The other counselors shook their heads.
“Well, it’s miles and miles of desert with no services, so you’d better have a full tank of gas. What I remember most about that trip is that we drank that ice-cold nonalcoholic beer, sang Creedence Clearwater Revival songs because Mama loved them, and told jokes . . . and crossed our legs because there wasn’t even a bush to squat behind after all those beers were gone. When we finally got to a town with a service station, the line for the ladies’ room was longer than the one to buy gas. The bathroom only had one toilet, and you had to put a quarter in the door to even get inside.”
“Are you kiddin’ us?” Novalene asked.
“Nope,” Jayden answered. “And let me tell you, folks, that was the best quarter I ever spent.”
“Did you drink any more beer on the rest of the trip?” Elijah mentally kicked himself for asking such an awkward question.
“No, sir, we did not,” Jayden answered, “and we sure enough had our quarters ready when we reached that station,” she said.
“That’s a hoot, but I like Henry’s story about Elijah, too,” Diana said. “We should all do that for our service guys. I bet they’d love some green grass from home more than about anything.”
“Probably so.” Elijah wiggled his toes and could almost feel that cool grass on his feet again.
“I see my girls are done eating,” Jayden said. “Soon as Tiffany gets finished with her hog lot duties, Ashlyn has to exercise the horses, so I’d better finish up the last two bites of dessert.”
“I usually read a book while my girls do their individual afternoon jobs, and just check on them a few times,” Novalene said.
“Tiffany is the one struggling with bulimia, so she has to have a chaperone to keep her from throwing up in the restroom. I suspect the therapist will have more tips for us about that when she arrives. Tiffany will be drawing plants, insects, and lizards. Carmella will be making a bug collection. Looks like they’re headed out now to the hog lot, so I’ll see y’all at supper,” Jayden answered.
Elijah couldn’t take his eyes off her as she walked across the room and out the door. He had seen tight jeans and good-looking women before, but Jayden had the whole package. He got up from the table and took his empty tray to the cart, then followed her outside. A stinging hot breeze bringing bits of sand and dead grass with it hit him in the face when he left the building. He suddenly had a yearning for a beer, but there was no way he could have one in the middle of the day—not with nine girls watching his every move.
He rounded the end of the cabin in time to see Tiffany and Carmella coming back from the hog lot. Two girls from the Moonbeam Cabin were busy picking trash or stray sticks up from the yard and putting whatever they found in a paper bag. That was a disciplinary move. No doubt about it, Novalene had taken what was in the trash cans from the bathroom, as well as what was in her cabin, and strewed it on the yard before she told them to clean it up.
“Oh, look, Tiffany, the Moonbeams are on trash duty,” Carmella said.
“That’s better than slop duty.” Lauren giggled and pointed at their caps. “Fly away, fly away, you old daydreaming clouds!” She motioned with both hands and then dropped them to her side and glared at Carmella. “Or us Moonbeams will make you disappear.”
Carmella bowed up to her. “Bring it on, smart-ass.”
Lauren knotted her hands into fists. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Tiffany set the bucket down and cocked her head to one side. “Darlin’, you’d better be afraid of me. I don’t give a tiny rat’s heinie if I go to juvie, and I’ll mop up this whole farm with you and your little sidekick over there. Don’t you ever make fun of our cabin again, or any one of the three of us who live there, or . . .” She shrugged and picked up the bucket.
“Or what?” Lauren taunted.
“Or I will throw your skinny ass over my shoulder and drop it in the hog wallow,” Tiffany told her. “We only get one uniform a day, so think about that while I go wash out this bucket. When I get back, if you still want to do battle, we will. It’s your choice. I’ll take my demerit for putting you in with the hogs.”
Elijah heard a soft giggle behind him and whipped around to see Jayden standing back even farther in the shadows.
“Looks like you got some scrappers in your cabin,” he said in a low voice.
“Looks that way,” she agreed. “Do all of them ever learn to get along?”
