For a moment I was aware of nothing but the rush of air into my lungs.
Then I noticed the laughter.
Caleb and Dillie were thrashing in the water, hysterical. And standing at the edge of the pool, flashlight in hand…that was no security guard.
That was Jake.
“You kids know that trespassing is against the law, don’t you?” he said in a fake stern voice.
“Oh, please don’t arrest us, sir,” Dillie squealed, choking on her giggles. She splashed me. “Smile, Lizard. Jake’s not going to tell on us, is he?”
Jake’s smile was lit up by the flashlight. “Not on you, no. But maybe the twerp here,” he added, kicking a wave of water toward Caleb.
Caleb ducked out of his way, grimacing. “Come on, Jake,” he pleaded. “You tell my mom and she’ll —”
Jake shook his head. “That kid just can’t take a joke, can he, Zard?”
I loved it when he called me that — especially when it was too dark to see me blush.
“Don’t worry,” Jake said. “I won’t tell on you. Any of you.”
“In that case — want to come in?” Dillie asked. “Water’s great.”
I couldn’t believe the way she was talking to him, like he was just a normal person.
He shook his head. “Not my thing. You kids have fun. Try not to drown.” As he walked away, Caleb and Dillie burst into laughter again.
“I can’t believe we thought Jake was a security guard,” Dillie giggled. “And look at you, Caleb, you’re still scared of getting in trouble.”
“Well, I can’t believe your brilliant plan was to hide at the bottom of the pool,” Caleb shot back.
“Hey, it could have worked,” Dillie said. “Right, Lizard?” When I didn’t answer, she dove underwater, kicking toward the other side of the pool. She resurfaced and waved at me. “Tag —you’re it!”
But instead of chasing her, I swam to the edge of the pool and hoisted myself out. How was I supposed to just go back to splashing around like nothing had happened? Like Jake, of all people, hadn’t seen me soaking wet, hair plastered all over my face, snot probably dripping from my nose? You kids have fun, he’d said. Like I was just some little kid playing a little kid game.
“Where are you going?” Dillie shouted as I wrapped a towel around myself.
“Back inside,” I told her.
“You want us to come with you?” Caleb asked. “You shouldn’t be walking around out here by yourself. It’s dark.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “You kids have fun.”
Chapter Four
Location: Tranquility Lake Recreation Area, Oklahoma
Population: Too many RVs, too many tents, too many campers
Miles Driven: 1,237
Days of Torment: 25
Crossing the Oklahoma border meant three things:
We were safe from any more show tune-themed family entertainment hours. At least until we got farther west. I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of show my parents would decide to put on once we were in spitting distance of Las Vegas.
We’d seen all we would ever see of Kansas. Since the Wizard of Oz was my third favorite movie, I’d been secretly looking forward to this stretch of the trip. I didn’t know that Route 66 only winds through Kansas for thirteen miles. We passed a power plant, a park, three old bridges, a general store, and suddenly we were in Oklahoma. No wizards, no twisters, no yellow brick road. Just plenty of grass. And some cows.
Camping time.
Our parents had lined up a steady stream of cheesy, grungy motels for us to stay in. But they were also determined to connect with the land.
Enjoy those wide-open spaces.
Commune with the — wait for it, the word that always spelled my doom — real countryside.
After three weeks of skeevy motels, I was almost looking forward to setting up my tent. Camping looked like fun in the movies. It seemed easy to ignore the whole sleeping-outside-in-the-mud thing. Even though you’re lying there, trying to pretend that there aren’t ants in your sleeping bag, you’re staring up at a starry sky or out into a landscape of beautiful nothingness.
Except in real life, I found out, you’re just staring out at a bunch of other tents. Instead of letting you spread out in the landscape of beautiful nothingness, the park authorities herd everyone into a big sandy parking lot. (Which was obviously how they managed to keep the beautiful nothingness a beautiful nothingness, but still — annoying.) It also turned out that in real life, the ants were the size of my thumbnail and were joined by buzzing flies the size of my fist.
In real life, birds didn’t tweet beautiful melodies. They cawed and squawked and snatched the last bite of sandwich right out of my hand.
And in real life, you had to deal with campsite bathrooms. Enough said.
Not that there weren’t good parts. Toasting grilled cheese sandwiches over the fire? Definitely good. S’mores tasted better in the wild than they did cooked over my stove top — even if I did manage to burn my first four marshmallows into black, bubbling gunk and almost light my hair on fire.
And then there was the smell. This whole part of the country smelled different than it did back home. My parents said the air was cleaner out here. I didn’t really know what it would mean for air to smell “clean.” I did know that most motels smelled like detergent (if you were lucky), and that the inside of our car smelled like Cheetos and feet. But out in the park, it just smelled…empty. Crisp. Open.
But even a whiff of nature and the taste of chocolate-smothered marshmallows weren’t enough of a plus to balance out the most serious minus. It wasn’t the insects. It wasn’t the mud. It wasn’t even the bathrooms. It was Family Entertainment Hour.
And it was our turn.
“They’re going to love it,” Dillie whispered as we huddled in the tent with Caleb, preparing for our debut.
