by Kasie West
I shoveled a couple bites of salad into my mouth, then stood.
“You done already?” Dad asked.
I swallowed. “Yes, that badminton earlier really took it out of me.” I lifted my phone off the table.
Lauren scoffed at the lame excuse. Microphone feedback rang out and I dropped back into my seat as quickly as possible. That had not been ten minutes. Not even five.
“You don’t have to stay,” Dad said as if I’d changed my mind because of his question.
“It’s fine, I’ll leave when you guys do.”
Lauren narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously, but continued to eat.
Brooks’s voice came over the microphone. “We’re back, and, just a reminder, we take requests. The song list is on the back of the schedule on each table.” Was he the lead singer?
“Hello,” Lauren said, her eyes glued to the stage, which, unlike me, she could obviously see clearly. I ducked a little more and reached for the schedule at the same time Lauren did. I let her have it first.
“Hello, what?” Mom asked.
Lauren scanned the song list, then handed it to me. “Hello, cute band in the middle of the woods. Sign me up. Avery, check them out. Let’s go request something.”
I looked down the list, which contained mainly oldies—the Beach Boys, Elvis, the Beatles, and more. None of which were the punk rock vibe I’d heard the night before in passing. I peeked around Mom and watched as someone who wasn’t Brooks began singing a Billy Joel song. He had a nice voice—smooth with just the right amount of rasp.
Dad, now staring at the band too, said, “They are way too old for you to be fraternizing with.”
“How do you know how old they are?” Lauren asked.
I wasn’t sure how old the others were, but Brooks hadn’t seemed that old. Around my age maybe. Lauren was fifteen, though, so I could see why my dad was laying down the law.
“Plus,” Mom said, “they work here. This isn’t some dating camp. There are plenty of guests visiting that you can hook up with throughout the summer.”
Lauren almost spit her mouthful of water all over the table.
I shook my head and whispered, “Mom, hook up means have sex with.”
Now it was Mom’s turn to be shocked. “That’s not what I meant!”
“When did the meaning of that change?” Dad asked.
Lauren laughed, then stared longingly at her phone. “I wish I had been recording this whole conversation.”
“Any good songs on there?” Dad asked, nodding at the list I held.
I passed it over and then wished I hadn’t when Mom scooted her chair closer to Dad’s, leaving me completely exposed. I sat still, knowing movement would only draw attention. None of the band members were looking at me. The singer, a wiry white guy with floppy brown hair, held the microphone stand with both hands as he sang. His body hardly moved. The buff Polynesian guy behind the drums looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. The bleached-blond guy on bass kept looking at the wall, where, following his gaze, I noticed a clock. And the commanding presence of Brooks I’d noted the night before was only half as commanding. He seemed as though he wanted to blend into the paint on the wall as he stood there strumming his guitar with zero energy.
I was surprised, but then noted the dining hall was loud with talking and clattering dishes and laughter, nobody paying much attention to the band. That would be a hard audience to perform to. As if he sensed me looking, Brooks’s eyes caught mine.
Crap.
I gave him a little smile and a small wave. As he took in the table and my family, his brows went down. Maybe he didn’t recognize me. Or maybe he was trying to fit me into the story he’d previously thought was true. He didn’t return my smile, just looked away.
Over the next half hour, as my parents and Lauren carried on a conversation I pretended to be part of but didn’t follow at all, I tried to catch his eye. I wanted to mouth “Sorry” or something. But he didn’t look my way again.
Was he mad? Why would he be? We didn’t know each other. It was just a silly misunderstanding. I’d clear it up. He’d caught me off guard the night before. That’s all I had to say and then it would be over.
So when my parents announced they were done and stood to leave, Lauren standing as well, I said, “I’m going to check out the dessert bar.”
“Okay, see you back at the cabin,” Dad said.
Lauren pointed to the stage and said something to my mom as they walked away. My mom only shook her head.
I listened to three more slow-paced, low-energy songs before Brooks leaned into a mic and said, “That’s a wrap. Thanks for being a good audience. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
I clapped, but when nobody else joined me, I let my hands fall back to the table. Then I watched as Brooks and the guys gathered up their instruments and walked through a door off the side of the stage. I stood, looked over my shoulder, and followed. I caught up with them on the back side of the building, where they were loading the drums and guitars onto a flat trailer attached to a golf cart. I stopped by the back door.
“We should put a tip jar on the edge of the stage,” the drummer was saying. “Supplement our income, yeah? Tell me that’s not the best idea you’ve ever heard.” He held out a fake jar. “We take hundreds, people. Or fifties. Those work too.” At this he laughed loudly.
The bass player slapped at his neck, the action making me aware of the bugs I could see dancing around in the last streaks of light from the setting sun.
Brooks shook his head. “They don’t even clap for us, Kai. You think they’d cough up money?”
“Come on, have some imagination.”
Brooks plucked a drumstick from the front pocket of Kai’s shirt and pretended to stab him in the gut with it.
