Chapter 1: Nick

-- AUGUST 28 --

What the hell am I hell doing here? I'm a college graduate, cum laude from USC. Sure, I could've been magna cum laude if I'd just applied myself a little harder, but I still got through it and got my degree. I got my dream job, doing business consulting for a Big 4. It's Monday morning, and I should be downtown, kicking back in my 33rd-floor office looking out the window of the city that used to be right at my fingertips.

I should be dressed in that Armani power suit, hobnobbing with some of the finest business minds in the country. Sure, they'd have continued working me like a slave for eighty-plus hours a week, but my raises were guaranteed at twenty percent a year, plus bonuses. I could have been making six figures by the time I turned 25 and a partner by 30.

I should be dining on the finest steaks at Mastro's in Beverly Hills with Martina. Damn that girl had a smokin' body. Still does, I suppose. I'm sure she would have been absolutely crazy in bed, but I'm never going to find out because I'm never going to see her again. A girl that hot can't stay single for long. She's back home among the wolves while I'm stuck here in the middle of podunk Oregon or somewhere. And instead of eating steak I'm liable to end up milking cows for the next year.

Fuck.

She was out of your league, anyway. Look at you. Flabby, average-looking nerd. How the hell you got a girl that hot to go on a date with you in the first place I'll never know.

Screw you. And I started working out.

Pssht. Sitting on a stationary bike not pedaling while watching SportsCenter doesn't count as 'working out'.

Fuck you.

It's your own damn fault you're here, you know. Nobody put a gun to your head.

It's not my fault!

Of course it is.

What else was I supposed to do, huh? Downtown L.A. is not the place to be after hours.

Would've been better than how things turned out, wouldn't you say?

Things weren't that bad. Nobody died or anything. Everyone's just overreacting.

You still could have killed somebody.

But I didn't. Why does everyone keep forgetting that? It wasn't such a big deal.

If it wasn't such a big deal, then why are you sitting here in podunk Oregon arguing with your own conscience. Huh?

Hey dimwit, we're still in California. Get it straight.

Did you just call your own conscience a 'dimwit'? Who's the real dimwit, huh?

"Fuck you."

A sharp elbow caught me in my ribs. I quickly turned to the source of the elbow: a girl my age with vintage cat-eye glasses and dirty-blonde hair with a forelock dyed neon purple. "Watch your language," she hissed at me. "This is a family camp, doofus."

Wincing, I shook my head and muttered, "Sorry."

Purple-streak gave me a strange look, wondering about the weirdo talking to himself in the middle of a presentation, and cursing at himself no less. Shaken from my reverie, I turned my attention back to the front of the room where a camp polo-clad middle-aged woman with a weatherbeaten face stood and continued on with her orientation.

Paying attention here was just as difficult as in a college lecture hall. In the back of my head, I knew this information was important for me to understand, especially since I knew diddly squat about Morris Camp and even less about being a ranch hand. But I was still seething inside at the utter humiliation of even being here in the first place that I was finding it quite difficult to concentrate.

Really, I didn't belong here. I'd looked around the room and engaged in polite conversation with some of the thirty-odd young men and women in the room when I'd first arrived. Some of them were seasoned veterans: previous staff members who had served the camp before, or had at least done so this current summer. The others were at least frequent visitors to the camp, fully comfortable in this environment and this way of life. And unlike me, every single one of them wanted to be here.

I didn't particularly understand the logic. Why would anyone want to give up the creature comforts of modern life in favor of rustic charm and rural limitations? I'd been living alone in a one-bedroom downtown loft apartment, entertaining myself with a 50-inch plasma TV and a top-of-the-line gaming computer with the fastest graphics card money could buy. Here I'd be sharing a room with some dude I'd never met before while the nearest TV was an old CRT in the staff lounge, and there wasn't even a cellular tower within range to get a single bar. Mom wouldn't let me bring even a laptop, which was just as well since this place didn't have Wi-Fi anyway. I wondered if the bathroom would be attached to my room, or if I'd have to hike through the great outdoors to take a communal shower beneath a jerry-rigged garden hose.

"Camp," I muttered to myself as if it were a curse word.

