Page 8 of Lady and the Camp
She tapped at the screen. Even watching her interact with the device sent a wave of dread over me. How would I ever manage to detox from my online life? My online lifewas my life.
Marcy suppressed near glee as she tapped and swiped her screen.
“What?” Noah prompted. “Spill.”
She turned the phone’s screen to face me. An outdated website with a photo of a lake and trees and some cabins stared back. “Hudson, what do you think about summer sleepaway camp?”
Chapter 3
Lucas
Crispmountainairhitmy skin. The sun hadn’t yet broken fully from the horizon, leaving the day to be explored. The lake shone in tones of blue, deepening farther out. Brisk waves lapped against the side of the sailboat. I felt alive. Free. Adventure waited. All I had to do was take it by the—
“Lucas? Lucas, did you hear me?”
A shrill voice cut through my perfect morning boat ride. All that was missing was the boat, the sea, and the feeling that actual adventure waited anywhere close to where I existed.
“Luu-caaasss!”
I grit my teeth and left the storage room, my solace. When I didn’t respond fast enough, the woman called after me as if I were one of her grandkids.
I found the seasoned administrator perched at her desk as if she hadn’t just hollered loud enough to wake the dead. Today, her graying curls attempted a jail break from whatever hair do-dad she had clipped in. “Twila, it’s honestly too early for this. The coffeemaker’s still on the fritz.”
She looked at me simply, though simple did not accurately describe Twila. An agent of chaos, more like. “I offered to bring you coffee from town.On me. You turn me down every time, so I stopped offering.”
That was before my Dr. Coffee machine gave it up to the big bean in the sky. “I’ll go into town later and buy a new one.”
“I can order you one now. Something more…current.”
“I like what I have. They just don’t make parts for it.”
Twila snorted as she slid her reading glasses from the top her head onto her face. These glasses were even more obnoxious than the last pair. Multi-colored plastic with jewels along the side surrounding the wordGuci. I could have sworn the brand had two Cs in the name. “No one makes parts for antiquated small appliances that were cheap to begin with. How about this? Come here and look.”
I walked over to her desk. “Those are hats for dogs.”
“Ope. Wrong screen.” She clicked to a new screen and the desktop computer displayed rows of fancy chrome machines fitting for a coffeehouse in a city.
“No.”
The screen blinked and another set of machines appeared. More realistic, but with price tags I didn’t care for.
“No.” I shook my head. “You know I hate online shopping.”
“It’s like our generations got mixed up,” Twila mused. “Oh wait. My generation of old fogies all shop online.”
“I can just as easily go to a store and support a local business.” How did we even get on this topic? “What were you calling me in here for?”
“Oh!” She clasped her hands together. “That Marcy woman—your cousin, did you say? She is adelight. I called her back since you hadn’t gotten around to it. About the hire. For the office.”
I grunted. “I told you I’d handle it. And we need the hire out at camp, not in here.”
Twila had been begging for more help after she’d, without permission, run some kind of ad attached to a school program resulting in more families enrolling their kids for camp sessions.
Enrolling as a last resort, obviously. We were gaining all the families who realized the big name camps filled months ago.
And cost more. And had top-of-the-line facilities.
Camp Junebug? Not even close.
