Chapter One #2
I self-consciously cross my ankles and tuck them further back under my seat, so he doesn’t give me shit about my knock-off Crocs again. They’re breathable, waterproof, and comfortable. Besides, my paycheck goes to making sure Morgs has food on her plate and cleats that she can stink up.
I sigh and roll my eyes. “I’m very aware of when your birthday is…”
“Like I’d ever let you forget, babydoll,” he volleys back quickly, like he half expected the response he drew out of me.
“Anyway, the guys are taking me out to Flask Lounge. Wanna come with, ya know, after Mowgli’s game?
” He nudges me in the ribs with his elbow.
“Or are you too up to your ears in running numbers on this camp you’re so desperately trying to keep afloat? ”
I snort. “This camp I’m trying to keep afloat was once your pet project too,” I remind him.
“Mhmmm,” he drawls, “but each year I watch you get more and more stressed out about what a money-pit it is. I keep trying to tell you, we gotta sell it off. It’s almost a liability at this po—”
“I’m not selling it off to an investor,” cutting him off, I glare at him. “We’ve been over this a hundred times. If you want to sell out, then sell out to me, but only me.”
At the utterance of my sharp words, he raises his hands defensively.
“Okay, okay. ‘ūhā, calm down. I’ve got other investments that are doing well. I’ll keep my half of the co-ownership for as long as you can handle it.
I know you’re strapped for cash, so I won’t keep hounding you about it”—he pauses, thoughtfully—“until I can see you’re drowning. ”
“I’m prepared to swim,” I rebut.
He chuckles, likely at something he’s about to say that will undoubtedly be corny as hell and remind me, yet again, of all the ways Kai cannot take a single thing seriously. “Good thing we named it Camp Healing Waters then. Would kind of suck, if you couldn’t swim.”
I flash him a smarmy smile. “You’re hilarious,” I deadpan.
He jokes, but he helped name the business back when he was more involved.
Back when we had the shared vision of a summer camp to help troubled youth—me, a licensed clinical social worker, and him, an up-and-coming property investor.
Brooks, a body of water, and Kai—Hawaiian for ‘the sea’—another nod back to his ancestry.
The camp is situated on a lake, and thus the name seemed fitting.
Since I believe in finding healing in nature, we do a lot of water sports here.
And no, not those water sports.
He leans down and whispers in my ear, “Well, someone must be wearing his favorite pair of pretty undies again, underneath those sweats. I know this, because his panties are in a bunch now, unlike they were when they were on my floor the other night.”
“Shut up. They are not my favorite, and you bought the things,” I hiss at him, as Morgan comes bounding down the stairs.
I’d rather she not find out about the ‘with benefits’ portion of my ongoing situationship with Kai, if I can help it.
As far as she knows, we’re just two really close best friends—gay best friends, who used to date but split up amicably.
It’s been far from amicable, really, but she doesn’t need to know that.
She approaches Kai with a saccharine sweet pout on her face, a brush in her hand, and two hair elastics that match the color of her softball uniform. “Can you French braid my hair, please?”
He chuckles. “Well, of course. You didn’t think I stuck around here just for the company of your shut-in dad, did you? I can’t even talk him out to a night on the town with me and the guys for my birthday.” He winks at me.
I roll my eyes. “Another night,” I reassure him. “Tonight, I have snack shack duty at the ballpark, and I need to work up a budget for food for this year. Something you could probably help with, if you took a more active role… partner.”
“Silent partner,” he reminds me. “Meaning, I only bring the money, honey.” Then, he eyes the paperwork in front of me. “By the looks of it, a lot of it.”
Ah, there it is. Another not-so-subtle dig about being the main funder of this camp again. I’d have bought him out a long time ago, if I had the means to do so, but the reality is, I just don’t. He frequently reminds me of his contribution, however, likely to keep his claws in me somehow.
He continues to provide funding and I ascribe to be his personal booty call, I suppose.
If I had a backbone at all, I’d set some boundaries there with him too, so I didn’t feel like I whore myself out to keep the camp afloat.
I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to officially quit the guy, as much as I’d like to, for my heart’s sake.
He likes the easiness of our ongoing casual hookups.
I, apparently, like getting my heart strung along, because I don’t know how to do casual, despite the unaffected affect I plaster on.
Yep, that’s right, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to get over Kai. He’s toxic, I know, but I can’t help but hope that someday he’ll actually want to change, and we can be together again.
“Can’t help the money issue. I hate going up on tuition,” I proffer, changing the subject. “I feel like I’m taking advantage of peoples’ heartache. It shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to send your children to grief camp.”
While he starts braiding Morgan’s hair, he glances over at me. “What’s the biggest expense we’re looking at so far?”
“Repairs,” I tell him. “The weather here is harsh on those buildings, especially over the winters. They weren’t in the best shape almost a decade ago, when we bought the place.
Also, the kids are hard on them when we’re open for the summer.
Plumbing alone is a huge expense I have to plan ahead for. ”
Morgan snorts. “I thought that toilet Bentley clogged last year was going to blow up,” she says, giggling.
Morgan has been a mainstay at Camp Healing Waters since its inception.
She was the first camper enrolled here when Kai and I first bought the old sporting camp on Mahoosuc Lake, right around the time she came to live with me.
Now, she’s graduated to the role of youngest camp counselor here. One she excels at. She’s great with kids, and the campers here love her back. I run the day-to-day business side of things, all while providing therapy sessions to the campers.
