So Much to Live For (5 page)

N
ATURALLY, Dawn hadn’t meant to tell them about it. But hearing how a few of them longed to be kissed and how unattractive they felt about themselves, she just couldn’t help herself.

“It–it was at camp.”

“Oh, so he was a chemo geek, too,” Esther said with an understanding bob of her head.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Paige scolded. “Dawn’s pretty. She’s probably been kissed hundreds of times.”

“Half a hundred,” Dawn joked, making the others laugh.
Actually only once
, she thought. It would have been twice if they hadn’t interrupted Brent earlier.

“All right, so some guy kissed you at camp. But what about a
normal
guy—one who doesn’t have cancer?”

“Yeah, do you have a boyfriend?” Paige asked, scooting closer on the bed. The empty sleeve of her nightshirt swayed with the movement.

Instantly, Dawn thought about Jake Macka. “Well, I liked a guy once from school.”

“Who was he? What did he look like?” Cindy wanted to know.

“His name was Jake, and he had black hair and gorgeous brown eyes. He sent me a card when I was in the hospital the first time. At least, I always suspected it was him. It wasn’t signed.”

“What happened to him?”

“He moved away.”

“But didn’t anything
happen
between you?” Cindy sounded disappointed.

“We didn’t kiss, if that’s what you mean, but I’ve never felt about anyone else the way I felt about him.”

“Not even Brent?” Val asked.

Dawn thought about it. Brent had a way of making her feel gooey inside. And she certainly had wanted him to kiss her, but it was different than it had been with Jake. She wished she could put it into words, but she couldn’t. “I’ve only known Brent a few days,” she said. “And besides, it’s summer and everyone knows about summer romances.”

“I don’t,” Paige said, wide-eyed.

They all burst out laughing. “Everybody falls in love in the summer,” explained Dawn. “But when school starts, . . . well, summer love fades like a summer tan.”

“Oh.” Paige sounded so disappointed that they all laughed again.

Dawn fingered the pile of makeup in the middle of the bed. “So, what’re you going to do with all this stuff?” she asked.

“We thought we’d practice different looks,” Cindy said, rummaging through the little pots of eye color.

“My dad says I can’t wear makeup until I’m thirteen,” Paige declared. “But since I’ve only got one arm, I figure I’d better start practicing putting it on now.”

Dawn chose a tube of mascara and held it up. “Um, Marlee, why don’t you try blue eye shadow?”

At the sound of her name, Marlee looked startled. She’d been so quiet that the others had probably forgotten she was still with them. “Uh, no . . . I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be a party pooper,” Esther said, as she stared into a hand mirror and smeared frosted shadow across her eyelid.

“I told you I don’t want to.”

“Well, okay. We just thought you might like to join in.”

“Well, I
don’t
.” Marlee scrambled off the bed, knocking Esther’s arm and causing her to smear eye shadow onto her forehead.

“Hey! Now look at the mess you made.”

Marlee hustled outside, and while the girls grumbled, Dawn went out after her. She hoped Marlee wouldn’t take off running as she had before. It was too dark to chase her through the woods. She was relieved to find Marlee at the bottom of the porch steps, where she was standing barefoot on the damp grass.

“They just didn’t want you to feel left out,” Dawn said, defending the group.

“I don’t wear makeup,” Marlee said flatly.

For an instant, Dawn felt anger boil inside her. She wanted to shake the girl. People had bent over backwards to reach out to Marlee, but she wouldn’t even try to meet them halfway.

“Don’t stay outside too long. It’s past curfew,” Dawn told her icily.

She had started back up the steps when she heard Marlee say in a small voice, “It’s because of my eye.”

Dawn stopped. “Your eye?”

“The fake one.”

Dawn came slowly back down the steps to stand next to Marlee. “What about it?”

“After the doctors cut out my eye and gave me this glass one, I tried to put makeup on. The tear duct’s still there, and it kept watering and watering. Pretty soon, eye shadow and mascara were running down my face until I looked like a freak. There’s no such thing as a really waterproof mascara, you know, even though the ads in the magazines say there is.”

In the moonlight, Dawn saw that tears were trickling down Marlee’s cheek.

“I was a real mess. When I finally got cleaned up, my lashes were stuck shut together. After all the moisture, the socket suddenly got dried out. So now I don’t wear any makeup. Ever.”

Dawn’s chest felt as if a weight were pressing against it. “There must be women who have glass eyes and know how to manage makeup. I’ve read about actresses in Hollywood who—”

“Why should I bother?” Marlee’s voice trembled. “I’m ugly and no amount of makeup’s going to change that.”

“You’re not ugly, Marlee. You just
feel
ugly,” Dawn told her, recalling some of the things she’d been told by hospital psychologists. “The way you feel doesn’t mean that’s the way you really are.”

