“What’s for dessert?” asks Mrs. Chadwick hopefully, after we manage to plow our way through the pasta.
Mrs. Wong’s brow wrinkles. “Well, now, I hadn’t thought about that. I think there are some rhubarb cookies left. Who’d like one?”
The response is underwhelming. Nobody raises their hand, and she looks hurt.
“Let’s all thank Lily for this wonderful dinner,” says Mrs. Sloane quickly. “She’s put a lot of thought and effort into this hiking trip, and I couldn’t have asked for a better shower present.”
“I’d just like a shower,” whispers Becca, and Emma and Megan and I stifle our giggles.
Mrs. Sloane goes over and gives Mrs. Wong a big hug, which restores Mrs. Wong’s smile. Then Mrs. Sloane reaches into her backpack. “Now, I’m not much of a camper,” she tells us, “but I’ve always heard that there’s one thing you shouldn’t go into the woods without.”
“A compass?” says Mrs. Wong.
Mrs. Sloane shakes her head.
“Bug spray?” I suggest.
“Nope.” She looks around to see if there are any other guesses, then pulls out a bag of marshmallows and waves it in the air.
“All right, Mom!” shouts Cassidy.
“That’s funny,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, “I always heard that it was something else.” She plucks a box of graham crackers out of her backpack and holds it up too.
We all cheer. Mrs. Wong has kind of a funny look on her face.
“That leaves just one last camping necessity,” says Mrs. Delaney with a grin. She fishes around in her backpack. “Which would be—”
“CHOCOLATE!” we all cry, as she pulls out a handful of candy bars. Even Mrs. Wong cheers this time too.
“Now you’re talking,” says Mrs. Chadwick. “I haven’t had s’mores since . . . well, since I was a girl scout.”
I try and picture Mrs. Chadwick as a girl scout. All I can imagine is Mrs. Chadwick as she looks now, only shorter, decked out in one of those old uniforms with the badge sashes. I smile to myself.
“I’ll get the campfire started,” says Cassidy.
A few minutes later we’re all sitting around the blaze, roasting marshmallows and telling lame jokes and spooky stories. Elementary school stuff, but still fun. Even Mrs. Chadwick seems to have unbent a little, and I’m starting to think maybe backpacking isn’t so bad after all. I look up at the sky. It’s a clear night and in spite of the glow of the campfire I can still see the stars overhead. They’re a lot brighter up here in the White Mountains than they are back home in Concord. I get up and wander off a little bit from the group, then lie back in the grass and munch on my s’more and look for constellations. I spot the easy ones first—Ursa Major and the Big Dipper, of course, and the North Star, and Orion’s belt. Then I branch out, challenging myself to find Cygnus, the Swan, way over in the east, and the red star Antares, which is the marker star for the constellation Scorpius.
“Time to hit the hay, everybody!” Mrs. Wong calls after a while. “We need to leave early if we’re going to be back in time for the cookout.”
Mr. Hawthorne is planning a big barbecue for us all tomorrow night, which is the Fourth of July. I look up at the sky again. If it stays this clear, it’ll be perfect for fireworks.
Back at the campsite, I discover that Emma and Cassidy and Megan and Becca decided we should all cram into one tent for the night. We were going to each share a tent with our mothers, but they figured this would be more fun instead, and Mrs. Wong said we’d be plenty safe by ourselves. She and Mrs. Sloane are sharing a tent, and so are Mrs. Hawthorne and Mrs. Delaney.
Mrs. Chadwick gets a tent to herself because she snores.
We unroll our sleeping bags in the biggest tent, then play cards for a while by flashlight. I can hear the low murmur of voices in the other tents, where our moms are talking, and the steady buzz-saw drone from Mrs. Chadwick’s tent.
“Let’s play ‘Truth or Dare,’ ” Becca suggests.
None of the rest of us except Cassidy has ever played it, so Becca explains the rules. “Whoever goes first gets to pick somebody and say ‘truth or dare.’ The person they pick has to choose, and if you choose ‘truth,’ they get to ask a question and you have to tell the truth. If you choose ‘dare,’ they get to dare you to do something and you have to do it.”
“Are we going to get in trouble playing this?” asks Emma.
Becca gives her a disgusted look. “You are such a goody-goody!”
