Last Chance Summer - Shannon Klare Page 0,32
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