Lucy took off the helmet she'd borrowed from Brendan. She put the gloves inside it and balanced it on one of the equipment boxes. There was a line of planters waiting for the shower. They passed a joint around. Someone offered it to her. She took a drag and passed it back to the next person in the line.
None of the women in camp were in the line waiting for the shower. Lucy stayed by the stove for a while to warm up then went back out into the rain and walked to her tent. She knelt under the tarp and took off her rain gear and her top. She zipped open her tent, swivelled around and sat down inside it as she pulled her trousers down. She kicked off her rubber boots. Both her socks came off with them. All of her clothes were soaked, including her underwear. It was a struggle to get her sports bra off. She left all of her wet clothes in a pile outside the tent. She grabbed a mostly clean tee shirt and scrubbed herself as clean as possible with it. She was shivering now. She pulled on a pair of clean panties, a pair of men's long underwear, and a tee shirt. She squirmed her way into her sleeping bag and worked her legs up and down inside the bag to generate some heat.
When she was warm enough she sat up in the tent and dug through her pack until she found the dress she'd been saving for the gown-plant. It was a shoulderless red-checked gingham dress. She took off the tee shirt. She pulled the dress over her head. Then she put the tee shirt back on overtop of it along with a polar fleece jacket.
Still half in the sleeping bag, she unzipped the door of her tent and poured the water out of her boots. She grimaced and wiped the mud off of her hands on a patch of moss near the door. She climbed out of the sleeping bag and put on two pairs of dirty but clean socks. She used a dirty tee shirt to dry out the insides of her boots as much as possible and then pulled them on. She squatted outside her tent and zipped the door closed.
She pulled her raincoat around her shoulders and flipped the hood over her head. She made her way as quickly as she could to the cookbus.
She opened the door at the front of the bus and walked up the steps. April and Cassie were inside talking to Amber. Lucy took off her raincoat and hung it on the railing by the door.
Amber saw her and let out a whoop. "Hey! Hey!" she said. "It's a hen party!"
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