“I am not!”
“You are too!”
“Shut up, Becca,” says Cassidy.
Becca glares at her, but she shuts up.
Cassidy turns to Emma. “Actually, it’s really fun,” she says. “I used to play it back in California. Watch, I’ll show you. Becca, truth or dare?”
“How come you get to go first?” Becca protests.
“Do you want to play or don’t you?”
Becca sighs. “Okay, okay. ‘Dare.’ ”
Cassidy grins. She sticks a foot out of her sleeping bag and peels off her sock.
“Phew, Cassidy, put that back on!” Megan squeals, holding her nose.
Cassidy wags it around a bit to torture us, then turns to Becca. “I dare you to sneak into your mom’s tent and put this sock under her nose.”
“Eeeeew,” I say. “That is so gross!” I can’t believe Becca will accept the dare. But I’m wrong.
“Done,” she says, wiggling out of her sleeping bag. She grabs her flashlight, and crawls out into the darkness.
We lie there stifling our giggles as we listen to her creep across the campsite. Very quietly, she unzips her mother’s tent. Then there’s a long silence except for the steady zzzzz zzzzz zzzzz from Mrs. Chadwick. A second later we hear zip!—not so quietly this time—and Becca scampers back over to our tent and dives inside.
The snoring continues for a few seconds more, then turns to a sputter as Mrs. Chadwick inhales Cassidy’s dirty sock. We hear some flailing noises, and she starts to cough.
We clutch our sides and stuff our faces in our pillows to muffle our laughter as Mrs. Chadwick continues to hack for a bit. She must manage to push the sock away in her sleep somehow, because eventually we hear her lapse back into her steady buzz-saw drone.
“That was a good one, Cassidy,” says Megan. “Can I have a turn?”
Megan dares Cassidy to run out into the middle of the campsite and do a crazy dance, which of course she does, and then it’s Becca’s turn.
“I pick Emma,” she says. “Truth or Dare?”
Emma considers for a minute, then says cautiously, “Truth, I guess.”
Becca looks at her and smiles her superior queen-bee smile. “Do you like my brother?”
“What kind of a question is that?” says Emma indignantly.
“You have to answer!” Becca tells her. “Those are the rules.”
I can see by the expression on her face that Emma is really wishing she’d chosen “dare.” She looks over at Cassidy for support. Cassidy shrugs. “She’s right, Emma. Those are the rules.”
“Can’t I get another question instead?”
Becca shakes her head. “Nope.”
“This is a really stupid game!” Emma protests.
I nod in agreement, even though I’m curious to hear what Emma has to say. Especially since she hasn’t said a word to me about it. Usually Emma tells me everything.
“Don’t be such a baby!” scoffs Becca. “Just answer the question. Do you like Stewart or not?”
Emma picks miserably at a thread on her sleeping bag. “Well, kinda, I guess,” she admits finally.
“Ha! I knew it!” crows Becca, and begins to chant, “Emma and Stewart, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n—”
“Stop it!” Emma says furiously.
“Why?” Becca taunts her. “It’s true. You two make such a good couple. A lot better than you and Zach. My brother is the biggest geek in Concord—he’s perfect for you.”
Emma balls her hands into fists. ??
?You are such a—a PYE!” she shouts.
“What is going on in here?” demands Mrs. Wong, unzipping our tent and sticking her head in. “You girls are making way too much racket!” She shines her flashlight around at us.
“Nothing,” Becca mumbles.
Emma looks away.
“If you girls don’t pipe down, we’re going to have to separate you. We’re getting up early tomorrow morning, remember?”
“Thanks for getting us into trouble, Waldo,” whispers Becca to Emma after Megan’s mother leaves.
“Shut up, Josie,” says Cassidy.
I reach over in the dark toward Emma’s sleeping bag to try and give her an encouraging pat. She pulls away angrily. Feeling a little guilty, I roll over. I probably should have tried to stick up for her more. Some best friend I am. It takes me a long time to go to sleep.
We’re all pretty quiet at breakfast. Mrs. Wong makes oatmeal with maple sugar, which is actually not too bad, and then we get packed up to go. As she’s striking her tent, Mrs. Chadwick discovers Cassidy’s sock. She holds it up between her thumb and forefinger, like a small dead animal.
