hard to burn down a stucco building,” Elijah laughed. “I imagine they’ll remember this with a shiver when they get home.”
“Did I hear scorpion?” Carmella stopped by the table on her way back from getting another bottle of orange juice. “What do they look like? Will they kill me if they bite me? Where can I find one for my bug collection?”
“Look it up in the bug book this evening,” Jayden said.
Elijah pushed back his chair, stood up, and tapped his coffee mug with a spoon. The room quieted immediately. “Carmella has just asked a good question. July and August are the months when we begin to see scorpions in this part of the country. Could any of you identify one if you saw it?”
Not one hand raised.
“Carmella has a bug book that she’s going to go get when I get through talking. You will all look at the picture of scorpions in it so you know exactly what they look like. Bark scorpions are what is most common here. They can climb walls and walk across ceilings,” he said.
Several of the girls looked up and scanned the walls in the dining hall.
“They show up in bathtubs, sinks, and even beds because sometimes they fall from the ceiling,” Elijah told them. “They can crawl through a crack as small as an eighth of an inch wide, and outdoors they can be found in piles of lumber, bricks, and brush and trash. A sting will not kill you, but it will deliver acute pain for about three days. If you get stung, go to your counselor or come to me immediately, and we’ll treat it so you don’t have nausea or vomiting.”
“We’re in hell,” Bailey groaned. “I thought that spider was the worst thing we’d have to deal with.”
“I don’t mean to alarm you, but you need to be sure you recognize the scorpion and don’t mess with it in any way. That includes catching and sketching, girls.” Elijah’s tone left no doubt that he was very serious.
“Have you ever been bitten by one?” Ashlyn asked.
Elijah nodded. “Twice. That’s why I’m telling you to be careful. Chances are you won’t even see one, since they’re nocturnal.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Novalene sighed. “Now I’ll have to go with them to the bathroom if they need to go at night.”
Diana shook her head. “Don’t worry. I bet not a one of them will even get out of bed once they check the whole room before they lay down.”
“If they’re smart, they won’t.” Elijah crossed the room and poured himself a second cup of coffee. “I was sicker with those scorpion bites than I was with the flu.”
Jayden made a mental note to threaten her girls with exile from the camp and a trip straight into juvie if they caught one of those evil critters and turned it loose in a cabin. No ugly haircut was worth that kind of thing.
That evening, when supper was over, Jayden put four bottles of water into a plastic bag and carried them across the lawn. After what Elijah had said about scorpions, she kept her eyes on the ground. She saw a few beetles, and a couple of bees flew around her head, but there were none of those critters that looked to her like a cross between a dinosaur and an alien.
She set the water on the tables separating the two sets of chairs, opened the cabin door, and yelled, “Y’all girls come on out here. We need to talk.”
“Are we in trouble?” Carmella asked.
Jayden motioned for them to sit down. “Should you be?”
Tiffany’s eyes never left the bottles sitting on the tables. “You going to waterboard us?”
“Nope,” Jayden answered. “Thought y’all might be thirsty.”
They all three sat down, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that they were nervous. Probably about that beast of a spider. Jayden picked up her bottle and twisted the lid off. “I’m not going to ask any questions about that spider, but I am going to warn you about scorpions. I’d better not find out that you caused someone to get sick from a sting, or else I’ll pile on extra demerits and you’ll end up talking to a judge again. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison and reached for their water at the same time.
Jayden took a long drink from her bottle while they uncapped theirs, and then she changed the subject. Her father and stepmother both belabored a point, especially when they thought that she had done something