The Daydream Cabin

by Brown, Carolyn

  “Write it down and tell whoever you talk to that’s your dream couple,” Jayden told him.

  “Do you think the fact that I’m sitting on Daydream Cabin porch will have some good juju?” He chuckled.

  “Never hurts to hope,” Jayden answered. “What about a young couple, say about twenty-five, who’ve just gotten married, and he has ranchin’ in his background, and she’s been studying to be a chef?”

  “Find me that couple, and I’ll let them raise as many kids as they want here on this place,” he answered. “Do you know someone like that, or are you just teasing me?”

  “I’m just throwing out ideas so that you’ll be prepared for whoever applies,” she said.

  “Well, honey, if someone like that sends me a résumé, I’ll believe that you have superpowers.” He tipped up his root beer and finished it off.

  “Just call me a superhero,” she teased.

  He stood up and said, “I’d call you Daydream Angel if you’d stay. We work well together.”

  “Let’s do some interviews,” she said. “Maybe you’ll find someone who works even better with you.” She didn’t want him to go. She wished they could talk about personal things instead of hiring a cook. Evidently, he was only interested in the hiring of someone to work for him—not a woman whose heart had begun to get all warm and soft every time he was near her.

  “There ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happenin’,” he said as he disappeared out into the dark.

  What’s that supposed to mean? Jayden wondered. Could he possibly feel the same vibes she did every time they were together? If so, why didn’t he make a move?

  Questions upon questions, but not a one had an answer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November,” Jayden recited that morning instead of crossing the kitchen to look at the calendar. That meant the next day was the first day of July, and half of her time at Piney Wood Academy was gone.

  Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Her mother’s voice was so clear in her head that it startled her.

  “I’m not sure,” she muttered an answer. “Some days I feel like it’s half-empty, Mama.”

  Then you need to change your attitude.

  “What does that mean?” Jayden popped a pan of biscuits in the oven.

  Novalene came inside and headed toward the coffeepot. “What does what mean?”

  “I was talking to myself,” Jayden answered. “What are you doing up and about so early?”

  “Moonbeam Cabin had a spider episode this morning, and Bailey is terrified of them,” Novalene said. “If this had happened a couple of weeks ago when they had the hair-cutting thing, I would have thought your girls were retaliating.”

  “I was afraid they might, so I never mentioned it to them.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Jayden remembered platinum hair that had flitted past the screen door the evening that she told Elijah about the incident.

  Novalene took her coffee to the table, sat down, and let out a long breath in a whoosh. “It was about three o’clock. I’m surprised it didn’t wake everyone up in all of the cabins. Bailey was screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to get the big brown tarantula off her forehead. Keelan was standing four feet back with the broom in her hand like she was going to swat the thing away. I should have gotten my phone and filmed it.”

  “What happened?” Jayden bit back a giggle. After what those two girls had done, this had to be payback.

  “Bailey was flat on her back like she was about to go into rigor. She was afraid to move. She kept whimpering like a dying coyote and rolling her eyes up to catch sight of the thing that seemed to be considering making a nest in her hair,” Novalene answered. “I grabbed the broom from Keelan. The way she was swinging it around, she could have put out one of Bailey’s eyes, and then I coaxed it into crawling off the girl’s head and onto the broom. I started out toward the bathhouse to flush it down the toilet, all the time praying the damn thing didn’t clog up the plumbing. When I was about halfway there, it jumped off the broom. I didn’t know those things could move so fast. One minute, it had hunkered down and was enjoying the ride across the yard, and the next, it was gone.”

  “Thank goodness the one we found was hiding under the bed and not on Carmella.” Jayden used a wooden spoon to point to the wall where Tiffany’s drawing of the tarantula hung. “I bet Bailey appreciates the art in that picture a lot better today than she did when Tiffany put it up there.”

  “No doubt about that,” Novalene agreed.

