Chapter Text
It was a normal day of job hunting. scrolling through page upon page trying to find any job who would take you without a college degree. Job requirements recently had gone off the rails, requiring so many certifications and years of experience they didn’t even about your cpr certification or child care courses you took. Sighing, you put your head down on your desk, tired and frankly too hungry to focus. You stand up with the loudest dad groan, giving voice to your aching back and cramped shoulders.
As you try to stretch in a way that WONT pop a rib out of place, A message chimes from the phone that you left on the desk. You stop bending your body into various positions trying to pop your back and instead reach toward your phone, you know it’s probably another rejection but your heart can help but flutter at the hope of this being the one. You fight with your phones password system for a few seconds now frantically scrambling to get to your email. your stomach starts contorting into nervousness and excitement. You opened your email from “superstar summer camp” as you read the first line you couldn’t help but smile, you got the job.
Well technically you hadn’t fully secured the job yet. You still had to go in for a quick meeting with the owner to make sure you would fit in. Other than that the email included basic job stuff like where to go, possible hours and an rough daily schedule. Luckily as this was a summer camp job, you still had a few weeks before the season officially started. Just enough time to arrange an agreement with your landlord. And prep for your interview.
The thing about working in a summer camp is the fact that you stay on site. So paying rent for multiple months that you’re not in house is a huge loss. Hopefully your land lord will work out some kind of agreement with you to make sure you don’t end up homeless in the camps off seasons. He may be a stubborn old man but he has a heart. Enough worrying about the instability of your housing it’s time to prep for an interview.
You’ve never worked in an actual summer camp before, sure you have experience day cares but those aren’t live-in situations. The kids go home at the end of the day and so do you. But you would be stuck around the clock 24/7 with these kids, do you really have what it takes? But to be honest it didn’t matter if you could, right now you really needed the money. It’s not like you could deny how sad your fridge looked, or how you’ve been late on rent for the entirety of living in this apartment.
Snapping yourself out of the self pity spiral you were falling down. You shoved your phone in your pocket and head to your closet to pick an interview outfit. While switching between drafting a response email, picking an outfit, and talking on the phone with your land lord. Picking through stained button ups and graphics tees you decide that 2/3 tasks is better than a mental break down, the outfit was just going to have to wait.
The week up till the Interview flies by, you’d reached an agreement with your landlord and even managed to pick up a pretty cheap polo shirt. You started preping for the interview that you needed to leave for in a few hours. Ironing your new polo and actually brushing your hair for the first time in a concerningly long time.
You felt all ready to go and even used some of that fancy cologne you got for your birthday a few years back, while it smelled professional you weren’t a big fan of it. Figuring it probably wasn’t professional to wear sweet marshmallow scented body spray which you much more preferred, you continue with the fancy cologne and head out the door with a new sense of anxiety.
Through the drive over you progressively for more and more anxious to meet your new possible employers. What would you do if they ended up being some psychopathic murder hobos who lure desperate people into the middle of no where to harvest their kneecaps. You don’t have time to worry more as you pulled into a gravel parking lot with a nice colourful sign marking the entrance to “Superstar summer camp”.
The sign had all sorts of smiling animals and you think a sun and moon. A corner of the sign looked awkwardly painted over with a colour that didn’t quite match the background. You figured some kid just spraypainted a dick or something and the camp didn’t have the same paint to fix the sign with. You walk past the sign, tapping it for good luck as you walk on the dirt path into hopefully your new job.
Looking around you see a few basic teens in simple white shirts with a light blue pocket shirt pocket, the pockets had little tophats logos on them. The teens were wandering around, some chopping fire wood, some sweeping off the cabins that surrounded you. From what you could see there were 6 large cabins surrounding a large cement amphitheater. Behind the amphitheater was what you assumed was a mess hall completing the circle of buildings. The entire camp was backed by a large still lake, the sight of it took your breath away.
To your left you could see a large forest with the perimeter roped off, large signs hung from the ropes. You couldn’t read them from here but you guessed it had something to do with not entering. You kept walking towards the amphitheater in the center of camp, unsure of where you were supposed to be. You had more time to look around until hopefully someone would notice how lost you are.
Now that you were in the middle you could see the fronts of the cabins. The cabins each had a mural painted on the front each with a cartoon animal. There was a yellow bear in a river hunting fish, a purple wolf standing on a cliff, a pink chicken up on a red barn and a neon alligator thrashing in a river.
You stopped and noticed that the cabin across from the mess hall and right in front of the forest, seemed to be longer, it looked like two cabins were squished together with the mural in front depicting the sun and moon on separate sides blending night and day. It was really pretty, you hoped that you could paint something like that one day.
“You lost little one?”
A voice from behind knocks the soul out of your body with surprise. You whip around to see a tall guy in a starry baseball cap leaning over behind you. You nearly smack him in your surprise but stop yourself before your hand made it above your shoulder. He chuckles and you take a second to admire-you mean observe the man standing in front of you. He was wearing the same shirt as the other teens but his had blue sleeves and hems. His navy blue pants were splattered with yellow paint. He had a red choker and matching bracelets with little hanging ribbons and fake bells. He had a lot of simple ear piercings and blindly white hair. He may have had albinism since his eyes were pale red with tinges of blue near the edges. Your thoughts were interrupted by his hand waving in front of your face.