The pay was minimal. There was no real 'vacation time' and the health plan began and ended with the nurse's station at the back of the Main Lodge. The nearest bar serving alcohol was an hour's drive away, and the only thing we'd be able to watch on TV was the collection of old VHS tapes gathering dust in the corner.

And yet, to a person, everyone truly wanted to be here. Unplugged. Unconnected. Happily cut off from the outside world. Some of them were taking a hiatus from their lives, pausing before, during, or after their college careers for a year or so before going back and re-entering the real world. Some never went to college and never planned to, deciding that the joy of the great outdoors was worth not pursuing anything more ambitious than this simple life. ALL of them had some connection to Morris Camp, either growing up in the area or at least visiting with their family at some point.

All of them, except me.

Well, that's not technically true; I did have some connection to this place. My mom had grown up at this camp, visiting every year practically from birth and into her twenties. Only after meeting Dad did she stop coming. But some old friend or another had told her about this 'ranch hand' program they were running. So when the shit hit the fan back home, when I was terminated from my dream job, and when only Dad's connections managed to get me off from any criminal charges beyond a simple slap on the wrist, I got sent here.

'It will toughen you up, ' Mom insisted.

'It will help you build character, ' Dad agreed.

Fuck toughening. Fuck character. I wanted my old life back.

But you can't have your old life back; that's the whole point. Look at the bright side.

Bright side?

You could've been spending the next few years in jail. Being a ranch hand won't be so bad, right?

I sighed. Right...

The interminable orientation ended, and the collected ranch hands talked amongst each other while our "Ranch Leads" started singling us out one-by-one.

Before the orientation, I'd been chatting with a guy named Aaron about the Dodgers and we'd sat down together. Now, I stood up to stretch while we started talking again about nothing in particular. But a moment later, my breath caught in my throat as I saw her.

Fuckin' A. How the hell did I not notice this girl earlier? She was tall, blonde, busty, and beautiful. Oddly enough, there were disproportionately more girls than guys working as ranch hands at this camp. From the brief conversations I'd had with them before the formal orientation, I gathered that girls were more likely than guys to give up a year of their early-20s to do something like this. Supposedly there was also a high female-to-male ratio signing up for things like the Peace Corps and other volunteer organizations, and being a ranch hand at Morris Camp apparently wasn't much different. Unfortunately, the majority of those girls ranged from plain to downright unattractive, although there were a few pretty ones in the bunch.

Still, I should have noticed the blonde earlier, as I now found her to be the hottest one in the room. Well, there was a brunette with a very pretty face, but she was also the one giving 'back off, fucker' glares to any guy who happened to check her out. The blonde, on the other hand, was smiling and twirling her hair in one finger as she chatted with a good-looking guy who had taken the initiative to engage her in conversation.

"Earth to space cadet..." Aaron waved a hand in front of my face.

I blinked, met his gaze for a moment, and then gestured with my eyes toward the blonde.

Raising his eyebrows, Aaron turned around and looked over, whistling beneath his breath. "Yeah ... you think I didn't notice her the second I walked in the room?"

"Boys..." Purple-streak girl with the cat-eye glasses sighed behind us. "Is sex all you think about?"

I turned around and blushed, my automatic reaction when dealing with a woman expressing displeasure in me. Hell, I probably blushed a lot of the time when dealing with a woman who wasn't expressing displeasure in me. My conscience was right: Martina had been way out of my league. Even I didn't know how the hell I'd gotten her to go out with me.

Get real. She liked your car and your bank account.

I sighed. The car was gone now, and the bank account was useless in a place like this. What could I do, impress a chick buy buying every Kit Kat they had stocked in the snack bar?

Aaron stepped past me and grinned at the shortie scowling at us. "Sex isn't the only thing we think about, but it's pretty high up the list."

The girl rolled her eyes obviously and sighed. "Well if you really want, go have at her," she said while gesturing toward the blonde. "That one is a total slut, so you've probably got a good shot of getting a piece of her."

I arched an eyebrow. "Slut? What makes you say that? Do you know her?"

She shook her head. "No, I just know her type. Girls don't get boob jobs unless they're gagging for male attention."