  “God, what a morning,” Diana said as she came through the door, likely for coffee if Jayden knew anything. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen a tarantula. I swear that Tiffany jinxed us by hanging that picture up in here. One showed up on the Sunshine Cabin porch this morning. Remember me tellin’ y’all that Rita was my alpha girl when we first got here? Well, when that spider hopped up on her leg, she did some kind of fancy footwork. The other two girls took off in a dead run toward the exercise yard with Rita right behind them, trying to shake the thing off her pants before it made its way up toward her shirt. If I hadn’t seen the spider on her, I would have thought she was trying to learn some new steps.” Diana poured herself a mugful of coffee.

  Had the one pinned to the board in the corner of the living area in Daydream Cabin come back to life? Jayden began to wonder if there was such a thing as zombie spiders. She made a mental note to check that evening to see if Carmella’s tarantula was still there.

  Diana took a sip of her coffee and went on. “Lord, I hate two things in this old world, and spiders are both of them. The damn thing jumped from Rita’s pants right over onto Violet’s bare arm once they got to the morning exercise spot. She fainted dead away. Just dropped like a rock with every one of the other girls standing at attention for fear they’d get a demerit if they broke ranks. The spider took off for the bushes while I got her revived. I told her that she didn’t have to go on the hike this morning since she had fainted, but she insisted that she was fine. You got a new story about the spiders, Jayden?”

  “Nope.” Jayden pointed to the picture on the wall. “Our bad boy is still pinned to a board, and the picture up there on the wall is the only thing left to attack us.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure, I bet every one of these girls remembers that there are tarantulas in these parts, and they think twice about their behavior once they go home,” Novalene said.

  “Bless their little hearts,” Jayden said. “They’ve lived an entitled and totally sheltered life. Someday they’ll look back on this and appreciate the fact that they got the opportunity to turn their lives around.”

  “But today isn’t that day. I bet they check under their beds and in every corner before they go to bed tonight,” Novalene said. “Truth is, I intend to do the same thing in my room. Spiders or anything that crawls, including snakes, give me the heebie-jeebies.”

  Diana shivered. “Me too. I don’t like those things, but a mouse or a rat will put me to running in high gear a lot faster than that. How do those big old things get into a cabin anyway?”

  “I think our spider came through that little tear in the spacer where the air conditioner hangs in their bedroom,” Novalene answered.

  Jayden pulled the biscuits out of the oven and set the pan on the buffet line next to the scrambled eggs, sausage, and blueberry muffins. “Do you think Lauren tore the plastic to let the smoke out when she was there?”

  Novalene shook her head. “No, she was cracking the other window for that. I bet Bailey and Keelan talk Elijah out of some duct tape before bedtime tonight, though. They will most likely tape every crack and cranny in the whole cabin, and if they do, I’m not saying a word about it.”

  “I bet all of them have nightmares for the rest of this week.” Diana sighed. “We’ll be up at night with them like they’re tiny babies.”

  Not mine, Jayden thought. If they made that tear in the plastic and shooed
that big-ass spider into Moonbeam Cabin, then Bailey and Keelan had it coming.

  The commotion started the second the girls all filed into the dining room. Bailey got right up in Tiffany’s face and narrowed her eyes until they were barely slits. “You turned that spider loose in our cabin to pay us back for giving y’all bad haircuts, didn’t you?”

  Tiffany’s smile was so saccharine that Jayden had no doubt her girls definitely had something to do with the whole escapade. “Bad haircuts? We thought y’all did a fine job on our hair, didn’t we?” She turned toward Carmella and Ashlyn on down the line.

  “Love my new shorter ponytail,” Carmella said.

  “I was thinkin’ of askin’ y’all to cut another inch off mine,” Ashlyn told them. “But if you deliberately gave us ugly haircuts, then you should be ashamed. We trusted you. I guess what we heard in church last Sunday about vengeance belonging to God went right over your heads.”

  “God didn’t put that spider in our cabin,” Keelan argued.

  “Maybe the devil did it, just like he made you give us bad haircuts,” Carmella said in a sugary-sweet tone. “Y’all should ask God for forgiveness for your evil deed, and maybe He will step in and keep old Lucifer from bringing more fire and brimstone down upon y’all’s heads.”

