So Much to Live For by Lurlene McDaniel Page B

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.

Eleven
    I T rained the next day. As the girls in Dawn’s cabin packed up to go home, the atmosphere was gloomy.
    “This is the worst part,” Cindy groused as she shoved clothes into her duffel bag. “I just hate saying good-bye.”
    “We can write each other,” Paige offered eagerly.
    “Oh, we’ll write each other for a while,” Esther said. “But then we’ll get busy with school and stuff and we’ll forget.”
    “Well, we’ll see each other next summer,” Val declared.
    Dawn listened to them make plans as she folded up her bed linen. She kept thinking back to when she told Sandy good-bye for the last time. They’d promised to write and meet again the following summer. After Sandy had died, Dawn had tied up all of Sandy’s wonderful letters and put them in the cardboard box.
    You’ve got to stop this remembering
, Dawn told herself sternly. It wasn’t helping her mood any.
    “I’ve got an umbrella,” she announced to the girls as they packed. “When you’re ready to take your gear to the main hall, let me know.”
    Later, she walked them in groups of two while holding the umbrella as the rain fell steady and fine, turning the trails to slippery paths. Cars and vans clustered in the parking lot near the hall where kids and parents greeted one another. She hugged her girls good-bye, and then went back to the cabin to collect her own gear.
    Inside the cabin, gloom had settled. The smell of hair spray, perfume, and baby powder lingered in the air, but the building looked sad without all the hustle and bustle of the girls.
    “Anybody here?” Brent called through the screen door.
    “Just me,” Dawn said, grabbing her bags and crossing to the door.
    He stood on the porch in a yellow rain slicker, his hair wet with rain. She was glad to see him. Standing alone in the damp, dreary cabin remembering that other summer so vividly had become almost too much for her to bear.
    “Let me help,” he said, taking the bags.
    “I’m not in a big hurry,” she confessed. “I told Rob to be here by one o’clock because I figured everyone would be gone by then. Maybe we can just wait here on the porch until the crowd thins out.”
    He set her bags down, removed his slicker, and draped it over the railing next to her. “You okay?” he asked.
    She stared out at the drizzling rain. “Sure. It’s just that leaving is sort of