ONE

It was a fairly normal Monday afternoon; the very beginning of July. I can guarantee it was probably about ninety degrees in the kitchen of Mary and Jerry’s, the restaurant where I was currently employed. It was my second summer working there and this summer was even hotter than the previous one. I had gotten hired the previous June, and although I had just turned nineteen, it was my first real job.

I liked the people I worked with, although I had no one really to compare them to and I didn’t know any of them extremely well. I didn’t have any real “friends”; my ex boyfriend of the previous two years had taken care of that. He was a no-good jerk who had treated me pretty badly for our entire relationship and had cheated on me more times than I could count on one hand. But, he had also been my first real boyfriend, so I had no clue that I should have been treated better. He didn’t let me get a job or have any friends. But that was all behind me, finally, at nineteen years of age.

Out of all the people who I worked with at the restaurant, though, there was one guy in particular – who I had met thirteen months ago – that I was especially fond of. His name was Matthew; he was a waiter, and was waiting tables as Ms. Tacoma – Mary – was giving me the “tour”, on the very day that I got hired. Matthew, who I found out later went by “Matty” to his friends, stopped and introduced himself. He even told me a story about his first day of working there. Although it sounded exaggerated, the story consisted of him dropping three plates and messing up a whole bunch of orders. I remember his very words to me that day, too: “And I didn’t even get fired.”

I liked Matty right away. And I continued to like him when I started to get to know him better. I even still liked him when he told me about his girlfriend; how they had been together for three years and how much he loved her.

“She works here, too,” he told me, on my fifth shift. I assumed by that point that he worked practically every day. “You’ll like her,” he added with a smile.

And I did like her, too. I met her about a week later; she was assigned to “train” me on being a hostess. I remember she introduced herself to me as Victoria, but I soon found out that everyone called her Tori. She was gorgeous: long, straight dark hair, tall and thin. Basically she was everything most teenage girls wanted to be. And she was twenty-one.

I found out a few weeks later that since I was on Matty and Tori’s good side already, I didn’t really have to worry about anyone not liking me or having any enemies. Matty and Tori were “higher up” around the restaurant. There were thirteen people employed at the restaurant, including myself, Matty, Tori, Ms. Tacoma (Mary) and Mr. Brown (Jerry).

My shift on that fairly normal Monday was noon-to-six, which was a shift I enjoyed working. It always went by fast, compared to the opening and closing shifts. I was waiting tables that shift, though, and I must admit I preferred being a hostess, as it was less work. But neither job was really that bad.

“Sydney!”

I heard my name being called from across the kitchen, as I tried to remember which orders I needed for which tables. Even after thirteen months, it didn’t seem to be any easier to remember. I looked up and saw both Matty and Tori, holding hands, walking towards me. They both had the day off. Mr. Brown and two other guys were working in the kitchen and both looked over as the couple neared us, as well.

“Hey, guys,” I said to them, placing the third plate on my arm.

“Did anyone mention anything to you today? Something… uh… pretty big?” Matty asked. I just shook my head quickly.

Mr. Brown and both of the guys in the kitchen looked like they knew what he was talking about. Alex Ace, the blonde in the kitchen, spoke up. “No one said anything about it to her.”

“About what?” I wanted to know.

“Well, you see –“ Matty began, but was interrupted.

“Matthew, let Sydney do her job. You can tell her about the trip when she takes her break,” Mr. Brown – who I still couldn’t bring myself to call Jerry, like everyone else – told him, and Matty looked disappointed right away.

“Jerry, you ruined the surprise!” Matty was pretending to be devastated.

I was still confused, so I just spun around and went back out to the dining area. After I served the three tables I was waiting on, I made my way back to the kitchen again, hoping to find out what the heck everyone was talking about and why I was still out of the loop about it. Matty and Tori were gone and Mr. Brown, Alex and a guy everyone just called D, were discussing something amongst themselves. I didn’t know Alex or D that well, and to be honest, Mr. Brown scared me a little bit, so I just stood there for a few minutes until someone noticed I was there.

“You can take your break now, Sydney,” Mr. Brown told me and I nodded, thanking him silently.

“Matty and Tori said to tell you that they would be waiting for you in the lobby,” Alex said, while D just looked at me.

“Thank you. I’ll be back in half an hour,” I said politely, taking off my apron and hanging it up on the hook behind me.

Like Alex had informed me, Matty and Tori were, in fact, waiting for me in the lobby when I made my way out there. I followed them outside where Tori proceeded to pull out her pack of cigarettes and lit one for herself and one for Matty. I had long since given up on trying to get them to quit; it just seemed like a lost cause.

“What’s the big news that everyone but me knows about?” I finally asked, as the three of us stood just outside the restaurant in the hot summer air.

The two of them looked at each other, smiling. They looked excited. Matty spoke first. “Well, you are the only person that Mary and Jerry have hired in the past year, right?”

I thought about the question for a minute and realized that it was true: everyone else had been working at the restaurant longer that I had. I was still the new girl. I just nodded, waiting for him to continue. Tori continued for him.

“So that is the reason that you are the only one who doesn’t know about what we are going to tell you,” she said, still smiling.