“Not always, but it’s pretty common to see the three in each cabin bawl their heads off on the last day because they have to leave their friends,” he answered.
“Hey, Miz Jayden, I’m ready to go walk Dynamite.” Ashlyn came out of the barn with the horse on the lead rope. “Where are Tiffany and Carmella?”
“Wait right there for them,” Jayden told her. “We will be along in just a few minutes. They have to get their supplies.”
“Hey, cloud girl,” Lauren yelled across the yard. “I’ll trade jobs with you. I’ll exercise that horse if you’ll pick up trash.”
“No, thank you. You go on and get your hands dirty,” Ashlyn yelled back at her.
“Fly away, fly away, cloud girls. Or is it chicken girls? Those clouds on your hats look like fat chickens to me.” Bailey made a flapping motion with her arms.
Tiffany and Carmella came out of the dining room about then, and Tiffany wasted no time jogging across the yard. She got right up in Lauren’s face and popped her hands on her hips.
“What did I tell you about making fun of us?” she said through clenched teeth.
“Wasn’t me,” Lauren whispered. “It was Bailey.”
Tiffany shifted her focus to the girl. “That’s one.”
“One what?” Keelan, the third member of the Moonbeams, asked.
“On three, all three of us Daydreamers will roll you in the hog lot. We’ll take our punishment like adults, but you’ll stink like hog crap all day. Think about that before you test me again.” Tiffany turned around and headed toward the cabin, with Carmella right behind her.
“Guess I’d better go smooth some ruffled feathers,” Jayden laughed.
“You really think Carmella and Ashlyn would help Tiffany out?” Elijah asked.
“Mean don’t come in size, and they’re all itching for a vent for their anger right now,” she answered.
“What does mean come in, if not size?” Elijah asked.
“It comes in attitude, and if Tiffany was mad enough, she could roll all three of them in the hog wallow by herself and with one hand tied behind her back.” Jayden took a couple of steps toward the cabin and turned around. “This isn’t a whole lot different than a prison yard, is it?”
“Not at first.” Elijah tipped his cap toward her and went on inside the barn. He turned around after a couple of steps and watched Jayden walk away for the second time.
Chapter Eight
Dynamite simply plodded along beside Ashlyn as if she were his best friend. Jayden had been talking to the horse the night before when she’d heard someone coming into the barn. Now she wondered if that slow-moving old rodeo horse was Elijah’s confidant, too.
“If that bit . . . witch”—Carmella stumbled over the words—“thought she was going to intimidate Tiffany, she can dam . . . dang well think again. Man, it’s hard to talk without using cuss words.”
“Don’t I know it,” Tiffany said. “I’ve almost had to grow a new tongue for the times I bit mine off to keep from saying the f-word.”
“Me too,” Ashlyn admitted. “Would you have really rolled her in the hog lot? Or were you just dissin’ her?”
“I would have sure tried, even if y’all didn’t help me,” Tiffany answered. “Seeing that smart aleck covered in hog sh—” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “Crap and mud would have been something worthy of drawing.”
“Be still,” Carmella whispered.
Ashlyn stopped in her tracks. “Is it a snake?”
Dynamite ran out of rope and came to a halt beside her.
The fly settled right on the warm crap.
Tiffany dropped to her knees and began to sketch. “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe until I get this roughed out on paper.”
Ashlyn stood perfectly still until Tiffany nodded, giving Carmella the go-ahead to try to trap the fly.
“Well, shi . . . crap!” Carmella swore when it flew away to light on a nearby cactus. She tiptoed across the distance and trapped it in her box on the second try. “Got it!” she shouted.
At first, Jayden thought Carmella’s loud voice had spooked Dynamite. The horse reared up on his hind feet, jerked free of the lead rope, and seemed to turn around midair. Then he took off in a fast run back toward the barn.
Ashlyn pointed toward the half-mile post. “Snake,” she whispered.
“Go take care of your horse,” Jayden said. “Fly like a fast-moving cloud.”
“I hate being a cloud,” Tiffany said.
