Back at the retreat center, the sun had just dipped below the horizon and the sky was an inky purple. I racked my bike, gave Hannah back the helmet, and thanked her and Baxter for including me in their outing.
“You’re not a guest, Ashlyn,” Hannah said. The feeling of belonging to anything that even resembled family was still foreign.
As nice and peaceful as the evening had been, my mind was spinning. It was a strange thing to have new allies after being isolated for such a long time. To be accepted, and allow myself to accept in return, threw me off. And the fact that I shared what I had, and made myself vulnerable? I knew without a doubt I’d be up all night, Bax and Hannah’s words playing around and around in my head. Dad’s phantom scolding would probably show up too, reminding me to keep my cards closer.
I decided to go for a walk. There was a chill in the air now, so I walked quickly up the hill to stave off goose-bumps. The moon rose, half bright and half in shadow, over the lake, illuminating the ripples cast by the slight breeze. I rubbed my bare arms as I walked past.
“Cold?”
His voice was like honey. I turned and saw his almost-feral grin, lips curling upward.
“Hi, Marcus.” I remembered how, earlier that day, I saw him laughing with Mallory. Somehow that seemed like weeks ago, instead of just a few hours.
“What have you been up to?”
“Went into town with Hannah and Baxter.”
“Oh yeah? The boring twins?” He chuckled.
I gritted my teeth. “You know Hannah’s my cousin, right?”
“Sorry, sorry. But you have to admit, she’s super uptight. Am I wrong?”
“She’s just . . . focused.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” I crossed my arms, leaning backwards to give him a hard stare. “Hey, hey,” he said, putting his hands on my arms and tugging me closer. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I guess I’m just confused why you’re hanging out with them. That’s all. Doesn’t seem like a good fit. Especially when you could’ve been hanging out with me instead.”
Before I could respond, fully prepared to tell him how I’d found him occupied earlier, he smiled at me. Against my better judgement, I smiled back. Marcus lowered his head to mine and I let him kiss me. He held my face in his hands gently, like I was more than a girl he kissed a few times at his summer job. His lips on mine, I tried to imagine what it might be like if we kept talking after he went back to school. Maybe started dating. Would he invite me to see him at college? Introduce me to his friends as his girlfriend? Would he meet my mother and send me letters at school? I couldn’t picture it. I pulled away.
I hadn’t started kissing Marcus because I thought he would make a good boyfriend. I had liked his confidence, his ease in navigating a room full of strangers, his magnetism. But I wasn’t the same girl who had thought those things anymore. Though I was still a work in progress, I could see cracks in his façade. Not unlike my dad, actually. The little jabs at Hannah and Baxter. The joke about his roommate. Having his mom do his laundry. The flirting with Mallory. Perhaps I’d been able to ignore them a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t the same girl who would settle for those things now. Whatever was in that kiss, even though it felt nice, was no longer what I wanted.
I put both hands on his chest and pressed lightly. “Good night, Marcus.”
He looked confused, wounded almost, like he’d never had a girl say good night to him before he was ready, but he nodded and let me go. “Good night, Ashlyn.”
Those things I liked about him tasted sour on my tongue now; Marcus was all smoke and mirrors. And maybe, just maybe, I deserved something more.
I went back to the cabin. Hannah’s shower stuff was gone, so I knew I had at least a few minutes alone. I dashed off a quick letter on a Sweetwater postcard to mail in the morning.
Dear Tate,
I think I may have just lost my taste for boys with polos. What do you think about hiking boots?
Love,
Ash
“Ashlyn, I need you,” Deb bellowed from the office door as I walked into the lodge the next day.
I hurried to her, afraid there was another emergency. “What’s going on?”
“Well, nothing good. We have a group arriving today and we are short staffed; there’s some kind of summer flu going around. I’m going to need you to cover the morning shift.”
“Sure, where do you need me?”
“Volleyball courts. It’s the Springville Methodist Church’s Sunday School group. They need to be supervised while the adult leaders go through the ropes course. You can play games with them. Red rover and that kind of thing, okay?”
Ugh. Kids. I was not a kid person at all. And all morning in a pit of sand? “Okay,” I said, though, because I had no other choice.
“They’ll be there waiting for you in about fifteen minutes, so get a move on.”
