Page 53 of The Checklist
“Were you going to expound on how we are not screwed? Or just say something hopeful and wait for someone else to strike gold?” Tim said, waving his hand in front of her face.
“No need to be mean. I’m not the one who booked a kids’ campsite without consulting the consultant,” Dylan said, looking down at him and serving up the extra sass that had been hanging around since she and Nicolas had broken up.
“I’m sorry.” Tim put his hands up in submission. “Can you help?”
“Well, I’m trying. But don’t think we won’t dissect this once we get back to a place with Wi-Fi,” Dylan said. “I think we act like this mix-up is a team-building exercise.” She paused to let him finish rolling his eyes before she continued. “Take an activity out of Team Building 101 to assign cabins. Make everyone get in groups of eleven by favorite ice cream or animal or something.”
“Then what?”
“Let them get settled in. After that, you run a modified version of your plan with pens and paper. I’ll make a run to the store for poster board, and I’m sure they have markers lying around here somewhere.”
Tim looked around the room, apprehensive. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice. We can’t send people home after they got all the way up here.”
Dylan thought more than a few people would probably like to go home, especially after catching sight of the walls, but she nodded anyway.
“No time like the present,” he added.
“Actually, we should wait until Joe gets back with—” Dylan said, but Tim was already on the move, pulling his shoulders back and striding toward the giant hearth under the cross. Dylan’s eyes roved around the expansive room, eventually finding Joe holding a megaphone and cradling a stack of paper. She waved him over as Tim hopped onto the hearthstone, shouting to little effect. The people nearest him turned around and took three steps back to get out of spit range, but the hall was so big that the sizable crowd stationed by the coffee stand hadn’t even noticed he was talking. Shrugging, Tim lifted his hand to his mouth and pulled off a wolf whistle that would be the envy of gym teachers across the continental United States.
“Welcome!” Tim stretched up, cupping his hands around his mouth in an attempt to amplify the sound. “I hope you all had a pleasant ride up to this majestic site. Mounted animals notwithstanding.”
A few people in the front snickered before a woman yelled, “We can’t hear you.”
Taking an exaggerated deep breath, Tim shouted, “This better?” Without waiting for the answer, he plowed on. “Like I was saying, welcome! We are going to start by getting sorted into our cabins.”
“Got your maps,” Joe whispered, finally appearing at Dylan’s side.
“Still can’t hear!” the woman called again.
“I said, we are going to get into cabins,” Tim screeched, causing the people near the front to jump back another foot.
“Great. And if I could just borrow this,” Dylan said, reaching for the bullhorn in Joe’s other hand.
“Oh no. I need that to help people find their cabins.” Joe moved the bullhorn away from her as if she were a toddler reaching for something with a Mr.Yuk sticker on it. Tim’s voice cracked as he continued to scream at the room.
“Joe, you’re gonna have to do me a solid,” Dylan said, taking her best big-sister tone and grabbing onto the bullhorn. Giving the horn a hard yank, she managed to wrench it free from Joe’s death grip, eliciting a gasp from the man. Stumbling backward at the sudden release of the hotly contested item, she smoothed her jacket and her tone—“You’ll get it back, promise”—then marched over to Tim and thrust the thing at him as another round of “whats” went around the room.
“Is this better!” Tim shouted into the shrieking bullhorn. A volley of squeals sent hands over ears as the people in the front gave up and walked back toward the coffee stand, leaving Tim a good ten feet of room.
Dylan made a mental note to have Brandt pick up a PA system at some point and silently thanked her lucky stars that Tim hadn’t decided to have this professionally filmed “for posterity.”
“You may have noticed we are at a children’s campground and not a luxury retreat. There was a mix-up in scheduling, but it is in keeping with the theme of the weekend, which is”—Tim paused fordramatic effect—“invention!” Clearly, he had expected applause here and stopped talking to wait for it. The awkward moment stretched into a half minute of silence. Finally he explained, “It’s invention because we want you to explore new ideas ... like a curious child.” Tim spoke more slowly and moved his free hand in a come-along-with-me-here-people gesture. When the clapping still didn’t start, Tim shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, we have a few hours before dinner, so what we want to do is divide everyone into cabins.”
Tim instructed everyone to get in groups of eleven people based on their birth month. He continued through the room like a motivational speaker, asking what month each group was and pairing them with another group from the same month, then yelling, “Fantastic! Head over there to that gentleman with the stack of papers, and he will get you situated,” before moving on to the next group.
“We’ll gather for dinner and a keynote session at five thirty,” Dylan said to the first group when they approached for cabin assignments. Observing the blank stare most of the group members gave her, she made another mental note to get copies of the schedule to hand out at dinner. Just one of about fifty mental notes to take care of before everyone reconvened in the dwelling of the dead animals.
“Hey, Dylan?” Brandt’s voice came from behind her.
“What’s up?”
Brandt curled his lanky frame inward before speaking. “The bunk beds don’t have sheets.”
“Shit,” she said, not caring if the giant cross and every dead animal in the room heard. It was going to be a very long two hours.
“I can’t believe I maxed out my credit card at REI,” Dylan mumbled, passing more sleeping bags to Deep.
“Better or worse than maxing it out at the hunting-goods store?” Deep asked, grabbing a bag full of neatly arranged pillows from the back of Dylan’s packed car before closing the hatch.
