Chapter 3 - Jameson
Jameson is perfect. All last year, in school, he would send Bella notes stuck in her locker. The sophomores all knew they were going steady. All the guys grumbled when the school year started. Their chances to grow the courage to talk to her, ask her to a dance, or be their lab partner for chemistry were ruined. Now the popular, pretty girl in school is taken.
And what a couple.
She already floods her notebook with their baby names and her own with a new surname. She wonders and wonders.
They walk around the camp, Jen and Lauren walk behind the couple. In awe. Jen makes this sour face, though, because now what? They were a team. The three chicklets. Now they're only two, and bored ones at that.
The camp prepares to get together tonight as a welcome back for the start of a great summer. Maybe they'll get to dance with new boys. Maybe they'll have a summer fling, too. All they know is this summer might just be a drag. Bella always was the life of their trio.
Renee braises the chickens and pops them back in the oven. There are two whole ones. She's done. She looks out the window, and she chuckles. Boy, does she know how it feels to be a third wheel. She watches as Jen and Lauren make exasperated faces behind her daughter and her new bae.
"Girls! Tell your mothers I've got the potato salad this time," she shouts out the window, because last time they were mush, not chunks. Renee won't have that.
They shout back, and they heard her.
Tonight she'll wear that new dress and no heels this time. Screw Leah and her fashion sense. She'd rather be comfortable than wobble around, sinking in soft dirt.
Everyone is loud and jovial at the campsite. Music plays and lights twined in the trees twinkle from above.
Greetings, hugs, kisses, and "how was your winter" are the similar actions and questions you hear around the picnic tables.
Renee grins at something Leah says and makes a face the moment she turns away. She can't believe she'll spend all summer with the loud-mouth woman bragging about her amazing potato salad and finger-licking deviled eggs. Bland, shredded cardboard is what Renee thinks.
Charlie is ahead when she looks up. His job was to get the chickens out of the warmers from the kitchen by now. She tries not to huff and puff but gives him a look instead. "Get the chickens!" she says through her teeth. He begrudgingly goes. Then he comes back empty-handed. He's turning in circles, looking at the table full of food Leah and the other cooks laid out.
The chickens are mysteriously gone. The party seems to stop. Everyone is bewildered. A search party is formed, yet no one seems to know how to find a pair of dead, garlic and lemon roasted birds meant for dinner. Eventually, they muscle through the least delicious foods on the tables spared from the mystery.
Renee is pissed.
….