“Ugh!” Kai grabbed his stomach and stumbled forward. “Ian, Levi, save me.” He reached out for the two guys who stood there as unimpressed by this performance as they were with their own earlier onstage.
“How many more drum pieces inside?” Brooks asked.
“Just one of the cymbals and the snare,” Kai responded, recovered from his fake injury. “Oh, and the pedal.”
Brooks turned back toward the door, toward me, and stopped cold when he saw me. After that initial reaction, he was in motion again. “You like to linger in doorways?” he asked as he swept past me and back inside. The friendly manner we had ended on the night before was completely gone.
I followed him. “No, I mean, I’m sorry.”
The cafeteria was emptying out and employees were wiping down surfaces and putting away food. Brooks hopped up onstage and grabbed the two drum pieces by their stands. As he stared at the pedal still on the ground, it was obvious he was trying to figure out a way to pick it up too. I stepped onto the stage and scooped it off the floor.
“You’re sorry for what?” he asked, heading back the way we’d come.
“I’m sorry that you assumed I worked here and—”
“Assumed?” he asked. “You were wearing a staff shirt and when I said ‘Welcome to Bear Meadow,’ you said thank you.”
I groaned. “I know.”
“Well, I hope you won,” he said.
We’d stepped outside again and I stopped on the gravel path just short of the guys and the golf cart. “Won?”
He turned to face me. “Whatever bet you had going with your friend. Trick an employee or mock an employee or sneak into the lodge after hours and steal some stupid T-shirt for whatever nighttime prank you wanted to play. I know your type and I’m over it.”
“My type?”
He stood there with a drum in each hand like a weird version of Lady Justice with her scales in one hand and her sword in the other. “Yes,” he said, obviously not needing any more evidence in his case. “Your type—entitled, rich snob.”
I s
ucked in a sharp breath and tightly gripped the pedal in my hands. I wanted to chuck it at him. Say something equally rude back. But as it often did when faced with conflict, my brain went blank. He didn’t need a response; he finished his walk to the trailer.
It took me a second to realize the lead singer with his floppy brown hair and kind eyes was now standing in front of me, reaching for the pedal. It was obvious he’d heard everything and felt sorry for me. I thrust the pedal forward and he took it without a word; then they all drove away, the cymbals in the trailer clanking together over each bump.
That’s when I let out an angry breath. How dare he. One tiny misunderstanding and I was suddenly a snob? All the things I should’ve said when Brooks was standing in front of me now flooded my brain. “Useless brain,” I muttered.
I turned down the nearest path and started walking.
“Excuse me,” I called out to a girl with a name badge on.
She turned. Her tag said maricela. She had black hair and golden brown skin. She wore a pair of jean shorts darkened with the wet imprint of her bathing suit underneath. She must have been a lifeguard. “Hi, can I help you?” she asked with a big smile.
“I’m totally lost.” I had taken the path off the dining hall that I thought led to my cabin, but after twenty minutes of wandering past trees that all started to look exactly the same, I knew I had gone the wrong way. It may have been the gray of dusk now, but soon it would be pitch-black, and I had nothing but my cell phone flashlight.
Maricela squinted at me. “Oh hey, you’re Brooks’s friend, right? I saw you helping him with the drums in the dining hall.”
“Ha!” I reacted without meaning to.
“Is that a no?” she asked.
“Pretty sure Brooks hates me, and I’m pretty sure I’m answering for the sins of past guests.”
She smiled as if she knew exactly what I meant. “Well, this is his third summer here. He’s seen a lot and I’ve only heard a handful of the stories.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t judge all boys based on my jerk ex-boyfriend, so…” I trailed off, realizing that wasn’t exactly true. I’d sworn off all guys after finding out what Trent and Shay had done.
“Jerk ex-boyfriend?” she asked. “Do tell.”
I rolled my head as the same wave of pain I’d felt when Shay told me about the betrayal washed over me again. “Just home drama I don’t want to think about right now.” I sighed. “And now I have this drama with Brooks.” I closed my eyes. “I hate drama.”
She pursed her lips to the side, studying me for a moment, and then nodded as if deciding something. “Come on, I can help you resolve at least one of those. You two just need to talk. Brooks really is a nice guy and I’m an excellent mediator.”
“You want me to march into Brooks’s cabin and demand he talk to me?”
She laughed. “No. We have this staff campfire thing we do at night. You’ll like it.”
I wanted to say no because I didn’t feel like dealing with Brooks. But I was going to see him all summer. Just the thought of him standing up there every night at dinner, half-heartedly strumming his guitar while judging me, had me saying, “Okay.”
She led me down the path and up a hill. “What’s your name, by the way?” she asked after a couple of minutes.
“Avery.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Maricela.”
“Yeah.” I pointed to her name tag.
She laughed. “Oh right. I always forget about this thing.” She took it off and tucked it in her pocket.
“How many summers have you worked here?”
“Last year was my first.”
“So you’re not jaded yet?” I asked.
“I was born jaded,” she said with a single laugh.
We came to an Employees Only sign halfway up the path, and I hesitated.
