lookin' out for you, my darling

m-i-n-e for all the t-i-m-e

"So I'm taking the bus this year," Trish grumbles, the phone pressed between her ear and her bare shoulder as she wriggles out of her jeans. The window's open, her fan's dialed all the way the up and still it's too hot, Trish's skin damp with sweat she can't be bothered to wash off. "Hooray, I guess."

Jo huffs. She's in Hawaii, probably watching the waves from her air-conditioned hotel room. Trish isn't one for tropical vacations but god, she'd kill for working A/C. "Big deal," Jo says. "It's a bus, dude. Imagine every field trip you've ever been on, but with less vaping—"

"Yeah, and more screaming." Trish flops onto her bed and throws an arm over her face, carelessly dramatic. Unfinished lanyards and camp nametags of years past hang over her like a tangle of vines, taunting her. "They really expect me to haul ass out of bed at 7:30, drag myself to the bus stop, and take charge of a group of kids I hardly know."

"No one's fault but your own." Jo's right, of course. She's also, from what Trish can gather, playing a ukulele, which only makes it more irritating. "Plus, free breakfast. Also shitty coffee, but it's not like you drink coffee anyway."

"Fine, but that's not the point." The point is that Trish is a late riser by nature, and the only thing that got her through those early mornings and long days of glorified babysitting last year was the drive up to camp with Andy, splitting homemade trail mix and bickering over the radio, having someone to vent to about trouble children and clueless parents on the way home. The point is maybe Trish doesn't want to take the goddamn bus, okay, and she shouldn't have to justify herself, Danishes and poppyseed muffins be damned.

She tells Jo as much. Jo, of course, doesn't buy it.

"Y'know, I have a feeling this has nothing to do with hauling ass out of bed at 7:30," she says. Trish realizes she's plucking the melody of "Careless Whisper," and proceeds to ignore it. "What bus stop are you, anyway?"

"St. John's." It's a few blocks down from Trish's house, which would be convenient if she didn't have to drag herself home after eight hours of chasing children in 92-degree heat.

"Oh, so you'll be with Andy, Joan, Wil...and Pete." The plucking of the ukulele comes to a discordant halt. "Hmm."

"Don't," Trish says, scrubbing a hand over her face.

"I'm just saying." Trish can hear Jo's shit-eating smirk from across the Pacific. "Maybe it's not the thought of being on the bus that scares you, but the thought of being in a confined space, twice a day, five days a week, with Pete We—"

"Oh, no, Penny, don't put that in your mouth," Trish says flatly. "Sorry, Jo, I'm gonna have to hang up before my dog kills herself."

"You can't run from the truth, Patricia—"

Trish hangs up and wishes, not for the first time, that her best friend didn't know her so goddamn well.

--

Every summer, without fail, Trish's vacation plans have included the following three things: 1) filming one-person Green Day covers and then deleting them out of embarrassment, 2) putting off homework and school shopping until the last possible minute in favor of browsing record shops and screwing around in GarageBand; 3) summer day camp.

You'd think after eight years, at the ripe age of sixteen, she'd have found something better to do with her summer. She's pretty sure the girl whose mom talked her and Jo's mom into signing up the two of them has long quit and moved onto better more productive things that don't involve spending eight hours frying in the sun with no pay and an 80% chance of nosebleeds.