Page 7 of Need S'More Time

“Sure, yeah,” June replied, much too quickly. “I mean, not really - is anyone who works with kids okay?” she laughed off her poorly timed joke. “I don’t know - I used to be able to have the patience for conversations like that, but this year, I’m just so short with all of the kids. I’m annoyed and frustrated and seeing how well you handled that makes me wonder what I would have done, and I think the answer is not something I’m exactly proud of.” June shoved her hands in the pocket of her fleece, looking up at the sky. “Which is a shitty feeling, to say the least.”

“I just met these kids today,” Colin said, gently. “It’s different when you’ve spent months and months dealing with the same drama. Trust me, when it’s the end of summer camp and I’m dealing with 19-year-old counselors who have broken up and made up every week for ten weeks, I’m also much less patient.” June smiled, appreciative of the way that Colin was trying to make her feel better. In some respects, he was right - she had been dealing with Evan and Xavier having friendship fights every other week since September - but June knew, deep down, that something had changed in her this school year. Employing a skill she had picked up from her emotionally distant father, June shoved the feeling down and tried to remember where she was. She was in the trees, surrounded by mountains, away from most of the bullshit in town. June took a deep breath, held the air in her lungs for long enough that she felt the burn, then slowly let it out, pursing her lips. Closed her eyes, opened them. Took in her surroundings. Tried to smile.

“You good?” Colin asked, watching her.

“Yeah,” June said, nodding. She would make herself good. It’s what she’d been doing all year.

Upon arriving at the dining hall, Colin had waved a quick goodbye to her and gone to chat with the kitchen staff to ensure that students with allergies had the correct dinners prepared. June grabbed a cup of coffee from the coffee machine, added too many French Vanilla creamers, and sipped it slowly, watching kids trickle in from their first day at camp.

Unsurprisingly, June was greeted with a lot of cynical faces and complaints - they were preteens, to be fair. But, a few genuine smiles were peppered in the crowd, and June did feel a sense of joy from the students that had been missing in her classroom. She overheard a group of girls debating whether Harry Styles or Timothee Chalamet was more attractive, while a mixed gender group of students argued over whether they would rather eat burritos or pizza as their only meal for the rest of their life.

Kids are back to squabbling over dumb shit, June thought, smiling as she sipped her coffee. Nature is healing.

Kids found their tables, eating with their groups assigned to them at camp, rather than their friends, and June was also heartened to see kids who wouldn’t normally talk to each other beginning to tentatively explore new friendships. Maybe this week would actually heal, and not just the relationships between the students, but perhaps it could actually work for June, too.

June took in the dining hall, that familiar sense of camp nostalgia returning to her. It was one large room with round tables scattered throughout, dark brown plastic chairs surrounding each table. One group of students were setting the tables for the entire class of kids, and June laughed as they debated over whether people needed forks placed on their plates or next to it. Historic photos of Camp Peek-N-See dotted the walls, along with flags made out of worn bandanas, adding pops of color to the natural wood walls and ceiling. Pop music - Katy Perry’s "Firework" - played in the background and June laughed while some students shimmied to the music, unconscious of what they were doing.

She maneuvered her way through the kids setting up, almost spilling her coffee when a student who was dancing bumped into her. She made her way out of the dark green doors to the balcony, which was one of June’s favorite places on camp.

The dining hall was two stories - the bottom used for campfires when it was raining - and the main floor opened up onto a balcony that overlooked the lake. Shaded with a wooden pergola, Adirondack chairs dotted the space. It was June’s favorite thing to do, when she wasn’t hiking or heading off camp to drink beers with Kevin, to sit up here and read, watching the kids canoe or hike during breaks from her book. The sun was just beginning to set over the tip of the mountain that June and Kevin had hiked this morning and she knew it would get much colder tonight, made a mental note to grab something to keep her ears warm before they went out for beers tonight.

With a start, June remembered that she had invited Colin out for drinks with the teachers. Would he actually show up? Or did he say yes just to be nice, the way that Kevin begrudgingly went to all of the horrible plays and musicals that students invited him to. Ugh, June didn’t want anyone’s pity. She wanted genuine connection and new friends and - yes - she wanted to spend time around a guy she was physically attracted to.

Sighing again, she walked back into the dining hall to find that nearly all the students had arrived. Kevin was getting his own coffee, and June walked over to meet him, needing to refill her cup. She didn't need coffee after 8 am before returning to in-person schooling, but now she found that she needed a cup almost every two hours to make it through the day. Another thing she tried not to think about too hard.

