“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been yapping about your stupid job, I would’ve been paying better attention,” I growled as I scanned the brush as I walked farther away.
“Don’t give me attitude just because you’re jealous of me.”
“What! Why would I be jealous of you?”
“Because you hate your job at the hotel while I love mine.” He sounded smug. It was amazing how a stupid, minor comment from a sibling could immediately set me off.
“I don’t hate my job!” I shot over my shoulder angrily. My jaw set and my teeth ground together. It was stupid getting mad at something so dumb.
“Then you wouldn’t be transferring departments,” called Simon lazily.
I muttered angrily under my breath as I continued my dark search. He always knew how to touch a raw nerve. It was a major talent of his. But as much as I hated to admit it, part of me was indeed jealous of my dorky younger brother. He had immediately taking a liking to working as an indoor lifeguard at the resort we both work at. When I moved to Wisconsin Dells to be closer to my parents…no, that’s not accurate. I didn’t move home because I was a dutiful daughter. When I moved to Wisconsin to live with my family, it was because I couldn’t find a job with my near useless Creative Writing degree. I came home to lick my proverbial wounds as I recovered from my first failure as an adult. I couldn’t find a big girl job, so I had to settle for something else. Unfortunately, in a tourist trap area like the Dells, the jobs that paid higher than seven or eight dollars an hour were quite limited.
Still, I was desperate to find a job to avoid sitting at home like the loser I considered myself. I applied to twenty different places and stupidly said yes to the first place that called me back. I took a job as a shipping and receiving attendant at a busy water park resort. My long days were often boring and spent delivering food, beverages, and packages eight hours a day. I didn’t mind the job, but I didn’t get off to a good start with my two female coworkers. I couldn’t quite connect with the supervisor or the manager in the shipping department, either. Everyone had a rather bland personality that was indifferent to humor or even a sunny disposition. Maybe that was just the Wisconsin nature, and I was an alien to it given I was a native of California. My manager never left his office during the nine to five shift and only grunted a hello in the morning. Other than that, the most I conversed with him was the day I interviewed with him and the day I requested the transfer.
My supervisor was worse. We shared nothing in common except the fact that we were both female. Every conversation I started with her was immediately shut down. Laurel hated talking, even if it was friendly small talk. It got to the point that merely asking how her weekend was resulted in a dirty look as if I personally offended her with my attempts at friendly banter. The only other person in our department consisted of another girl who was best friends with our supervisor. Jonna ignored my polite attempts at conversation as well. She wouldn’t provide dirty looks like our supervisor, but it was as if she wasn’t allowed to like me solely because Laurel didn’t. Jonna would stare at me as if I was a weirdo for greeting her in the morning. No hello was ever returned.
Long and terribly awkward silences started plaguing the department to the point I knew I needed a change for my sanity alone. I had never said or done anything to cause strife. My coworkers simply despised conversation. I was unfortunately someone who couldn’t function every day without it.
We worked in silence eight hours a day. The only words spoken were an answer to me when I would ask what part of the hotel we were going to next. Even then, it was only a grunted response. Sometimes an eyeroll was added in. One time, Laurel told me I talk too much. Ironically, working there, I felt I had never spoken less in all my life.
More often than not, mistakes were made in the job solely because our supervisor didn’t communicate with us to explain what needed to be done. Something needed to be delivered to a certain place at a certain time? Forget getting a slotted time and delivery day from Laurel. She wouldn’t communicate in regards to anything. She only berated Jonna and me when the time came and went for a delivery. It was as if being able to scold someone gave her meaning to live. That was the only time I would see a small satisfactory smile on her pudgy face.
As weeks passed by, I was coming home too angry and hostile for a job that paid me a measly ten dollars an hour. I then decided to transfer to another department in the hotel. There was a whole two dollar pay raise that won me over. I gave my manager my two weeks’ notice with my transfer request. He was rather indifferent about it and didn’t ask why I wanted to transfer. It made me think that he probably had problems keeping employees given Laurel’s horrible personality, so my transfer request wasn’t surprising.
This new job was for banquet set up. I didn’t exactly know what my first day tomorrow morning was going to provide me. To decide what department I wanted to transfer to, I tried out working in a few places to see what I would like best.
Housekeeping wasn’t something I had any willpower to commit to. I didn’t relish the idea of scrubbing toilets every day or changing the sheets that people slept on. Aquatics was a miserable department to work in. The water dome had a very strong smell to it. For the three days I tried out working there, I came home and had a hard time getting the burning stench of chlorine out of my nostrils. I also wasn’t thin enough for the skimpy swimsuits the girls had to wear, but it was the chlorine that really made me not want to go anywhere near that place again after my three days were done. Looking chubby in a one piece was something I could live with, but the smell wasn’t.
When I went to banquet set up, I had only picked up two three-hour shifts in the department. My time had been spent folding linens or wheeling stacks of chairs out of a room. There wasn’t much to it. It was easy enough. I emailed the manager of banquets one night, and he gave the okay for my transfer. That was that.
I would hopefully love the new department as much as Simon loved his wet, chlorine-scented job, but I doubted it. Perhaps it was my inner cynic speaking, but minus our unfortunate habit of murdering innocent squirrels with our cars, good things always seemed to happen for my brother and sister, along with our parents. I had somehow missed out on inheriting the apparent luck gene. After all, I had been the sole Davis child that had needed braces and two attempts at Algebra I in college. While my parents and siblings are slim and slender, I’m the only plump one in need of a twenty-pound weight loss. My family’s good luck gene that seemed to plague them had bypassed me all through life. If I didn’t possess the same eye color as Simon and our mother, I’d swear I was adopted.
Ignoring Simon as he continued to nag, I scanned harder into the brush, walking in farther when I saw drops of blood. “Damn,” I muttered as I spotted the deer. The doe was struggling to stand up. It whimpered in pain every time it attempted to move.
The sound of a snapping twig startled me. The noise came from nearby, nowhere near me or the deer. The poor doe withered in pain as she struggled to stand. She was afraid, and her movement was clearly making her broken leg worse. Another snapping of twigs had me suddenly on alert. “Simon?” The mere sound of my voice caused the noise maker to hurry closer toward me and the deer.
“What?” snapped Simon as he pulled himself out of the truck. Evidently whatever was making the noise was not my brother; he only started walking toward me on the paved road when I called him. Something was wrong with this scenario. I slowly backed up a distance from the doe, little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. My skin prickled with goosebumps. Something was wrong. Something was coming. The rustling noise continued to grow louder. Once Simon heard the movement, he paused. His eyes went to where I was shining the flashlight. The doe was still struggling to stand. It was terrified and trying hard to get away. It knew something was coming, too.