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I found Katherine and Maxine already in a giggling mood, and they forced a cocktail into my hand before pushing me away from the gathering and across the campus to where our cabins stretched out in tidy rows leading up to the dark forest beyond. They were cute, log-built structures split in half, with a bed in each room and a shared bathroom between them. Maxine, unsteady on her feet after too many “dirties,” tripped up the rustic steps and fished a key out of her linen overall pocket.
“We’re cabbies,” she sang.
“What—” I started to ask, but Katherine cut me off.
Too loudly, she said, “Like roomie but with a cabin!”
Maxine chortled. Even tipsy, she looked Instagram perfect, with a delightfully fluffy messy bun sending curling blond tendrils around her face. She wore adorable olive green linen overalls over tan-colored high-top sneakers, and pulled the look together with her megawatt smile. She splayed her lithe, dancer body against the wooden door. “Our party room awaits.”
“I’m pretty sure I see aspirin in your future, not a party,” I shot back, and took a sip of the cocktail.
Katherine guffawed but teetered into me. “I feel amazing. The wilderness is amazing.”
I peered at my drink. Did they puree shrooms into these things, or what? Maxine flicked on the porch lights and the interior lights, and after she grandly gestured at the antique-looking, metal-framed, full-size bed swathed in white, she suddenly looked confused. “Wait, where’s your stuff?”
“It’s in the car,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Oh yeah,” Maxine snorted.
“To the car!” Katherine demanded. She wore all black, as she often did, and her wispy tunic floated around her as she careened away, making her look like a bat bride from a bad Sci-Fi movie.
I groaned as they both wobbled their way back down the path. If I let them come to the car with me, they would know I had been rescued by Amos.
Katherine looked over her shoulder, her rich, red-tinted waves glinting in the dull glow of the porch light. “What?”
I sniffed, resting my hands on my hips and looking sheepishly to the side. “My bags are in Dr. Brady’s car.”
Katherine’s mouth popped open. Maxine gasped, and then exhaled with a suggestive, “Ooh!”
“I ran out of gas,” I hurried to add, joining them on the well-paved path that was getting darker into the sunset’s shadows. “He was behind me, so he saved my butt. Thankfully.”
“Oh my God, was that the most awkward car ride of all time?” Maxine asked, her thin hands pressed against her lips like a prayer.
You have no idea, I thought, and the salacious narrative of my audiobook played in my ears with deafening embarrassment. “It was the worst,” I admitted, taking another long, bittersweet gulp of the cocktail.
We started back down the walkway, and the chatter and laughter of our colleagues once again drifted over the rapidly chilling air. Maxine threaded her arm through mine, staggering against me. “Tell us! Was he mean? Did he make you pay for the gas?”
Katherine made a choking, gasping sound. “Did he lecture you?”
As we neared the golden glow of the string lights ahead, I told them everything. I told them how surly he was, and how the audiobook had blared over his speakers, followed by his relentless teasing over my choice of literature. I told them about the diary and how he’d scared me from his office with his overbearing grouchiness.
Maxine shook her head a lot, and Katherine led us to the bar to get more drinks, which she downed suspiciously quickly. Her round face had gone red, and her blue eyes sparkled with frenetic energy. “Dr. Brady gets away with too much shit,” she said ominously.
I watched her over the rim of my mason jar cocktail. Kathrine didn’t usually do more than observe and make cryptic statements like she was actively reading everyone’s futures in her head. She wasn’t usually so direct. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He thinks he’s like… a god or something. It pisses us all off.”
Maxine nodded in agreement. She had a slight tinge to her high cheekbones, too. Around us our colleagues chatted and chuckled, but as I stood by the log bar with my fellow receptionists, I felt a kind of chill settle in around us.
“I think he could use a dose of his own medicine,” Katherine said, and her gaze slid to Amos.
Across the patio, he stood with Dr. Buchanon and Dr. Andrews, and they seemed to be seriously discussing a topic—most likely work—while they placidly sipped draft beers.
“What kind of medicine?” I asked, taking another drink and letting the buzz lull me into a heady mix of complacency and curiosity. And mischief.
“I have a few ideas,” Katherine replied darkly. She held out her mason jar until I clinked mine against hers. “We’re at camp, after all. What’s summer camp without a few pranks?”
* * *
