9. Nat #3
I cleaned my area up before going to the other side of the mess hall to a sandwich-making station. The staff didn’t cook for us on our days off, but they were nice enough to do this for us today, which was much appreciated. I was starving.
I made my way to the table everyone was sharing and found my spot between Autumn and Jack. Really, universe? Jack was kind enough to scoot over for me to sit down, an uncharacteristic move, but maybe he was just trying to keep space between us.
The whole group was ravenous.
Felicia broke the silence. “Where are Hazel and Leo?”
Eyes met as we questioned the same thing. Leo would be excited about eating whatever we ended up making, but he was a garbage disposal. Last year, he told me he was a judge for the town’s tuna melt competition, which sounded disgusting.
Autumn gave a long sigh. “The director for Sunlight was fired.”
Murmurs came from the group. Hazel hadn’t been specific as to why she bailed in our text message, but obviously, it was a big deal.
“They looked for that person for months,” a resigned Jack said. “What the hell happened?”
“Apparently, they were arrested for embezzling money from their child’s PTA. Luckily, they weren’t in charge of the finances for Sunlight yet.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Lamar’s shocked expression matched everyone else’s. “Who steals money from kids?”
There were murmurs of agreement and outrage.
“So what are they going to do?” I asked. Autumn was always in the know, but this new development likely had no solution yet.
“They don’t know. Leo mentioned that the assistant director was incredibly qualified for their position, so it’s possible they’ll move them up and then look for their replacement. Until then, it looks like it’ll be just me running things here.”
“I can help with whatever you need,” I offered.
“Especially when it comes to communications.” It didn’t go without my noticing that Jack’s gaze was on me.
I turned, prepared to defend myself from I didn’t know what, but his stare was something more like awe.
There was no way. I could only do wrong in his eyes.
Felicia offered to separate and distribute the mail to campers, and Lamar said he would coordinate with the cleaning crew on his day off. Sawyer, Emerson, and Azalea offered up similar projects they could help out on.
“You’re not doing this alone,” Jack said seriously.
Autumn teared up at the support from her friends. “I’ll be sure to ask for help this time around,” she promised. “This is a well-oiled machine, and we had a system set up for when they were gone the first time, but this time…”
I’d planned on calling Hazel after this competition because of how down I felt this morning, but I decided to put my feelings on the back burner. She had enough on her plate already.
We returned to our places and found our cakes had cooled.
I jumped back into action, prepared to decorate better than I’d ever decorated before.
Though that experience was very limited.
One year, for a friend’s birthday, I made a mirror glaze that went over some buttercream icing.
Complete with my edible glitter, the idea formed itself.
Galaxy glaze. I tried not to bolster my ego too much, but the words genius and brilliant both came to mind.
Then I noticed that my cake had cracked a little.
Had I baked it for too long? I touched the worst side, and a piece fell.
Dammit. I grabbed some buttercream and added it before placing it back together.
It would be fine. What I needed to worry about was my glaze.
Despite my careful reading of the recipe, the consistency wasn’t quite right.
I glanced at my competition and found mixed reactions to everyone’s creations, but the confident, smiling faces concerned me the most. I should have been happy for them, but I found myself more jealous than anything.
My ambition was starting to get the best of me.
I took a breath and told myself to take it down a notch.
It was out of my control. I could lose this one, but as long as Jack didn’t win, I’d be okay with the result.
It was now or never. I poured the glaze over the frosted cake, but it spread too quickly and almost melted the frosting below.
Oh god, I must have put it on when it was too hot.
I tried scooping it off the wax paper so I could respread, but the entire thing was dripping, and it was too thin to pick up.
I looked at the clock. I had fewer than ten minutes to make this into a masterpiece.
I took a breath and assessed. So the glaze didn’t work.
That was okay. But it had melted the frosting below, and that was also sliding off the cake.
I took a spreading knife to try to blend it, but the gelatin mixture plus the frosting was turning into this chunky monstrosity.
We had less than a minute to go. I continued to fix the frosting, which was still melting off. Then, with ten seconds left, I threw some glitter onto the thing, and voilà.
It looked horrendous.