Page 65 of The Perfect Deal

Something was very wrong. As I strode over to her, I thought maybe she was just upset to have to say goodbye to the girls. I knew how fond of them she’d grown over the weeks. Placing my hand on her shoulder, I said, “Good morning, Liberty,” and I smiled at the other girls at the table, avoiding Karrie’s gaze as she was giving me a strange stare.

Liberty pulled away from me and only mumbled something under her breath that might’ve beenhi, but I wasn’t sure. It was odd.

Before I could say more to her, one of the girls asked, “What are we doing today, Coach Joshua? Is it a lake day before we go home?”

“It is,” I told her. “Some of the staff is out there right now getting the waterslides ready.”

That made the entire table cheer, which made my smile more genuine. Liberty still wasn’t smiling though. I returned my attention to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. “See you guys in a bit,” she said, grabbing her tray and getting up abruptly, walking away from me to toss her untouched food in the garbage, return her tray, and bolt out the door.

I took a few steps to go after her but didn’t get far. Sam’s hulking body appeared in front of me. “Good morning, Joshua. I’ve got a kid over here who’s got a rash. I’m not sure he should be in the lake.”

I stared at Sam for a moment, annoyed that he’d interrupted me, but then, this was my job—taking care of kids who needed help, not chasing after staff members who may or may not have a problem with me. Shaking my head to clear it, I asked, “Has he been to the nurse?”

“Not yet,” Sam said, and I followed him over to his table, already wound up in the never-ending tasks associated with leading the camp.

For the next couple of hours, I ran around putting out fires, making sure everyone had everything they needed in order to enjoy our last day. It seemed the further along in the session we went, the needier some of the kids became, and the staff was usually so exhausted by that point, they just wanted to be done with it all. That put more on my shoulders, which I normally wouldn’t mind, but today, I needed to find time to talk to Liberty.

I didn’t get a chance to truly stick my toes in the water until near lunchtime. We were doing a come-and-go picnic where the kids could grab a sandwich, chips, a cookie, and a drink, eat whenever they wanted, and then hop back in the lake. Since the plan was to get everyone out of the water by one, cleaned up by two, and loaded in the buses by three, I had to make sure everything was running smoothly.

I had just taken a few steps into the shallow portion of the water when I saw Liberty with some of her girls under a tree eating their sandwiches. I watched her for a few moments, noting how amazing she looked in her bathing suit, the way the sun glinted through the vibrant leaves of the tree to catch the golden strands in her hair. She was always the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but when she didn’t know I was looking, that was when she seemed more like an angel than an actual person.

The water felt good on my warm skin, but I needed to speak to her. Without even getting my swim trunks wet, I pulled myself out of the lake and headed over to where they were talking and laughing together. I hated to interrupt since it was clear they were in the middle of something, but as soon as I approached, the girls greeted me. “Hey, Coach Joshua!” they all shouted and then laughed.

“Hi,” I said, smiling. “How are you guys doing?”

“Good,” Monique answered for everyone. “Miss Karrie is over there with some of the other staff members.”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug. I assumed she just wanted me to know where her other supervisor was. “How are you, Liberty?”

“Fine.” She didn’t even lift her head to look at me. “Tara, tell me again about that English teacher you mentioned before, the one with the hiccups.”

“Oh, yeah. He was so funny!” Tara launched into a story, and I just stood there, realizing this was Liberty’s way of letting me know that she didn’t want to speak to me, but I had no idea why. She didn’t have her camera with her today, which was fine since she’d already gotten so many amazing pictures. So I could’ve chalked it up to her just wanting to concentrate on the girls, but normally, she would’ve been happy to see me.

Sighing, I turned around and walked away, not sure what else I could possibly do. I wanted to take her hand and pull her up, leading her away from the girls to talk about all this, but that would’ve been enough to cause a scene, and I didn’t want to alarm any of the kids.

Reluctantly, I headed back to the lake, jumping off the dock into a deeper part. A splash went up, hitting some of the guys that were hanging around there. They all laughed, some of them cheering for me, none of them realizing it was an act of aggression meant to regulate my feelings.

I stayed under for a while, letting the water surround me and bring the real world out of focus. Down here, everything was different. Plants, fish, insects, an entire new ecosphere revealed itself to me through the murky green water. I stayed down until my lungs began to burn a little, and then I shot to the surface, pulling in a lungful of air.

“We thought you might need help down there, Coach,” Axel said, grinning at me. “Dang, you can stay under a long time.”

“Just looking at the fish,” I assured him, even though it wasn’t quite true. “I don’t recommend you guys stay down for quite that long.”

“I’d drown,” Robby noted, and I nodded along with him. It probably wasn’t a good idea for me to do it either, and it hadn’t helped my disposition.

I wouldn’t be able to stay in the water long anyway. I had to go check that the buses were going to be arriving on time, amongst other things. I swam around with the guys from Fox House for a bit, trying not to think about how some of them were seniors and this would be their last visit to camp, before I headed to the shore and pulled myself out of the water.

“Hi, Josh!” Karrie’s voice grated on my last nerve as I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me. “Camp sure has been busy.”

I raised an eyebrow, not sure what she was getting at. “It always is.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to see one another more.” Her eyelashes were going to town, like usual, blinking up a storm. “But I’m looking forward to dinner.”

At first, I was confused. If she was hungry, she could go grab another sandwich. But then I remembered that we’d made plans to have dinner together once we got back so that we could talk about the future. I hoped that included her quitting or me coming up with a plan to fire her. I hadn’t had a whole lot of opportunities to think about it with camp going on, so all I did was nod. “Yep. It’ll be nice. Excuse me.”

With that, I stepped around her and headed back toward my cabin. I may as well go take a shower to rinse off the lake and then start facilitating the successful transport of everyone back to civilization. Inevitably, someone left something somewhere and we had to stop and turn around. I’d like to avoid that if possible this time.

By a quarter till three, we had everyone heading toward the buses, bags in hand, staff members going back to check all the cabins for any items that might’ve been left behind. I thought we might actually be able to roll out of here on time for once.