No Place Like Here

by Christina June

  While Deb seemed very pleased with her ability to fit me in, I wanted to die. If crawling under the table for the rest of the summer was an option, I would’ve done it. In one fell swoop, Deb told everyone that I hadn’t gotten this job on my own merit, that I was underage and under-qualified, and that my family had arranged the whole thing. I thought I was embarrassed when Cassie Pringle came to my door to peddle her brand of sympathy back at school, but this suddenly felt so much worse. The only other thought that went through my head—besides wanting to lock myself in Deb’s gingerbread house—was whether Hannah had told anyone about my dad’s “situation.”

  “Good things come in young packages,” Marcus called from his table. I raised my eyes to his, grateful for the diversion, and he winked.

  “Isn’t it small packages?” Hannah said with a scowl.

  “Maybe. But my version works.” Marcus just smiled at her and took a swig from his glass. He turned back to me and flashed me the same confident smile. My toes curled as I grinned back, my mind started thinking of ways I could pay him back for the save.

  I could feel Deb’s eyes on me. Was she waiting for me to say something? How grateful I was to her for hiring me? It would be a lie. How happy I was to be there? Also, a lie. How thrilled I was to be working with her in the office? I didn’t think I could get that out without laughing.

  “Thanks, Deb.”

  It satisfied her enough that she nodded and went back to her seat at the front of the room. And in that moment, I realized something very important. Deb reminded me of my dad. She needed to feel important. That was her weakness. Perhaps I could use my years of experience with self-centered people to my advantage.

  Thanks, Dad.

  On my way back to the cabin, feeling deflated, a hand grasped my shoulder. I whirled around to find Marcus there, grinning.

  “Speaking of small from earlier, ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’”

  “Shakespeare,” I said. “Impressive.” I smiled, charmed that one, he had come to find me to make me feel better, and two, knew quotes. I wondered what else he was good at.

  “I try.” His grin brightened a few watts.

  “That’s one of my favorite quotes.” I didn’t add that it was a little bit of wish fulfillment on my part. I was definitely on the small side, but I’d never felt fierce. Maybe one day.

  He brushed imaginary dust off his shoulder. “Lucky me. I look forward to learning more of your favorites. See you around, Ashlyn.”

  “See you, Marcus.”

  He saluted me and took off jogging, leaving me looking forward to telling him more of my favorites.

  Chapter 8

  It turned out “other duties as required” meant cleaning up in the campus gym and filling in when an area was short-staffed, on top of working in Deb’s office. In my first week as a gainfully employed near-adult, I wiped down fifteen treadmills approximately three hundred times, spilled water on half a table of retreaters during a particularly hectic lunch shift, and handed out the wrong room assignments, mixing up an all-girls high school leadership group with a bunch of insurance salespeople. Those girls were not pleased when I had to trade out their cushy rooms with queen-sized beds for cramped quarters and bunk beds. It felt like I was doing everything wrong. The dad-voice in my head criticizing constantly didn’t help.

  On top of it all, none of the things I’d been asked to do did anything to chase away the thoughts about my parents and about my future that kept plaguing me. Questions, really. What was my dad doing in prison? Was he safe? Was he making friends or enemies? Was he thinking about me? How was rehab going for Mom? Was she feeling any better? Would she be the mom I once knew by the end of the summer? What was going to happen to me at the end of this summer? Where would I be? It was an endless loop, an earworm I couldn’t shake. And it was causing me to stumble at my job even more than I would have otherwise.

  I’d also spent so much time by myself, I felt like I was almost completely alone at Sweetwater. Sure, I interacted with retreat patrons occasionally, and I saw Hannah every evening long enough for her to catch me up on how many volleyballs she had to rescue from the lake that day before she passed out in her bed, but for the most part, everyone was kept busy. Most of the time, there weren’t even a handful of us eating dinner at the same time, so I’d taken to bringing a book or my quote journal with me so I didn’t look like a loser eating at a table for one. I probably saw Deb the most, though it was usually as she was rushing in from some meeting, her hair a mud-colored cloud around her head, and papers that were usually flying off her desk, drifting to the floor behind her. I, on the other hand, was much less important. The most strenuous thing Deb asked me to do was walk into town to buy her a refill of the Swedish Fish she kept hidden in her breast pocket.

