Reach for Tomorrow

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Josh shrugged. “It sure seems like I’ve already waited forever. We’ve been apart for about a year now.”

  “And you don’t date anybody else?”

  “Oh, I see a girl named Natalie once in a while. But she knows how I feel about Katie. There’s nothing between her and me except friendship.” Josh stood and stretched. “I guess I’ve kept you from your work long enough. And I’m sure that flick’s about over by now.”

  Morgan stood too. “I’m glad you stopped by, Josh,” he said, and meant it.

  “And I’m glad you didn’t mind me talking your ear off. Sorry if I kept you from your chores.”

  “I can clean saddles anytime,” Morgan admitted. “Thanks for talking.”

  “Thanks for listening.” Josh waved and stepped out into the night.

  Morgan walked down the row of stalls, and the horses stuck their heads out over the half doors. He stopped in front of the roan mare and scratched behind her ears. “How you doing, old girl?”

  The horse nuzzled his pocket, sniffing for a treat. He sometimes carried chunks of carrots. “Nothing tonight,” he said.

  He couldn’t get Josh’s words out of his head. Morgan realized that what he’d felt for Anne had been love too. And he couldn’t remember telling her. She had died without hearing those words come out of his mouth, and he should have said them.

  Megan’s face floated into his mind. She was like Anne: sweet, bookish, a little naive. Maybe that was what attracted him to her. She was different. Of course, she would never know how he felt if he never so much as spoke to her. And a snake like Eric could walk away with a treasure he would never really appreciate.

  “Might not ought to let that happen,” Morgan said absently to the mare.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Did you see Josh slip out of the movie?” Lacey and Katie were walking back to their cabins. Their girls followed them, swinging flashlights so that beams of light bounced off the ground and trees, and talking excitedly among themselves.

  “Never noticed,” Katie lied.

  “He probably went to his cabin to write Natalie a nice long love letter,” Lacey said lazily.

  “I wish I’d never told you about that letter.” Katie was cross. How mean of Lacey to throw the letter up to her. Katie had been unable to keep her mind on the movie because she’d kept waiting for Josh to sneak back inside. But the final credits were rolling across the screen before he did, and she’d been left to wonder where he’d spent the evening. After the lights had come up, everyone had eaten cookies and milk, then headed to the cabins to sleep.

  “Maybe I’ll write Jeff a nice long sexy letter before I turn out the lights tonight,” Lacey mused.

  “Lacey,” Katie warned. “Cut it out.”

  Lacey hooked her arm through Katie’s. “Oh, don’t go getting all angry. I’m just trying to show you the error of your ways.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “No, you’re impossible. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the two of you back together again.”

  “It’s not so simple, Lacey. I have a life. A track scholarship. I have three years of college left.”

  “What? Credits can’t transfer? You can’t run for the University of Michigan? Give me a break, girl.”

  Katie sighed. She would be wasting her breath trying to explain to Lacey how she felt. Her gratitude toward Josh was no substitute for love. If she settled for the former instead of the latter, she’d be doing them both great harm.

  “Let’s just drop it,” she said. She slid her arm out of Lacey’s and hurried on to her cabin alone.

  NINE

  “Is it ever going to stop raining?” Dullas complained, her nose pressed to the screen door of the cabin.

  It had rained for almost three days straight, and Katie was feeling edgy herself. “Take an umbrella and go down to the rec center,” she told Dullas.

  “They’re playing baby games. It’s boring.”

  “Do it,” Katie said. She sensed that Dullas really wanted to go but was reluctant to leave the cabin because Sarah was still there, lying on her bunk, reading.

  “Oh, all right,” Dullas grumbled. She turned. “You want to come, Sarah?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve just got a few more chapters before I finish the book.”

  Dullas left, and Katie strolled around the cabin, bored.

  “You don’t have to hang around for my sake,” Sarah said. “Go on down to the rec center.”

