When I tell Autumn to sign me up, her freckled face brightens, and she begins listing instructions: “Wear your sturdiest shoes. Buy hiking boots, if possible, or sneakers will do. Pack lots of bottled water in your backpack, though we always have extra. Don’t forget to put sunscreen on your nose and ChapStick on your lips, because the wind can be intense up there….”
What have I gotten myself into?
I’m wondering the same thing on Saturday, as I trudge up a treacherous, sloping trail behind Jasper, Autumn, and Mr. Hawthorne, who are all wearing anoraks, fingerless gloves, and backpacks. The three of them are singing at the top of their lungs, even though we’ve been walking uphill for hours. It’s some song about hiking, though I’m much more focused on not tumbling off the side of the mountain than I am on listening to the lyrics. Every once in a while, Mr. Hawthorne will stop to point out the tracks of striped skunks, patches of poison ivy, and owl pellets, which only serves to strike more fear into my heart.
The wind slices through the fir trees, and I clutch at my white earmuffs, wishing I’d worn a hat (the earmuffs looked cuter). Following Autumn’s instructions, I’m wearing sneakers, but they’re thin-soled baby-blue Pumas, and I can feel every rock, stick, and leaf through them (the Hawthornes are all in lace-up hiking boots). My Capezio tote hangs from my shoulder, cumbersome and heavy (I packed three bottles of water, ginger Altoids, my cell phone, a tin of smoked almonds in case we get stranded, my compact mirror, and lip gloss — which I figured could double as ChapStick).
Obviously, I’ve made several mistakes.
“I’m so jealous!” Michaela cried this morning when she ran into me in the hallway and I had to explain why I was wearing sneakers. “I’ve been wanting to climb Mount Elephant forever. Heather and I went for a hike on a trail near there last week, but it got too cold to go climbing.”
She was in her short robe, heading for the shower and, looking at her, all I could think about was Anders and the IMs. “I guess you can’t get everything you want,” I told her cryptically, and then drifted off to my room, feeling her gaze on the back of my head.
Why my sister would want to scale this crazy mountain is beyond me.
Up ahead, Jasper stops singing, pauses in his tracks, and glances back at me with an amused smile. “Ready to throw in the towel?” he calls.
“No!” I snap between pants. But the truth is, I kind of am. Nobody warned me that the trail was going to become as steep as a wall. A while ago, I decided not to bother keeping up with the corn-fed Hawthornes, and simply struggled along at my own pace, which is basically that of a snail on sleeping pills.
Autumn, too, stops singing and comes to stand beside her brother. “Katie, come on!” she hollers, and her tone isn’t teasing like Jasper’s was. In fact, it’s borderline annoyed. “You don’t have to be so scared. Just take bigger steps!”
“Easy for you to say!” I shout back. “You could do this blindfolded!”
I actually think I’m doing well — for me. Back in September, when I thought of Autumn as Flannel, and she thought of me as a city snob, I wouldn’t have even made it past the trail sign.
“She has a point,” Jasper says, elbowing Autumn. She glares first at him, and then at me, and stomps up the incline to catch up with her father. But Jasper reaches out his gloved hand to help draw me up. “It’s just another hour or so to the top,” he promises. “And the way down is always easier than the way up.”
Usually, I get a kick out of me and Jasper volleying insults back and forth, but today it’s kind of nice to have him be, well, nice to me. As my hand touches his, I hate how there seems to be a direct line between the nerves in my fingers and the blood in my cheeks.
I’m surprised when Jasper doesn’t let go right away. He keeps a tight grip on me as we navigate the rough terrain. He’s obviously just being polite — Autumn’s dad is big on his kids having manners — but being this near to him is doing strange things to my heart. I study his profile — his auburn hair curling out from under his woolen hat, his glasses, fogged up from the cold, his short nose and smooth, thin lips.
What is going on with me?
“Thanks for taking my side back there,” I tell Jasper lightly, trying to pretend I’m speaking to someone utterly ordinary — like, say, Autumn’s older brother.
“Yeah, Autumn’s just cranky ’cause she’s hungry,” Jasper replies, adjusting one of the straps on his bookbag with his free hand. “Usually she thinks you’re adorable, like some terrified domestic cat that’s been let loose in the wild.”