“Howdy,” Kevin said, clinking his coffee cup to hers. “This shit -” he indicated his coffee - “is worse than what the district provides.”

“Yeah, but it’s better than nothing?” June posed dramatically, adopting a fake smile resembling a 1950s beer advertisement.

“Since when did you become an optimist?”

“Never!” June said with the same false brightness in her voice. “I just cover up all of my actual feelings!”

“Oh, I know,” Kevin said, bumping his hip into hers. He nodded to the front of the dining hall where Colin was walking up to a small stage. “Your man’s here.”

“He is not my -” but June’s protest was cut off.

“Aaaaaaaall right, everyone!” Colin’s voice rang out over the entire dining hall. June was impressed to see that Colin wasn’t using a microphone. In all of her conversations with him so far, he had been relatively soft spoken. “One two three, eyes on me!”

“One two, eyes on you,” the majority of students repeated back, with only a few eye rolls accompanying the repetition. June felt a surge of jealousy, as she had been struggling all year to get kids to listen to her in class.

“Awesome, awesome,” Colin said, walking around the dining hall and using his physical presence near chatty groups to encourage them to quiet down. June knew what he was doing, and could recognize smart teacher moves in other people. He’s magnetic, June thought.

Colin continued to hold the attention of the large group of students, explaining how the dining system worked at camp, getting them excited for dinner, while at the same time making sure that the students knew the norms and expectations. June was captivated but at the same time felt the heat of jealousy flare in her stomach - Why couldn’t she get the students to listen to her in the same way? June had never had the type of behavior problems that she had this year and more than once, she found herself doubting the strategies that she had used for a decade. What if everything she had been doing was wrong?

June could barely focus on her pizza, not even when Kevin brought over a small bowl of ranch to dip their slices into. Growing frustrated with herself and the entire situation, she pushed around her crusts until Kevin called her out on her moping.

“Just get back to the cabin and get your shit together,” he said. “I know it’s tough love, but you’re a real bummer to be around right now.” June begrudgingly agreed, picked up her stuff, and walked across the camp property. The sun was just beginning to set over the mountains, and golden shadows were cast over the white bark of the aspen trees, highlighting the buds and new leaves. She trudged back into the teacher’s cabin to grab a hat and her wallet, and paused when she passed the full length mirror in the bedroom and looked at herself. June was delightfully average, in her own estimation. 5’5”ish, midsized, decent, if small, boobs, some semblance of a waist that flared out to hips that had grown more generous during COVID. She knew she was pretty enough that people didn’t find her unsettling but didn’t have a face to launch a thousand ships. She looked closer - pale skin that burned too easily, a nose that had an unfortunate bump about halfway down the bridge (the result of a keg stand dare in college), normal lips, hazel eyes, and wild, dark red curls that alternated between fanning out like a halo around her head and being tamed.

She spent a few minutes poking and prodding at her face, looking at the small wrinkles that had begun to spring up around the corners of her eyes when she smiled and had begun to bracket her mouth. June had never been afraid of aging, tried to embrace it as a natural process that she felt lucky to experience instead of the alternative, but recently, her face had begun to serve as a reminder that she, well, she wasn’t young young anymore.

34 didn’t feel old, necessarily, but it also didn’t feel full of potential in the way 24 had. People who were 34 had their shit together, right? June cocked her head and looked herself in the eyes. People who were 34 didn’t spend sleepless nights wondering if they had wasted the past decade of their life in a career that was a dead end. People who were 34 had friends who didn’t just have the same job as them and didn’t spend their weekends attending softball and soccer games for 12 year olds. People who were 34 weren’t ghosted by fuckboys on apps - they had already gotten married, settled down, shit - they knew if they were going to have kids or not. June felt like she had more in common with the 24 year olds at her school than her peers her age. Even Kevin had gotten married in the last year, and he was usually the person that June could count on for a wine-soaked movie marathon on a Friday night.

“Get your shit together, Lehrer,” June said to her reflection in the mirror, attempting to channel every sad teenage movie she had watched in the past two years. Turns out, in real life, talking to yourself in a mirror made you feel even stupider than you felt before.

“Who are you talking to?” Kevin called from the living room.

“Uh, just leaving a voice memo,” June lied. Idiot, she thought.

---