  By the time Friday night rolled around, I was a mess—bored from doing nothing challenging, physically or mentally, and desperate for meaningful human contact to distract me from the endless cycle of negativity and nerves. Once upon a time, I’d enjoyed things like going to football games and movies and parties. But the last year was something of a social life-desert, and I was beyond thirsty. So, when Ruth stopped by my place at dinner to tell me there was an employee bonfire happening after “last call”—when the retreaters had finished their activities and retired for the night—I lit up.

  “You in, kid?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound cool and nonchalant instead of desperately hopeful about the whole thing.

  “See you at the firepit at ten. Bring a pen.”

  A pen? Who brings a pen to a bonfire? Sticks for marshmallows, sure. Hot dogs, perhaps. A blanket if the air got especially chilly. But a pen?

  After I’d eaten and taken one more spin around the gym with my disinfectant wipes, I headed back to my cabin to grab a sweatshirt. On the way I passed Baxter, who had three logs over one shoulder like he was some kind of lumberjack mountain dweller.

  “Coming to the bonfire?” he asked, adjusting the wood like they weighed nothing.

  “Yep,” I replied, imagining splinters jutting from his shoulders like porcupine quills.

  “Good, good. I’ll see you in a few then.” He started walking again, careful not to knock me with the ends of the logs.

  “Hey, Baxter?”

  He paused and turned.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the pen for? Ruth said to bring one.”

  Bax’s faced crinkled into a smile. His crooked tooth showed, but it was a nice smile anyway. “You’ll see,” he said laughing, and went on his way, shaking his head.

  I chose a purple pen, the one I used to write many of my quotes down in my journal, and tugged on a Blue Valley Academy sweatshirt, the one my dad had bought me when my parents moved me into the dorm last summer. It felt like a consolation prize at the time, as if my dad was trying to say, “I know we’re taking you away from all your friends and ruining your life, but here’s a sweatshirt.” I stuck the pen in the little front pouch of my sweatshirt and headed for the firepit.

  Most nights, the firepit was used as a gathering place for whichever group reserved it, as a kind of debriefing of whatever they’d learned that day. The insurance salespeople used it the night before, and when I walked by on my way to the cabin, I heard them chatting about increased productivity as a result of team unity. The night before that, a team of math teachers were congratulating themselves on getting everyone over the giant wooden wall in the ropes course and discussing how they could use that experience in the classroom. It was the firepit of truth, where all became clear and the path forward showed itself like a beacon shining through the fog of life. Or something like that.

  Hannah was already sitting by the fire when I got there. Bax had chopped the logs and was stoking the fire, with Ruth dictating how the wood should be arranged, like a backseat driver.

  “You need more kindling,” she advised.

  “It’s fine, Ruth.”

  “It’s going to go out and
then where will we be? In the dark, that’s where.” Her hands were on her hips.

  “It’s fine, Ruth.”

  Mallory and a girl whose name I didn’t know who was on kitchen staff, strolled up and sat down. I chose a seat next to Hannah. I dusted off the seat, which was really just a big slice of log, and sat down.

  “Did you really just wipe off a tree?” Hannah looked at me with disdain. “You know you’re in the middle of the woods, right? There’s dirt here. Pretty much everywhere.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Just checking. And guess what else we have here?” Her sarcasm was quickly diminishing any hope I had for some much-needed, positive social time.

  “What’s that?”

  “Washing machines. Dryers even. They’re these cool machines that make the dirt on your clothes disappear. Wow. How about that?”

