Paradise Lost by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online

argue about it, Jenny simply shrugged in agreement. “Fine,” she muttered. Without much help from Dora, Jenny managed to lay the tent out properly, but when she asked Dora to hold the center support pole in place, Dora proved totally inept.
    “Don’t you know how to do anything right?” Jenny demanded impatiently. “Here, hold it like this ! ”
    Instead of holding the pole, Dora grabbed it away from Jenny and threw it as far as she could heave it. The pole landed in the dirt and stuck up at an angle like a spear.
    “If you’re so smart, Jennifer Brady, you can do it yourself.” With that, Dora stalked away.
    “Wait a minute,” Mrs. Lambert said, picking up the pole and walking toward the still unraised tent. “What seems to be the problem, girls?”
    “Miss Know--It-All here thinks I’m stupid,” Dora complained. “And she keeps telling me what to do. That’s all right. If she’s so smart, she call have the stupid tent all to herself. I’ll sleep outside.”
    “Calm down, Dora,” Mrs. Lambert said reasonably. “These aren’t called two -man tents just because they hold two people. It also takes two people working together to put them up. Now come over here and help.”
    Dora crossed her arms and shook her head. “No,” she said.
    “Look here, Dora,” Mrs. Lambert cajoled. “The only reason Jenny knows so much more about this than you do is that she and her dad used to go camping together sometimes. Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
    Jenny thought about her father often, but hearing other people talk about him always brought the hurt of his death back with an intensity that made her throat ache. Jenny bit her lower lip. She nodded but said nothing.
    “So come over here and help, Dora,” Mrs. Lambert continued. “That way, the next time, you’ll know what to do.”
    “I don’t want to know how to pitch a tent,” Dora stormed. “Why should I? Who needs to learn how to pitch tents anyway? ‘These days people live in houses, not tents.”
    Rather than waste any more time in useless discussion, Mrs. Lambert turned to Jenny. “Never mind. Here, Jenny. Let me help. We’ll have this up in no time. Besides, we’re due at the evening campfire in twenty minutes.”
    “Campfire!” Jenny exclaimed. “It’s too hot for a campfire. And it isn’t even dark.”
    “In this case, campfire is only a figure of speech. With the desert so dry, it’s far too dangerous to have one even if there aren’t any official restrictions here. We won’t be having a fire at all. I brought along a battery-powered lantern to use instead. When it comes tome for after-dinner storytelling, we can sit around that.”
    “Storytelling is for little kids,” Dora grumbled. “Who needs it?”
    Mrs. Lambert didn’t respond, but Jenny heard her sigh. For the first time it occurred to her that maybe her troop leader didn’t like Dora Matthews any more than the girls did.
    It was almost dark before all the tents were up and bedrolls and packs had been properly distributed. As the girls reassembled around their makeshift “campfire,” Jenny welcomed the deepening twilight. Not only was it noticeably cooler, but also, in the dim evening light, no one noticed the mess she had made of’ her sit-upon.
    Once all the girls were gathered, Mrs. Lambert distributed the sack lunches followed by bags of freshly popped microwave popcorn and a selection of ice-cold sodas, plucked from the motor home’s generator-powered refrigerator. Taking a refreshing swig of her chilled soft drink and munching on hot popcorn, Jenny decided that maybe bringing a motor home along on a camping trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
    “First some announcements,” Mrs. Lambert told them. “As you can probably guess, Mr. Foxworth’s motor home has a limited water-storage capacity for both fresh water and waste water. For that reason, we’ll be using the rest room as a number-two facility only. For number one, you can go in the bushes. Is that