Reach for Tomorrow (8 page)

The group responded with a cheer.

Eric stepped up, grabbed the handkerchief and
held the now slack rope high for all to see. Meg dug in her heels. She felt Katie tense behind her. Eric put the whistle in his mouth. He gave a blast and dropped the handkerchief, and immediately the rope went taut.

Meg felt her feet sliding toward the edge of the mud pit. “They’re stronger than I thought,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Pull!” Lacey yelled from behind.

On the sidelines, the others erupted with yelps, catcalls, and chants of encouragement. From the corner of her eye, Meg could see Eric, crouching down, watching the white handkerchief intently.

“Go! Go! Go!” someone shouted.

The handkerchief edged toward the girls. Seconds later it inched toward the boys. From behind her, Meg heard Dullas utter a swear word and heard Lacey say, “Save it, Dullas. Pull!”

Meg hung on for all she was worth until her sneakers began to skid ever closer to the edge of the pit. “Help!”

“Don’t let go!” Kimbra yelled from the sidelines. “You can do it.”

Meg pulled hard, watching Josh slide ever closer to the edge of disaster.
A … few … more … tugs
, she told herself. By now her legs felt as if they
were on fire and her back muscles were screaming for mercy. Her hands ached from holding the thick rope.

“Whose bright idea was this, anyway?” Katie gasped over Meg’s shoulder.

“Lacey’s,” Meg grunted.

“Remind me to kill her.”

“Me first.”

All at once the rope went slack and the line of girls fell backward. Instantly the rope went tight again, but Meg, completely off balance, could do nothing to stop her forward momentum. She tumbled face first into the mud. Seconds later half the line toppled in with her. She came up sputtering, to the blast of the whistle and Eric shouting, “The winners and champions, the boys’ team!”

A cheer went up, but Lacey rose out of the mud and shouted, “You cheated!”

“Did not,” Josh said with a laugh. “We just used strategy to defeat your superior numbers. We threw you off balance; gravity did the rest.”

“Are we going to take this, ladies?”

A shout of “No!” and surge of bodies brought Josh and most of his team into the mucky mire. Soon mud was flying everywhere and staff and side-liners alike were ducking.

Eric blasted the whistle, but someone yelled, “Get him!” and moments later he too was flung into the mud.

“Don’t touch the ref!” he kept shouting. “Remember the rules!” But his shouts were lost in shrieks of laughter as he disappeared in a tangle of muddy arms and legs.

Every time Meg tried to crawl to the edge of the pit, she slipped and skidded back into the mud. She was so weak from laughing and slinging mud at everyone, she could scarcely catch her breath.

By the time the staff broke out the hoses and began rinsing kids off, Meg was resigned to sitting in the middle of the pit to await her turn. Richard Holloway announced, “To the lake!” and kids took off running. Meg, her friends, and a few stragglers were left behind in the muddy hole.

Lacey, covered from head to toe in dark brown gunk, said, “I’ve always wondered what I’d look like as a brunette. Anybody got a mirror?”

Katie, equally slathered with mire, said, “The worst part is now we have to do their laundry.”

“We got ripped off,” Chelsea said. Because she’d been the last in line, she wasn’t as caked with mud as the others. “I think we should be let off the hook.”

“I still think they cheated,” Lacey said in a huff.

“Face it,” Katie said, “they outsmarted us. We’ve got to pay up.”

Meg agreed and wiped slop from her mouth. “Ugh, this stuff tastes awful. Let’s get out of here.”

Suddenly a hand reached down. Meg looked up, shading her eyes from the bright, hot sun. Morgan stood over her.

“Want some help?” he said in his lazy drawl.

“I
’m really dirty,” Meg said, feeling self-conscious. Morgan chuckled. “I can see that.”

She felt Katie nudge her from behind, so she held out her mud-caked hand and let Morgan guide her out of the pit. He walked with her to the edge of the woods.

“Don’t mind us,” Lacey called. “We’ll get out on our own.”

“Hush!” Meg heard Katie say.

Ignoring her friends, Meg said, “Well, you can’t ever say you haven’t seen me at my worst.” Her chest felt tight, and she knew it was because she was standing so close to Morgan. She tried to scrape some of the mud off her face.

“Let me,” he said, holding out a towel. He gently wiped her cheeks, forehead, and neck. “What do you know, there’s a girl under all that gunk.”

“I’ll never get clean again,” she said, taking the towel and wiping her arms and hands. By now the towel was sopping and a hideous brown color. She could only imagine what she must look like. “Thanks.”

His eyes danced with amusement. “You all were good sports, and the kids had a blast. It was fun to watch.”

“Yeah, how come you’re so clean and neat?”

His denim shirt was only lightly spotted with mud, and she was positive it had come from her.

“I decided not to give the guys an unfair advantage, what with my superior strength and all.”

“Oh, you,” she chided. “You just didn’t want to get muddy.”

“You’re right about that.” He laughed. “Let me walk you down to the lake so you can rinse off.”

She took a step. “Yuck. I’ve got mud oozing between my toes. Feels awful.”

He walked with her. In spite of her sticky condition, she felt light and happy. Just being around Morgan lifted her spirits. “You know,” she said, “there are people who pay hundreds of dollars to soak in mud so they can be beautiful. They must be crazy.”

When they got to the lake, she saw the campers jumping and splashing in the water. “Come this
way,” Morgan said. He led her to a more isolated area. “Go on in and wash off. I’ll wait here on the bank.”

