The peroxide bubbled and hissed as it cleansed his arm. “Seriously, that really stings,” he said and squirmed in his seat. “And isn’t this a little personal? Shouldn’t you have at least bought me dinner first? We haven’t been properly introduced.”
She paused to flash a flirty smile and shake the hand she was already holding. “I’m Giavanna Rinaldi. Everyone calls me Gia. Stop whining. You’re worse than the kids.”
“Speaking of kids, I can’t believe they leave you alone with them. Do they know how vicious you are?”
“Yes,” she said and found a piece of gauze, “it’s what they pay me for. And you are?”
“Rocky Lionakis. Everyone calls me Rocky.”
“Nice to meet you, Rocky,” she said and bit off a piece of tape.
“No tape! I’ll have to rip it off later along with a layer of skin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s what we use on the kids. See there?” she asked with another piece stuck to her full bottom lip. “It took two extra-large gauze pads to cover that up. Make sure you clean it better when you get home and put some antibiotic cream on it.”
“Yes, Nurse Make-It-Worse.”
She laughed as she gathered her supplies. “There is no end to your sparkling wit is there?”
“Sorry. Thanks for the water, and I appreciate your help.” But he would appreciate everything more if she’d disappear into the woods so he could roll home and lick his wounds. Leaves and twigs fell from his hair when he moved, and he was covered from head to toe with a layer of grime. There were no less than six insect corpses stuck to his pants—and that’s what he could see. He pulled up the front of his polo shirt to wipe his face. Big mistake. That served only to create mud and smear it around.
He pointed his chair toward his car. “It was nice meeting you, Gia. I’ll see you next week. Thanks again.” He took off down the winding sidewalk through the trees.
“Wait up,” she called after him. “I’ll walk out with you.” She skipped to his side and crinkled her nose as she rearranged the stuff in her arms. “Or I guess I should say I’ll walk and you roll.” She giggled at her own remark. “Walk and woll. I mean roll. Walk and
roll
.”
Rocky stopped near the patch of asphalt that served as a small parking pad behind the outdoor stage. “You sound like Elmer Fudd.”
“
You
try to say it fast.”
“Some other time. Right now it’s entirely possible I have a wolf spider in my pants so I need to go.”
“Oh,” she snorted, and made a sweeping gesture toward his car as she stepped back. “By all means, you should hurry.”
Within seconds he transferred to the driver’s seat and collapsed his chair to pull it inside.
She approached his car door and scuffed the toe of her cross-trainer on the steaming blacktop. The strawberry-scented cloud that surrounded her wafted into his hot car.
“What’s your talk about? I missed it today. I had to make a run to the office for some of the other counselors. By the time I got back, everyone was off to dinner.”
He turned the key. “It’s about my injury, my recovery, and my faith journey.” He shrugged. “Nothing fancy. I’m new at this.”
“This isn’t what you do for a living?”
“No. Not even close. I’m a computer guy.”
“Maybe I can catch your story next week.”
“Sure.”
She stepped closer still. “Do you live around here?”
“No, I’m about an hour down the road near Houston. What about you?”
“Dallas born and raised, but I’ve been away at school in west Texas. I’ve worked at this camp every summer since I graduated high school.”
He nodded.
“Well, Rocky, take care of that arm,” she said as the hint of a shy and uneasy smile teased the corners of her mouth. “See you next week.”
She turned and headed down another twisting trail. He caught one last glimpse of her before the forest swallowed her up. Warmth radiated across his chest. She was beautiful, sarcastic, and entirely too brutal to be around children.
He liked her.
****
Gia Rinaldi returned what she borrowed to the medical shack and jogged toward the dining hall. The new counselor she was in charge of training, Rebekah-with-a-K, would be annoyed she’d taken so long.
“What took you so long?”
And there it was.
Rebekah-with-a-K stood at the exit with the cabin clipboard as she guided sweaty pre-teen girls from dinner like a flight attendant unloading a plane. “Bu-bye,” she chanted over and over. “Head straight for your cabin.”
“Sorry,” Gia said and relieved her of the clipboard, “had to stop by the nurse.”
The petite college sophomore with the flaming red hair morphed from drill sergeant to compassionate new friend. “You OK? Did you get hurt?”
