I Am Girl Power

by Katie Cross

  Once I freed the charred bacon and flipped it around the half-heated grill, I cleared space on one side and tossed on slices of French toast in rows. My post-squirrel hysteria calmed enough for me to think straight.

  “I got this,” I said to myself, taking deep, cleansing yoga breaths. “I got this.”

  While the French toast bubbled on the grill, I reached for a plate. My hand landed on an empty shelf. I fumbled around. Nothing. A horrifying thought occurred to me. I tore through the pantry and the other cupboards.

  “I forgot plates!” I said, running a hand through my hair. “Oh, no!”

  How could I have forgotten to buy plates? Oh, well. No way to fix it now. They’d have to eat with their hands.

  Ten minutes later, I stared at a pile of half-cooked, half-charred French toast. Random hot spots on the grill led to the toast being burned or soggy. No in between existed.

  Hoping the staff would either like burnt food or wouldn’t notice the squishy middles, I placed the French toast in a mixing bowl below a rolling window that opened into the dining area. It groaned when I tugged on the rope that pulled it up. Twenty pairs of eyes turned to stare at me.

  “And that,” Mark said from where he stood on top of a table, “is Megan, your lovely chef. She doubles as a squirrel hunter, everyone. Let her know if you need help. Give her a round of applause.”

  A chorus of mumbled greetings and half-hearted claps came at me. I waved, wondering, based on their strange expressions, what I must have looked like. When I reached down to smooth the apron, my fingers ran over an eggshell.

  “Meg,” Mark said with a fixed smile, tapping his thumb against his leg. “Is, uh, breakfast ready?”

  “Oh, yeah. Uh … the first round of French toast is done.” I forced a smile. “Help yourself.”

  The crowd surged forward as one. Just as the first staff member approached, my heart stopped a second time. I froze. I’d forgotten to fix the plate dilemma. And where was the syrup? Of course there was syrup. There had to be syrup. What kind of a fool would forget syrup? My mind spun back to the grocery store. Surely, I hadn’t forgotten…

  Yes. I had.

  “Where are the plates?”

  “Is there any syrup?”

  My tongue turned into a packet of sand. The whole crowd stared while I mentally fumbled for a way out. Was French toast palatable without syrup? Probably not this French toast.

  “Ah … no,” I said. “No syrup. Forgive me, I should have explained. This isn’t just regular French toast. This is, ah, special.”

  A burly Tongan—Sione, if I remembered correctly from the twins’ adventures in California—lifted up a piece, studying it with sharp brown eyes.

  “Sure smells like regular French toast.” He tore into it with a savage bite. “Tastes like it.” He grimaced. “Kinda.”

  The thick, smoky scent of bacon wafted past me. At least I’d managed to get that right.

  “Haven’t you heard of French toast and bacon sandwiches?” I asked. “No? Oh, well, allow me to enlighten you. It’s … the latest rave in breakfast food. Instead of a sweet, er, breakfast theme, salty’s in.”

  I plucked a piece of French toast from the pile and waved it around, ignoring their suspicious stares. A few dots of liquid egg splashed the counter.

  “Load it up with bacon, add a bit of butter, and voila!” I shoved two pieces of bacon between slices with a beaming smile. The gooey middles smushed beneath my fingers, and egg ran down the back of my hand. “A delicious breakfast sandwich with lots of protein.”

  “What are the strawberries for?” someone asked.

  “That’s the sweet variation. You just put powdered sugar and strawberries in the sandwich instead of bacon. There you have it. Breakfast sandwiches without the stickiness of syrup.”

  “What do we put them on?”

  “There’s no plates.”

  “Oh,” I said, waving an airy hand toward a roll of paper towels. “No need for plates with just sandwiches. We’re … going green. Conserving water. Just use a paper towel.”

  Mark glared at me from the back, nostrils flaring. Are you kidding? he mouthed. I ignored him.

  With a few hesitant shrugs, the staff stepped forward, ramming bacon and strawberries between their pieces of French toast. I waited, breath held, for someone to call me out as a fraud. But they moved through the line with nods of thanks. Only a couple of them seemed overly suspicious.