  But Katie hesitated. Mr. Holloway had asked the counselors not to allow any camper to spend too much time alone. “That’s okay,” she said. “I have some letters to write. I haven’t written my mom and dad in two weeks. My dad’s a sportswriter, so he writes me all the time from his office computer. I feel guilty when I get three letters in a row and I haven’t written even one.”

  Sarah said nothing.

  Katie went over to Sarah’s bunk and sat on the edge. “Is Dullas pestering you too much? I know she hangs around a lot. Is she getting on your nerves? She doesn’t mean any harm, you know. She’s just got a strong case of hero worship.”

  “I can’t imagine why. I’m not much of a role model.”

  Katie didn’t dare confess all that Dullas believed she and Sarah had in common, or how she had come by the information. “Well, she does.”

  “It’s true that she follows me around like a puppy,” Sarah conceded. “But I can deal with it. I’ve got a brother and sister, and they make pests of themselves sometimes. Dullas is all right.”

  “You—um—having an okay time at camp?”

  Sarah lowered her book. “Yeah. I didn’t think I would, but I am.” She looked thoughtful. “Actually, I’m glad I’m away this summer. It’ll give Tina a chance to be king of the hill.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sarah marked her place with a bookmark and sat up. “Well, I’ve been sick a lot, and so the family focus has been on me for a long time. That’s been kind of hard on Tina. You know, she sort of gets shoved into the background because she’s normal.”

  “I don’t have brothers or sisters,” Katie said, “so I’ve never thought about how one person’s sickness can affect the rest of a family, but it makes sense that it would.”

  “My illness has been tough on all of us. When I came out of remission a year ago and needed a bone marrow transplant … well, I’m telling you it was a real blow. Everybody got a jolt of reality. Especially me.”

  Katie shuddered to think what would happen to her and her parents if her heart transplant failed. Not to mention Josh. She knew that, as with all other organ recipients, her body could reject the transplanted heart at any time. There was no statute of limitations on rejections. Katie had already been through one episode of rejection shortly after the transplant surgery. She had no desire to endure that experience again, but she was virtually helpless to stop it. All she could do was make the most of each precious day that this precious gift, her new heart, gave her.

  “What do you mean by ‘especially’ you?” Katie asked.

  “The best donor for a bone marrow transplant is a brother or sister.”

  “And Tina wouldn’t give you any bone marrow?”

  “She couldn’t because we weren’t compatible. No one in my family is, because …” Sarah took a deep breath. “Because I was adopted.”

  Katie tried to act surprised by the news.

  “Believe me, it came as a real shock to me. I’d never been told. Then I got the check for a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Hey, I got money too!” Katie had never actually met anyone else who had received One Last Wish Foundation money. “I spent some of it to take us all to the Transplant Olympic Games out in Los Angeles. I’m a runner, you know.”

  “I see you go out early in the morning.”

  “I have to keep in shape. Track is my life.” Katie studied Sarah. “So what did you do with your money?”

  “I spent it trying to locate my birth mother.”

 
“Did you find her?”

  “I found her, but she couldn’t help me,” Sarah said sadly. “And she really didn’t want me in her life.”

  Sensing Sarah’s pain, Katie quickly said, “But you got the transplant anyway, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but from an unrelated donor, so there’s a bigger chance of failure.”

  “Gosh, I sure hope that doesn’t happen.”

  “Me too. But so far, so good. Coming to this camp was my doctor’s idea. She thought it would do me good to be around others who’ve been sick and are surviving.”

  “Has it been helpful?”

  “Yes.” Again Sarah looked thoughtful. “I don’t get to feel normal very often. Back home, even my good friends treat me like I might either break or blow up in front of them. But here everybody treats everybody else the same. You don’t have to bring someone up to speed on cancer and all that goes along with it. People just know. You know what I mean?”

  Katie nodded. “It’s the best part of Jenny House, feeling as if you belong to some special tribe where nobody is set apart because they have medical problems.”