“Does anyone belong to this?” she asks, wrinkling her nose.
“So that’s where my other sock disappeared to!” cries Cassidy, the picture of innocence. She takes it from her and looks at it in mock surprise. “I wonder how it got in your tent?”
“How, indeed?” says Mrs. Chadwick, frowning, but Becca distracts her before she can ask any more questions.
Becca and Emma still aren’t speaking to each other by the time we hit the trail. The rest of us try to cover for them, hoping our moms won’t notice.
“Man, I’m looking forward to that barbecue tonight,” says Cassidy. “I can hear those hamburgers already, calling my name.”
I’m looking forward to it too. And not just because Darcy will be there. For one thing, Emma’s dad is making his special Fourth of July cake, which he makes every year. It’s incredibly yummy. Much better than rhubarb cookies, and almost as good as s’mores. He bakes a carrot cake in a big rectangular pan, and he decorates the cream cheese frosting to look like an American flag, with blueberries for stars and sliced strawberries for the stripes.
For another thing, even though this trip has turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would, I’m looking forward to going home. After almost losing Half Moon Farm, I hardly want to be any place else these days.
“I thought we’d take a slightly different route back,” Mrs. Wong tells us. She’s out in front this time leading the way, instead of Cassidy. “So we can see different things.”
“What, like different pinecones?” whispers Becca, and we all giggle. Well, everybody but Emma.
Becca Chadwick may be a Pye, but she can be really funny, too. I sort of get it now why Megan likes her.
After about an hour, we take a water break while Mrs. Wong consults her map. “This way,” she says, and we all troop off again.
“Uh, Mrs. Wong, shouldn’t we be going downhill?” asks Cassidy a few minutes later.
Mrs. Wong looks around. She frowns. “Let me look at the map again,” she says, pulling it out of her backpack. She opens it up and stares at it, consults her compass, then turns it around the other way. “Aha,” she said. “I see what I did. I should have turned off at this trail back here.” She thrusts her finger at a bunch of squiggly green lines.
“But—” says Cassidy.
“It’s not a problem,” Mrs. Wong tells her, folding up the map. “There’s a trail up ahead that connects to it.”
We hike along for a while more, then turn off on another trail. The breeze is picking up, and the tall pines make a pleasant swooshing noise high overhead. It’s not quite as warm as it was yesterday, which is a relief, plus the trail Mrs. Wong has chosen for us is a shady one, so the sun isn’t glaring down on us like it did yesterday.
By lunchtime we’re still in the woods. Mrs. Wong hands out energy bars.
“Just a quick snack to tide us over, ladies,” she tells us. “We have that barbecue to look forward to, after all.”
“Shouldn’t we have been back by now?” Emma asks me in a low voice. I shrug.
While Mrs. Wong consults the map again, I glance over at my mom. She and Mrs. Hawthorne and Mrs. Sloane and Mrs. Chadwick are sitting on some boulders, talking and laughing. They don’t seem too concerned, so I relax. Emma had me worried there for a minute.
“This way,” says Mrs. Wong when we’re done eating. She hoists her backpack again and sets off.
Mrs. Hawthorne starts to sing “Swinging Along the Open Road.” We all join in. Even Emma and Becca, although they still won’t look at each other. At least we’re on flat ground now, and not going uphill anymore. We sing it straight through first, then as a round. It sounds pretty good, and it’s got a good pace to hike to, as well.
An hour later, we pause for another map consultation. The singing has long since stopped, and nobody’s laughing any more. Our moms are starting to look worried. Even Mrs. Wong doesn’t seem as confident as she did. I shiver. The wind is really whipping through the treetops, and I fish my sweatshirt out of my backpack. It’s getting cold. And cloudy, too. So much for fireworks tonight. Right now, I’m wishing I was back at Half Moon Farm, safe and snug in my room.
“Surely we must be almost there by now,” says Mrs. Chadwick. “My feet are killing me!”
Mrs. Wong looks helplessly at the map. Cassidy is frowning over her shoulder, trying to make sense of the green squiggles too.
And then I finally admit to myself the truth we’ve all been avoiding.
We’re lost.
Emma
“I fancy it’s the unexpected things that give spice to life.”