“Well, what is it?” I asked again.

It was as if Matty just couldn’t keep it in any longer. “Every July, Mary and Jerry go to Italy for three weeks to visit family and friends that they have there. During those three weeks, they close the restaurant. It’s… like… a tradition.”

I didn’t quite get what he was saying. “So I have three weeks off this month?”

“Yeah, we all do. But, also during those three weeks, the rest of us always go on a camping trip. It’s pretty much a tradition, too,” Matty went on.

I thought I understood what he meant by that point. “Everyone else?” I wanted to know. I found it a bit weird that eleven people would all go on a camping trip together, especially that three of them were older women who were just friends of Mary’s.

“Well, everyone except Linda, Sherry and Marge, obviously. They just get three weeks off from work. The rest of us; me, Tori, Alex, D, Lana, Julianne and Tyrelle, we all go camping. Usually out at Tawanda Lake or somewhere around there,” Matty continued.

I didn’t know where Tawanda Lake was, exactly, but I knew it was a good three or four hours away.

“Sounds like fun,” I told them, forcing a smile. I didn’t really know if they were inviting me yet.

“It sure is,” Tori spoke up. “Girl, you have to come with us this year.”

I smiled again, but this time it was a real smile. “Really?”

“Of course! You are so ‘one of us’ now which means that it wouldn’t be our annual camping trip without you,” Matty told me, grinning.

It was a lot to take in, all of a sudden. Besides the fact that they were inviting me on a three-week camping trip, they had basically just told me that I was their friend. I mean, I knew I was their friend and I totally considered them mine, but I had never heard it from them before. I rarely even saw them outside of work. I wasn’t exactly a typical social teenager.

“When does this all happen?” I asked, feeling a little overwhelmed.

“This year Mary and Jerry are leaving on the 8th, which is this Friday. I can’t believe this week is here, already,” Tori explained.

“This week?” I was honestly surprised.

“Yeah, we will probably leave this Saturday or Sunday. And they get home on the 30th, which is a Saturday. But they don’t re-open the restaurant until August 1st. So we have, well, a long time,” Tori continued.

“Wow,” I said, without thinking.

“Yesss,” Matty grinned again. “Do you want to come?”

“Of course I want to come,” I replied right away.

“But?” Tori asked.

“That is kind of, well, soon. I’ll just have to talk to my parents –“

“Don’t you live on your own?” Matty interrupted.

“Yeah, but I baby-sit my little sisters a lot during the summer since my dad and his wife work all the time,” I told them.

“I’m sure you can take three weeks for yourself. You have no idea how much fun it is going to be. I bet you’ve never had so much fun in your whole life.” Matty was just going on and on, making it seem like the best thing that would ever happen to me.

In all reality, it probably was. I hadn’t gotten the chance to have much fun during my teenage years and now I was nineteen, basically an adult. I had never really had fun. I knew at that moment that I had to do it.

“How do you guys get around? You just all take different vehicles?” I felt I needed to know a bit more of the details before saying yes.

Both Tori and Matty grinned at my question, and Matty answered first. “Nope.”

“No…?” I was confused once again.

“We always take my dad’s RV. It’s huge: it has four beds and a kitchen and living room area and everything. It hardly ever gets used anymore these days since me and my siblings are all grown up, so my dad loves that we take it every summer. And we don’t have to worry about tents or anything. And we can take turns driving.” Tori sounded very excited about the whole ordeal. It sounded like something to be really excited about. I was getting excited just thinking about it.

“Wow,” I said again.

“Yup. You have to come,” Matty urged me.

I was quiet for a few minutes, just watching the two of them smoke their cigarettes. I started thinking about their relationship and how extremely happy they were together and had been for the past three years. I wondered why I hadn’t deserved a boyfriend as wonderful and amazing as Matty was to Tori. I wondered why I had ended up with a lying, cheating and abusive boyfriend. And I wondered if my “Matty” was out there somewhere. At that moment I hoped that he was.

“Okay, I’m in,” I blurted out, surprising even myself a little bit.

“You’re in?” Matty asked, just to be sure he’d heard me correctly.

“Yup, I’m in,” I repeated.

Tori let out an excited yelp and Matty just screamed. They were obviously happy with my decision. When I left them about ten minutes later to go back to work, I began thinking about what the trip would be like. When I passed by Lana Louis, the girl who looked about Tori’s age, who was the hostess that day, I wondered if she and I would become friends or if she would even like me. When I went back into the kitchen, Mr. Brown was now no where to be seen and Alex and D were making some food, chatting loudly.

I slipped my apron back over my head and then washed my hands at the sink which was right next to where the guys were working. I hadn’t been expecting them to say anything to me, I guess, because I was startled when I heard one of their voices.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

It took me a few seconds to realize they were talking to me. I turned around and forced a smile, but was completely nervous. I had never really had a conversation with either of them before; I had mostly become close with just Matty and Tori.

“The verdict?” I asked, pretending to not know what they were talking about.

“Are you coming on the camping trip, or what?” the same guy, Alex, asked again.

“I sure am,” I told them, trying to remain confident. They didn’t know me, so I could be whoever I wanted to be at that moment.