Unlike some summer camps, which only hold sessions for a week or two at a time, the experience here is highly immersive.
Campers spend an entire summer here, beginning a week or so after school lets out, and lasting until a week or two before it starts back up again.
Because it is a grief camp, I couldn’t see a point in doing anything less than a month.
I need that much time for sessions even with the small number of kids I have signed up, a number that keeps dwindling each year.
At max, we can currently host about fifty campers. This year, I have thirty-eight.
I am not sure if the dwindling numbers are because of income limitations, the lack of updated facilities around here, or if there’s a steadily declining rate of parents and caregivers that believe this niche camp experience would be beneficial.
Lord knows there isn’t a lack of issues for children to overcome.
I know this because I was put on a foster caregiver list when I took in Morgan.
I get calls all the time asking if I can take in an emergency placement.
Due to my already stretched thin bandwidth, and the fact that I let my license lapse, I unfortunately cannot, but it hurts my heart every time I have to inform DHHS that I can’t do it.
I try to rationalize that I make up for that with the work that I do. It helps lessen my burden of guilt, to know that I am still helping kids in some capacity.
We split the camp up into two equivalent age brackets.
The younger crowd, elementary school-aged kids, are a wild bunch.
They end up needing the most supervision, that’s for sure.
I try to work with them mostly to guide them to accepting the reality of their situation, and give them good tips for coping moving forward.
Emotional regulation with them is most key, since many of them don’t realize the gravity grief can weigh on them.
The other half are middle-school kids. They’re usually the ones that don’t need quite as much supervision, as they’re more self-guided.
However, they do tend to have bigger mental health needs when it comes to grief and healing.
Not only are they dealing with some heavy burdens regarding loss of some sort, they’re also in their most formative years.
Self-discovery is such a big thing for them.
I remember Morgan going through middle school. Peer pressure, friend cliques, and self-image were ever-present topics of our nightly dinner table discussions here.
My only wish is that we had more time in the summer to have a separate session for high schoolers as well.
Maybe if Ryann had a place like Camp Healing Waters around for her, when she was that age, she wouldn’t have started on the path that eventually took her life.
Kai and I had already formulated a business plan for this camp to be for troubled youth right before her passing, but by the time we laid her urn in the ground, I was even more determined to see this new grief camp concept to fruition.
If only I won the lottery and didn’t have to worry about this damn budget.
Inflation, the cost of living, is chipping away at everything good I had envisioned for this place, which I also call home.
My house is half-office, half home. Although, looking at the kitchen table in front of me, it appears that the wall that divides the main office from my abode is quite blurred.
“Earth. To. Brooks,” Kai enunciates, pulling me from my reverie. I find him giving me a pointed look, all while effortlessly weaving Morgan’s second braid. “The next biggest expense?”
“Employees,” I say, then correct myself. “Enticing people to come work here for the summer. We have to stay competitive.”
As it stands, most of the employees that we have are folks looking for summer work.
Each year, it becomes harder and harder to find workers.
The ones we do employ are here because they work for the school system, like our nurse and kitchen workers, or because they’re college-aged kids looking for a summer paycheck.
They all want that little extra something, like a sign-on bonus, to get them to choose Camp Healing Waters over the plethora of other summer camps all around Maine—ones that have been touted as being ‘more fun’ or having newer, more updated equipment and activities.
Not to mention, we don’t have a handyman on standby for all the Bentley’s that like to clog up the pipes.
Kai ties off his handiwork and pats Morgan on the shoulder. “There ya go, Mowgli. Run, scoot, go get your gear, or you’re going to be late!”
“Thanks, Uncle Kai!” She takes the stairs, two at a time, up to her room. “Wish you could stick around for the game!” she adds.
He hangs on to the banister and tilts his head upwards. “Don’t have to watch to know you’ll be kicking ass and taking names! Shoot me a text when you’re playing near the big city again!”
“Portland’s not a big city!” she retorts.
“Bigger than bumfuck Alder Notch!”
“We have a streetlight,” she huffs, running down the stairs with her bat-bag slung over one shoulder.
“It’s a blinking light at an intersection where deer like to cross the road. You’re in the woods, sweetie,” Kai teases.
We step out onto the weathered porch, and she gestures out towards the lake. “Don’t have that in the city,” she rebuts.
“Nah.” He chuckles, ushering her to the passenger side of my rust bucket. “I only have the entire Atlantic Ocean a block away. And an Old Port district that doesn’t have a curfew of nine p.m. on a Saturday night.” He cocks a devious look at me over his shoulder.
“Thanks for bringing her glove back,” I tell him, unamused by his latest dig. “Have fun tonight.”
“You know I will.” He winks at me, before folding himself into his sleek, purple car.
And I’m sure he will, because I know I’m not the only one he brings to bed with him. Kai’s got no shortage of hotter men at the ready to buy him drinks and go back to his downtown loft with him. Why he keeps his hooks in me too, I’ll never know.
“Ready? Got everything?” I ask Morgan, spinning in my seat to back carefully out of my parking spot.
“Probably not,” she jokes.
Before he drives off, Kai pulls up beside me and his window slides down.
I crank mine down, by hand. “Work-campers. Google it. Might save a few bucks with those. I know you think high schoolers can’t handle this job, but look at how good Mowgli’s doing.
” On that, he takes off in a show of sprayed gravel and tire tracks.