“Hello? You alright?”
You snapped back to reality and gave an awkward chuckle, “yeah sorry, I’m just a bit distracted right now”. The hand he was waving in front of your face moved to lightly pat your shoulder before retreating to his pocket. “Are you the new hire here for orientation?” He asked. You sheepishly nodded a reply. His gentle voice murmured “I’ll take you to the meeting, after all I’m headed there too.” His voice was beautiful, it was kinda low and smooth. Just listening to him seemed to soothe your nerves.
He turned and motioned for you to follow him. He had very long legs so you had to almost jog to keep up with him. Oh goodness his legs were really long, like holy shit they went up to your chest. You looked ahead to see where you were heading and noticed there was a lot of foot traffic going through the bear cabin which you were heading to. The teens were carrying piles of sheets and pillows in and out. There was about eight kids you could see, entering and leaving.
The man leading you had his back turned, you could see the moon and star logo that was printed on the back. You got to the cabin and followed his lead slipping past the teens and into the cabin. You turned to follow the teens to the right but your guide grabbed your hand and pointed with the thumb on his other hand, down the left corridor “this way little one” he corrected. You grinned apologetically and stepped into a very small weirdly lit conference room.
There were a few other people there in foldable chairs surrounding a kinda sketchy dark wood table. At the head of the table was the shortest man you’ve ever seen. You could tell he was an adult from his stubble but he came up to your chest and as an already below average person, that was saying something. Your guide flash you a quick smile and took a seat at the table, the man at the head smiled wide and motioned to an empty chair across from your guide.
Two more people trickled in and the last one, a large intimidating man with a red Mohawk shut the door behind him and sat to your left. The man at the head clapped his hands and stopped the little amount of chatter there was “alrighty let’s get started with introductions” he announced “I’ll start, I am Mr Freddy ‘bear’” he did air quotes around the bear. “I am the head of the camp and the owner, Roxy, how about you go next.”
The woman you presumed to be Roxy was a lot tanner, her sterling silver hair was swept into a high pony tail with a green streak in front sticking out across her face. She had a studded cat ear headband and a choker. You couldn’t see the rest of her around the hunk of a man sitting in between you and her. She stood up and spoke with a cool but still friendly voice “I am Mrs Roxanne, Roxy ‘wolf’” she did air quotes around the wolf, you figured this correlated to the cabins they ran. “I supervise the ropes course and wood working.” She sat back down and began to inspect her nails.
There was an awkward moment of silence before she elbowed the large man in between us and he stood up with a grunt, keeping his arms crossed as he stood. “I’m Monty, don’t call me Mr ‘gator’”. He spoke with an almost southern accent, he had sunglasses on despite how poorly lit the room was. The arm pits and sleeves of his shirt were cut off with the “armpits” ending close to his hip bones. He wore alligator print green swim trunks and you were fairly sure he was wearing swim shoes and not real shoes. He began to sit down before Roxy elbowed him again without looking up from her nails. He grunted out “ I run the lake” and under his breath grumbled “there ya’ happy? Little Mrs bossy,” Roxy glanced at him then rolled her eyes.
Now it was your turn to introduce yourself, all the anxiety the moon man had smoothed was immediately back in full send. You managed to stutter out “Hi I’m new, obviously heh, um I don’t run anything but maybe I will, I’d be open to and-“ you cut yourself off before the rambling got even more embarrassing. You sat down quickly and squeezed your eyes shut hoping to erase yourself from existence. Monty next to you lightly chuckled and slapped your back, almost too hard but not enough to hurt.
Finally after what felt like forever, the silence was broken as the man who guided you in, stood up. “I am Mr ‘moon’ , I run wilderness survival and woods supervision.” He sat back down and nudged the man next to him. The man looked like the personification of an anxious golden retriever, his hands were tapping all over. He had splaying vitaligo and made it look like there left half of his face has in shadow. His hair was bright blonde and splayed all over the place, he wore a matching red ribbon necklace and bracelets to moon. His shirt seemed to be covered in every conceivable colour of paint. He stood up to introduce himself but went up a bit too fast and tripped himself, after a few seconds of wild flailing he righted himself he cleared his throat awkwardly and you couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight. He started off “hello everyone! I am Mr ‘Sun’ , I run arts and crafts and ,” he turns to you with wide goofy smile “I am super excited to have a new member on the team.” The man was practically vibrating and you couldn’t tell if it was anxiety or excitement. He looked around for a second and then quickly sat down.
Last up was a larger woman with a short pixie cut. She had funky goemetric earrings and a matching bandana. The blue sleeves of her shirt were cropped off, and as she stood up you could see the tips of her thigh high brightly coloured socks. “Hello I’m Mrs chica ‘chicken’ , I teach cooking and lead most the hikes you’ll find going on during camp!” She spoke very bright and chirpy, the name chicken was really fitting for her. Actually on second thought all the counselors really fit the animals on their cabin, you suppose that’s the point, but they really nailed it. Who knows maybe they became more like their mascots over time.
Freddy stood up, which really didn’t do much for his height anyway. “Now that introductions are all over, it’s time for the tour!” He began to walk over to you before adding “the rest of you, if you don’t want to help on the tour, should go supervise the helpers. I’m not sure they know how to do laundry on their own.” He laughed a little at his own joke and then walked towards you.
END CHAPTER 1