“I don’t care if they love it,” I shot back. “I just care that it’s over quickly.”
“Isn’t that the point?” Caleb reminded me.
It had been Dillie’s idea to do The Wizard of Oz, in honor of the five minutes we’d spent speeding through Kansas. But it was my idea to do The Abridged Wizard of Oz, the whole story start to finish in under five minutes. Since we’d gotten the five-minute version of Kansas, I figured we were entitled to the five-minute version of Family Entertainment Hour.
Even if our parents wouldn’t thank us, I was pretty sure Kirsten and Jake would. They’d had their turn the night before, and they’d filled the time by reading aloud random lines from the newspaper and the back of a cereal box. According to Kirsten, it was a “Dadaist commentary on the commercialization of the media and the futility of trying to rationalize the randomness of modern life.” Our parents totally bought it. But I was pretty sure it was just an excuse not to have to humiliate themselves with costumes and songs and barking.
Too bad we didn’t think of that first.
I winced at the thought of Jake seeing me like this, with socks taped to the side of my head like floppy dog ears. I’d opted to play Toto and the flying monkeys, figuring that way I wouldn’t have to talk. It didn’t occur to me that instead I’d have to crawl around on all fours, bark, hoot, and generally make a fool of myself.
“Action!” Dillie cried.
We burst out of the tent. Our families were assembled in a semicircle on the ground, sitting cross-legged and waiting to be entertained.
We hadn’t spent much more than five minutes putting together the show, but everything went as planned. At first.
DOROTHY (Dillie): Oh, here I am in Kansas, everything stinks.
AUNTIE EM AND UNCLE HENRY (Caleb): Do your chores!
DOROTHY: There are no chores somewhere over the rainbow. Sigh.
TOTO: Woof!
DOROTHY: Oh no, a tornado! I’m flying! Where am I now? And why are there tiny little legs with ruby slippers sticking out from under my porch?
WICKED WITCH (Caleb): My name is the Wicked Witch of the We
st. You killed my sister. Prepare to die.
TOTO: Woof!
You get the idea.
Later, Caleb played the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, all at once: “I may be heartless and brainless and a big fat scaredy cat, but even I know that evil flying monkeys aren’t a good sign.”
That was my cue. I was supposed to start jumping up and down, flapping my wings, and hooting and hollering like an evil monkey — with half the campsite staring at me. With Jake staring at me.
“Monkey!” Dillie hissed. “Go!”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath…and started hooting and hollering and hopping. What choice did I have?
Family Entertainment Hour was supposed to be a little educational. Here’s the lesson I learned: If you’re going to bounce up and down and flap your arms around, don’t do it with your eyes closed. Because you might go a little bit off course. You might slam into your costars, knocking all three of you to the ground…where you collide with a tent…which then collapses on your heads.
Show over.
No one stirred as I crept away from the campsite. I played the flashlight back and forth across the trail, keeping my eyes on the ground ahead of me. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. Just away.
The trail wound up a hill. I followed it to the top, then stopped, looking out at the night. The moon was almost full. A wide lake stretched out beneath me, moonlight gleaming on its glassy surface.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” said a voice behind me.
I almost screamed.
Instead, I whirled around. Jake was grinning at me.
“You followed me?” I asked. Maybe it was because it was so late, or so dark, or I was just so tired, but I wasn’t as nervous as usual. When someone has seen you hooting like a flying monkey, it’s hard to worry about what they think of you anymore.
“I was supposed to let you just wander off by yourself?” he asked. “What if you got lost or something?”
“I’m not some dumb little kid,” I said.
“Who said you were?”
Instead of answering, I sat down, curling my knees up to my chest. Below us, the lake was dotted with tiny lights. At first, I thought they were glowing fish — but then I realized they were reflections of the stars.
Jake sat down next to me. “They treat me like a dumb kid, too,” he said suddenly.
I kept my eyes on the water. “Who does?” I asked.
“I don’t know. My aunt and uncle. My parents. Everyone.”
I figured he’d stop there, since that was about the maximum number of words he ever said in a row. But he didn’t. “I’m not supposed to be here, you know that?” He ground a fist into the dirt. “I’m supposed to be at baseball camp. I’m shortstop. I told them I was letting the team down. I told them. But you know how it is.”
I made some noise, like a half sigh, half hum, hoping he would see I did know how it was.
“It’s not my fault they’re splitting up,” he said. “So how come I’m the one who gets punished?”
“Your parents sent you on this trip to punish you?” I asked, confused. Then his words actually sunk in. His parents were splitting up? Caleb had never said anything about that. Did he even know? Did anyone know, or had Jake just revealed a huge secret — to me?
He snorted. “They said it would be good for me. But they just wanted me out of the way so they could fight.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Sorry,” was all I could come up with.
Totally lame.
“Whatever. So what about you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
I tried to come up with something that would make me sound interesting. But my parents weren’t getting divorced, and I wasn’t letting my team down. I was just boring old Liza Gold.
“It’s obvious, every time I look at you,” he said.
