seen such hate in any of the girls who had come through Piney Wood. Her skin was so pale that it looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in weeks.
“Okay, now we’re going to Moonbeam Cabin and study the rules,” Novalene said and then led the way across the yard.
Jayden was the next one to come out of the dining hall, with Tiffany right beside her, carrying the hog-feed bucket.
“So, you are Tiffany Jordan?” Elijah said.
Tiffany had a hard look about her, one of those don’t-mess-with-me glares that said she wouldn’t mind plowing right into another girl. Since she was as tall as Jayden, Elijah was doubly glad that Skyler wasn’t there that session. Jayden was going to have her hands full with this group, but even after only knowing her a short while, Elijah felt like she could handle the job.
“Yes, sir,” she almost hissed.
“Carry on with your duties. I just like to meet the girls one at a time on the first day so I can put faces with names and cabins.” He headed back inside the dining hall just in case the other two from Daydream Cabin thought they could give Mary a hard time.
He pulled up a chair and sat down at the adult table. Carmella gagged when she had to rake the spaghetti, salad, and bread all into a dustpan with a paper towel. Ashlyn flinched as Mary handed her a bucket of water and scrub brush. Elijah bet that they would give Tiffany a hard enough time that she’d think twice before she did something stupid again.
Chapter Five
By the time Jayden had wrangled Tiffany back into the dining room, Tiffany’s two teammates had cleaned up the spilled food and were now on their knees with scrub brushes. Jayden pulled up a chair beside Elijah, sat down, and pointed to the third scrub brush. “I believe that belongs to you. In case the three of you haven’t been formally introduced, this is Tiffany Jordan.” Jayden pointed at the redheaded girl.
“If you ever do something like this again, I’m going to shove your face into the food you throw on the floor,” Ashlyn growled.
“And I’ll hold you down while she does it,” Carmella added.
“That’s between you three,” Jayden said. “Tiffany is here for shoplifting and for cyberbullying. She posted a picture of a classmate wearing only a bra and panties that included a nasty comment about only ugly girls wearing granny panties. Tiffany, this girl right here with the pink in her hair that will either be cut off or dyed to match the rest of her hair is Ashlyn Causey. She’s here for a third DUI in the past two months. And the other one is Carmella Ruiz, who was caught shoplifting. Now, y’all feel free to visit while you get the stains up off Miss Mary’s floor, and then we’ll go to our cabin and talk about rules.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carmella and Ashlyn said with so much venom that Jayden should have been nothing but bones and hair on the floor.
A full ten seconds later, Tiffany dropped to her knees and muttered, “Yes, ma’am.”
Elijah motioned for Jayden to follow him outside. She hoped that she hadn’t gone too far with her discipline on her first day. He could always fire her if she had, she thought as she pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser in the middle of the table, wiped sweat from her forehead, and stepped around the three girls. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on your progress.”
Elijah was sitting on the park bench when she arrived, and he patted the place beside him.
She sat down and wiped even more sweat from her forehead. “It’s hotter’n hell out here. Do you think I was too rough on them?”
He shook his head. “Not one bit. I wanted to tell you that, but not in front of the girls. It’s a lot harder to tighten the reins later than it is to let up on them once the girls begin to figure things out. Did you ever have to deal with a kid throwing their food on the floor before today, and did you make someone else help clean it up?”
“Oh, yeah,” she answered. “I doubt that these kids can do much of anything I haven’t seen or dealt with before, but I seldom have the backing of an administration. If I’d told a kid that she had to take the slop bucket to the hogs, I would have had six