“Thanks for seeing me, Ellis—” I feel like I should call him by his last name since he’s interviewing me, but he also looks like he’s about my age.

“Emerson,” he finishes for me.

“Oh, you guys are—” I nod at Aiden, now in the distance.

“Cousins.” Ellis pulls a paper out from the podium and sets it in front of me. “Fill out this top section. Make sure you include the emergency contact. That’s not optional.” He highlights the words in blue, and runs his finger down to the next section labeled AVAILABILITY. “Mark all the days and times you’d be available.”

“I’m available any time.” I draw a long skinny circle around the entire week. “I have zero life right now.”

Ellis smiles. “Excellent.” He hovers over me while I fill in my address, birthday, and school info. He hands me another sheet of yellow paper. “This goes over dress code. You’ll get two RD tank tops, two shirts, and a hoodie, but you’ll need to provide your own khaki shorts.” He checks something off on his own clipboard. “Sneakers, no sandals. You’re likely to break toes if you drop a boat on them.”

Ellis tells me about River Depot and everything that goes on there. How I’ll do a little of everything to start, until they figure out where the best fit for me is. I’ll ring up customers, stock shelves, scoop ice cream, and make hamburgers and hot dogs, but I’ll also work the canoe and kayak trips, hauling boats and reading the rules to riders and sending them on their way with paddles and life jackets and inflatable coolers in tow. That’s where they really need someone, he tells me. When he’s done, he pulls out flat plastic-wrapped red shirts from the podium. “Here are these.”

I look at the shirts I’ve just been handed. “Is that … there’s no interview?”

“I can ask you more questions if you want.” He looks like he’s serious. “Otherwise you can start tomorrow. We need all hands on deck to start orientation. They’ll be here before you know it.”

And by “they” he means the tourists. The thousands of summer residents and visitors who will take our tiny town from a two-thousand-person ghost town to a bustling summer destination. We may have a week before they start to trickle in, but by the Fourth of July, Riverton will be unrecognizable.

“I can start tomorrow.” I smile, because I had no idea it would be this easy. That for the first time in weeks, something could go right. And so easily.

“See you at nine.”

And just like that, I am officially employed for the summer.

AIDEN

Hauling canoes all day is suspiciously similar to baseball camp: I’m tired, hungry, and probably going to hurt in weird places tomorrow. Ellis hands Olivia a pile of red clothes, shakes her hand, and makes his way back to the riverbank, where I’m standing with an armful of red cushions.