  “I just wish there were more kids my age,” Sarah said with longing.

  “There will be next year. Once the new building is constructed and there’s a full staff, there’ll be a lot more teens coming. My first year here is when I met Lacey and Chelsea. We’ll be friends forever. You should plan to come back.”

  “Does that mean Dullas will be back too?”

  Katie laughed. “You should have seen her last year. We all wanted to drown her at first. She’s a new person since Kimbra adopted her.”

  Sarah’s smile turned wistful. “I became a different person when I found out about my adoption. Cancer was hard enough. Then when I found out I wasn’t related to anybody in my family … well, that was the hardest part of all.” She looked up quickly. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my family. They’ll do anything for me. But still, I don’t really belong to them. Not by blood.”

  “Is that so important as long as they love you?”

  “In my case it makes all the difference in the world. Because I have leukemia. And because family blood and bone marrow are what might cure me forever.”

  By suppertime the rain had ceased and the sun was peeking through cloud banks. In the rec center the noise was deafening; the campers seemed to be all but bouncing off the walls.

  “I sure will be glad to get back to a normal schedule tomorrow,” Katie told her three friends above the din.

  “They need some major exercise,” Meg said.

  “And I need earplugs,” Chelsea added.

  Lacey pushed away from the table. “Follow me,” she said. “I have an idea.”

  Katie fell in behind Lacey, along with Meg and Chelsea. Together they marched over to the boys’ tables, where Josh and the other male counselor, Kevin, were eating with their kids. Lacey stopped in front of them, crossed her arms, and tapped her toe.

  The boys looked up. “Problems?” Josh asked.

  “It’s come to my attention,” Lacey said in a loud voice, “that your cabins are full of a bunch of weenies.”

  Josh and Kevin exchanged glances. Josh set down his fork. “We’re tougher and better than your dinky little girly-girls.”

  “I think not,” Lacey said.

  What’s Lacey up to? Katie wondered.

  “How do you propose we settle this, then?” Josh asked, a sparkle in his eye.

  “Well, I think a nice old-fashioned tug-of-war over a big mud pit could go a long way toward proving that girls are superior to boys.”

  By now a hush had fallen on the room and campers were listening, elbowing each other, and gigging.

  Lacey turned toward the girls’ tables. “What do you think, ladies? Can we crush them?”

  A chorus of “Yes!” went up.

  Josh glanced down the table at his boys. “We’ve been issued a challenge here, guys. Are we going to let a bunch of girls get away with calling us names?”

  A roar of “No!” went up.

  “Then you’ll meet us over a mud hole tomorrow afternoon at three to prove who’s the better team?” Lacey asked.

  “We’ll be there.”

  “And the losers will serve the winners dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Deal.”

  Lacey held out her hand, and Josh shook it. “Be prepared to eat dirt,” she said.

  “Won’t happen,” he countered.

  Lacey marched with her friends and all the girl campers straight out of the rec center.

  Outside, Katie eyed her suspiciously. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Sure do. I’m trying to make certain everyone has a good time.”

  “And a mud pit is your best idea?”

  Lacey smiled sweetly. “Love can be a dirty business.”

  Confounded, Katie stared at her friend. Lacey was definitely up to something. Katie wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but knowing Lacey, it would involve Katie. She didn’t like it. But there wasn’t a thing she could do about it except be a good sport and join in.

  TEN

  Meg, her friends, and their charges spent the next morning preparing for the big Mud Event. For kids not well enough to participate, banners were made, along with flags, posters, and colorful pom-poms. “For the cheering section,” Katie told them. “We’re going to need lots of cheering.”

  “We’ll murder them,” insisted Dullas, who Meg thought was getting a little more enthusiastic than necessary.

  After lunch they all donned bathing suits or T-shirts and shorts and marched to the area behind the rec center, singing “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to make them muddy …” It didn’t rhyme, but nobody seemed to care.