Do you think I’m adorable? I want to ask, but that question feels even scarier than the ravine below us. “I’m glad I provide endless entertainment,” I grumble instead.
“But you know,” Jasper says, and I feel him looking at the side of my face. “Your princess act does get a little old after a while.”
Princess act? I come to an abrupt stop and turn to glare at Jasper. Suddenly, I’m hyperaware of my fluffy white earmuffs, Pumas, peacoat, and tote bag. “It’s not an act!” I spit, jerking my hand out of Jasper’s. “This is how I am. I’m not a Fir Lake native. I don’t milk cows.” Now the heat in my cheeks is from anger. “I don’t go on hikes. I don’t wear flannel. I’m a city girl. Deal with it, Jasper.”
And with that, I flounce away from him — or I flounce as best I can, what with all the rocks in my way, before I find myself on a quiet plateau with Autumn and her father. Open sky and rugged mountaintops surround us. We haven’t reached the top yet, but the view still makes my head whirl. Fir Lake itself looks like nothing more than a puddle of bright blue water. The town — the roads I walk every day, stressing over school and boys and Michaela — is miniature, cardboard.
“Wow,” I whisper, forgetting Jasper’s princess jibe.
“No kidding,” Autumn says, sidling up to me. “Doesn’t everything seem less important up here?” I sense that she feels bad about snapping at me before. And suddenly, I’m filled with the urge to tell Autumn about Michaela. Maybe it’s that my confrontation with Jasper has left me feeling restless and jumpy. Or maybe it’s that I finally see how well Autumn understands me. Either way, my secret is ready to come out.
“Who’s ready for lunch?” Mr. Hawthorne asks, unzipping his bookbag and taking out a thermos, baggies filled with sandwiches, and a folded-up blanket. I’m ravenous — an hour ago, the bark on the trees had started to look like milk chocolate to my eyes — but I can’t believe we’re about to picnic in the dead of November.
Jasper appears on the plateau, red-cheeked and wind-tousled, and he crosses his eyes at me. I ignore him.
“I have to pee,” Autumn announces and, unfortunately, I realize that I do, too.
“There’s got to be a Porta Potti around here somewhere, right?” I ask, glancing around.
Jasper bursts into uncontrollable laughter while Mr. Hawthorne says, “Now, Jasper Benjamin. Behave yourself.”
“What?” I ask Jasper, my face hot with indignation.
Autumn takes my arm. “Katie, there are no toilets on the mountain,” she tells me softly.
“So, you mean …” My stomach sinks.
Autumn nods grimly, even though I can tell she sort of wants to laugh, too. “The woods, Katie. Nature’s bathroom.”
Within seconds, I am reluctantly following Autumn down a narrow path that leads off the plateau and into a thicket of trees. “I can totally hold it,” I say, even though my bladder is telling me something very different. Also, the goal is to hike up to the top of the mountain after lunch, so who knows when I’ll even see a real bathroom again?
“You go first,” Autumn tells me, motioning me toward a shaded spot behind the trees. “I’ll stand guard.”
Jasper’s princess taunt is echoing in my head, so I try not to cringe too much as I unzip my jeans and crouch down. I also try my best not to think about what kind of strange plants and grasses — and bugs — might be on the earth below me. I finish as quickly as I can, then hurry over to Autumn, who — eve
r-prepared — passes me a bottle of hand sanitizer. Then I wait for my friend to take care of business and she strolls back to me casually, accepting the Purell.
“That was a Fir Lake rite of passage,” Autumn tells me with a smile, but I’m too traumatized to smile back. “Okay, let’s return to our men,” Autumn adds, but then I stop her.
This is it. The two of us have this one moment alone, deep in the woods. This is my chance to divulge the truth about Michaela, to unburden myself of this heavy secret.
“Autumn, remember how you thought I was hiding something?” The words rush out before I have a chance to think them through. “Well, you’re right. I am. And it’s about Michaela.”
“Oh, my God. Is it bad?” Autumn whispers, studying my face.
