“My hair is going to look like crap anyway when it starts growing out.”
Jayden handed each of them a journal. “This is the only thing, other than your memories, that you will take home with you. Write whatever you want in it or never pick up a pen to scribble the first word. I won’t be taking them from you, and you don’t get a grade on it. Hopefully, you will take notes or even write stories in it. I think you should write about threatening to roll Lauren in the hog lot, Tiffany. Carmella, you should write about the smell of that box when you brought your horsefly home. Ashlyn, you had the courage to cut off your hair, and you know it’s going to look bad, so write about that. Hopefully, you’ll look back through the pages when you get home and see how much things changed from this day to the last hours you spend here.”
“I’ll write about how my horsefly felt when he was freezing to death.” Carmella smiled.
“Freezing?” Jayden asked.
“Yep.” Carmella nodded. “Tiffany had to do an insect collection for school, so she told me to put the box in the freezer—then I can pin the frozen bug to a piece of foam. Miz Mary let us use the freezer and gave me a piece of Styrofoam that she was going to throw away.”
“That’s great.” Jayden started out of the room.
“You going to write in one?” Ashlyn asked.
“Yep, and my first entry tonight is going to be titled ‘Horses and Horseflies,’” Jayden replied.
“Make that ‘Hair, Horses, and Horseflies,’” Ashlyn said. “I loved that pink streak, and I’ve been tucking it up under my cap so no one could see it. I’ve been afraid it was going to fall, and I’d get a demerit. But I’m going to look like a skunk anyway. My natural hair color is dark brown. If anyone makes fun of me, they’ll pay dearly. I am a loud and proud Daydream girl and we’re a tough bunch.”
Jayden slipped out of the room with the pink hair in her hand. She took it straight to her bedroom and used a pair of manicure scissors to cut a swatch from it. Then she taped the lock to the first page of her journal. She smiled as she wrote Hair, Horses, and Horseflies.
Dear Mother,
If my girls have to write in their journals, then I should do so, too, and tonight I’m writing to you. Maybe if I put my feelings on paper, I can get past this terrible pain that I still feel for what happened when you went to the hospital. You knew how much that house meant to me, and if anything, it should have been given to both of us girls, not just to Skyler. She only let me take my personal items out of the house before she had a private sale. She didn’t even let me know what she was doing until it was over, and all the sentimental things I wanted had sold. Your precious collection of teapots went for only a few dollars, and the porch swing where Gramps and I sat so many evenings sold for five bucks. All of my memories were nothing more than dollar bills to her. Was your brain already affected by the aneurism, or did you love her more than me, even after the way she treated us during the divorce?
I have no answers, and you can’t give me any. I should be writing about horses, hair, and horseflies. Horses because they’re part of our camp here and that’s what we’ve dealt with so far. Ashlyn has to exercise the horses because she has three DUIs and she whacked the pink streak out of her hair tonight. Carmella has to pick up bugs because she was caught shoplifting one too many times. And Tiffany has to sketch the bugs because she posted ugly pictures of her classmates. I just know you would have handled things like this. I miss you, Mama, even though I still can’t understand why you did things the way you did.
Until later, Jayden
Clouds shifted across the moon that evening, and everything remained dark in all the cabins. Jayden and her team had had a pretty big day, so Elijah wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find her on the porch, but he was more than a little disappointed. He was about to round the end of the cabin when he saw a movement in his peripheral vision and