Meg walked out into the water shyly, knowing he was watching her.
Please don’t let me fall in a deep hole
, she begged silently. That was all she needed, to make even more of a fool of herself in front of him. She was sure his onetime girlfriend had been poised and ladylike, not at all like her. Odds were
she
didn’t go rolling around in a mud pit.

Meg rubbed at her arms and legs, and the water swirling around her turned a dirty shade of dark brown. She held her breath and went under the surface, trying to cleanse her hair of the clinging mud. She came up and rubbed her arms again, but no matter how hard she scrubbed, her skin remained a pale brown. Finally she gave up and staggered back to shore, the water pouring off her. Her sneakers squeaked across the grass.

“Sit with me a minute,” Morgan invited her.

She dropped beside him in a wet heap. “I feel better,” she said, “but something tells me I’ve got a long way to go before I reach clean.”

“You look fine to me. I like a girl who isn’t too prissy, who doesn’t mind getting a little mussed up. On my aunt and uncle’s ranch, we get city dudes all the time trying to catch a piece of the Old West.
They buy all these fancy clothes—as if a horse cares what you look like—and within days these same people are wearing faded jeans and the most comfortable shirts they can find. Ranch life isn’t for the fashion-conscious.”

Meg laughed. “My dad’s a surgeon, so mostly he wears scrubs all day. In medicine you’d better like green because that’s the color you’re wearing most of the time.”

They sat in a comfortable silence, looking out over the lake. A heron, wading along the shore, darted its long beak under the water and came up with a small fish, which it quickly devoured. The sound of the campers’ laughter started to fade, and Meg said, “I think everyone’s headed back to their cabins to get cleaned up before supper. I’d better go too.”

She started to rise. He caught her arm. “Could I ask you a favor?”

Her heart seemed to trip, then go on beating. “Sure.”

“I’ve—uh—been reading a lot of poetry lately. Some of the poets you mentioned to me.”

“You have?” She hoped she sounded sufficiently surprised.

“I like them. Some more than others, of course. I was wondering if you’d get together with me and
help me understand them. I’d like to really catch on to what they’re saying with all those nice words. Would you do that with me, Meg?”

If he’d asked her to walk across the lake on her hands, she would have agreed. “Of course I will. But I’m no expert. I don’t always get the point of a poem either.”

“You’ve got to be smarter about it than I am,” he said with a grin. “The words are pretty, but the meaning sometimes escapes me.”

“I’ll sure try to help,” she told him.

He helped her to her feet. “I’ll walk you home.”

Her legs felt rubbery, both from the exertion of the tug-of-war and from Morgan’s proximity. “Thanks,” she said. “The hot water’s probably all used up by now anyway.”

“I’ve got a shower down at the barn.”

“That’s all right,” she said hastily as images of herself in his shower flitted through her head. “I need to get fresh clothes and all. Plus, because of our big mouths, we’ve got laundry, bedmaking, and serenading to do.”

They were at the cabin now, and she saw her girls peering out through the screens and heard them giggling and whispering.

“Can you meet me at the barn tomorrow night after supper?” Morgan asked.

“I’ll be there.” She walked into the cabin, fairly floating off the ground.

The next morning after breakfast, Katie went to Josh’s cabin to keep her part of the tug-of-war bargain. Meg had gone on to Kevin’s cabin, and they had agreed that the next morning Chelsea would make Kevin’s bed while Lacey made Josh’s. Katie entered the cabin cautiously and was relieved to discover that it was empty. The area the boys used looked fairly neat, but the room off to the side where Josh stayed looked as if a bomb had gone off in it.

Shocked by the disarray, Katie grumbled that he’d probably trashed the place on purpose just so she’d have a mess to clean up.

She set to work. Clothes lay in heaps, so she sorted through them, piling the dirty ones in a corner to take with her to the laundry room when she left. She picked up a T-shirt and was struck by the scent of Josh’s familiar aftershave that clung to the fabric. Her heart lurched as she remembered nights of being in his arms, the wonderful fragrance enveloping her.

She opened his closet door and fingered the few clothes hanging there. She saw a shirt she’d bought
him, now faded from being laundered so many times. She thought of the time they’d been together at the Transplant Games, of the fun they’d had, of his soft kisses in the moonlight.

With a shake of her head she shut the door on the closet and on the memories.

She went to his bed and was dismayed at the snarl he’d made of his sheets. She threw everything off the bed, then remade it, making sure the corners were tucked in neatly and the top blanket folded properly. She picked up his pillow and found stray hairs. She hugged the pillow and buried her face in it, recalling all the times she’d snuggled against his broad chest, listening to the beat of his heart while he smoothed her hair and whispered, “I love you, Katie.”

She jerked herself into the present, fluffed the pillow and tossed it on the bed, then turned her attention to his dresser. A photo caught her eye, and she picked it up. It was of Josh and a smiling girl with long, dark hair. They had their arms around each other, and it was obvious they were at a party. Across the bottom, a feminine hand had written:
To the good times! Love, Natalie
.

Katie’s heart thudded and her throat constricted. So this was his new girlfriend. She was pretty. It
didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why Josh liked her. Confronted by the image of the girl, Katie felt the sting of jealousy.

She was scrutinizing the photo so hard that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her and had no idea that she was no longer alone until she heard Josh’s deep voice ask, “Can I help you, Katie?”

K
atie dropped the photo as if it were on fire. She spun around. “I—I didn’t know you were here. I thought I was alone.”