Page 192 of Story of My Life
“A literal hellscape,” Zoey agreed, dunking a hand towel into a pitcher of lukewarm water and slapping it to the back of a runner’s neck.
“Got another one for you,” Levi called as he backed his truck up to the cooling tent, which was so full of bodies it was probably ten degrees warmer than outside.
“We don’t have room for more,” I said, gesturing at the bedraggled mass of humanity slumped in borrowed lawn chairs.
Ace shot me a doctorial “I told you so” look and harrumphed as he moved past me to help Levi unload the newcomer from the bed of the truck.
A warm, firm hand gripped my shoulder. I swiped away damp bangs to find Cam standing next to me. He’d changed and now wore gym shorts with his sopping-wet Summer Fest shirt tucked into the waistband like it was a quarterback towel. “Hey, Laura just got here with Gatorade and a few bags of ice. I’m gonna help her unload.”
“Oh my God. Thank you! This is an absolute nightmare.”
“Look on the bright side,” he said. “It’s ten thirty and ninety-seven degrees. It can only get worse.”
“I don’t think you know how the bright side works,” I complained.
Cam disappeared and I moved out of the way just in time for Levi and Ace to carry a sopping-wet Darius into the tent. “Did I win?” he mumbled.
“If by winning you mean you were the last person to cross the finish line and my family has to give away our entire toilet paper inventory for free, then yes,” Levi told him.
“Good job, me,” Darius said weakly.
“We need to get him out of this ridiculous costume,” Ace interrupted.
Recalling what Darius said he was wearing underneath, I excused myself to go help with the Gatorade.
I was halfway to the parking lot with the cheerful beat of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” pounding in my head when Darius’s mother jogged up to me.
“I brought a fresh change of clothes for Darius and bad news.”
“He’s under the tent. What’s the bad news?”
“We lost one of the buses.”
“One of the bus trip buses?”
She nodded. “Apparently there was a road closure and the detour took them to Dominion.”
I gasped. “Those bastards. They stole our bus.”
“Darius is going to be devastated.”
“We’ll figure out a way to make it work,” I lied. “Which bus did they get?”Please be the assisted living bus. Please be the assisted living bus.
“It was the family bus.”
Damn it. The family bus would have spent big entertaining the kids and feeding everyone. The assisted living bus was less likely to be a windfall.
“But the assisted living bus will be here in about an hour. They had more bathroom breaks.”
Crap. I considered what my heroine would do. Would she save the day with the perfect executable idea and end up celebrating with free drinks from Rusty’s Fish Hook for the rest of her life? Or was this the dark night of the soul, where shediscovered it was all for naught and the town was doomed to disappear into the borders of the evil town next door? Also, why didn’t we usenaughtanymore?
“Okay. We can handle this. We’re Story Lake. We don’t back down from a challenge,” Darius announced between guzzles from his second grape Gatorade. The entire town council plus Levi, Gage, and Zoey were surrounding him on his lawn chair in the not-so-cooling tent.
“Sometimes we do,” Erleen whispered.
Darius squared his shoulders. “Well, not this time. Dominion is coming after us, and we’re not going to roll over without putting up a fight.”
“What do we do first?” Gage asked.