  Grateful for a chance to step away, I returned to the grill and started slinging more French toast on the heated surface. The whir of the overhead fan drowned out the chatter of the staff in the background. I closed my eyes.

  One meal down, I thought. One hundred seventy-nine more to go.

  Chapter 6

  You Are Girl Power

  My salvation arrived by phone call.

  After the disaster of my first breakfast, I paced around the kitchen, wiping down the already gleaming stainless-steel countertops. No syrup? No plates? A squirrel? The depth of my disbelief could not be measured.

  The vibration of my phone almost didn’t break through my haze of embarrassment. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and saw Lexie’s name. I hesitated but finally pressed it to my ear.

  “Hey, Lex.”

  “Hey!” she said. “You answered! How long have you been gone? Like two weeks?”

  “Two days.”

  She groaned. “I’m. Going. To. Die.”

  I paused, my mouth half-open, debating whether I should share my horrible morning. Or, more correctly, the struggle of the past two days. She’d be marrying Bradley soon, and that gave me an unexpected hesitation.

  “You still there?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. Sorry.” I leaned back against a counter.

  “So,” she drawled. “How is it?”

  I swallowed, my eyes scanning the kitchen in two short seconds. What am I doing here? I should have been in a new hospital, placing an IV or paging a cardiologist. I’d jumped in over my head.

  “It’s, ah … it’s…”

  “That bad?”

  My shoulders slumped. I couldn’t hold it in. “Yes! It’s been crazy. Lex, you won’t even believe what just happened. My Mom fell apart, and there isn’t any money for food, and I forgot syrup. Who forgets syrup? Oh! And there are squirrels in my oven. Squirrels.”

  “Sounds like a bad pregnancy joke.”

  “Lexie!”

  “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. Tell me what’s going on. Squirrels in paradise? Okay, now it just sounds like a bad rap song.”

  Recounting the breakfast fiasco took ten minutes. “A squirrel?” she asked, giggling. “Oh, Megan. I’m dying.”

  “It was horrible.” I dragged a hand through my hair. “But, okay. It’s kind of funny, too.”

  “Horrible would have been if the squirrel bit you.”

  “True,” I said, laughing. “Very true.”

  “How are the staff?”

  I thought of their perplexed expressions. “Who knows? It’s hard to tell. I mean, I served them French toast without plates or syrup right after chasing a squirrel. I think my first impression went over like a snowball in hell.”

  Lexie giggled. “Another great rap song.”

  I chuckled with her until the reality of my situation nudged its way back in like a shadow. “Lex,” I said, sobering. “I don’t belong here. I miss work. I miss being a nurse.”

  I miss you, I wanted to say.

  My heart longed for the hospital. The sound of my badge swishing against my scrubs. Doctors calling for me with new orders. Connecting with a patient. Calming someone who felt as if their world had turned upside down. It all felt so much more intense and important than flipping bacon.

  “Too bad. You can’t come home. Look at it this way—it will be good for you to do something you aren’t uber-talented at. I, for one, am devastated I didn’t see the Great Squirrel Chase. Oh, I’m going to pee. I have to stop thinking about it.”

  While she alternated
between snorting and recounting snippets of my morning, I picked at a loose thread on my shirt. Leaving everything behind had turned out to be harder than I’d expected. I even missed my down comforter and my sugar cookie candle. I may as well have moved to another planet.

  With indifferent natives.

  “C’mon,” Lexie said. “Don’t wallow, Meg. It’s not like you. It’s only been two days.”

  Outside, Justin strode by carrying an armful of firewood on his shoulder, squinting as he stared into the sun. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t believe how beautiful the scenery is up here,” I said, tracking him as he disappeared around the side of the lodge.

  “Have you heard from Nathan?”

  “No.”

  “Think you will?”

  “Hope not. Any news with you and Bradley?”

  “He hasn’t proposed in the years since you left, if that’s what you mean. Nothing new to report, really. I just wanted to hear your voice. We already miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  Lexie’s voice softened. “You got this, Meg. It probably won’t be easy, but you’re Megan. You are girl power. You can do anything. You know? There may be a few growing pains, but you’ll figure it out.”