—Anne of the Island
“The best thing to do when you’re lost is stay put,” says Cassidy.
“Nonsense,” says Mrs. Chadwick. “We should find a trail that leads straight downhill. We can’t be more than a few miles from the lake.”
Mrs. Wong looks from one of them to the other. “Well,” she says cautiously, “perhaps Calliope has a point.”
Cassidy shakes her head. “Honest, Mrs. Wong. We should stay here. My dad drilled it into me. We used to go hiking all the time in the Sierras.”
“She’s right, Lily,” says Mrs. Sloane. “David took her on a lot of backpacking trips.”
“She’s a child,” sniffs Mrs. Chadwick. “We can’t trust her judgment.”
“She’s thirteen,” says Mrs. Sloane sharply. “And she’s spent more time in the wilderness than you have, Calliope.”
Mrs. Chadwick bridles at this, but before she can pick a fight my mother steps forward. “Actually, I’ve done a lot of reading about wilderness expeditions, and I think Cassidy’s right. Staying put is the first thing they always tell you to do.”
“Fine,” snaps Mrs. Chadwick. “In that case half of us can stay put and half of us can go for help. I will lead the group that goes for help.”
Mrs. Chadwick is used to being in charge.
But Cassidy shakes her head again. “Splitting up is the second biggest mistake people make,” she says. “Stay put and stay together. That was my dad’s number one rule.”
“Oh, it was, was it? And what other pearls of wisdom do you have to share with us?” Mrs. Chadwick’s tone is sharp. She’s obviously getting fed up with being told what to do.
Cassidy holds up her hand. “STOP!”
“Stop what?” demands Mrs. Chadwick.
Cassidy ticks off her fingers. “S is for ‘Stay calm.’ T is for ‘Think it through.’ O is for ‘Observe,’ and P is for ‘Plan and prioritize.’ ”
“Sounds to me like somebody knows what she’s talking about,” says Jess’s mom.
“Hmmph,” says Mrs. Chadwick.
“Okay, so we’re calm,” says Megan. “We’ve got S covered. So now what?”
“T is for ‘Think it through,’ ” says Cassidy. “What time were they expecting us back, Mrs. Wong?”
&nb
sp; Megan’s mother looks at her watch. “I told Jerry mid-afternoon at the latest. It’s four thirty now, so I’m sure they’re a little worried.”
“Worried enough to call the forest service and send out a search party?” asks Mrs. Sloane hopefully.
“Probably not quite yet, unfortunately,” Mrs. Wong replies. “My guess is they’ll give us a another hour or two.”
“By then it will be starting to get dark, and it’s going to be tough for them to find us in the dark,” says Cassidy. “We’ll most likely have to spend another night on the mountain.”
Everybody groans.
“That means we need to make shelter, find water, and do something to attract attention, to make it easy for them to find us tomorrow morning,” she continues.
“This is ridiculous,” protests Mrs. Chadwick. “I still say at least some of us should try to go for help.”
“Let’s take a vote,” says Mrs. Sloane. “All in favor of following my daughter’s plan, raise your hand.”
Everybody but Mrs. Chadwick raises their hand. Even Becca.
“You’re outvoted, Calliope,” says Mrs. Sloane.
Mrs. Chadwick grunts.
“So what was that next thing we’re supposed to do, Cassidy?” I ask her.
“O is for observe,” she says, “and I’ve observed that it’s gonna rain soon.”
We all look up at the sky. Dark clouds are gathering overhead. Thunderclouds.
“I think we should split into two teams,” Cassidy suggests. “Mrs. Wong, you be in charge of setting up camp with Mrs. Chadwick and Mrs. Hawthorne and Becca and Megan. Mom, you and Mrs. Delaney see what you can find to help attract attention. Bright T-shirts we can tie to trees, stuff like that. Emma and Jess can help you.”
“What about you?” I ask her.
“I’m going to go for water,” she says. “There was a brook off to the side of the trail about a quarter of a mile back.”
“It’s probably not safe to drink,” grumbles Mrs. Chadwick.
Cassidy holds up what looks like a water bottle with a pump handle and a line of plastic tubing attached to it. “Lucky I brought my dad’s old water purifier along then, isn’t it?”