled, shaking his head as we passed the illuminated windows on the side of the nurse’s building. “They’re testing the limits, huh?” he said. “And you’re struggling to get ahead.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, continuing to walk. “We’ll spend the whole night in total silence. Sounds fun.”
“Your sarcasm isn’t near as good as mine,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Never said it was,” he said.
Silence grew between us for a minute, the sound of rain dripping off the sides of the umbrellas and water sloshing beneath our feet the only noise around.
My thoughts drifted back to the cabin. There had to be a way to get ahead. Four juvenile delinquents had nothing on me. Nothing.
It wasn’t until we’d reached the pavilion on the outer line of camp that either of us spoke. Grant, his voice almost too quiet to hear beneath the pavilion’s huge metal roof, motioned toward one of the wooden swings lining the outside of the court.
“It isn’t the driest place in the world, but I’m tired of getting rained on. We can take a break until it lightens up.”
“Good. I’m freezing,” I said.
“And I have zero sympathy for you.”
“Because you’re coldhearted.”
I followed him across the concrete, taking a seat on one of the damp hanging swings positioned at the corner of the pavilion. He dropped his umbrella on the concrete in front of us, letting the saturated vinyl leave its drenched silhouette beneath it.
“You’re the one who opted out of going back to your cabin,” he said. “I made the offer.”
“I didn’t feel like going round one million and two with my campers,” I said, scrunching my nose. “With my luck, they’d complain some more about the wet spot in the roof. Or they’d want to know why they can’t go swimming when there’s a thunderstorm outside.”
“Then get them in check.”
“Great suggestion, Captain Obvious,” I said.
He let his fingers idly drum on the swing’s backing. This close, warmth poured from him strong enough to be comforting. I followed his gaze, watching rain drench the grass outside.
“Besides, I’m doing my best,” I said. “I’m not the one who has the advantage of having been a camper. Remember? Kira said it’s the reason you’re so good at your job.”
He shifted beside me, stretching out his long legs against the concrete. “Yeah? And what else did Kira say?”
“She didn’t tell me why you were out here,” I said, mirroring the movement. “She said it wasn’t her story. Whatever kind of stupid excuse that is.”
He glanced at me, a smile playing at his lips. “She’s a good friend.”
“She’d be an even better one if she would’ve given me the four-one-one,” I said.
He let out a long breath, his hand moving to the brim of his hat. “It isn’t really the four-one-one. It’s common knowledge I was a camper. People who know me know the full story. You want it? Get to know me.”
“I didn’t ask for the full story. I just want a fraction of it,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Besides, you aren’t exactly an open book. Your mood changes like the weather.”
“But I stay generally hot,” he said.
I scowled, and he let out a sigh.
“I had a problem with authority figures who thought it was necessary to tell me what I could and couldn’t do,” he said, shrugging. “It caused issues back home. I got sent here to fix myself. The end.”
“Who sent you here?”
“The end,” he repeated.
“For someone who gave me a lecture on trying to connect with my campers, you’re having a hard time connecting with me.”
“I’m not obligated to connect with you,” he said.
“Fine. Help me connect with them, since I’m doing such an epically bad job at it.”
He raked a hand across his stubbled jaw, frowning. “I already gave all the advice I have. You have to want to make it work with them. If you distance yourself, they’re going to feel it. If you judge them, they’re going to feel it.”
“It’s hard not to judge people who are judging me.”
“They’re the campers,” he said. “You’re the one who has to make the first step. If you can’t, you’re setting yourself up for failure. If you can’t, they win. It’s that simple. Besides, you managed to get along with me and I’m twenty times more difficult to deal with.”
“Got that right.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” I said. “You’re stubborn and difficult, despite this good-looking exterior. You’re like a Venus flytrap. You wait, drawing people in with your charm. Then bam! You crush them with your sarcasm.”
“No one has ever compared me to a Venus flytrap.”
“Because you’ve never met anyone as smart as me.”
He shook his head, grinning. “Where are you from, anyway? What type of background has given you this awesomeness you seem to think you have?”
“It’s my Cajun coming out.”
“You’re from Louisiana?”
“South of Shreveport. Born and bred.”
My smile faded. Shreveport was the birthplace of my parents’ ultimatum. It was also Nikki’s favorite city.
“And what la
nded you out here?” he said. “You just randomly decide to be Loraine’s niece of the year and volunteer yourself as her newest employee?”
“I’m her only niece, and I don’t think volunteer is the right word for it,” I said, watching the rain.
Grant nudged me in the side, his face tilting my way. “I gave you a fraction of my story. It’s your turn to give me a fraction of yours.”
“That wasn’t a part of the agreement,” I said, shaking my head. “Besides, it’s more mysterious to keep those parts of me from you. Keeps you wanting to learn more about me. Makes it more of a chase.”
“You think I’m interested in chasing after you?” he said.
“We do a pretty good job of flirting. I don’t think it’s totally far-fetched.”
“What if I don’t consider what we do flirting? What if it’s just random conversations with a girl I was forced to pair up with for the summer?”
“Then it’s your loss,” I said.
“A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E,” he said.
“I think you like it more than you let on.”
“I do, but I think it’s one of the biggest issues between you and your cabin,” he said. “You do a good job ebbing and flowing when it comes to you and me. You need to figure out how to apply that tactic to your cabin.”
“Getting along with you and getting along with my cabin are two different things,” I said.
“Then figure it out,” he said. “If you don’t, that failure will fall on both of us.”
He stood, grabbing his umbrella from the concrete. Rain was still cascading around the pavilion, but he didn’t seem to care.
“I’ve got people looking to me to do this job, expecting me to do a good job, so I need you not to fail.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“Then don’t.”
He stepped into the downpour, glancing at me over his shoulder as he walked toward the path. I could’ve stayed in that pavilion with him much, much longer, but he was right. This was a job. Whether I chose it or not, being a counselor was a part of the gig and there was money on the line. Substantial money.
Last Chance Summer Page 9