  Sighing, I gazed out the window. Branches swayed in the wind. I didn’t know how to cook for twenty people. I wasn’t familiar with most of the recipes, and I had a suspicious feeling I’d be at war with a squirrel, a grill, and an oven. To make matters worse, the fridge still didn’t work, and I wasn’t sure when to start piecing together lunch. Or if it would be eaten. My easy summer in the trees was slipping out of my grasp already, and camp hadn’t even started.

  But Lexie was right.

  “Yeah,” I said, blowing out a hot breath. “You’re right.”

  “Duh. I’m also late for work and have to go. Good luck, Meg. Sounds like you’re going to need it.”

  Mark’s Banned Food List.

  (Blister: This. Is. Serious.)

  Egg White Omelettes

  Gluten substitutes. We love gluten. Keep the gluten!

  Kale. Don’t EVEN

  Light Ranch. Light anything

  Skim milk

  Fat-free anything

  Turkey sausage

  Brown rice.

  Quinoa. Don’t try to fool me again.

  Saturday and Sunday slid by in a blur of dusty shoes, cheap new plates, and the stress of cooking for twenty grown men. Thanks to a temperamental oven, meals didn’t go well. My first attempts at homemade bread remained straight dough in the middle, while the edges firmed up to the consistency of a clay pot. The bland chili received no applause.

  Luckily, the buzz of preparation spread across all of Adventura, keeping everyone too busy to care about boring food. By late Sunday night, camp glimmered like a crystal. Except the kitchen, which still needed a bulldozer. I fell asleep the moment I closed my eyes and woke what seemed like ten minutes later.

  “Rise and shine, Adventura,” Mark sang Monday morning in a dramatic operetta over a loudspeaker. “The campers will arrive soon.”

  Thirty minutes later, the scent of simmering gravy and fresh biscuits filled the lodge with warmth. The staff mingled in the background. Snippets of conversation floated into the kitchen as I tossed plates, napkins, and silverware onto the counter.

  “Finally,” I murmured to myself, sliding two trays of fresh, doughy biscuits into separate ovens. “A hot, yummy breakfast on the first day of camp. On plates, no less.” The oven doors banged shut. “Nailed it.”

  Five minutes later, Justin stepped through the swinging door wearing a dusty pair of work pants and heavy boots.

  “Hey, Meg. Need some help?”

  I glanced up from where I crouched at the fridge, rummaging for a box of butter. His denim blue eyes cut right through mine.

  “Uh … sure. Will you check the biscuits for me? They should only be halfway done by now, but that oven is almost as grumpy as the squirrel I evicted.”

  Forcing myself to look away from his rugged attractiveness didn’t come easy, but I returned to my search for butter. Did he tousle his hair on purpose, or was it wild from the intermittent wind? I couldn’t imagine him caring about his hair.

  “Uh, Meg?”

  I popped back out from the bowels of the fridge. The uncertainty in his voice made my stomach drop.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think they’re done.”

  A tray of round, blackened discs emerged from the oven. My mouth dropped. “Seriously? I just barely put them in!”

  In two steps, I reached the second oven door and yanked it open. A tentative, weak wave of heat billowed out. Even though the second oven was set at the same temperature, these biscuits still had a doughy shine.

  “Fabulous.” I slammed the door shut again. “We’ll just give the staff bowls of gravy to eat.”

  He eyed the gravy pan. Generous lumps clumped around the edges, but he wisely said nothing.

  “Look on the bright side,” Justin said as he slid the burned tray of biscuits on top of the grill. “No rabid squirrel. You have plates. And these will make excellent baseballs. You are three steps ahead of your first day.”

  “If you have a bat, I know exactly what I want to do with it,” I muttered, glaring at the stove.

  He laughed and headed for the door.

  “Just set out cold cereal for them to fill up on if the other biscuits don’t turn out. It’s a fitting tribute to the first day of camp, don’t you think?”