  “You are related to the devil himself,” Bailey hissed. “I saw you put that spider in the box you carry around.”

  “Why don’t you come visit us in our cabin and look at all the bugs pinned to my board?” Carmella smiled. “You’ll only see one tarantula there, and unless he’s turned into a zombie spider and came to visit you, then I expect that you’re confused. I didn’t even like the first one, so I surely wouldn’t want to deal with a second one.”

  Jayden couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Carmella had given a convincing argument, but not once had she denied doing the dirty little deed.

  Bailey took a step back. “What do you mean by fire and brimstone?”

  “Talk to God,” Tiffany answered as she picked up a tray and slid it down the buffet line. “He’s the one who takes care of that, not us.”

  “Besides, we didn’t do anything mean to the Daydream girls, and the spider came to visit all of us, too, so don’t blame them. I flat out fainted,” Violet chimed in as she shoved her way between Tiffany and Bailey and picked up a tray. “Get over yourself, girl, and eat some breakfast. We’re in the danged desert. We can expect spiders and lizards. You didn’t even faint like I did, so stop your whining.”

  “It sat on my forehead.” Bailey shivered.

  “Well, it crawled up my leg,” Rita countered.

  “At least you had pants on,” Violet told her. “I thought for sure it was going to take a bite out of my arm and scar me for life.”

  The girls all completed the line and took their trays to their tables. They were still talking about spiders and the worst thing they’d experienced since being at the camp as Jayden filled her tray and joined the other counselors and Elijah at the adult table. She was sure her girls had something to do with the spider issue, but since she didn’t have a single shred of evidence, she decided to take the advice her mother always gave her and keep her suspicions to herself.

  Elijah nudged her with his shoulder. “I thought we’d have to leave Violet behind after she fainted, but she made the entire three-mile hike. What a trouper.”

  Novalene nodded in agreement. “I was surprised that Bailey kept up this morning at all. For a little while there, I thought we might have to call out the EMTs to get Bailey breathing again.” She told Elijah what had happened to start off her day that morning.

  When she finished, Diana told her part of the morning’s incidents. “At least it wasn’t a scorpion. If one of those gets loose in a cabin, the girls might burn it to the ground.”

  “Be hard to burn down a stucco building,” Elijah laughed. “I imagine they’ll remember this with a shiver when they get home.”

  “Did I hear scorpion?” Carmella stopped by the table on her way back from getting another bottle of orange juice. “What do they look like? Will they kill me if they bite me? Where can I find one for my bug collection?”

  “Look it up in the bug book this evening,” Jayden said.

  Elijah pushed back his chair, stood up, and tapped his coffee mug with a spoon. The room quieted immediately. “Carmella has just asked a good question. July and August are the months when we begin to see scorpions in this part of the country. Could any of you identify one if you saw it?”

  Not one hand raised.

  “Carmella has a bug book that she’s going to go get when I get through talking. You will all look at the picture of scorpions in it so you know exactly what they look like. Bark scorpions are what is most common here. They can climb walls and walk across ceilings,” he said.

  Several of the girls looked up and scanned the walls in the dining hall.

  “They show up in bathtubs, sinks, and even beds because sometimes they fall from the ceiling,” Elijah told them. “They can crawl through a crack as small as an eighth of an inch wide, and outdoors they can be found in piles of lumber, bricks, and brush and trash. A sting will not kill you, but it will deliver acute pain for about three days. If you get stung, go to your counselor or come to me immediately, and we’ll treat it so you don’t have nausea or vomiting.”

  “We’re in hell,” Bailey groaned. “I thought that spider was the worst thing we’d have to deal with.”

  “I don’t mean to alarm you, but you need to be sure you recognize the scorpion and don’t mess with it in any way. That includes catching and sketching, girls.” Elijah’s tone left no doubt that he was very serious.

  “Have you ever been bitten by one?” Ashlyn asked.