“Pretty bad.” And just like that, standing in the shadow of the bare-branched trees, I let out everything, from Michaela’s mysterious sleepovers at “Heather’s” to the IM Chat with Anders to the huge e-mail revelation. When I’m finished, I let out a long sigh. It’s as if someone has removed a bookbag of rocks from my back. I look at Autumn, expecting her to huff over Michaela’s lies, or to curse out Anders (although Autumn never curses), or to smile and whisper to me whatever she might know about sex.
Instead, Autumn is silent and hard-faced.
“Are you okay?” I ask, worried that she’s caught poison oak or something.
“Katie, how could you do that?” Autumn replies in a low, controlled voice. “How could you disrespect Michaela’s privacy, go through her personal things?”
She is staring at me as if I’ve just told her I kick cats for fun.
“That’s not the point, Autumn!” I cry. “Michaela has been totally dishonest with me, and with our parents, and —”
“But you’re no better!” Autumn replies immediately, her eyes burning. “You snooping through her e-mails is just as dishonest as Michaela lying about where she’s sleeping over.”
Autumn’s logic does not sit well with me. “So you don’t even care that my sister is having sex?” I demand, lifting my chin.
“It’s none of my business,” Autumn replies coldly, throwing back her shoulders. She towers over me, but I refuse to let her intimidate me.
“If you were really my friend, you wouldn’t feel that way,” I lash out, and then wish I’d kept silent.
Autumn’s expression turns from outraged to thoughtful. “I don’t understand you, Katie. You’re a dancer, you’re amazing at yoga, and then you can be so clumsy in real life. Sometimes you notice the tiniest details, and then you’ll miss the big picture. And for the city girl you claim to be, you’re as small-town-nosy as they come.”
Did Autumn and Jasper band forces this morning and decide to say The Most Insulting Things to Katie? “What do you know, Flannel?” I snap, too angry to cry. “You’ve spent your whole life in Fir Lake.” I look Autumn in the eye. “You don’t know anything.”
I turn on my heel and storm back up to the plateau, where Mr. Hawthorne and Jasper are seated on the blanket, eating their tofu dogs. Autumn is right behind me, but I refuse to look at her, and I mutter something to Mr. Hawthorne about not feeling well and needing to get off the mountain.
Mr. Hawthorne jumps up and tells me to wait, he’ll walk down with me and drive me home. Autumn and Jasper — my new enemies — look on silently. I know I’ll never make it down Mount Elephant by myself — with my luck, a bear would choose today to cross my path — so I stand off to the side, swallowing my tears as the family packs up their picnic. I’ve definitely messed up their hiking trip, which only makes me feel worse.
While we make our descent, I’m relieved to lag behind, and nobody stops to check on me this time. What was it Jasper said? The way down is always easier than the way up. And it’s true that this time my shins aren’t burning as much. But on the way up, my heart wasn’t breaking. I’ve lost my one friend in Fir Lake, as well as the boy who — okay, now I can admit it — I may have had my first real crush on. I’ve betrayed Michaela’s secret. And I was forced to pee in the woods.
Thanksgiving weekend can’t come soon enough.
Hemming’s Goods is having a sale on candied yams, and the farmstands are hawking jelly jars of cranberry sauce. Paper turkeys dangle from the school ceilings, and Mr. Rhodes pasted a rust-colored sign that says GOBBLE GOBBLE on our homeroom door. Normally, Autumn and I would have a field day with that one, but it’s kind of difficult to laugh with somebody when they’re not speaking to you.
The first few days after the hiking disaster, I waited graciously for Autumn’s apology, but when she remained silent, I realized there would be none. Now, she’s stopped coming to yoga class, and I’ve started skipping out on Mabel Thorpe (I told my mother that the class was put on hold for Mabel’s audition trip to Las Vegas, which seems like a realistic excuse). At lunch, Autumn sits with her Camping Club friends again, and rather than admit to Michaela that I’m friendless and ask to sit at her table, I’ve taken to eating in the school library. I hide behind a romance novel as I scarf down my sandwich. The few times I’ve spotted Jasper in school, I glance away, my stomach jumping.
All I’m living for now is the trip to the city — The Nutcracker, Svetlana, my ballet girls. I’ve literally started Xing off the days on my Degas calendar, the one that hangs next to the photograph Trini and my friends gave me. My parents don’t know it, but I’m entertaining a fantasy that involves my moving in with Svetlana … permanently.