Ashlyn took off in a dead run. About fifty yards back along the trail, Dynamite had stopped and had his head down, nibbling on a rare sprig of green grass. Jayden couldn’t hear what she was whispering to the horse, but she could only guess that it had something to do with the big black snake that had slithered off toward the far mountain range.
Jayden turned her attention back to Tiffany. “Clouds are beautiful. They can bring rain, or they can just float around in the sky like big old fluffy cotton balls. They mind their own business whether they bring a storm or a peaceful day. We could all take a lesson from them.”
“Why did they give us clouds anyway?” Carmella’s nose twitched, and she held the box out at an arm’s distance. “I think I got something more than the fly in here from the way it smells.”
“Daydreams are like clouds. Ever shifting, but still they bring hope to us when we need rain,” Jayden explained.
“That’s right, and that makes us better than moonbeams and sunshine.” Tiffany straightened up. She tucked her sketchbook into the tote bag and slung it over her shoulder.
“Of course it does.” Carmella touched the post with a hand and turned around.
Tiffany put her hand on her hip. “Moonbeams are gone when the daylight comes around. Sunshine is hot, but darkness can put it in its place. Those girls aren’t a bit tougher or better than us.”
Pretty smart for a teenage girl. Maybe she should be counseling you, so you won’t feel like your sister is smarter and prettier than you, the niggling voice in Jayden’s head said.
“I’m glad that you believe that,” Jayden agreed. “I’m going back now. I think y’all have got this down.”
“You’re trusting me not to puke, and Carmella to pick up bugs?” Tiffany asked.
“Yep, and for you to finish that sketch of a horsefly on a pile of crap. Just don’t let one of those things bite you. It hurts like hell when they do,” Jayden told them. “See y’all at the supper table.”
“I wish I had a horsefly on my cap. That way those other girls would know that when I bite, it hurts,” Tiffany said.
“You want to fly around a horse’s butt and sit on piles of crap?” Ashlyn asked.
“Wouldn’t be much different than what we’re having to do, would it?” Tiffany shot back at her.
Jayden kept the laughter bottled up until she was almost to the barn. Then she giggled out loud. Too bad their cabin didn’t have a different name, but she had a feeling that when push came to shove, they would figure out a way to make the other girls wish they were in Daydream Cabin.
She was right.
At suppertime, she was getting a second helping of blackberry cobbler when she heard Carmella talking to the girls at her table. “It’s like this. We’re the lucky cloud girls and you’re just something that fades away. Moonbeams disappear with the light of day, and there ain’t a thing you can do about it. Darkness can wipe out sunshine, and again, not a thing you can do to stop it. A daydream is something that will become real forever with just a little work.”
“Bullshit!” Lauren, from the Moonbeam Cabin, said. “Whatever”—she did a head wiggle—“about daydreams, but clouds aren’t dependable. They’re like y’all. Just floatin’ around from one thing to another.”
“Watch your language. The rules say no cussin’ or ugly language,” Novalene called out from the adult table.
“Honey, without clouds there’s no water. Try flushing the toilet with no water or taking a shower. We have the power.” Carmella’s smile was pure saccharine.
“Is that a threat?” Lauren asked.
“Nope, just a fact. I’m goin’ to get another piece of garlic bread. Any of y’all want me to get one for you?” Carmella asked.
One hand went up.
Jayden was proud of her for the second time that day. She’d stated her position and then offered to help. Not bad—as a matter of fact, it was damn good.
That evening, her girls had first shower privileges, so they all traipsed out across the lawn as soon as they got back to the cabin after supper. When they returned to the cabin, Ashlyn walked up to Jayden and handed her the lock of pink hair.
“How did you do this?” Jayden asked.
“I used the razor in my kit for shaving my legs,” she answered. “My hair is going to look like crap anyway when it starts growing out.”
