“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 wrong. Even though they weren’t children, she often took the fall for anything that Skyler did wrong when they were both at their father’s new home. In his eyes, Skyler did nothing wrong, and since Jayden had decided to live with her mother, she had to be the one who was to blame when the girls argued. That was why she refused to see them after a couple of visits.

“I’m glad we don’t have scorpions in El Paso,” Carmella said.

“You probably do,” Jayden said. “They’re pretty much found all over Texas. But we never have talked about where y’all live. Why don’t each of y’all tell us about your hometown?”

Carmella raised her hand. “I’ll keep goin’. My daddy is a heart surgeon, and he was really angry with me when I got caught shoplifting for the third time. If he’d known how many pieces of jewelry I’d walked out with and given away, he would have sent me straight to juvie himself. I gave a thousand-dollar bracelet to a homeless lady once and told her to go pawn it for money for food, and I can’t count how many pieces of jewelry I’ve given my friends. They probably don’t even remember me now.”

“What does your mama do?” Jayden asked.

“Daddy got custody of me in the divorce. My stepmother says she’s my dad’s office assistant, but her main job is to be beautiful. According to her, she can’t even hold her head up in front of her friends because of me. Truth is, I kind of like that idea after the way she’s put me down for years. My mother moved to Paris to work for a fashion designer, so I only see her a few times a year and then it’s usually just for a day.”

“I’m from Tyler, Texas,” Tiffany said. “My dad owns Jordan Oil Company, and my suite of rooms back home is bigger than this cabin. I have a sitting room, a bedroom, and my own walk-in closet with a huge dressing room and bathroom attached to it. My mama is the company lawyer. My therapist, the one at home, not Karen, said I act out to get their attention. I thought she was full of crap, and I acted the way I do because I want people to like me. But, I see that now, and it’s crazy, but neither of my folks have ever had time for me. I feel like they were ashamed of me even before I got into trouble. They’re both beautiful people, and they wanted a boy to carry on the family name after they had my beautiful older sister. Instead, they got a tall red-haired throwback to Daddy’s grandmother, and then Mama couldn’t have any more kids, so it was bye-bye to ever having a boy.”

Jayden’s eyes stung with unshed tears, and when she tried to say something, her mouth had turned as dry as if she’d been eating a green persimmon. She picked up her water bottle and took a long drink, but the lump in her throat didn’t shrink a bit. No wonder these girls had such problems. Jayden wished she could wave a magic wand and fix them all, but she could only be there for positive support. They had to want to change, or it would never happen.

“Amarillo,” Ashlyn offered without being asked. “My mama inherited a string of hotels that are scattered all over the state of Texas. She and my stepdad travel a lot in connection with that, and I’ve always known my nanny better than I know them. My daddy’s family has a horse ranch in Virginia, and he helps run that. My stepmother trains horses, and I usually have to spend a couple of weeks with them in the summer. They don’t get me this year, and I’m glad. As much as I don’t like this place, I’d rather be here than there. Spending time there is just trading off one mostly empty house for another, because they’re too busy to even pick me up at the airport. My sweet nanny died last year”—she stopped and wiped a tear from her eye—“and”—she sighed—“there’s two wet bars in our house. One downstairs in the den and one in the media room on the third floor. No one even missed the bottles of whiskey that I drank to help me get past all the pain of her death.”

Listening to them tell their stories was cathartic. Jayden hadn’t been the only outcast in the world. She hadn’t been the only one who felt unloved by a parent or had been left behind by one. Kids today had the same problems she’d grown up with. This bunch just had more money and access to booze and cars than she had at their age.

“Do y’all ever look at the kids that don’t have a lot of money and wish you had their life?” Carmella asked. “A mama who makes cookies for an after-school snack and that tells you that you’re pretty and smart, and she’s so proud of you?”

“Only every day, but that kind of mama doesn’t really exist,” Tiffany answered.

“My mama worked the three-to-eleven shifts at the hospital in the emergency admitting office, so she was home during the day,” Jayden told them. “We couldn’t have an after-school snack together, but she left something for me and my grandpa, who lived with us. Course, at home I always took a back seat to my big sister, so I can feel your pain.”