The only other person as psyched for the trip as I am is my mother — and she’s not even coming. She’s been a whirlwind of activity lately, driving to Montreal to buy a new pair of white toe shoes for Michaela, and skipping office hours to scrub the attic barre with Murphy Oil Soap, just so — as she put it — Michaela’s extra practice time will take place in a clean environment. I wonder if Mom knows and/or cares that Mabel Thorpe’s studio has dust bunnies the size of Mount Elephant.
One week before the trip, I’m slouched at my desk, highlighting pages in my social studies textbook as snow pours down outside my window. I’m wishing I could call Autumn to ask her a question about the rice crops in Southeast Asia when I hear Mom outside my room, swearing loudly in Russian. There are a couple of crashing noises followed by a bang. Dad, who just finished his manuscript, is downstairs, shoveling the front walk (he was thrilled to have to buy a shovel), but I can’t imagine what Mom is up to.
I find her in the hallway, my and Michaela’s suitcases at her feet as she tries to cram the vacuum cleaner and countless boxes back into the giant hall closet. “Mom, you know we’re not leaving for another week,” I say, feeling a pang of impatience at these words. If Mom asked, I could tell her how much time was left down to the hour.
“Of course I know,” Mom says as she unbuckles Michaela’s dark pink suitcase. “I thought we could get a jump start on seeing how much you had to pack.” My mother is possibly the world’s most organized human being — I have no idea where she got me. “We should sort out the outfits you and your sister would like to take along,” she continues. “You’ll probably want to get your lavender silk dress dry-cleaned, and Michaela needs —”
“I need to go, because I’m late!” Michaela exclaims, emerging from her room. “Oh, hey, Katie,” she adds, smiling at me.
As the trip back home looms closer, my sister has been reaching out to me in small ways, like insisting I ride to school with her and Anders whenever it snows (I sit buckled in the backseat like an infant while she and Anders blast Rooney and giggle over private jokes). She doesn’t bring up stargazing anymore, but last night, after dinner, she asked if I wanted to have a mani-pedi meeting in her room … and I declined. It’s the old Michaela I long for, anyway, the Michaela I used to share everything with. The new Michaela may as well be a moon-dweller.
Tonight, the new Michaela is wearing an oversize sky-blue sweater (I suspect it might be one of Anders’s), and an itty-bitty denim skirt over tights and these hideous maroon duck boots she bought at The Climber’s Peak. The
bookbag slung over her shoulder looks stuffed to the brim, as if she’s planning on spending the night elsewhere.
“Michaela!” Mom puts her hands on her hips. “Where are you rushing off to?”
I know very well where Michaela is rushing off to. I can tell by the shimmer in her eyes and the high color in her cheeks.
“Heather’s house, for an emergency yearbook meeting,” Michaela replies, and I’m shocked by how swiftly and easily she can now lie. She’s probably still sleeping like a baby every night. “She’s waiting for me outside.”
Mom sighs. “Darling, we need to figure out which dress you’ll be wearing to the performance, and then which leotard you’ll take along for your private lesson with Svetlana —”
“Ugh, Mom.” Michaela rolls her eyes. I can’t recall if I’ve ever before heard my sister talk back to our mother. “Do we have to do that now?” She pushes up the loose sleeve of her sweater and checks her watch.
Mom clucks her tongue. Is she disappointed in her Michaela? Hope soars in me. “What could be more important than this trip?” Mom asks my sister.
“Nothing,” I speak up, coming to stand beside my mother. I mean it, too. “I’ll go through my clothes with you, Mom,” I add. Maybe the two of us can huddle in my room, bonding and laughing, while Michaela is off hooking up with her boyfriend. Maybe Mom will finally see that while I’m not the most talented, I’m the daughter who’s more deserving of her affections.
“Well, to be honest, it’s Michaela I’m concerned with,” Mom tells me with a dismissive shake of her head. “You won’t be dancing for Svetlana, Katie, so all you really need to do is pick out your evening dress. And the lavender silk still fits, right?”
No, it doesn’t fit. I wore that dress to The Nutcracker last year, and since then my boobs have grown an entire cup size.
Standing with my mother and my sister among the chaos of suitcases, I feel like my head is going to explode. She’ll always prefer Michaela, won’t she? No matter what.