Jayden handed each of them a journal. “This is the only thing, other than your memories, that you will take home with you. Write whatever you want in it or never pick up a pen to scribble the first word. I won’t be taking them from you, and you don’t get a grade on it. Hopefully, you will take notes or even write stories in it. I think you should write about threatening to roll Lauren in the hog lot, Tiffany. Carmella, you should write about the smell of that box when you brought your horsefly home. Ashlyn, you had the courage to cut off your hair, and you know it’s going to look bad, so write about that. Hopefully, you’ll look back through the pages when you get home and see how much things changed from this day to the last hours you spend here.”
“I’ll write about how my horsefly felt when he was freezing to death.” Carmella smiled.
“Freezing?” Jayden asked.
“Yep.” Carmella nodded. “Tiffany had to do an insect collection for school, so she told me to put the box in the freezer—then I can pin the frozen bug to a piece of foam. Miz Mary let us use the freezer and gave me a piece of Styrofoam that she was going to throw away.”
“That’s great.” Jayden started out of the room.
“You going to write in one?” Ashlyn asked.
“Yep, and my first entry tonight is going to be titled ‘Horses and Horseflies,’” Jayden replied.
“Make that ‘Hair, Horses, and Horseflies,’” Ashlyn said. “I loved that pink streak, and I’ve been tucking it up under my cap so no one could see it. I’ve been afraid it was going to fall, and I’d get a demerit. But I’m going to look like a skunk anyway. My natural hair color is dark brown. If anyone makes fun of me, they’ll pay dearly. I am a loud and proud Daydream girl and we’re a tough bunch.”
Jayden slipped out of the room with the pink hair in her hand. She took it straight to her bedroom and used a pair of manicure scissors to cut a swatch from it. Then she taped the lock to the first page of her journal. She smiled as she wrote Hair, Horses, and Horseflies.
Dear Mother,
If my girls have to write in their journals, then I should do so, too, and tonight I’m writing to you. Maybe if I put my feelings on paper, I can get past this terrible pain that I still feel for what happened when you went to the hospital. You knew how much that house meant to me, and if anything, it should have been given to both of us girls, not just to Skyler. She only let me take my personal items out of the house before she had a private sale. She didn’t even let me know what sh
e was doing until it was over, and all the sentimental things I wanted had sold. Your precious collection of teapots went for only a few dollars, and the porch swing where Gramps and I sat so many evenings sold for five bucks. All of my memories were nothing more than dollar bills to her. Was your brain already affected by the aneurism, or did you love her more than me, even after the way she treated us during the divorce?
I have no answers, and you can’t give me any. I should be writing about horses, hair, and horseflies. Horses because they’re part of our camp here and that’s what we’ve dealt with so far. Ashlyn has to exercise the horses because she has three DUIs and she whacked the pink streak out of her hair tonight. Carmella has to pick up bugs because she was caught shoplifting one too many times. And Tiffany has to sketch the bugs because she posted ugly pictures of her classmates. I just know you would have handled things like this. I miss you, Mama, even though I still can’t understand why you did things the way you did.
Until later, Jayden
Clouds shifted across the moon that evening, and everything remained dark in all the cabins. Jayden and her team had had a pretty big day, so Elijah wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find her on the porch, but he was more than a little disappointed. He was about to round the end of the cabin when he saw a movement in his peripheral vision and saw Jayden coming back from the bathhouse.
“Hey, don’t run away.” Her tone sounded light.
He turned around and headed back. “Thought you had already turned in for the night. Mind if I sit down?”
“Not a bit if one of those beers is for me.” She slid back in the deep-red chair and patted the table connecting it to the other one.
He set a beer on the table, twisted the top off the other, and handed it to her. Then he sat down and did the same with the second bottle. “Tell me about your day.”
She took a long sip of the cold beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “Horses, horseflies, and hair.”
He chuckled. “Want to give me a few details about that?”
He took a couple of deep breaths and then reminded himself how improper it was for him to even be sitting on the porch with her. If one of the girls came outside, or if Novalene or Diana decided to come over for a late-evening chat, his being there could be misconstrued as something more than just sharing a beer with a fellow employee. But right then he didn’t really care.
The Daydream Cabin Page 10