Aaron, staring over at the blonde, was shaking his head slowly. "I don't think that's a boob job. Believe me, I've spent countless hours both on the internet and in real life evaluating women's breasts, and I think I'm pretty good at spotting implants."

"Pssht," the girl beside us scoffed. "Look how big those are, and how skinny she is. No way are those things real."

I shook my head, thinking of Martina and smiling at the memory of her Playboy-model quality body. "Not necessarily. Some girls are blessed with good genes, and I think you're just jealous."

"Ugh," Purple-streak groaned and turned away. "Horny bastards."

My new friend chuckled and then extended a hand to her. "I'm Aaron, certified horny bastard."

Despite herself, a smile crept across the girl's face and she took his hand. "Zoey. Pleased to meet you."

Aaron grinned and pumped her hand. Zoey then let go and with a sigh, extended her hand to me. But just as I reached to shake hers, someone from behind called my name.

"Nick Campbell?"

I picked my head up and turned toward the voice. "That's me."

A scruffy-looking guy with a tanned face beneath an unruly ginger beard grinned up at me and grabbed onto the hand I had left proffered out for a shake. "Hey, I'm Todd. I'm your Lead. Pleased to meet you."

We shook, and then Todd glanced over to Aaron, his eyes dropping to my new friend's chest and catching the scribbled nametag stuck to the front of Aaron's shirt.

"Oh, hey. Aaron Nantz?"

My new buddy nodded in confirmation.

Todd grinned. "Cool. I'm your lead, too. That makes this easy. Both of you come on back with me into the other room. There's some paperwork we've got to fill out and I'll get you both squared away."

Aaron shook hands with Todd and then we all turned back to Zoey. With an amused smile, she gave us a short wave and said, "See you guys around."

-- SEPTEMBER 4 --

The alarm clock on the nightstand blared to life, screeching relentlessly in the most annoying electric sound 1960s-era engineers could devise. Jerked from blissful sleep by the harsh tones, my left hand flailed out over and again, slapping the nightstand surface, accidentally turning on the radio as well, and nearly knocking over the table lamp before finally hitting the right button to shut the damn thing up.

"Unnnngh..." I groaned, and not in a good way. "Somebody shoot me now."

On the opposite lumpy twin-long mattress, Aaron groaned as well. "I can't shoot you. You have to shoot me first."

When Mom first suggested this job, I had asked her what the hell it meant to be a "ranch hand". Googling it sent me to some truck accessory store. Wikipedia redirected the phrase to the article for "cowboy". My mind was filled with images of riding a horse while herding cattle and swaggering about the dusty prairie wearing chaps and a six-bullet revolver in a leather holster.

In a week, I'd learned it really meant "camp slave". It was just a random title given to everyone, much in the way Disneyland calls all its employees "Cast Members" like they're part of a movie or something. Everyone was a ranch hand, and a ranch hand could be assigned to do literally anything around the camp. Shovel manure? Done it. Bathroom janitor? Hell, yeah. Scrape up dried Mac & Cheese from underneath the tables of paying camp guests? You betcha. Only thing I hadn't done yet was milk a cow, and looking at the schedule showed I was due for that this afternoon.

Much, MUCH later this afternoon. Or at least, it seemed that way given that our alarm was going off at the ungodly hour of 6:00am, and on a Sunday no less. No more sleeping in on the weekends – those were peak days for the guests. No more rolling out of bed at 7:30 on the weekdays and tousling my hair before taking the elevator down to the garage and making the 5-minute drive to work rather than walk ten blocks.

In retrospect, it would've been a better idea to walk. At the very least, my body would have been a little more used to physical activity that way. As it was, my most significant daily exercise had been the short commute from my 33rd-floor office to the Keurig coffee machine about twenty feet away. And after a week of regular "ranch hand" duties, I didn't think there was a muscle on my body that wasn't sore.

