“No, Elijah is taking over,” Mary told them. “Don’t worry, we’re leaving the place in good hands. Now, if Henry will say grace, we will dish up all the fixin’s for tacos and enchiladas and have sopaipillas for dessert.”
Jayden had been running late that morning, and she hadn’t taken time to eat breakfast. Besides, she hadn’t wanted to leave dirty dishes in the sink or take the time to wash them. Now it was noon, and she didn’t have a bashful bone in her body. As soon as Henry finished saying grace, she was the first in the buffet line. She loaded up her plate with rice, beans, and enchiladas, and then poured herself a glass of sweet tea.
“Why are the cabins so bright, and everything else kind of dull looking?” she asked Mary when she reached the end of the line.
“These girls need to learn how to behave, but they also need a bright spot in their lives. Once they get here, they’ll be given jobs, a schedule, and a regimen that they’ll hate, but they’ll like going home to their cabins, to that one bright spot, at the end of every day. Henry has been working hard to make the flowers grow, but tomorrow the girls will take over. Their flower beds will become a matter of pride for them. We hope their other jobs will, too. The girls tend to get competitive in their jobs after they get settled in. None of them will want to listen to the girls in the other cabins razz them if they can’t even grow a petunia,” Mary answered, following behind her.
“We are a private camp, and their parents’ money will buy them eight weeks here, but it is their last chance before juvenile detention. For most of them, it’s their third strike at anything from car theft to shoplifting, drug problems, abuse issues, hot checks, cyberbullying, driving under the influence, or anything else you can name short of murder. We do our best to put them on the right track in the eight weeks they are here, through schedule, physical training, discipline, and counseling. They hate us at first, but by the end of their time, we usually turn out a batch of happier, healthier girls. We don’t depend on state financing, but we do have guidelines.”
“How long have you been doing this?” Jayden sat down.
“Twenty years,” Mary answered. “When Henry retired from the army, we wanted to do something to help others. Henry’s father left us this property. Back fifty years ago, it was a little hideaway for the snowbirds, but we decided to put it to better use. We could never have children of our own, and Henry had seen the service turn many a young person around. So, we put our heads together and came up with this place.”
“Why just girls?” Jayden bit into an enchilada and rolled her eyes. “This is delicious. You should have a restaurant.”
Mary laughed down deep in her chest. “Honey, no one would drive out here for tacos, not when they can drive up to a window in just about any town and pick some up. To answer your question, we thought about having camps for boys, too, but we just don’t have the time and space. It’s really sad how little support some of these girls have gotten with their struggles.”
By then everyone had filled their trays and taken places at the table. “In that twenty years, have you ever had less than a full house?” Jayden asked between bites.
“Nope,” Elijah answered for Mary. “We’re a pretty exclusive private camp, and our success record is well known. Therapists and judges alike recommend us.”
Novalene joined in the conversation. “These girls know when they get here that this isn’t a party.”
“If they don’t, it doesn’t take them long to figure it out,” Diana added.
“Yep.” Mary nodded. “It’s tougher on the ones who think that they’re coming to a summer camp to lay out in the sun and work on their tans.”
Henry passed out booklets from the end of the table. “They change every year according to state regulations, so y’all will all need to go over them.”
Jayden opened the small notebook to the first page and almost groaned when she read that every single day, Sunday included, everyone would be up and ready for exercise at five thirty in the morning. If she could have gotten her hands around her sister’s throat right then, there would have been one fewer person on that airplane leaving for Europe on Monday. She was used to getting up early and going to the gym, even in the summertime, but not on weekends.
“When your girls arrive, you will give them each a handbook,” Henry said. “And then you will take some time to go over the rules with them. Y’all would do well to highlight each and every one of these rules and the disciplinary action that will be taken if they break one of them. We don’t take kindly to the I-didn’t-know excuse, and you can put money on it that one of them will use it before the first week is out.”
“Why would they do that if this is their last chance?” Jayden asked. “Forget I said that. We deal with all kinds of problems in my school, too . . . and just as many excuses for why they did what they did.”
“Honey, that’s in all schools now,” Novalene said. “Family structures and the constantly changing world around us make it tough to navigate. Teachers, and especially us counselors, feel the burden of having to deal with the effect all this has on the kids.”
“Amen!” Jayden agreed, and drizzled honey over her sopaipilla.
“Why do you think that is?” Henry asked.
“Because in all the fussin’ about what should be done, each of those adults wants their way. They spend more time fighting among themselves about who is right than they do paying attention to the kid,” Jayden answered.
When they finished eating, Mary passed around sheets of paper. “These are the specifics on your summer-session girls. Y’all need to know all of them. We’ll start with the Daydream Cabin that belongs to Jayden. Tiffany Jordan struggles with bulimia and was caught shoplifting. She also has two priors for cyberbullying—taking pictures of overweight girls and posting them on the internet with hateful messages. Carmella Ruiz has been before the judge three times for shoplifting. Ashlyn Causey was caught for the third time driving while under the influence.”
Ashlyn, Tiffany, and Carmella, Jayden repeated the names silently.
“Novalene, you have Moonbeam Cabin as usual, and your girls are Lauren Fielding, who has anger issues combined with drug issues. She’s been in rehab more than once. Bailey Morse, who’s been caught cooking meth for distribution for the third time. And last is Keelan Johnson, who sells cocaine to her fellow high school students and also to the vo-tech kids she went to classes with there.”
Sounds like a Tuesday in my school, Jayden thought.
“Diana, you get Rita Standish. She was beaten so many times by her stepfather that she acted out by trying to burn down the house. Next is Quinley McAdams. She’s had assault charges brought against her for fighting with other girls. And last is Violet O’Hare. Her boyfriend got her on drugs and then abused her. She got tired of it and put him in the hospital. He filed assault charges on her.”
“Looks like we’ve all got our work cut out for us,” Diana said.
Jayden felt a little better now that she knew what she was dealing with. She enjoyed counseling the kids in her school, and she felt confident that she could be a help to these girls.
These girls will be with you twenty-four hours every day, seven days a week, for two months. You don’t get to counsel with them an hour or two and then go home at the end of the day. Her mother’s voice was in her head and Jayden couldn’t argue with her.