  “How about that?” I echoed. I was trying to decide if a snarkier response was worth the effort, when someone sat down on my other side.

  “Is this seat taken?” The hope suddenly rekindled and burst into flame. Marcus. I hadn’t seen him much except in passing the last few days, so this was a more-than-pleasant surprise.

  “It is now.” I turned on the brightest smile I could muster. “How are you?”

  “Can’t complain. Getting paid to sit in the sun all day is pretty great. How about you?” That’s right, he was lifeguarding with Mallory. My smile went down a few watts.

  “I’m getting the hang of things.” I didn’t want to talk more about work, or lifeguarding, or any other subject that might lead to Mallory. “Thanks for the save the other night.”

  “What save? I was just calling it like I saw it.” Marcus’ brown eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “It was sweet of you. Thanks for the quote too. And for the record, I’m almost eighteen. Just a few more months.”

  “Age is a state of mind,” he said, stretching his legs out in front of him. “So, what brings you to Sweetwater, Ashlyn?”

  I quickly tried to think of a story that didn’t invite questions I didn’t want to answer. “Well, Hannah is my cousin,” I said, nodding in her direction, “and our families were never very close, distance-wise.” Okay, kind of a lie. But now was not the time to rehash our life story. “It seemed like a good idea to spend some time together. Hannah worked here last year. Et voila, here I am.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “How about you? This is your first summer here too?”

  Marcus nodded. “Yep. I just finished my first year at Columbia.” Cute and smart.

  “I love New York.” My parents took me there for my tenth birthday and we had tea at the Ritz. It was perfect, until my dad told the waiter he wasn’t bringing things out fast enough and threatened to leave zero tip. My smile slipped another few watts in the shadow of the memory. “My best friend’s stepsister, who is also kind of my friend, is spending the summer there.” My smiled dimmed even more. I shouldn’t have said anything. Thinking about New York made me think about Tatum and her stepsister Tilly and how they were going to be tourist-ing all over the city without me. Maybe even right now. Ugh.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, she’s a dancer.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Despite the less-than-inspiring small talk, I decided I liked Marcus. I liked his laid-back attitude and the promise of something deeper inside. That bit of mischief didn’t hurt either.

  “Are we all here now?” Ruth called. When I broke my gaze from Marcus, I realized there was quite a crowd around the campfire. All the lifeguards, cooks, servers, sports instructors, maintenance people, and who knows who else were seated or standing. There had to be at least thirty or forty employees and, just like Deb had so unceremoniously pointed out in the mess hall, it was painfully obvious I was the youngest one here.

  Hannah gave Ruth two thumbs up, so she continued. “Welcome to the first Sweetwater Overlook employee bonfire of the summer season.” Everyone started clapping. First? I thought. There’s going to be more of these? “I’m Ruth Newhouse, senior most team member and self-titled Queen of the Ropes.” A few laughs erupted. “For those of you who are with us for the first time, we’re glad you’re here. Everyone else, good to see your faces back around this fire.” More clapping. “Now, I know we’re feeling a loss this year. And for anyone who is wondering, I called Joan this morning and she’s feeling very well. She said she hopes to visit when she’s a little stronger, so we have that to look forward to. Now, I want to introduce you to Amos Turner.”

  A distinguished-looking man, who could’ve been James Earl Jones’ doppelganger, stood up and smiled. I knew Amos already—he had waved to me from his classroom as I ran errands for Deb. His job was to take groups through a series of personality tests and then teach them how to use the results back in their workplace or organization. After welcoming us again, Amos asked us to all take out our pens. Finally. “This is a Sweetwater tradition,” he said. “The Allen family started it years ago and we continue it tonight.” He and Ruth began passing out little slips of paper.

  “What are we doing?” I pressed Hannah.

  “Impatient much? Relax.”

  I took a slip of paper when the pile came my way, passing it on to Marcus. Once everyone had a paper in hand, Ruth and Amos took the stage again.

