“Is it against the rules for us to have a beer when the girls can’t even have their cigarettes?” she asked.
“We’re the adults, and we didn’t break the law so often that we have to be here.” He handed her the beer. “I’ll share if you’re not afraid to drink after me.”
“Not one bit.” She took the bottle from his hands, took a drink, and handed it back. “Lord have mercy, but this tastes good.”
“I don’t reckon God cares one way or the other,” Elijah laughed. “But a cold one is pretty good at the end of a day like we just had. I saw Carmella going with Tiffany to the hog lot after supper.”
“One of her teammates or I will be with her no matter where she goes. She can’t even shut the bathroom stall door when she goes in there,” Jayden answered. “Have you had girls with eating disorders here at the camp before?”
“A few times, but by the end of the session, they’re usually over that. They need the food to have enough energy to keep up, and they’re mostly competitive enough that they don’t want some of the other kids to get ahead of them.” He took another drink and then handed the bottle back to her. “You finish it off. I understand these girls, too. Not in the girl way you do, but in an emotional way.”
“Want to talk about it?” she asked.
Jayden was a counselor, but she could and probably would talk back. In his eyes, Dynamite did a better job. “Not tonight,” he answered.
“Skyler says that whatever I’m thinkin’ is written on my face.” Jayden took the last sip of the beer and handed the empty bottle back to him. “Thanks for sharing.”
“Evidently, you like the beer if what Skyler says is true.” He chuckled.
“I’m wondering if the girls, especially Tiffany, can see too much sympathy in my expressions,” she said. “And the beer was wonderful.”
He tucked the empty bottle in his hip pocket. “Think about the smell of the hog lot when you start to feel sorry for one of them.”
“That’s really some pretty good advice.” She smiled.
“Works for me,” he said.
“I should be getting back to the cabin. I just needed a little walk to clear my head. I’m glad that you came out tonight, too.” She turned around and headed back to the cabin.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said.
They walked side by side without saying another word all the way to the Daydream Cabin. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said, “Have a good night. See you at five fifteen out in the yard. The siren goes off at five ten. Just sayin’ so it doesn’t scare you and make you fall out of that narrow bed.”
“How do the other counselors sleep through that kind of noise?” she asked.
“They probably didn’t their first year here. Some of them have gotten up and walked or jogged with us through the years, but Novalene and Diana have never chosen to do that. Good night, Jayden.”
“Hey, if I’m going to eat all of Mary’s good food, then I need to do some exercise,” she said, “and to be truthful, I’m up at five thirty most mornings for a workout in the apartment gym before I go to school. I do take the weekends off, but I’ll do the whole seven days while I’m here to be able to eat what I want.”
“Good way to think.” He nodded and headed back to his house.
Jayden crawled into her bed, set her alarm for five o’clock, and fell right to sleep. She dreamed that Skyler was standing before a judge in a courthouse with a red-haired guy beside her. Skyler was wearing a pretty white dress and holding a bouquet of daylilies that looked like they’d been picked right out of their mother’s flower bed. The next morning, when Jayden awoke at a few seconds before her alarm went off, she tried to make sense of the crazy dream. To begin with, Skyler would never go to the courthouse to get married. She’d want the biggest, most flamboyant event in all Texas. Next, she’d never be satisfied with a bouquet that wasn’t professionally made, and to end with, Skyler Bennett went for the trophy boyfriends—tall, dark, and handsome. A pallid redhead would never, ever do.
“That was a stupid dream,” she said as she slung her legs over the side of the narrow bed and jerked on her jeans and shirt. She hurried with her hiking boots so she’d have time to rush through the bathroom, and she met Ashlyn and Tiffany coming back across the yard.
“I hate Tiffany more than Carmella does,” Ashlyn declared.
“Turn that hate upside down and learn to love each other.” Jayden jogged past them, glad to see that one of the stalls was vacated. She was leaving the bathhouse when the siren blew, and the noise really did startle her badly enough that she went from a jog to a full-out run to the yard, where Elijah waited.
“All right, ladies, get in a line and stretch your arms out to the sides. That’s how much distance I want to see between each of you.” He stopped in front of a girl with dark hair and a tattoo. “Where is your cap, young lady? I don’t know what cabin you belong to without it, and that’s an automatic demerit. You’ve got exactly one minute to find it and get it on your head, and I will be putting a note in your file in addition to the demerit that you now have. What is your name?”
“Yes, sir, and my name is Quinley,” she mumbled as she ran back toward her cabin. She had to hustle to get back in a minute, but when she did, she gave her other two team members a look meant to fry them on the spot.
“Miss Jayden, you can stand beside me and you girls can follow her movements. I’ll go easy on you ladies for the rest of this week, but next Monday, I’ll get out the jump ropes and stretching bands, and we will add more strenuous exercises to our regimen,” Elijah said. “We’ll begin with toe touches.”
Jayden bent forward but raised her eyes to see how her girls were doing. They had each followed her lead that morning and put their hair up in ponytails, then pulled them through the holes in the back of their caps. Not only would it keep their hair off their sweaty necks, but it would also keep their hats from falling off like other teams’ hats had already done. Even though Tiffany was the tallest and thinnest of the three, her fingertips only reached her knees. Carmella managed to touch her ankles on the first try. Ashlyn palmed the ground in front of her. Apparently, that girl didn’t only have a daily appointment with the tanning bed, but with the gym as well.
Elijah went through basic stretching exercises with them for the next fifteen minutes and then said, “Now that you’re all awake, I want you to look to your right at that mountain back there. Our goal on the final week you are here is to hike all the way over there. It’s about a five-mile trip there, and then that far back to the camp. We’re going to walk a mile today. By walk, I mean a good steady pace, not a slow walk like you are moseying through a rose garden. I’ll take the lead, and Miz Jayden will bring up the rear. Take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and follow me.”
Ashlyn had no trouble keeping up with Elijah, but some of the stragglers, including Tiffany at the very tail end of the group, were panting before they’d even walked the equivalent of a city block. Jayden lengthened her stride until she was right beside the girl. If her bulimia was advanced, she might faint dead away, and someone needed to be there to catch her when she fell.
