watered each morning and evening unless it rains, and, when we leave at the end of July, for this flower bed to look as pretty or maybe to be even more beautiful than it is right now. Is that understood? It would be a shame if the girls from the other two cabins did better at such a simple gardening job.”
“Yes, ma’am.” They all sighed.
“I will not remind you every day about the flower bed. You will take time to do that without me saying a word. The first time I come out here and find wilted flowers, I will give every one of you a demerit.” Jayden opened the old-fashioned screen door and then turned the knob on the wooden one leading inside the cabin.
The girls’ sighs could have been heard halfway to heaven. Apparently, they had expected it to be as cool as the dining room, but what they got was a stark little place that was almost as hot as it was outside.
“We have air conditioners.” Jayden hoped to catch an afternoon breeze through the screen by leaving the door open. “We will save them for night, since they freeze up if we use them too much. Besides, we won’t be in the cabin very much in the daytime. Now, sit down, pick up the handbook with your name on it, and let’s go over the rules. You each have a highlighter, so I suggest you mark the basics so you don’t forget. This is the only time I’m going to spoon-feed you the dos and don’ts in this book. Two of you are fifteen, and the other is sixteen. You are old enough to be held accountable if you break the rules. If being here at Piney Wood isn’t proof of that, then you’ve got more to learn than what’s written in this book.”
Carmella opened the book and groaned. “No smoking?”
“That’s what it says. If you’ve been a smoker, you’ll be quitting cold turkey,” Jayden answered. “If you break that rule, not only will you get one of those demerits that you do not want or need, you will be picking up the yard every evening for a week on your hour of free time.”
Tiffany read the next one and turned pale. “No phones or calls for the next eight weeks? That’s cruel and unusual punishment. Even a prisoner gets a phone call home.”
“You can’t be trusted with a phone, so quit whinin’,” Ashlyn said. “I damn sure don’t want my picture taken in these ugly granny panties and shown to the world.”
“Oh, hush. Giving up my phone won’t be as hard as you giving up your booze.” Tiffany pointed at the next rule. “No liquor or beer. How are you ever going to survive?”
“I can’t drink. You can’t take pictures of me and Carmella in our granny panties, and there’s nothing for Carmella or you to shoplift. It’s going to be a long two months, isn’t it?” Ashlyn did a head wiggle that would have made any smart-ass teenage girl proud.
If groans and grunts were candy and nuts, the cabin would have looked like a sweetshop by the time they finished going through the handbook. While they were still reeling from what they could and couldn’t do during their residence at Piney Wood Academy, Jayden handed each of them a sheet of paper with their names on the top.
“The handbook is your Piney Wood Bible. This paper is the Book of Revelation, or what will come to pass right here in Daydream Cabin,” Jayden said. “This outlines what you will be doing as a team, what you’ll be doing individually, and the schedule as to when you will be allowed your turn for showers in the bathhouse. You will have an hour, which will be your free hour this afternoon, to acquaint yourselves with what’s written there. Now you may go into your bedroom, which is through that open door.”
Tiffany’s eyes got as big as saucers. “What do you mean, bathhouse? Don’t we, at least, have an individual bathroom in the cabin?”
“No, ma’am,” Jayden answered. “The bathroom is located behind the cabins. It has showers and stalls. No mirrors, and when you read your papers there, you will see that every fourth day is your day as a team to clean it thoroughly.”
All the color left Ashlyn’s face. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”
“Honey, that won’t be nearly as bad as the day you muck out the horse stalls in the barn,” Jayden said. “Lay