“I’m fine.” She pulled the screen door closed and wrestled the hook into its corresponding eye. “I was helping Rocky.”
“Rocky... Which one is that?”
“He’s not a camper. He was our speaker. He took a spill from his wheelchair and banged up his arm.”
Rebekah pushed her visor further into her mass of tight curls. “That can’t be good. Did you have to help him back into his chair and all that?”
“Oh, no. He didn’t want my help. I had to forcibly administer first aid.”
They fell in step behind the ten girls of Mighty Oak Cabin 2A for which they were responsible. “Take a few minutes in the bathrooms,” Gia called ahead. “Then to your bunks for quiet time and devotional.”
Rebekah swatted a mosquito away from her face and scrunched her nose into a freckle-splattered look of curiosity. “How do you forcibly administer first aid to someone who doesn’t want your help? He’s a grown man. You can’t just tackle him and make him accept a bandage.”
“But I did. And yes I know, in hindsight, I should’ve left it alone like he asked, but his chair had bounced from the end of the ramp all the way down to that nasty bug-infested clump of brush between the Pin Oak and Cottonwood Trails. Color me nosy, but I had to make sure he got out of there OK.”
“Of course. But at what point did you go all savage Florence Nightingale on him?”
“I ambushed him after he crawled back to the top.”
The rookie’s big throaty laugh burst unexpectedly from her tiny body. “You must tell me more, but I need to see why these girls are slowing down.”
“Probably because it’s ninety-five degrees, and the humidity is off the charts. We need to...” But Rebekah trotted off before Gia could finish her sentence about hydration safety. If that over-zealous newbie didn’t calm down it was going to be one long, irritating summer.
“Ooooooooo-
wee!
”
Rebekah’s shrill celebration from the front of the pack could only mean one thing: she’d reached the air conditioned comfort of the cabin. Bless her perky little heart.
Gia stepped inside, hung the clipboard on its designated hook by the door, and dropped onto her bunk. Cool air caressed her damp skin and chased the heat from her cheeks. She drained her nearby jug of water and wiped away the sweat with a fresh towel from the plastic tote under her wood-framed bed.
The rustic scent of stale campfire and wet clothes hit her nose four seconds after first time camper, Sophia, opened her duffle nearby. It caused a weird, fast-moving spell of nausea. She pressed her finger under her nose. “Sophia, don’t put your dirty wet clothes in your bag like that, OK? Either hang them and let them air dry or, when it’s closer time to go home, you can put them in an airtight bag.”
“Sorry, Gia. I thought they were dry. Must’ve still been damp.”
“No problem. I’m trying to save your clothes and keep your mom from passing out when she finds your laundry.”
She leaned forward to rest her head in her hands. The worst moldy clothes in the world had never caused a reaction like that. After eight years, maybe it was time to retire from summer camp. It’s what her parents expected now that she’d earned her college degree. Last she spoke with them, they made it clear they weren’t paying for grad school, but rather insisted she join the workforce as a contributing member of society—preferably somewhere far from Dallas. She couldn’t blame them really. It did take her a while to pull it together. It was a long treacherous road from the depths of academic probation to a degree with honors. There had been semesters of more partying than studying, a string of incomplete classes at two different schools, and an outright failure of several courses. Still, her parents paid tuition and encouraged her to work each summer at Towering Pines. Why? Because it was easier to report to their friends and massive congregation that ‘Gia’s away at college studying to be a child psychologist,’ or ‘Gia’s working at a Christian summer camp as a counselor,’ than to say ‘Gia was kicked out of her dorm, and we have no idea where she is,’ or ‘Gia failed to meet the requirements to be classified as a sophomore, junior, senior, whatever...’
And the kicker was that a few semesters back she had grown up, renewed her relationship with Christ, and started to understand how much she really wanted to help hurting children. Outside of a brief romantic mistake at the close of her senior year, she’d stayed on the straight and narrow and continually sought God in all things. She was a new creature in Christ and all that. Too bad her parents didn’t have a clue.
More odors crept to her nose as the rest of the girls entered the cabin in tired but chattering bunches. They settled in for quiet time, but not before spritzing and squirting an array of fruity and floral scents into the woodsy air they all had to share. Could they just once refrain from making the place smell like the bath shop at the mall?