  “We’re in the business of helping people reach their potential,” Ruth announced. “Or, at the very least, trust themselves and their peers a little more. We build teams. We repair teams. We build families.” It took every ounce of strength to keep the skeptical look off my face at the word “families.” A family was the thing you were dropped into at birth without a choice. You didn’t get to build it. It was built before you got there, cracks and all. I knew that better than anyone.

  Amos held up his own slip of paper. “In the great Allen tradition, we will now write down our hopes and dreams for the summer. What do you wish?”

  You’re kidding, right? Are we back in first grade? I looked around to see if this was some kind of joke. It wasn’t. Everybody else was lost in thought.

  What did I wish? I wished my dad wasn’t in jail. I wished my mother didn’t have to deal with depression and go to rehab. I wished we were the kind of family who talked about stuff rather than letting it fester until our bad decisions bubbled up to the surface and everything was infected. I wished my dad had been the kind of father who took me camping so I wouldn’t be the kind of girl who wiped off a tree stump. I wished I’d been allowed to get a part-time job like everyone else my age instead of being a fish-out-of-water here. I wished I was with Tatum, instead of Hannah, who probably wished she was with someone else too. I guess, when I really thought about it, I wished for an awful lot of things.

  “Write down your wish for the summer, fold it up, and toss it into the fire,” Ruth instructed. “If you want something bad enough, it just might come true.” Thirty heads bowed over their laps, scribbling wishes. No one else thought this was ridiculous?

  I blinked and looked down at my paper. I wrote, “I wish to survive,” crumpled the paper up into a tiny ball, and threw it into the center of the fire, where the flames swallowed my wish and made it disappear.

  Chapter 9

  What did you wish for?” Marcus asked me after Ruth and Amos had bid us all pleasant dreams. We all had an early day ahead, so most people drifted away from the fire and back down the trail toward their respective cabins or their cars to head home. I had lingered a little longer, not quite ready to go to bed yet. Marcus, to my delight, stayed too.

  “You first.” I gave him a half-smile.

  “I wished for an intelligent, beautiful girl to appear before me,” he said, the corners of his mouth lifting.

  I wagged a finger at him. “Ah, but you fell for my trick and told me, so now it won’t come true.”

  “It was already true before I even wished,” Marcus said, leaning his face close to mine so there was no way to mistake he was talking about me.

  My face flushed w
ith pleasure. “What did you really wish for?”

  Marcus squinted at me, a little of his bravado fading. “Do you really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

  He sighed, shoulders sagging. “Just to have a relaxing summer. I didn’t have the best first year at school. College isn’t always the great experience everyone tells you it will be.”

  “What happened?” I asked softly. “If you want to tell me.”

  Marcus inhaled. “I’ll spare you the gory details, but in a nutshell, my grades weren’t what I expected, which meant I didn’t get the internship I wanted. My parents were not pleased. Thankfully, this job came up.” He looked at me with a small smile. “So, it wasn’t all bad.”

  I was touched he’d opened up. “I’m sorry. I know what it feels like to be disappointed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  His brown eyes were warm on mine. “I shared. Now it’s your turn.” Marcus smiled again, this time wider, encouraging me.

  Something in my heart tugged. Maybe he understands. “Well, speaking of parents not being pleased. Last June, I got arrested.”

  Marcus’s mouth opened and then he clamped it shut. “Not what I was expecting you to say.”

  I offered a wry smile. “Not what I was expecting either. I was dating this guy, kind of the stereotypical ‘bad boy,’ and he decided to shoplift a ton of stuff, while we were together, and keep that plan a secret from me. It was awful. My parents were, obviously, furious, and I got my best friend mixed up in it too. So not only was everyone mad at me, my dad took it five steps further than every other parent on the planet and sent me away to boarding school.”

  “Ouch.”

  “And it still stings. All signs point to my going back in the fall, even though I deserve to come home for senior year. My track record over the last twelve months has been spotless.”