“Really? You are?” D asked. He looked practically stunned. I guess they hadn’t expected me to say yes.

“Yup,” I answered again.

“Right on, that’s awesome!” Alex went on. I smiled, for real.

It was a pretty cool feeling. The fact that they thought it was awesome that I was going on their camping trip with them.

I went back to work, as usual. Lana was the only other person working with me, until it turned five o’clock, which was when Julianne Matson started to work the waitress closing shift. She seemed like a pretty nice person, but I hadn’t really talked to her very much, either. Neither of them mentioned anything about the trip until six o’clock came around and I signed out. I was walking through the kitchen to hang up my apron again when I heard someone saying my name.

“Sydney, hey,” the voice said. I turned back around and saw Lana. I assumed she was taking her break.

“Yeah?” I asked her, trying not to look as absolutely terrified as I felt.

“Did Matty and Tori tell you about the camping trip?” she asked. She knew they had told me about it, I could tell. I just nodded. “Are you gonna come?”

I took a breath and let it out. “Yeah, I am.”

“Cool, I was hoping you would. We’re going to have a crazy good time,” she finished.

“Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun,” I agreed.

“Oh yeah, for sure. Are you working tomorrow?”

“No, I’m working Wednesday and Thursday.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then.” She was smiling. She was really pretty, almost as pretty as Tori.

“Yeah, see you,” I finished and turned back around to hang up my apron.

Before I left the kitchen to leave the restaurant for the night, I heard voices from the back. I stopped to listen for a few seconds, but couldn’t hear anything they were saying, so I continued on my way.

“Just say goodbye to her,” I heard a guy’s voice practically yell.

“Damnit, Alex, shut up,” the other voice said, even louder.

I just stood there, as if I knew they were talking about me. I could still see them and I knew they could still see me.

“Just do it!” Alex’s voice said again.

Finally, after a few more seconds, I heard, “Hey, Sydney?”

After taking a deep breath and letting it out, I took a few steps back towards where Alex and D were still standing, in the kitchen, preparing food and making meals. They looked busy. I felt bad for even going back.

“Hey, Sydney,” D said again.

“Hey,” I said, still in shock. I had a weird feeling in my stomach.

“Uh, I just wanted to say ‘bye. And see you Thursday… you work Thursday, right?”

“Yes, I do. Ten to four,” I told him, looking right into his eyes, but only for a split second. I was still putting on a total act. I was pretending to be this confident, outgoing girl that I totally wasn’t. But it didn’t matter.

“Cool, I will see you then,” D finished.

I nodded and then waved to both of them before turning back around. Once I was out of the building and in the parking lot, I let out a huge sigh of relief. My car was parked pretty far from the building so I had a bit of time to think about everything that had happened. On the drive home, I turned the radio up and rolled the windows down and sung, loudly and happily. That was the first time in a long time that I really felt happy, and I must admit it was a strange feeling.

When I got home – a small apartment building in the middle of the city – and flopped down on my not-so-comfortable sofa, I let out another deep breath that I hadn’t realized I had been holding in. And suddenly I thought about Jessa O’Riley, my only real friend, aside from Matty and Tori. I had known Jessa since grade school and even though we didn’t remain best friends throughout the years, we met back up again at the end of high school. She stuck with me through my horrible relationship, even pretending that she didn’t know me once when my ex and I saw her at the mall. She didn’t know why I stayed with him as long as I did, but she was relieved and happy when I finally told her that it was over. Jessa had moved to a small town two hours away, called South Bay, the previous year, just after I had gotten hired at the restaurant. And although we called each other once a week and quite often, we still always wrote each other letters and sent them old-school, snail mail style, all the time. When I felt like there was something I wanted her to know, I wrote her a letter. And as I sat there on that sofa, thinking about my best friend Jessa, I knew that this was something that I had to tell her in a letter.

Jessa,

How are you? How’s South Bay treating you? How is your mom? Too many questions, I know, but I feel like I haven’t talked to you in forever. Okay, okay, I know it’s only been a few days. I miss you. And I have big news. Okay, it’s actually huge news! Guess what I’m doing this weekend? You will never guess, obviously, so I’m just going to tell you. I agreed to go on a three-week camping trip with a bunch of people from work. We’re leaving this weekend and not coming back until the end of July or something. I don’t even know the details; I just agreed to go. I know, it’s not really like me, but it just sounded like so much fun and I never really to do anything really fun.

Do you think that I made a mistake by agreeing to go? I mean, I know Matty and Tori pretty well, and they are really cool, and there’s only five other people going, and I know them all from work. It’s not like I’m going to be going with strangers, right? I guess I’m sort of questioning my decision now, but I know I can’t back out. They were really excited that I said yes. Now I just have to find a way to tell my parents that I’ll be gone for three weeks and they’ll have to find a baby sitter for that time… oh man. That is not going to be fun for me. They’ll understand, though, I hope. I think I’ll wait and tell them tomorrow. Tonight I’m just going to sit back and relax, watch some television and stuff. Maybe do some reading. I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you that, though. Write back to me soon, and I’ll probably call you on Friday! Bye, love you.

Sydney XOXOXOX