  No, I wanted to growl, but after seeing his illuminating smile, I couldn’t bring myself to be too angry. The gravy had a weird texture anyway.

  With a sigh, I headed for the pantry.

  After breakfast, Adventura lay quiet and peaceful.

  The lodge door creaked in the soft breeze. Staff members buzzed around camp, charged with energy.

  The tranquility shattered with the sound of a car horn. Within minutes, the woods teemed with adolescent boys threatening to string underwear up the flagpole. Twenty minutes after check-in, two boys were unaccounted for, three couldn’t find their bags, and five parents had forgotten to sign waivers. Mark moved amongst the pandemonium with ease, barking orders like a commander as his voice faded in and out of the radio static.

  Two counselors and at least four campers inhabited each campsite. This year, Mark had employed ten counselors to manage five campsites. The rest of the staff directed camp programs, like white-water rafting and crafts. JJ was in charge of the climbing wall. Sione and a blond surfer named Hollis oversaw the waterfront. And an aging, soft-spoken ex-army infantry officer, Gary, led the rifle and archery ranges. Wires of curly, black hair streaked with white sprouted from his head, and a pearly smile that contrasted with his dark skin filled his face whenever he saw me.

  JJ and I stood in the lodge, watching the pandemonium with detached amusement. At least we didn’t have to be out there.

  “Did breakfast seem weird to you?” I asked, leaning back against a table.

  “Yep.”

  “So, it wasn’t just me? It was tense, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there wasn’t enough food.”

  My heart sank. “Really? I thought they had enough.”

  “There was enough cold cereal for one bowl each, yes. And the biscuits broke one of my teeth, and the gravy was lumpier than a mattress. So, let’s just say the food was … underwhelming.”

  “Told you to go for cold cereal like the rest of them.”

  His upper lip curled up over his teeth.

  “Right,” I muttered. “More cold cereal next week.”

  Mark had bought plastic plates, trays, cups, and utensils from the dollar store with his personal credit card over the weekend. Based on his harried expression when he returned, he had debt problems far bigger than mine.

  JJ grimaced over his coffee mug. “Although you pulled a smooth one with the whole no-syrup-French-toast thing, they aren’t as stupid as they look. They
know you just forgot.”

  I scowled. “Wonderful.”

  “It’s not a bad thing, Megara. Just own it.”

  The low thud of boots on the back porch preceded a knock on the screen door, jarring me from my spiral of embarrassment.

  “Come in,” I called. “You don’t have to knock.”

  Troy, a fiery redhead with the corded arms of a swimmer, stepped into the kitchen. His pale green eyes reminded me of sea foam. Freckles dotted every visible part of his skin, even the back of his neck.

  JJ jerked his head in greeting. “Hey, Troy.”

  “Hey,” Troy said, wiping his palm on his pant leg. He turned to me. “Uh, I came to introduce myself.”

  I stuck out my hand with a warm smile. “I’m Megan.”

  He accepted my hand, shaking with a firm grip. “Mark hired me as the medical officer. Just graduated with my EMT certification. He mentioned that you’re a nurse, right?”

  “Yes. I worked—uh, I came from a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.”

  At my accidental stumble, JJ’s gaze flickered to me and back to his magazine.

  Troy studied his shoes like they were about to swallow him. “So, uh … can I ask you questions if something comes up? I don’t have a lot of experience.”

  “Sure. Swing by whenever. The door’s always open.”

  His bunched shoulders smoothed out a little. “Oh,” he said. “Great. Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  Troy let out a long, relieved breath once he stepped onto the porch, and he whistled as he strode away. I watched him go.

  “See?” I pointed to the door. “That was awkward, right? But he wasn’t that awkward when he was talking with the other guys this morning. I know. I watched.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “It’s not creepy. It’s … awareness.”

  JJ turned a page and yawned. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. He was a mess just now.”

  “Don’t they like me?”

  “Oh,” he drawled with a sly smile, “I don’t think that’s the problem. Welcome to Manland. Strange culture, I grant you. But you’ll figure it out. Get them really full.” His face twisted in thought. “And more meat. Whatever you do, make more meat.”