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strings, but I couldn’t imagine he had that much influence to knock someone out of their position. He was just a chem teacher slash bed-and-breakfast owner. Not exactly the summer camp mafia.
    “Yes, but she had to leave for the summer, so it’s not really your fault or anything, just, you know, kind of a bummer for me.”
    “Look, I’m sorry I’m late; my dad told me to go to the office first. I had no clue what position I had. I’d never want to take someone’s job from them,” I said. Her features visibly softened. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and seemed to reboot herself.
    “Let me try this again . . . Hey, I’m Tori, welcome to Camp Manatee. Sorry I’m being a total bitch. I’m in the middle of a crisis, not what you want to walk into the first day.”
    It was a relief the source of her annoyance wasn’t me. “I’m Cassidy.”
    She motioned for me to follow her to the front of the room. The test kitchen was large and bright with rows of tables facing a long island at the front of the room that had a sink and stovetop built into it.
    “Do you have any experience in a kitchen?”
    “Actually, yeah, my last job was in a bakery. And I do a lot of cooking at home, fend-for-myself kind of stuff. Nothing fancy.” I didn’t add that my bakery job was mostly working the cash register or adding embellishments to cupcakes, but at least it sounded impressive, and for some reason I wanted her to like me. It would be nice to have an actual friend. Ems and I had been texting like crazy, but I craved real conversation with someone other than my six-year-old half brother.Adorable as he was, I wasn’t sure I had much more to add to his constant shark chatter.
    “Wow, cool. It’s not like I’m running the cordon bleu of camp programs or anything, but any experience is helpful. We’re icing and decorating cupcakes today, thought I’d keep it simple. We can’t do anything really cool, like chopping or range-top cooking, due to insurance issues.” She crouched down, opened a large drawer, and pulled out two cupcake tins.
    “So, um, what’s the crisis?” I asked, following her to the far end of the island. She placed the tins down on the counter next to a shiny silver KitchenAid mixer and lifted the beater back. Chocolate cake batter dripped from it. My stomach growled. I’d missed out on the breakfast part of bed-and-breakfast that morning.
    “I had three dozen cupcakes ready to go today, packed them up last night, but my brother and his stoner friends had a midnight snackfest and there were only eight left this morning. I made those suckers from scratch too. It killed me to use box mix for these, but there just wasn’t time.”
    I stifled a laugh at the “brother and his stoner friends” comment. Funny as it sounded to me, I didn’t think Tori would appreciate it. She unclamped the bowl from the base and was about to pour the batter into the tins when I stopped her.
    “Wait, don’t you have to grease them?”
    Tori gasped and placed the bowl down. “Damn, thanks,good call. I don’t know where my head’s at today. There should be cupcake liners over in that far cabinet.”
    I walked over to the row of cabinets and opened a few until I came across one that held supplies. Napkins. Straws. Enough plastic wrap to encase the Empire State Building. Tinfoil sheets . . . and finally, cupcake liners. I stood on tiptoe, knocked them off the shelf, and caught the box in my other hand. Tori held up her hand for me to toss them. I did and she missed, laughing.
    “We make a great team,” she said, picking them up.
    There was a crackle over the PA system. “All counselors report to the multipurpose room for morning rally.”
    “Oh shit,” Tori said.
    I grabbed the cupcake liners from her hand. “I’ll line, you pour. Do we have to go to . . . what was it . . . morning rally?”
    She picked up the batter bowl and followed while I frantically lined the tins.
    “Since we don’t have a set group of