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“Can we go? There’s an almost-cold overpriced PBR waiting for me at the bar,” Kevin whined.
“Fine,” June said, sliding her headband over her ears, moving her curls back in a way that, on a good day, could look energetic and youthful. On a bad day, it looked like her hair was on fire or Ms. Frizzle had a meltdown. It was what it was, she figured. She walked out of the room and pushed her cell phone, ID, and credit card in the side pocket of her knockoff Amazon leggings.
“About time!” Kevin joked, only a slight serious note to his voice as they walked out of the front door and began to work their way out of camp. June heard peals of laughter ring out as students had begun to head out of their cabins and walk towards the opening night campfire, where June knew that the counselors would put on skits and lead them in corny camp songs. In her first few years chaperoning kids to camp, June would spend her days and evenings tagging along with activities, supporting kids that she knew would be homesick or needed to see a familiar face in order to build trust with the camp staff.
That familiar pang of guilt hit June again as she realized she had spent very little time with students once she had gotten here, just dumped them off to the camp counselors and escaped on a hike with Kevin, then spent her afternoon attempting to write cover letters while images of a certain camp director popped into her head, and then ran off of camp property to start to drink as soon she she can. Behaviors are communication, rang a familiar educational refrain in her head. Usually, it meant that when a kid “acts out”, they’re trying to communicate something that they didn’t have the words for. What was June’s behavior communicating?
Lost in her thoughts, Kevin and June officially left camp property and turned left, up another short winding mountain road until they reached The Tavern. There was an official name that the bar and B&B used on their marketing materials, but June had never heard anyone call it by that name. It was just The Tavern, and for two people both overly sensitive to drinking and driving, the walk to and from was perfect.
The Tavern was an older wooden and stone building, originally built in the early 1900s as a hunting lodge. From what June could gather, at some point in the 1950s, when the tiny mountain town of Klarkuft had become a bit of a tourist retreat for professors and businessmen from Vanberg, it had transitioned into a bar and bed and breakfast, and June was pretty sure that some of the furniture hadn’t been updated since then. It was dusty, a bit moldy, overpriced, and drafty.
June loved it.
There was something about The Tavern that was so unpretentious, so different from the bars in Vanberg that attempted to cultivate a nostalgic vibe. The crowd at the Tavern was mostly townies from Klarkuft, a combination of workers and rangers from the state park that bordered camp and the eclectic community that called the mountain town home, some of whom, June figured, were probably descended from the original Swedish communities that had settled here in the mid 1800s.
An old bell tinkled as Kevin pushed open the door and June followed him inside, removing her ear band and mussing a hand through her curls to mitigate the flattened hair that she would have acquired on the walk there.
“Okay, Lehrer,” Kevin said as they approached the bar. “You’re not usually this quiet. Do I need to get you a shot to get you to open up and figure out what’s going on?”
June pulled a face. “Please don’t, I’m old and decrepit and my body cannot handle that type of poison anymore.” June ordered two bottles of standard local lager from the bartender, an older, sun beaten white man with dusty blonde hair and a welcoming smile. Kevin raised his eyebrows and indicated the two bottles that had clinked down on the old dark red wooden bar. “These are different types of poison,” June protested. “I don’t know how, but somehow they are. You’re the science teacher.”
June picked up both bottles and Kevin followed her to a small table surrounded by stubby stools, next to a roaring fire in a stone hearth. June felt her shoulders relax as she sat down, the hiss and pop of the fire a comforting white noise in the background. There was something about being out here, out of the city, that had allowed June’s brain to clear out. Maybe it was the lack of traffic, the lack of college students, the lack of hustle, but everything out here felt simpler and more straight forward. Not for the first time, June thought about the ways that she had looked forward to this week, not for the relief it would give her students, but for the relief it would give her. Sipping her beer, she focused on the licks of the flames, stretching her neck to relieve some tension.
“Make any progress on cover letters today?” Kevin asked, taking a delicate swig out of his beer.
“Not really,” June said. “I have a lot of tabs open and then all the websites you sent me, but I just can’t get started. I don’t know what to say.”
“Isn’t your job words?” Kevin asked.
“Yeah, but my job is also the only thing I’ve ever known. I can tell you what makes me an effective educator - at least before this year - but I can’t tell you why you should hire me to be a project manager. I dunno, I’m good at shit and I’d like to make money,” June laughed and took a sip of her beer. “It’s just overwhelming and so I just avoid it.”
“What would your therapist say?” Kevin asked.
“Hey, I wish you would get a real job so I didn’t have to keep charging you the rate that you started with when you were in undergrad,” June deadpanned. She’d had the same therapist since her second year at VU, where she stumbled into the student health center a sobbing mess after processing…no, she was pushing those memories away for this evening. Matched with a grad student who was also figuring out how to be a therapist, June had stayed connected after both of their respective graduations, and her therapist still kept her at a low rate, even though June knew she charged most of her clients drastically more.
“Okay, but actually.”
“She’d probably say that I avoid my problems by throwing myself into work or a project or some kind of distraction, and that I need to just actually face them head on.” June rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I pay for therapy when I know what she’s going to say half the time.”
“Do you listen to her?”
“Not exactly. But I’m getting really good at Temple Run again,” June pulled up her phone to show off her newest award.
“I’m so proud of you,” Kevin said, swatting the phone out of her hand. “Now, we’ll put the job shit on the back burner and I want to talk about the super sexy camp director. What’s his name again?”
“Colin,” June said immediately, her eyes flickering to the door to see if he had arrived, even though it turned out to be two other teachers from their school. Was she nervous? Why did she keep looking over Kevin’s shoulder to see if he was coming? Did he actually want to come when she invited him or had he just been saying that because he was overly nice, because his sister had already turned down June’s first invitation and he felt sorry for her? What if he showed up out of pity? That would still be a win, though, right, because he’d be here?
Since when did June care? Her stomach boiled with nervous energy.
“Hah!” Kevin exclaimed, victorious. “Pretty quick that you know his name. Just saying it’s suspicious.”
“Listen, you know I can memorize a classroom full of students’ names in one period,” it was one of June’s favorite teacher tricks that made her popular with students. “So it’s not that weird that I can memorize the name of the one staff member I’ve interacted with.”
“Hmmm,” Kevin said, pursing his lips. “What is the new secretary’s name at school?”
“Uhh,” June’s mind drew a blank. They had a new secretary?
“She literally emails you every day with a reminder to take attendance,” remembering that detail was not a strength of June’s “And you complain about it every day as well. That name hasn’t stuck in your brain?”
