Chapter 2 - Daddy's Girl

Casey felt like her brain was melting into mush as her classmates mercilessly butchered almost every line that came their way. She’d long since lost track of the story, and she had a feeling she’d be spending a lot of time on SparkNotes over the next couple weeks. She surreptitiously glanced at the clock on the wall. Five minutes… just five more minutes of torture, and then she would be free.
“Good, Lance, good,” Mr. Gilman said, cutting off the football jock before he could subject them to another line of one of Hamlet’s monologues. The football player sat down, looking immensely pleased with himself. “So, can anyone tell me what that means? Anyone?” He looked around the room for a raised hand, apparently unaware that most of the students no longer had the brainpower left to lift so much as a finger. “Okay, Lindsay,” the teacher said, picking a student at random.
“Yeah,” Slave one said reflexively. If Mr. Gilman was expecting his question to be answered, he’d definitely picked the wrong student.
“What do you think Hamlet is talking about?” Mr. Gilman repeated.
“I dunno.”
“Well, look at it for a minute,” the teacher suggested, undeterred by the slave’s indifference. She sighed loudly and looked at the page for a moment. Then she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Well?” the teacher pressed.
“I dunno,” she repeated.
Mr. Gilman decided the Slave wasn’t worth his trouble. “Okay, Casey.”
Casey jerked at the sound of her name and tried to muster the brainpower to come up with some plausible bull. “Yeah.”
“What’s Hamlet talking about here?”
“Um… well, he seems upset over his father’s death,” Casey said. It was the last thing she remembered hearing the teacher talk about.
“Right, that’s what Claudius and Gertrude were talking about earlier,” Mr. Gilman agreed. “What about now?”
Casey pretended to scan the page in search of the information she needed, wondering if she could stall until the bell rang. “Well… um… ‘two months dead…’” she murmured to herself, hoping she sounded thoughtful. “So, what, his dad died two months ago?” she guessed.
“Okay,” the teacher nodded. “What else?”
“Wait,” Slave one piped up. “His dad was the king, right?”
“Yes, Rachel,” Mr. Gilman said. They’d been over that about eight times already.
“If he died two months ago, how come Shakespeare could write about it?” Slave three asked. She leaned back in her chair, impressed by her own keen insights. Mr. Gilman was spared from having to answer her question as the bell finally rang. The classroom descended into chaos as the students packed up their things and started to leave. Mr. Gilman shouted something about reading the rest of the scene as homework. Casey highly doubted anyone would.
“Man, Shakespeare’s a nightmare,” Mark groaned, massaging his forehead as he and Casey made their way through the crowded halls. “I thought I was going to die.”
“Death is nothing compared to that class,” Casey replied as her mind slowly rebooted itself. “Are we still on for tonight?”
“Definitely,” Mark agreed, his cheerfulness returning. “It’s tradition, isn’t it?”
The winter campout was a well-established ritual between them. On the first weekend after every winter break, the two of them set up a tent and spent the night telling jokes and ghost stories and doing other camp stuff. Casey couldn’t remember how exactly the tradition had started or how they’d convinced their parents to allow it, but it was something the two of them had shared for years. She remembered the first time they’d done it, camping out in his backyard while his mom brought them hot chocolate and microwave s’mores. She knew it was a weird tradition, and she’d be the first to admit that to anyone who asked. But with Mark, it just made sense.
This year, the campout was especially important. In the past, they’d set up tents in the backyard or, if they were feeling adventurous, the woods behind Casey’s house. One year they’d even pitched their tent in a local park. Fortunately, the cops who’d evicted them that year hadn’t decided to fine them as well. But this year was different. It was their senior year in high school, and so this would probably be their last winter campout together. Mark was going into the military, while Casey had yet to decide what to do after graduation. At the moment she was leaning towards work, but her mom was constantly pestering her about college, and her nagging was starting to have an effect.
Casey and Mark wanted to make this campout especially memorable, so it was going to be bigger than anything they’d done before. No more backyards or local parks; this year, they were going to the mountains, to a lake Casey and her father had gone to when she was young. Mark had picked up some camp cooking secrets from his days in Boy Scouts and had promised a magnificent feast. Tonight they would meet up and finalize their plans, which they had been working on for months. So much time, she thought as she shuffled some textbooks between her backpack and her locker. So much time, all for this weekend.
“You okay, Case?” Mark asked. He was leaning against the locker beside her, a concerned look on his face.
“Of course,” Casey replied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I dunno, you just had that look on your face,” he said.
“What look?”
“You know, that look you get whenever you talk about your dad.”
Ah, yes. Her dad. Her wonderful dad. He was her role model, her inspiration. She absolutely adored him. He’d taught her how to ride a bike, how to set up a tent, how to gut a fish, all those things a girl can only learn from her father. Now he was dead, just another victim of lung cancer. It happens when you smoke three packs a day for thirty-something years.
That was, of course, why she’d chosen the mountain lake for their final winter campout. It was their spot, the place her father had always taken her when the weather was nice and the fishing was good. She hadn’t been there since her father’s passing, and she liked the idea of returning at last with Mark by her side. He was the only one who really knew what had happened to her father. Most kids knew her dad was gone, though the cause had been severely distorted by hearsay and rumors, but Mark was the only one she ever really talked to about her dad. He always knew when her thoughts turned to him and he knew how to cheer her up. It was what made him such an indispensable friend.
Casey took a moment to study her friend. Mark was a little taller than she, with dark brown hair and darker brown eyes. He was fairly muscular, although he certainly didn’t lift weights in his spare time. She supposed he was fairly attractive, although she never really saw him that way. Theirs was a close friendship, but their relationship had never moved beyond that and she doubted it ever would. That was one thing she liked about him; there was never any showing off or posturing, never any mushy, sentimental garbage. They’d trash-talked schmaltzy chick flicks often enough to know that that kind of stuff was best left in the big screen. No, he was just a very close friend, and everyone knew it. Even their parents knew it, and they never seemed to know what was going on. That was probably the only reason their camping tradition even existed; their parents knew they wouldn’t have to worry about them getting into the kind of trouble some teens were notorious for.
Casey was jolted from her reverie as a bell sounded nearby. “Come on, Case, let’s get to class,” Mark said with a smile. He turned and walked down the hallway while Casey went the opposite direction. She would miss Mark, almost as much as she missed her father, but she knew he’d always be there for her, even if they were hundreds of miles away. She knew that no matter how long they were apart, they could always come back together again.
Whoa there, Casey. Cut this sentimental crap and get back to business. She chuckled softly to herself as she slipped into the classroom seconds ahead of the tardy bell. There’d be time for musing later.