Aye-aye, captain, I didn’t say.
When I got to the volleyball court less than five minutes later, a large group of kids and one harried-looking adult, who was tapping her foot and staring at her watch, were already waiting for me.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” The woman squeezed my shoulders like we were long-lost friends. “I don’t want to miss the directions. We’ll be back when we’ve mastered the course,” she called, already starting to run up the hill toward the zipline.
“Okay,” I said, mostly to myself. I surveyed the crowd and then counted. Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two. Thirty-two children, and from the looks of it, none of them were much older than twelve. Some looked as small as kindergarteners. They were running in circles, throwing sand in the air, tagging each other and darting away, turning cartwheels and being louder than a rock concert.
“What am I supposed to do with them all?” I asked no one.
The ropes course took what? Two hours? More? I felt the first threads of panic rising in my throat. You’re in over your head. This is beyond your capabilities, Dad’s voice said in my mind. I clamped my jaw tight and ignored him.
Back in control of my thoughts, I tried to form a plan. Think. What did I like to do when I was younger? That was ridiculous, I liked to stay indoors and read, play with makeup, and watch TV. Not options there. I spun in a slow circle trying to get ideas from my surroundings. And then it hit me. I was standing smack dab in the middle of a teambuilding retreat center. For weeks now, I’d been watching groups of all kinds go through exercise after exercise, learning about one another and themselves. I pulled out my quote journal and ripped out several pages. I quickly wrote down some information on the sheets and smiled to myself.
“Hey!” I called as loud as I could. Approximately two kids turned and looked my way and then went right back to their friends. “Hey!” I tried again, waving my arms in the air like I was trying to land a plane.
A small girl with glasses, who was about ten or eleven years old, came up and tapped me on the shoulder. “You need to put your hand up like this.” She held her hand up high in the air, as if she were ready to receive a high five.
“Oh. Thanks. What’s your name?”
“Avery Chen,” she said, flipping her dark pigtail over her shoulder.
“Thank you, Avery.”
“No problem. What’s your name?”
“Ashlyn Zanotti.”
Avery nodded and walked back to her group of three friends. I thrust my hand into the air, my fingers splayed, and waited. Avery did the same, and her friends followed suit. One by one, the other members of the Springville Methodist Church youth group raised their hands and stopped talking.
Why hadn’t that woman told me about this magic trick before she’d rushed off? When I had their attention, I cleared my throat and smiled. Oddly, I enjoyed public speaking. There was something much less threatening about talking to a group of strangers. It was just talking to people I knew that scared me.
“Hi, everyone. My name is Ashlyn. I work here at Sweetwater. And we’re going to do something fun today. Has anyone ever been on a scavenger hunt?”
A few kids raised their hands. “This is going to be boring,” a little boy said out loud. I didn’t let it derail me.
“I want you to count off by fives and you’ll be matched up by your numbers. You’ll need to work together to find all the items on your list.” I held up the papers I’d written on. “Everyone has the same things to find but you won’t all have the same answers, and that’s okay. When you find an item, describe it as carefully as you can. First team to come back here with a completed list wins.”
“What do we win?” An older girl raised an eyebrow at me.
I blanked, but only for a moment.
“Do you like Swedish Fish? Jellybeans?” There was so much candy in the lodge, in all of Deb’s stashes, she would never miss it.
The kids cheered.
“Alright, get with your teams and remember to stick together. If a team comes back without all their members, they’re disqualified. Go!”
They all ran off. As I watched them study their lists in their small groups and chatter, presumably about the best way to go about ticking off all the items, my heart warmed. I’d done that. They were happy because of me. And I’d done it all by myself. I couldn’t help the wide smile that broke out on my face. Maybe I wasn’t a one trick pony after all.
Avery’s group paused near the entrance to the locker rooms right by the pool. I knew what they were looking for, the one I had listed as “one item that gets you wet.” At that location, they could choose the pool, the showers, the sinks, or even the hose used to wet down the pool deck and chairs. I smiled and moved on.
I found another group pointing to the archery range, most likely searching for “something sharp.” The smile stayed on my face as I kept walking the trail, by the edge of the lake, and towards the lodge. Occasionally a group would run past me, making a beeline for whatever they’d identified. I spotted the equipment kiosk up ahead and decided to tell Hannah about my great idea.