“Like she cares,” snorted a dark-skinned boy from nearby. A round of amused chuckles took place as if he had said something funny.
“Get bent, dick face,” Jamie shot back with a laugh of his own. A feeling of dread soon filled my stomach as the group laughed again. These young men reminded me very much of the boys I went to high school with. No one seemed to hold an ounce of maturity. I took a deep breath.
“I’m Everly.”
“That’s a weird name,” said a sixth boy as he entered the room. He was nearly half an inch taller than my five-foot five-inch frame. He was Hispanic with large almond-shaped brown eyes and slicked back hair that was just as black as Jamie’s. He was also attractive. A long-whitened scar ran from the boy’s left eye and nearly down to his chin. I had to look away from him to not stare. “It’s like Beverly but without the B,” he continued with a snort.
“You’re perceptive,” I said mildly, regretting my sarcasm as the boy flushed with his own embarrassment. Two of the other guys snickered.
“Yeah yeah, new kid in the house,” said the red-headed boy. He sounded bored. He then started to hand out sheets of paper to the guys around the lounge. Guys took the paper either with mild interest or with not any care. I wondered if the guy was going to hand me a paper to read, but the redhead merely walked away after that without so much as a glance my way. The other young men started to talk amongst themselves as they started to follow him. I stood there not knowing what to do.
Part of me felt stupid standing in place after they left. I didn’t know whether to follow the group or to stay and wait for Perry or a supervisor to arrive and find me.
“No offense but you probably wouldn’t understand anything on the paper anyway,” said another voice. The speaker was deep, masculine. I looked behind me to see there was tall young man with short, cropped hair the color of golden straw. He was the only one besides me remaining in the room, but he had been so quiet I hadn’t noticed he was there to begin with.
The young man was casually leaning against the wall, and he wasn’t looking at me as he spoke. His attention was only on the phone in his hands. I couldn’t tell if he was reading a text message or watching a video on silent. One red wireless earbud was stuffed in his left ear while the partner dangled by his neck. The guy was completely absorbed with whatever he was watching, but he still managed to speak again. “Just stay with the group. You wouldn’t understand the terminology we use.”
“Wouldn’t the obvious solution be to teach me what it means, then?”
I was a friendly person, but my sarcastic voice always had a tendency to fall out of my mouth before I could stop it. It was a word vomit that always got me into trouble growing up. It was my defense mechanism against rude people or the occasional bully who felt inclined to mock my braces or that extra twenty pounds I was carrying. While Miranda was always polite and respectful and Simon was enthusiastic and funny, I could come across as the sarcastic sourpuss of the family if I wasn’t careful. Typically, I always tried to treat others the way they treated me. That way that person usually dictated how our relationship was going to go. Except with my previous employment in the shipping department. I still couldn’t figure out where I had gone wrong with those girls.
My annoyed words caused the young man to peer up from his phone to finally look at me. A sharp tingle filled me as we locked eyes. I noted how very pale his face was, almost a sickly ashen color. But the paleness did nothing to mar his features. Sharp cheek bones and piercing, powder blue eyes enhanced an already handsome face. The guy answered without a smile. “You won’t last a whole month here. There’s no point in teaching you anything.”
He said this so straight faced and so unapologetically I nearly thought he was kidding. But his lack of smile and his walking away proved he wasn’t. I momentarily struggled to find my voice. “I’ve been picking up hours here before my transfer. I know what I’m doing,” I scoffed as I followed him into the long hallway. The floor was all carpet, made of an ugly red floral pattern that didn’t match the sky-blue walls or ceiling. The walls smelled of fresh paint. Even with the mismatched colors, it was a very pretty building. Once you made it out the hallway and toward the entrance, there was a small water fountain display surrounded by fake pine trees and taxidermy animals. One was a beaver. Another was of a red fox. The last was a very large grizzly bear that I could imagine was probably very frightening back when it was alive. But I could see why so many people booked events at this resort. The atmosphere was strangely homey, the forest theme making me feel at ease. I nearly forgot about the rude guy.
He didn’t look at me as his attention was solely fixated on his phone as he walked. I remembered seeing this young man from time to time when I worked in the shipping department. He was occasionally in the kitchen when I delivered packages, but we never conversed. As I thought about it, I couldn’t recall a time this guy and I had ever looked at each other. That’s how nonexistent our mutual existences were to one another. The young man didn’t bother looking at me as he answered calmly.
“You’ve been carting chairs away and folding linens while here. It’s not exactly complicated. Once you start doing some real heavy lifting, you’ll be run out of here fairly quickly.”
I couldn’t help but feel offended. “And why do you think that?”
“I don’t think, I know,” he said with confidence.
“You sound like a sexist ass.”
These words caused the guy to pause his fast walk. He turned around to face me. He smiled at me now, but there was no genuine kindness behind it. It was purely sardonic. “No. I’m a realistic ass. No female has lasted in this department a whole month before. If you make it, we’ll bother to train you. Until then, follow the group or stay out of the way if you can’t lift something heavy.”
“Whatever,” I snorted at the clear sexism being shown. “So where can I find the supervisor? You know, someone actually useful to talk to.”
This time the guy offered me a genuine smile. “There’s two. You’re looking at one of them.”
I could feel my face fall as my mouth softly popped open. It caused the guy to chuckle as he walked away.
***
It took less than four minutes working in banquet set up for me to realize I probably should have stayed in my old department. It took four hours for me to realize there was no going back to that old department. I had burned bridges by transferring. That much had been proven true when my old coworkers were delivering a package to the conference center. They offered very nasty glares in my direction that showed just how much they didn’t like me. My small wave toward them resulted in narrowed eyes and even dirtier looks. The funny part was that I had never once been sarcastic or rude to those girls. The supervisor had seemed to not like me simply for the sake of not liking me while the other girl disliked me only because the supervisor did. Maybe they were feeling even crankier than usual because I was gone. Now, Laurel would have to help Jonna lift kegs and other heavy objects instead of having me do it.
Strangely, I was finding I would have rather worked with the hormonal women in shipping rather than the department I was now in. The grass wasn’t greener on the other side. Even though my old supervisor there had been bossy and unfriendly, the supervisors in this new department were proving to be much worse.