Scratch that: my penis muscle wasn't getting much of a workout. Forget having sex; I couldn't even really jerk off. First of all, I'd gone from having a downtown loft all to myself to sharing a small room with another guy, so privacy was scarce. There was no internet and I hadn't thought to stash away any magazines, leaving me with only my memories (which weren't all that great) and whatever fantasies I could conjure up. Sure, there were several attractive females working around me, not to mention the occasional smoking hot guest to perv on. But the grim reality was that in this particular place, I was one of the least desirable males around; and saddled with that knowledge of the girls' low opinions of me, I found it difficult to muster up enough suspension of disbelief to even properly fantasize.

I suppose I couldn't blame the girls for their opinions. The metrics used to value a potential male's worth at Morris Camp were considerably different than the metrics of LA and Hollywood. Back home, my new model E-class with chrome rims and gleaming black paint job grabbed a girl's attention. My fancy watch and willingness to buy expensive drinks held that attention. And talk of spending a weekend away from my high-paying job to drive up the coast and visit my parents at their beach-front Malibu compound made girls wet between their legs while dreaming of a life spent in luxury.

Not so here.

Female ranch hands at Morris Camp were fit, every one of them in good enough shape to hike for hours, chase a loose mare around a corral long enough to get a bridle on it, and then swim back and forth across the lake a few times just for the fun of it. And they expected a man to more than keep up with them. The girls here didn't pay attention to what brand of clothing a guy wore; they paid attention to his muscles beneath. They weren't interested in charming conversation about the latest band, latest trends, or latest episode of Laguna Beach. They wanted to talk about the environment, the mystical interconnection of the universe, or your personal philosophy on one's sense of self.

That's not to say every girl at camp was a dirty, spaced-out hippie wearing hemp clothing and waxing poetic about metaphysics. In fact, most of the girls took care of their appearance, wearing at least a little bit of makeup and putting in some effort to enhance their physical appeal. Because for all the ideals of getting away from the rat race and the rest of the outside world, single young people at Morris Camp acted just like single young people anywhere else in America.

They flirted like hell.

Only a week into the program, and the rumor mill was spinning in overdrive with discussion of who was hooking up with whom and which guy was seen hitting on which girl. The metrics were different, but the hormones were the same. Seemingly every ranch hand was involved or rumored to be involved or rumored to be potentially involved with someone else. Everyone that is, except me.

It wasn't that I was bad looking. Granted, I'm no Orlando Bloom or Stephen Colletti, but I knew I had a halfway decent face. I was tall, with good posture and a confident carriage. And although I wasn't well-versed in liberal politics or the Seven Chakras, I'd bantered with quick-witted L.A. players and enough future trophy wives in the club scene to keep up my end of any conversation.

No, my biggest problem was that on Day One of orientation, I had proven myself to be the chunkiest, flabbiest, wimpiest guy in a hundred mile radius. All the new recruits had gone on a hike together to familiarize ourselves with the camp's grounds and to bond as "brothers and sisters" or so the Kumbaya-philosophy went. A mile into the hike I'd started dragging at the back of the pack. Two miles in one of the ranch leads decided to carry my backpack for me so I could keep up. And by the time we reached our first destination, one of the cute girls giggled while pointing at my sweat-drenched face and commented that it looked like I'd already gone swimming.

We actually did go swimming a few days later. I'd thought my bright orange Hurley board shorts looked pretty cool back in Santa Monica. Here, they just made me stick out like a sore thumb and called everyone's attention to the vast amounts of pasty white flab hanging over my waistband.

Shoulda walked the ten blocks to work, I muttered to myself more than once.

Adding injury to insult later on, I'd cramped up in the lake and started drowning. No seriously, drowning. Purple-streak Zoey had been the first to realize I was foundering, and I'd suffered the ignominy of needing a 5'4", 115-pound girl to rescue my sorry 6'2", 240-pound ass.

Suffice to say, in a world where the most attractive male attribute was physical fitness, I was at the bottom of the totem pole. Every guy - every guy - was a hardbody compared to me. And having every other ranch hand watching as the most basic of camp labor tasks completely wiped me out day after day after day was not helping my self-esteem, either.

And today I would get to milk a cow. Joy. At least things couldn't get any worse.

"C'mon, dude," Aaron reached out and slapped my shoulder as he stood up and then headed for the sink to wash up. "Gotta get to breakfast and load up on calories if you're going to survive today."