her brown eyes wide. Rob realized suddenly how close he’d brought her—close enough for a kiss, if he bent his head. Just a touch of his mouth to hers…
The loud jangle of a nearby bell announced the end of school. Before the vibrations had died away, he and Valerie stood a table’s length apart. In the next moment, little girls started pouring into the room, which effectively doused any adult inclinations he might entertain.
In time, Rob supposed, he would learn all their names, but to begin with there seemed to be a hundred of them, all about the same size and shape, all dressed in khaki shorts and vests and dark blue shirts, all running and chattering and in general creating chaos. Talk about safety in the meeting place! Ginny came in last of all, wearing the same outfit but easily distinguished by her crutches.
He met her in the center of the cafeteria. “Hey, sweetheart. How was your day?”
“Okay.” She looked tired, as she always did after school. “This is really crazy.” As she spoke, a redhead with pigtails flashed by Rob, headed at top speed across the room. Next thing he knew, Ginny cried out and both girls went down in a jumble of legs, arms, and stainless steel.
“Oh, man.” He knelt by his daughter, who was thrashing around. “Settle down, Ginny.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re okay.”
“I am not. She hurt me!”
The redhead was crying, too. “Oww. My arm hurts.”
Valerie knelt on the other side. “Sit up, sweetie. There you go. Let me see your arm.” Rob helped Ginny sit up, and they got the two bodies separated. The four of them were now the center of a circle formed by wide-eyed little girls.
“That was a stupid thing to do.” Ginny had shifted into a high-gear tantrum. “You don’t run around people with crutches—you might hurt them. Can’t you see where you’re going?”
“Hush,” Rob told her. “It was an accident.”
“I think you’re okay,” Valerie told the other girl. “You just fell hard on your hand.” She looked around the circle. “Why don’t we start the meeting? Girls, get your books from your backpacks and sit down here. Grace, would you bring my books over? And where’s Connor?”
“He went outside to the playground,” Grace said as she handed her mother the materials.
“He can’t play outside with his hand in a bandage. Go get him, please, and tell him to come inside.”
“He won’t come if I say so.”
“Tell him I’d better see him in here in one minute or he’ll be missing TV for the rest of the week.”
Grace heaved a big sigh and went toward the door. Rob could sympathize—he had it on Jen’s authority that it wasn’t fun, keeping track of a little brother all the time when you’d rather be participating in your own activities.
Thanks to the planning session on Sunday, he’d brought along Ginny’s floor chair so she could sit with the other girls. By the time he’d gotten her settled, Grace was back with a disgusted Connor. The boy’s hand was bandaged from fingertips to elbow.
“Did you get in a fight with a bobcat?” Rob winked at him. “They’re mean critters, aren’t they?”
Connor narrowed his eyes. “There are bobcats around here?”
“Not really. What did you do to your hand?”
But Connor wasn’t volunteering an answer. He turned his head away, just as Valerie officially started the meeting.
“I’m glad to see all of you at our first Girls Outdoors! meeting. I’m Ms. Manion, your leader, and this is Mr. Warren. He’ll be my assistant leader.”
“I didn’t know men could be leaders,” said a little blonde across the circle.
A dark-skinned girl spoke at almost the same time. “I didn’t know men could be assistants.”
Valerie grinned. “Well, according to the rules, men can be GO! assistant leaders. Mr. Warren was a Boy Scout and earned his Eagle award, so he knows lots of stuff about the outdoors he can share with us. Now, let’s go around the circle so each one can tell us her name and one interesting outdoors fact about her. Grace, can you start?”
Rob saw Grace flush, and her eyes looked a little bright. But she knew what to do. “My name is Grace Manion and I like bird-watching.”
Around the circle they went, learning names and hearing about girls who liked soccer or swimming or tennis, who camped with their families or sailed or spent a week at the beach. As the girls spoke, Connor started scooting away from the circle, pushing with his feet and sliding on his backside in an attempt to escape. Rob watched with a smile as Valerie grabbed the leg of the boy’s jeans just before he moved out of reach and pulled him back to sit beside her, all without even glancing in her son’s direction.
Just then, Ginny’s turn to talk arrived. “I’m Virginia Warren,” she said. “I like to ride horses.”
One of the girls on the other side of the circle said, “You ride horses? I don’t believe it.”
“I do ride.” Ginny’s face turned red. “I take lessons, too.”
On Rob’s left, Valerie nodded. “There are riding programs for people with all sorts of abilities. And there are GO! badges for horseback riding, among lots of other things. Open your books right now to page one hundred seventy—that’s the HorseCare Badge. To earn that badge, you have to do six of the activities listed on these pages. And when you do them all, then I can give you a little circle which looks just like the picture. You sew your badges on your vest and everyone can see all the interesting things you’ve done when you wear your uniform.”
She took them through the book as she had planned, pointing out the soccer badge, the swimming badge, the shell-collecting and bird-watching awards, plus cooking and camping and a myriad of other activities. “What you’ll need to do is to look through and decide which badges appeal to you the most. Some you can earn on your own, and some we’ll earn as a troop.”
Valerie got to her feet. “As a matter of fact, we have a couple of badge activities to do this afternoon. On page one-thirty-nine is the hiking badge.” She walked over to the table and took one of the compasses out of the bag. “Anybody know what this is?”
A couple of hands went up, including Grace’s. Valerie called on a different girl. “That’s a compass.”
“Right. And what’s it used for?”
Grace and several others raised their hands. “To find directions,” someone said.
“And which of the badge requirements does using a compass satisfy?”
All heads bowed low over the handbooks, each girl trying to read fast and be the first to answer the question. Grace put up her hand a minute before anyone else. Ginny was next.
“Tell us, Ginny,” Valerie said.
“We’re supposed to use the compass to make a path from one place to another place.”
“Right.”