“I wasn’t pretty before I got cancer,” she answered bitterly. “And now . . . well, mirrors don’t lie.”

Dawn searched for something encouraging to say. “You’re a great diver. Brent told me so.”

“He did?”

“He said he could tell that you practiced a lot.”

“I love to swim and dive. I live with my grandmother, and she has an indoor pool, and I practice all the time. That’s something else I had to learn to do all over again after my eye surgery—diving.”

“You did?”

“When you only have one eye, it affects your depth perception. I couldn’t measure the distance to the water by looking at it. The first time I tried to dive after the operation, I almost killed myself.”

“But you obviously kept trying, because I saw you dive the other day and you were really good.”

“I worked harder than I’ve ever worked on anything before,” Marlee said softly.

“Well, you can do the same thing with makeup and mascara. You just have to keep practicing.”

Marlee hung her head and drew a pattern in the grass with her big toe. “You think that’s all there is to it?”

“You won’t know if you don’t try.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“We could go try right now. I can help, and so will the others.”

“They hate me.”

“Wrong. They may hate the way you act, but they don’t really know
you
.”

“I’m pretty forgettable.”

Dawn put her arm around Marlee’s thin shoulders. “You’re a lot of things, Marlee Hodges, but forgettable isn’t one of them.”

Marlee tipped her head back and studied Dawn through one partially closed eyelid. The other lid drooped noticeably over her glass eye. “You’re not just saying that to butter me up, are you?”

Dawn laughed over Marlee’s sudden turn to dry humor. “I’ve only got two more days to make sure you have a good time,” she said, leading Marlee up the porch steps toward the cabin where the others could be heard joking over newly made-up faces. “You can’t let my very first job as a CIT be a failure.”

The door banged shut behind them as they walked out of the night and into the light.

D
AWN considered that night a turning point for Marlee. She had gone back inside the cabin and let Dawn apply the cosmetics, including eyeliner and mascara. Marlee tried on one of Fran’s wigs and one of Cindy’s outfits. And in the end, the results had been dramatic.

“You look super,” Dawn told her. And she meant it.

But the biggest benefit was that the evening had built a bridge between Marlee and the other girls. Not that Marlee became Little Miss Sunshine, but she did lighten up. She was less critical of people and camp activities. She made her bed each morning and actually participated in arts and crafts. The others invited her to sit with them during meals and included her in their discussions after lights-out.

Dawn felt pleased with the way things were going and faced Friday, the last full day of camp and the Junior Olympics, with mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was anxious to get home and get on with her summer. On the other, it was going to be hard to say goodbye to everyone.

Area reporters and a TV crew showed up to cover the games. Overall, Dawn’s girls did well in the individual events. They won the egg toss—Paige turned out to be an ace-egg-heaver with her one arm—and placed third in the mushy oatmeal pass. Yet the big finale—the Great American Tug of War, as Dr. Ben called it—turned out to be the highlight of the games.

In the center of the playing field, the staff created an enormous mudhole, a large sticky pit of goo that resembled a vat of chocolate in the hot afternoon sunlight. The campers formed two teams, each with their quota of counselors, medical helpers, CITs, and campers. Soon each team was lined up on the wet grass with a thick rope stretched between them. A bright-red rag, tied to the center of the rope, dangled over the pit of dark, oozing mud. The first team to bring the rag to its side of the mudhole would win.

“Of course, if anyone just
happens
to fall into the mud, then it’s too bad,” Dr. Ben told the audience as he grabbed hold of the thick rope at the front of the line.

Dawn stood midway in the line behind Dr. Ben, in front of Val, and behind Marlee as the rope went taut. On the other team, Brent shouted instructions to his teammates. Instantly, Dawn felt herself sliding forward. She gritted her teeth and pulled, using all her strength.

Someone shouted, “Dig in!” Dawn stomped her feet hard and felt her sneakers sink slightly into the wet ground. Slowly she stopped her forward slide.

“Heave!” someone else yelled. She groaned and jerked harder. She saw Marlee’s shoulders hunch in front of her.

“Whose dumb idea was this?” Marlee managed to ask through clenched teeth.

“Just keep pulling!” Dawn commanded. “Or we’ll be eating mud pies!”

From the front, she heard Dr. Ben holler, “We’re gaining! We’re gaining!” Immediately, her sneakers began to slide forward. Dr. Ben yelped, “We’re giving! We’re giving!”

For some reason, his words struck Dawn as funny and she began to giggle. Her laughter was contagious. Val started snickering, then Marlee, then the kid behind her, and so on, until everyone was laughing. As the laughter swelled, everyone’s strength gave out, and the whole group started sliding faster and faster toward the mudhole.