  Elijah nodded. “Twice. That’s why I’m telling you to be careful. Chances are you won’t even see one, since they’re nocturnal.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” Novalene sighed. “Now I’ll have to go with them to the bathroom if they need to go at night.”

  Diana shook her head. “Don’t worry. I bet not a one of them will even get out of bed once they check the whole room before they lay down.”

  “If they’re smart, they won’t.” Elijah crossed the room and poured himself a second cup of coffee. “I was sicker with those scorpion bites than I was with the flu.”

  Jayden made a mental note to threaten her girls with exile from the camp and a trip straight into juvie if they caught one of those evil critters and turned it loose in a cabin. No ugly haircut was worth that kind of thing.

  That evening, when supper was over, Jayden put four bottles of water into a plastic bag and carried them across the lawn. After what Elijah had said about scorpions, she kept her eyes on the ground. She saw a few beetles, and a couple of bees flew around her head, but there were none of those critters that looked to her like a cross between a dinosaur and an alien.

  She set the water on the tables separating the two sets of chairs, opened the cabin door, and yelled, “Y’all girls come on out here. We need to talk.”

  “Are we in trouble?” Carmella asked.

  Jayden motioned for them to sit down. “Should you be?”

  Tiffany’s eyes never left the bottles sitting on the tables. “You going to waterboard us?”

  “Nope,” Jayden answered. “Thought y’all might be thirsty.”

  They all three sat down, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that they were nervous. Probably about that beast of a spider. Jayden picked up her bottle and twisted the lid off. “I’m not going to ask any questions about that spider, but I am going to warn you about scorpions. I’d better not find out that you caused someone to get sick from a sting, or else I’ll pile on extra demerits and you’ll end up talking to a judge again. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison and reached for their water at the same time.

  Jayden took a long drink from her bottle while they uncapped theirs, and then she changed the subject. Her father and stepmother both belabored a poi
nt, especially when they thought that she had done something wrong. Even though they weren’t children, she often took the fall for anything that Skyler did wrong when they were both at their father’s new home. In his eyes, Skyler did nothing wrong, and since Jayden had decided to live with her mother, she had to be the one who was to blame when the girls argued. That was why she refused to see them after a couple of visits.

  “I’m glad we don’t have scorpions in El Paso,” Carmella said.

  “You probably do,” Jayden said. “They’re pretty much found all over Texas. But we never have talked about where y’all live. Why don’t each of y’all tell us about your hometown?”

  Carmella raised her hand. “I’ll keep goin’. My daddy is a heart surgeon, and he was really angry with me when I got caught shoplifting for the third time. If he’d known how many pieces of jewelry I’d walked out with and given away, he would have sent me straight to juvie himself. I gave a thousand-dollar bracelet to a homeless lady once and told her to go pawn it for money for food, and I can’t count how many pieces of jewelry I’ve given my friends. They probably don’t even remember me now.”

  “What does your mama do?” Jayden asked.

  “Daddy got custody of me in the divorce. My stepmother says she’s my dad’s office assistant, but her main job is to be beautiful. According to her, she can’t even hold her head up in front of her friends because of me. Truth is, I kind of like that idea after the way she’s put me down for years. My mother moved to Paris to work for a fashion designer, so I only see her a few times a year and then it’s usually just for a day.”

  “I’m from Tyler, Texas,” Tiffany said. “My dad owns Jordan Oil Company, and my suite of rooms back home is bigger than this cabin. I have a sitting room, a bedroom, and my own walk-in closet with a huge dressing room and bathroom attached to it. My mama is the company lawyer. My therapist, the one at home, not Karen, said I act out to get their attention. I thought she was full of crap, and I acted the way I do because I want people to like me. But, I see that now, and it’s crazy, but neither of my folks have ever had time for me. I feel like they were ashamed of me even before I got into trouble. They’re both beautiful people, and they wanted a boy to carry on the family name after they had my beautiful older sister. Instead, they got a tall red-haired throwback to Daddy’s grandmother, and then Mama couldn’t have any more kids, so it was bye-bye to ever having a boy.”