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I guess he had a point. I liked to stay hidden in the background. The spotlight was a place for beautiful wealthy girls like the ones currently cooing over the lingerie section at the back of the store. Not for a broken, damaged girl like me.
“Excuse me, Miss.”
Poising myself, I turned around and plastered on my best fake smile. “Hi, how can I help you?”
“Do you have this in a four? There’s only sixes and eights on the rack.” She smiled back, and it seemed genuine enough, not like some of the uppity customers who came from all over Columbus to get their hands on the latest fashion trends stocked by Vrai Beauté.
I snatched the silky material out of the girl’s hands and answered a little too abruptly. “I’ll go check for you.”
Tiffany shot me a questioning look as I hurried past the counter and into the back.
She wouldn’t appreciate my attitude, but I was restless about going to Camp Chance next month. For weeks I’d alternated between excitement, apprehension, and sheer terror. It made my mind an exhausting place to be.
Being a camp counselor would mean living in close quarters with the other counselors. It would mean getting to know them. Girls like the ones in the front right now. The last time I’d been around a group of people was five years ago in foster care.
The day I aged out of the system and walked out of the Freeman group home in Lancaster was the day I became truly alone. With the exception of my ex-boyfriends Bryan, Michael, and, most recently, Cal, I’d been alone ever since. I rarely made friends, not ones that stuck anyway. But my therapist was right. It was time to move forward and to let myself heal.
It was time to step out of the shadows and live.
CHAPTERTWO
Penny
At the endof my last shift, Tiffany still hadn’t managed to wish me luck. She did, however, mutter something about trying to hold my job open.
Kylie, one of the part-timers, had offered to pick up my shifts over the summer until she started back at school in the fall. It was more than I could have hoped for, but I found it hard to be relieved, not with how preoccupied my mind was.
An endless stream of questions plagued my thoughts. What would the other counselors be like? Would I survive the week of intense training? Or would I be packing my bags before I even had them unpacked?
The bus out to Hocking Hills was quiet, only me and a handful of campers taking the sixty-mile journey out of town.
When we passed through Lancaster, my blood ran cold. More than five years later and my fresh start had led me right past the one place I wanted to erase from my mind. I closed my eyes, turned up the volume on my phone, and let the music force out the unwanted thoughts.
It wasn’t until the bus came to a grinding halt that I dared to open my eyes again. The campers exited the vehicle with their overpacked duffel bags and headed toward the visitor’s center.
“Next stop is yours, little lady,” a gruff voice sounded from the driver’s chair.
I nodded up at the rearview mirror but didn’t reply as the engine rumbled to life, and we started moving deeper into the thick forest. The road cut through the copse as the huge Hemlock trees swayed gently in the breeze. It was peaceful. Calm. Somewhere I could imagine spending time, despite having never visited this part of Ohio before.
After ten minutes, a crooked hand-painted sign welcomed us to Camp Chance, and the trees thinned to reveal a vast clearing. In the center stood a large rustic cabin with smaller cabins arranged off to the side.
The driver parked in a dirt parking lot and opened the door. “This is you,” he said.
“Thanks,” I murmured as he offered his hand to help me off the bus. Clutching my bag tighter, I made no attempt to accept his courtesy… or touch.
I silently scolded myself.
Therapists had been telling me for years to face my fears. ‘Baby steps,’ they’d all said.
A graze or two of a pinky, shaking hands, holding hands, hugging… kissing.
The cognitive behavioral therapist I spent six months visiting last year told me to focus on the person I was with at that moment, to hold onto the reality that their touch was nothis.
Easy for them to say, sitting in the confines of their sterile, safe offices. In practice, it wasn’t that simple, and while I didn’t intend to let the driver get close enough to hurt me, I knew I should have accepted his offer of help.
My past had conditioned me to fear touch though.
Toabhorbeing touched.