  Eric had taken on the job of creating the mud hole. Meg was impressed to see how seriously he’d taken his job. He’d dug a pit no deeper than a foot but very big around. Then he’d filled it with water and added plenty of dirt. The mixture was the consistency of pea soup and almost ankle deep.

  “The object,” Lacey announced to her charges, “is not to fall into it.”

  The boys showed up, as did the entire staff. Even Mr. Holloway came to observe the big contest. A semicircle of chairs had been assembled for the staff and nonparticipants, and Katie passed out the banners they’d made.

  “Wish I could do it,” one boy said wistfully.

  Christy, Eric’s sister, sitting beside him, said, “Next year, Marty.”

  Meg realized that Marty was a cystic fibrosis patient and probably had a respiratory problem that kept him from participating. It touched her because she could tell just how much these kids with terrible medical problems wanted to be like everybody else—they wanted to have fun and do what others their ages did.

  “Will you hold my towel for me?” she asked Marty. “I know I’m on the other side, but I’d sure appreciate it.”

  He beamed at her for his answer.

  Morgan stepped up to the side of the pit with a length of rope. A clean white handkerchief was knotted in the rope’s center. “This is strong rope,” he told both sides. “Strong enough to hold a wild horse, so I know it can’t break.” He handed one end to the girls’ team, the other to the boys’.

  “The rules are simple,” Eric announced, stepping up and grabbing hold of the handkerchief. “This hanky must pass completely to one side of the pit or the other. Of course, when this happens the bulk of the losing side will be in the pit, but you’ll pick up on that, I’m positive.”

  Both teams cheered.

  “I have a whistle,” Eric said, and blew it to make his point. “Whenever you hear this whistle, you stop pulling because that means the game’s over and I’m declaring a winner. Of course, those of you in the mud will probably catch on to that too.”

  Both teams booed.

  “At no time will any of you call the other team names or get the referee—that’s me—muddy. Are the rules clear?”

  Both sides yelled their approval.

  One o
f the boys on Josh’s team shouted, “Hey, there’s more of them than there are of us, Josh.”

  Josh turned. “So what? We can take them. Are we men or mud daubers?”

  “Men!” came the resounding reply.

  Meg took the lead position on the rope, with Katie right behind her. Lacey positioned herself in the middle, and Chelsea became last in the line. About twenty-five girls sandwiched themselves between the counselors. Meg grinned across the mud pit at Josh, who was lead man on the other team. “Now, don’t get me muddy,” she called.

  “Fat chance,” he said. “We may be fewer in number, but we’re better.”

  “Oh, puh-leeze,” she said. “Whine, whine, whine.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Josh said. “If that’s your attitude, I think we should sweeten the pot. Just between us counselors, that is.”

  “How so?”

  He looked thoughtful. “I know. Losers have to clean the winners’ cabins, do their laundry, and serenade them outside their cabin windows for two nights in a row.”

  Meg glanced over her shoulder and caught Katie’s and Lacey’s eyes. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’ll be fun having Josh and Kevin make our beds,” Katie answered.

  “Fat chance,” Kevin yelled.

  Meg turned to her line of girls. “This is for our dignity, ladies. Let’s make it count!”

  The group responded with a cheer.

  Eric stepped up, grabbed the handkerchief and held the now slack rope high for all to see. Meg dug in her heels. She felt Katie tense behind her. Eric put the whistle in his mouth. He gave a blast and dropped the handkerchief, and immediately the rope went taut.

  Meg felt her feet sliding toward the edge of the mud pit. “They’re stronger than I thought,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Pull!” Lacey yelled from behind.

  On the sidelines, the others erupted with yelps, catcalls, and chants of encouragement. From the corner of her eye, Meg could see Eric, crouching down, watching the white handkerchief intently.

  “Go! Go! Go!” someone shouted.

  The handkerchief edged toward the girls. Seconds later it inched toward the boys. From behind her, Meg heard Dullas utter a swear word and heard Lacey say, “Save it, Dullas. Pull!”