So Much to Live For Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought back to her first camp session when she’d felt ugly and Sandy had helped her feel better about her looks.
    “I’ll do it if you will,” Dawn suddenly blurted out, trying to help Marlee feel less in the spotlight.
    By now, a small group had gathered. Other voices chided, “Yeah, Marlee, do it so she has to.”
    Marlee let Brent coach her for a moment before she rose on her toes, arched her arms over her head, and leapt upward. Her body made a graceful straight-arrow entry into the water. The other kids clapped when she surfaced.
    “Dawn’s turn!” somebody yelled. Dawn made an elaborate display of backing out of her promise. But in the end, she perched on the end of the dock and listened carefully to Brent’s instructions. Yet when she tried to follow his directions, her arms somehow lost their arch, her legs had a mind of their own, and she entered the water with an ungainly splash. She sputtered to the surface to the sound of laughter.
    “Graceful as a baby hippo,” Brent said from the dock, blue eyes twinkling.
    She splashed water on him just as the lunch bell clanged. The campers scrambled from the lake and raced to the hall. Dawn and Brent walked at a more leisurely pace.
    “You were a good sport,” he drawled. “Did you mess up that bad on purpose?”
    “Did you pick Marlee over the others because she was having such a miserable time and needed the attention?” she countered.
    Brent smiled sheepishly. “Maybe so. But she’s no amateur diver, believe me.”
    “I thought she looked a little too graceful,” Dawn declared.
    “She’s spent a lot of time getting that good. I’d say hours’ and hours’ worth of practice.”
    As she entered the mess hall, Dawn noticed a table had been set near the door. Dr. Ben was dispensing medications in small white cups. Dawn saw Marlee take one of the cups and felt relieved because she no longer had to endure the round of chemicals that could make a person nauseous and sick. But because she didn’t have to, she felt a little guilty, too.
    The afternoon passed quickly, and that night after dinner, Carnival Night started. Each cabin set up a booth of games for campers to try. Dawn’s cabin opted for the game of tossing rings around soda bottles. Dawn spent her time retrieving rings, righting bottles, and passing out prizes. It wasn’t until the bell sounded for campers to head back to their cabins that Dawn realized how exhausted she was.
    She fought to keep to her eyes open while everyone got ready for bed. Girls chattered and giggled, and she sadly remembered how she and Sandy had done the same thing, never once thinking that some poor, exhausted counselor wanted to sleep. Each night, when the lights had been switched off, the two of them had whispered in the about their day’s activities. Once, Dawn had crept to Sandy’s bunk, and they’d hidden under the covers with a flashlight and read love scenes from a romance novel. Now, lying in the dark, waiting for the girls to quiet down, the memory returned so vividly that Dawn had to shake her head to dislodge it.
    Finally everyone except Marlee was in bed. Dawn waited until she heard the bathroom door creak open and Marlee skitter across the floor. She held her breath as she heard the gentle rustle of Marlee’s bedcovers, followed by tugging and yanking and tearing. From across the room, she heard Marlee hiss, “Hey! Who messed with my sheets?”
    Dawn cooed sweetly in the dark, “You’d better learn to make your bed every morning if you want to avoid accidents. Good night, Marlee,” she added with a satisfied yawn, then promptly fell asleep.

Seven
    D AWN was eating cereal and listening to Cindy tell about her pet dog when Marlee sidled up to the table with her breakfast tray and declared, “
You
shortsheeted
me
.”
    Dawn looked up, prepared to receive Marlee’s wrath. “You short-sheeted me,” Dawn countered. “Around here pranks and jokes that don’t hurt anybody are a way of