She patted it and gave me a wicked smile. “Just don’t let Janelle catch you up here and you’ll be fine.” We kept walking.
“Who’s Janelle?”
“She owns the place. But she sticks to the main lodge and her fancy house up on the hill. She doesn’t slum it at the prehistoric employee cabins.”
I relaxed until she added, “Oh, and D. Don’t let her see you either. She’d probably tattle on you. But she works the front desk until nine.”
I slowed down. “Maybe I should just…”
She hooked her arm in mine. “No, no, we’re almost there.”
We passed several rows of older cabins—dark wood siding, water-stained windows—until we reached a clearing behind them. A large fire burned high in a brick-encircled pit, and at least twenty people, probably more, sat around in mismatched camping chairs.
Maricela pointed to a stack of pizza boxes on a picnic table. “Want some?”
“No, that’s okay. I just ate.”
She flipped open the lid of a box and took a slice.
“You all don’t eat in the dining hall?” I asked.
“Most of the time,” she said. “But sometimes we just want really good food.” She nodded to the picnic bench in front of the table.
I sat down and she joined me.
“Who has bug spray?” Maricela called out, slapping at her ankle.
A girl across the way tossed a bottle to her and she began spraying it all over her exposed legs like a misty shower of strong-smelling chemicals. I held mine out and she layered a coat on me, too, then passed the bottle back.
I looked around as she ate, and that’s when I saw Brooks on the far side of the fire, holding an acoustic guitar in his hands but not playing. Kai was next to him, tossing a shoe back and forth across the fire to someone on the other side.
“He’s such a goof,” Maricela said.
“Kai?” I asked.
“Yes.” She had a smile on her face.
“You like him?”
Her brows went down. “No, not at all. Janelle has pretty strict rules. Rule one, we can’t date guests. Rule two, we can’t date coworkers.”
“That sucks.”
“They’re good rules, trust me.”
“That sounds like someone who has broken one of those rules before.”
She cleared her throat and smirked. “Who, me?”
I had only known Maricela for two point two seconds but I already liked her a lot. Maybe she really could help me resolve things with Brooks. My gaze went back out to the group. “Is everyone who works here under twenty or something?”
“Well, it is a summer job. Not many adults are interested in summer-only work, so yeah, most. But we have a groundskeeper, he’s ancient, and Janelle is in her fifties. The office manager is older, the cook, the paycheck lady…”
The distinct sound of someone fingerpicking a guitar rang out. I went silent, along with everyone else, as we listened. The only noise was the chirping of crickets and the crystal-clear notes of perfect guitar playing. I tried to place the song but couldn’t. An original, then? The melody took my breath away. Brooks’s dinner playing had been so dispassionate that I hadn’t thought anything about his skills. But now I realized he was talented. And as I watched him play, the serene look on his face, the ease of his fingers on the strings, I knew this was his passion, his life. I could listen to him play like this forever.
My trance was broken when, reminiscent of dinner, he met my eyes and his serene expression immediately darkened. His fingers flubbed a chord, a sour note ringing out, and he flinched but then got back on track. His strong reaction to the mere sight of me reminded me how dumb he was being.
Even though he was still playing, the talking picked back up and soon there was a low buzz of voices all around. Kai got up and walked over to us.
“Did you eat all the pizza, Mari?” he asked.
“Yes, all five boxes.”
His smile, which I was realizing was pre
tty much a permanent fixture on his face, lit up his eyes. “I thought so.”
“Have you met Avery, Kai?”
“If listening to my best friend tell someone off is meeting them, then yes, yes I have. Hey, Avery.” He reached between us and retrieved two slices of pizza, which he folded in half to eat.
“Hi,” I said. “You carry those around everywhere?” I nodded toward the drumsticks still in his pocket.
He patted them. “Only so people will know how impressed they’re supposed to be.”
I smiled. “By the time you got to the Beach Boys at dinner, I was sufficiently impressed.”
He put his hand over his heart, obviously sensing my sarcasm. “Hey, if we didn’t have to play a Janelle-approved set list, we’d all be happier. Believe me.”
Maricela nudged me with her elbow. “Now’s your chance,” she said, nodding toward Brooks. “Go.”
I knew what she meant. With Kai gone, there was an empty chair next to Brooks. “I thought you were mediating.”
“I just said that to get you here.” She laughed when my mouth dropped open.
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re a big girl.”
I didn’t feel like one at all. I felt like a child in time-out or something. But I stood anyway and walked over to Brooks, who was still playing the guitar. Before I thought about it too much, I lowered myself into the chair next to him.
“You following me now?” he asked.
“You’re really good,” I said, when what I really wanted to say was Why were you such a jerk earlier?
He seemed just as surprised by the compliment as I was that I gave it. “Thanks,” he said, and then as if he didn’t want to reward me with the sound anymore, he stopped playing and set his guitar off to the side.
“Are you friends with Mari?” he asked, a piece of glowing debris from the fire floating above his head before disappearing into the black night.
“We just met.”
“I’m sure she told you that you’re not supposed to be up here. We can’t hang out with guests off the clock.”