Dr. Ben shouted, “Stop that noise! This is treason! Treason!” But, like dominoes, the line began to falter and finally to topple. And because he was first in the line, Dr. Ben tumbled spread-eagle into the gooey mud.

Dawn lay flat on the ground holding her sides, weak with laughter. Marlee lay beside her and members from the other team wandered over.

“You didn’t put up much of a fight,” Brent said, plopping down next to them.

Cameras clicked and reporters called out joking remarks as Dr. Ben walked past, his front covered with brown gook. Dawn took one look and started laughing again.

“You think this is funny?” Dr. Ben asked, pretending to be angry. He smeared a dollop of mud on her nose. She only laughed harder.

“Don’t forget this one,” Brent shouted, scooping a handful of mud from the doctor’s arm and splattering it on Marlee.

“Hey!” Marlee squealed, grabbing a handful of her own and smearing it on him.

In seconds, a mud-slinging war had erupted. Campers, counselors, even a few reporters began hurling globs of mud at one another. Kids rolled on the grass and slathered one another with brown, wet dirt. Girls ran shrieking as boys threatened to toss them into the sea of mud. Cameras clicked and video cameras hummed, recording the entire mess.

With her sides aching from laughter, Dawn stepped back and watched the fun. A memory from her first Junior Olympics slipped into her mind. She saw Sandy smiling triumphantly as her team won the water balloon toss.
If only you were here,
Dawn thought.
If only we could be doing this together.

Brent came up beside her. “You giving up?” he asked.

His question jerked her back into the present. “Never,” she said, with a huskiness in her voice that made him peer at her more closely.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she told him. “Never been better.”

“You looked sort of lonesome standing off by yourself.”

She poked him in the ribs. “And
you
look like a pig who’s lost his pen.”

“A pig!” he cried.

With a laugh, she shoved him away and darted off. He chased her and they zigzagged under the hot sun until Dawn was completely exhausted. Too exhausted to think about Sandy for the rest of the day.

* * * *

That night in the main hall, Dr. Ben gave out awards and ribbons for all the week’s activities. “Now, here’s the one I know you’ve all been waiting for,” the doctor said. “The coveted Clean Cabin Award.”

Excited whispers rustled through the crowd. Val leaned over to Dawn and asked, “Do you know who got it?”

“Nope. It’s a big surprise, even for the CITs.”

Dr. Ben continued. “I tallied up all the points from each of the CITs’ reports, and I’m pleased to announce the grand prize winner. There are four large pizzas waiting in the kitchen for the winners to take back to their cabin while the rest of us make do with punch and cookies.”

The crowd booed. Dr. Ben held up his hand. “Those are the rules, folks. The winners get to pig out. When I call out the winner, send one representative to claim your prize. The pizza man’s waiting in the kitchen.” He turned toward his helper. “May I have the envelope, please?”

Dawn handed him a white envelope. Then he ripped it open and pulled out a piece of paper. After a dramatic pause, he read, “The winner is: Cabin Three.”

Dawn and her kids shrieked and hugged one another. Dawn shoved Marlee forward and whispered, “Go collect and we’ll meet you by the kitchen door.”

Marlee hurried forward, while boys from other cabins made outrageous promises to her if only she’d share the pizza with them. At the mike, Dr. Ben held out his hand and Marlee shook it. All at once, there was a thunking sound, as something hard and small hit the wooden floor.

Marlee grabbed the side of her face and squealed, “My eye! Dr. Ben, my glass eye fell out!”

Gasping, Dr. Ben dropped to the floor on all fours and started crawling around. Suddenly, Marlee’s hands opened and a fistful of glass marbles cascaded over the floor, bouncing and thunking in every direction.

Scrambling, Dr. Ben struggled frantically to retrieve them. “Wait, I’ve got it! No, that’s not it! Here it is!”

Dawn was one of the first to catch on to Marlee’s gag, so she started laughing and pointing.

Dr. Ben stopped crawling and looked up at Marlee, whose face broke into an impish grin. “Got you, Dr. Ben,” she said.

He groaned and shook his head, smiled sheepishly, and sat down on the floor amid dozens of shiny glass marbles.

Pandemonium broke out as all the campers and counselors caught on to the joke. They whistled, clapped, and shouted, “Marlee! Marlee!” A brilliant smile lit up Marlee’s face.

Like radar, Dr. Ben’s gaze locked onto Dawn’s, and she saw him wink. She nodded in understanding, and, like an accomplice, winked back at him. Of course, he’d known that Marlee’s eye could never have fallen out. But he’d gone along with the prank and given the girl a moment she’d always remember. A lump the size of a handful of marbles rose in Dawn’s throat. And at that second she loved dear Dr. Ben with all her heart.