What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

I woke up the next morning fully dressed from the previous day. It was hot. I mean, not really that much different from the weather back home, but it was sticky with humidity levels that no one in their right mind appreciates.

I quickly showered in the bathroom between the empty spare room and mine and went back to my suitcase, which I hadn’t touched the night before and was right where I had left it. I pulled out a white skirt that hit just above my knees and a purple tee-shirt with a white lace camisole underneath. I slid on my favorite purple flats and pulled my damp dark hair back into a bun to keep it from dripping on my clothes.

The upstairs hallway was silent as I made my way down the stairs. I wandered around the vacant downstairs for several minutes, stopping in the kitchen to grab an apple. As I passed by the back slider door, I heard voices, so I slid it open and, when I turned the corner, found the other six occupants of the house sitting in the back garden sipping coffee and chatting. Actually, the adults were. Celia was sitting on a lawn chair a few feet off, texting. My thoughts briefly jumped to the waiter at Smiley’s.

“Well good morning, sleepyhead,” Mom said, seeing me turn the corner. “How did you sleep?” I told her I slept fine. Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that by the time I hit my bed, I’d been awake for seventeen hours straight.

“So girls, big plans for your first day in Cali?” my uncle asked us. I shrugged. I mean, what was I going to do? Celia stood up and announced she was headed to the beach. It was less than a mile’s walk from the house, and she could get there in fifteen minutes.

“Oh, Casey!” Gram chirped, actually getting my name correctly this time around. “I have just the thing for us to do today! The church is having noontime bingo palooza! It will be so much fun…” Yeah, and I’d bring down the average age by four billion years.

“Actually…” I said. Actually, I didn’t have anything to cover with. I should have taken the beach opportunity when it came up.

“Actually, Mom, Casey’s helping me out today. I’ve got a few runs I have to make and I can’t carry all of it by myself,” Aunt Fran intervened. She was a caterer for all sorts of different events. She drove a purple van, one of those kidnapper ones that you always see in the movies, only hers had storage for food instead. I looked at her gratefully and would have mouthed thank you if Gram hadn’t been right there, so I just nodded. Aunt Fran stood up. “Then it’s settled. Case, why don’t you help me carry this stuff in,” she said, gesturing to the apparent remains of breakfast.

We cleared the dishes and brought them into the house, passing Celia in the foyer. She was wearing a white and pink floral sundress over her bathing suit and was carrying her beach bag. Aunt Fran wished her a good time. She was still texting.

We took Aunt Fran’s regular car over to her catering shop. She basically ran it herself, with two or three other workers. This morning it was already open, and there were two men behind the counter. One was the man in his late forties who I recognized as Mr. McKormick. He’d been working at the shop for as long as I could remember, and Aunt Fran always said she’d never find anyone who would measure up to his abilities.

“Hi Mr. McKormick,” I said as we walked in.

“Casey! Haven’t seen you around these parts in awhile! How’ve you been?” We made small talk until the other man behind the counter cleared his throat. He wasn’t a man, really, probably only a year or so older than I was. He looked kind of like a kid from school back in Oregon, but I knew it wasn’t him. He was pretty tall with very tan skin, dark hair, and blue eyes. Mr. McKormick looked startled when he remembered he was there.

“Oh, well, yes, of course. Casey, I don’t think you’ve ever met my son. Casey, Riley. Riley, Casey.” I smiled at Riley McKormick. He smiled back.

“Nice to meet you,” I said formally, holding out my hand.

He shook it. “Same.” His smile was crooked. It was cute.

Aunt Fran came out from the back room then. “All right, all right, nice to meet everybody and all that. Casey came to help me with the rounds today, so I’d appreciate it if you two could help me get the orders ready.”

Mr. McKormick winked at me. “Never a dull moment here,” he told me, going around back with Riley in toe. Aunt Fran sent me out to the van to open it up for the food. With the help of the McKormicks, we loaded everything into the back and then left them at the shop.

“So. Here’s the rundown. We have three stops to make. The first is a wedding, the second is some senior citizens banquet, and the last one is some photo shoot for God knows what.” In five minutes we pulled up at one of the fancier hotels in the area. Gardens were spread across acres of land and I could see several large white tents to the side with tables and chairs all lined up. There were workers mingling around, but it was apparent the actual wedding was being held elsewhere, as there were no guests. We unloaded trays and trays of food and left the people in charge to deal with the arrangement of them.

Our next stop, the luncheon, was literally just around the corner, and as we pulled up, a lady wearing a white apron and a black dress underneath came running up to the van. I placed her in her early fifties.

“Are you the caterer? Please tell me you’re the caterer!” she said as we got out of the van.

“I’m the caterer,” Aunt Fran said, opening the back of the van. The woman breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank GOD. I told Mrs. Higgins to call, but she’s a little bit… well, she has her head in the clouds a good part of the time, and she told you twelve instead of eleven. The luncheon STARTED at twelve and now I have a whole bunch of crazy senior citizens wanting to know where their lunch is,” she huffed.

“Well then, let’s get this food inside,” Aunt Fran said. We carried all of it in, and the lady we had spoken to announced that the food was indeed here. Fifty old people cheered. In that way, they were very much like a group of teenagers.

Our last stop was at a building I’d never been to before. It was a massive building with at least ten stories and there were all sorts of vans with news logos and such pulled up out front. Aunt Fran drove around to the back of the building and knocked on the back door. A tall man in jeans and a sports coat (rather inappropriate attire for the heat of the day, I thought) opened the door about a foot and stuck his head out. “Yes?”

“Catering?” Aunt Fran said.

“Oh, yup, ummm… second floor Foster photo shoot. Go up those stairs on the back wall and the door should be open,” he said, going back inside. Aunt Fran sighed.

“I hate it when they do this. We’re going to have to be careful if we’re going to carry them up the stairs. These people are sooo insensitive.”

We climbed up the stairs and tried the door. It was open and we stepped inside, only to be stopped by a big man with dark eyes and dark hair. “Where are you going?”

“We’re catering,” my aunt said.

“Well, where’s the food?”

“It’s down in the van,” she said, opening the door and pointing the purple van parked down below. “Where are we supposed to bring it?” he pointed to a row of tables at the back. Obviously he would know where the food was.

It was then that I actually looked around the room. It was a large room with lots of expensive looking equipment. There were people swarming and hustling and bustling every which way. There were cameras, fans, ladders, and lots of props for uses which were completely unknown to me. A man passed us, carrying a camera on his right shoulder yelling, “No, no, I need the other lens” and a tall woman with light blonde hair and two inch heels was walking the opposite direction calling, “He wanted backdrop 211!”

We turned around and headed back down the stairs, retrieving the platters from the van. Because of the inconvenient location, we were forced to take fewer at a time. We would carry them up the stairs, weave in and out of the crowds swarming around, arrange them on the table, and go back for more. We were on our second to last trip when the tall woman stopped us. “You’re catering, yes?” My aunt nodded. “Come with me, I’ll write you your check.”

Aunt Fran went with the woman, leaving me to get the few remaining platters. I went down to the van, climbed the stairs, and was just about to turn into the doorway from the last time when someone coming from the room came out, shouting back over his shoulder. “No! I told you, I’m GOING on BREAK.”

Before I could say anything, he swung around the corner and hit me full force, sending the trays flying and me tumbling down a flight of twenty stairs.