Rebekah headed her way, wrestled their lone metal folding chair into submission, and tentatively placed her bottom on the seat as if waiting to see if it would collapse. “You look green.”
“Thanks.”
“No, really. And you’ve faded to pale. You OK?”
“I’m fine.”
Rebekah tapped the empty water jug with the end of her dusty cross-trainer. “I know it’s not dehydration. You drink more water in one day than most people get in three.”
“Years of camp experience. You’ll get in the habit, too.”
“Now you’re green again. Should I radio the nurse?”
Irritation pricked at her last patient nerve and sent a rush of heat through her neck and face. Blood pulsed in her ears. “Do you want a water jug upside the head?”
Rebekah planted her tiny hands on her hips. “Oh, now see? That’s better. The pink is back in your cheeks. And don’t you think it’s a little ironic? I threaten you with the nurse; you threaten me with bodily harm. Were we not recently talking about the use of force when it comes to first aid and you were on the pro side of the argument? Then you resort to violence when the running shoe is on the other foot?” Rebekah paused to take a breath and cross her legs. She leaned forward and propped her chin in her hand as she gazed at the ceiling. “Wait a minute. Is that even true irony anymore?”
Gia sighed. She didn’t know about true irony, but it would be nothing short of a true miracle is she didn’t shave off Rebekah’s auburn eyebrows as she slept.
“I’m fine,” she said with an air of calm that didn’t match her roiling insides. “My camp physical was eight weeks ago. I probably need to eat. I missed dinner, remember? Other than that, there’s nothing wrong that a good night’s sleep won’t cure. Can’t seem to get enough Z’s these days.”
Rebekah stood and pushed aside the folding chair. “What’s say we rest first today? I’ll go get you a plate and we’ll do the devotion after. I’ll prepare something if you need me to.”
Gia let her head drop to the downy pillow, too tired to resist. “No. I’ve got it. We’ll be discussing Psalm 139 and how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“One of my favorites. Be back in a sec.”
Wooden slats creaked and mumbles faded to restful breathing. “Feel free to take a snooze,” Gia called from her bunk. “We’ll do devotion later.”
Rebekah’s footsteps paused on the small deck and the tell-tale squeak of the metal mail box lid followed. She returned and dropped a stack of letters on the floor near Gia’s bed. “You’ve got mail,” she whispered, then dashed back out the door.
Gia hung over the side and pushed the envelopes around until the one with her name surfaced. She’d know that masculine scrawl anywhere, and any correspondence from the writer was about as welcome as the fresh wave of nausea that slammed into her. She quickly tucked the card into the Bible under her pillow until she could destroy it in the campfire later. She had no interest in the evil professor who’d broken her heart and mentally abused her during their short and disastrous acquaintance. That he would send her a card at her summer job was completely inappropriate and downright creepy.
She rolled onto her back and pressed her fingers into her temples.
Don’t go there
, she commanded herself.
Don’t think about it. It’s in the past...
But it was so hard to forget him when most nights seemed filled with ugly dreams and images surrounding the last time she saw him.
Her eyes fluttered as she prayed silently and drifted into twilight rest. Professor Evil’s memory faded.
Rocky and his wheelchair rolled across her mind among the jumble of everything else that had happened in her day so far. Did he really crawl down that hill? Did she really tackle him when he got back to the top?
She smiled. He was ruggedly handsome, offbeat funny, and entirely too cocky to be taken seriously.
She liked him.
2
Rebekah-with-a-K seemed to gag a little when she slid a half-eaten sloppy Joe into the trash. It didn’t help that someone, who apparently had deep-seated contempt for ground meat on a bun, had added strawberry milk and mustard to the mix and then garnished the whole structure with peas, carrots, and chewed-on bits of a plastic straw.
Gia rushed to the rookie’s side to demonstrate. “Don’t look or sniff. Push it all into the trash barrel. Get a pair of latex gloves from the box by the hand-washing sink. That helps.”
Rebekah’s auburn curls bounced from side to side as she hopped around and shook from head to toe as if flinging off the horror of it all. “These kids are disgusting. You’d think they’d be starving, but half this food is wasted. And they can’t push the plate aside. Nooooo. They have to play in it.”