My face felt like it was on fire. “What’s obvious?” I asked in a high, tight voice. Could he know what I was thinking? About him?
He laughed. “That you want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
I breathed a secret sigh of relief.
“So what is it?” he asked. “You leave a boyfriend behind or something?”
“Um…” Wasn’t it pretty clear that I’d never had a boyfriend, never even come close? Or maybe he was just making fun of me. “Not really,” I said feebly.
“Figured,” he said. “You’re probably not the boyfriend type.”
Great.
“Probably leave a string of broken hearts.”
The laugh popped out before I could stop myself. “Right. That’s me. Breaking hearts wherever I go.”
“See? I knew it!”
Was he flirting? No one had ever flirted with me before, but I always figured I would know it if it happened.
Of course, I also always figured I would know how to flirt back.
Instead of trying to say something clever or funny or cool, I just told the truth. “I miss my friends,” I said. “I had this whole summer planned out, and then…”
“Your parents come up with a different plan, and you don’t get a vote,” he said. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to go back to the campsite?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“Yeah.” He leaned back and stretched his legs out in the grass. “Me neither.”
So we didn’t go back. We just sat there. Not talking, not even looking at each other. Staring out at the lake or up at the sky. Waiting for the sun to rise.
It was the most romantic moment of my entire life.
Chapter Five
Location: Flycatcher State Recreation Area, Oklahoma
Population: 3 idiots in the woods
Miles Driven: 1,425
Days of Torment: 26
Sometimes I think your brain only has room for a certain amount of stuff. Like when you accidentally memorize a bunch of song lyrics the night before a Spanish test. And suddenly the next day you can’t remember how to conjugate the verb to sing, but you know each and every word of the newest Jonas Brothers’ song. Even if you hate the Jonas Brothers. (Especially if you hate the Jonas Brothers.)
That’s what happened to me after that night on the hill. My brain got full. Here were the things I didn’t have space to think about:
The fact that we were camping, again.
The fact that it was so hot that by nine A.M. my clothes were already soaked with sweat.
The fact that we hadn’t been to the grocery store in two days, and all we had left to eat were peanut butter sandwiches and carrot sticks.
The fact that our parents were forcing Caleb, Dillie, and me to go on an “energizing hike” even though none of us had any energy, or wanted any.
I couldn’t think about any of that stuff, because my brain was all fizzy and full from the night before. Why worry about sweaty T-shirts and boring hikes when I could worry about Jake?
Fortunately, there was plenty of time for that on the hike, since it turned out “hiking” just meant “taking a long, boring walk through the woods.”
I had my camera with me, as usual. I’d been hoping to get a shot of some exciting animals —buffalo or antelope or bears or whatever kind of creatures hung out in the Oklahoma woods. But the most we saw were a couple squirrels, and even they ran away when the flash went off. So I was left with a bunch of pictures of rocks, trees, and a couple brown smears. (“Bo-ring,” Dillie pronounced, and secretly I had to agree.) At least I got a shot of Dillie dangling upside down from a tree branch, pelting Caleb with red berries. Perfect for the Journal of Torment, which was filling up even faster than I’d expected. I already had the caption: Here we see the strange creatures in their natural habitat…
After an hour of this, I was pretty much done with the hike. Unfortunately, there were still two more miles before the hike would be done with me.
“I didn’t even know there were woods in Oklahoma,” I complained as another branch whacked me in th
e face. “I thought it was just a lot of flat stuff. And dust.”
“Oklahoma is one of only four states with more than ten ecological regions,” Caleb said. “It has eleven, including mountains, wetlands, prairies, forests —”
“Okay, Wikipedia, enough,” Dillie said. “We get the idea. How do you even know this stuff?”
Caleb shrugged. “I read it in the guidebook.”
“And remembered it?” I could barely remember what state we’d been in the week before.
He shrugged again.
“That’s so weird,” Dillie said.
Caleb scowled. “Is not.”
“No, good weird,” Dillie explained. “Cool.”
“There’s no such thing as good weird,” Caleb said seriously. “Weird can mean supernatural, or strange-looking, or unusual, eccentric, exotic, outlandish, but there’s no definition that means cool. If you mean cool, you should say cool.”
“Okay, first of all, don’t think I didn’t notice that you’re not just a walking guidebook, you’re a walking dictionary. We’ll come back to that,” Dillie said. “Second of all, you’re crazy. Words can mean whatever you want them to mean.”
Caleb shook his head. “If words could mean everything, they wouldn’t mean anything. They’d just be sounds.”
“They are just sounds!” Dillie slapped her hand on a nearby trunk. “Someone somewhere came up with the idea of calling this a tree. They could have called it a flibber. A forest of flibbers. A dark, deep wood of flibbers. I’m in the mood to climb a flibber and pick some apples off an apple flibber and —”
“Stop it!” Caleb’s face was red. “Tell her, Lizard.”
“What?” I didn’t want to get involved.
“Tell her she’s wrong.”
“Oh…well, I don’t know, Caleb. You are kind of weird,” I teased.
“But weird in a good way, right?” Dillie encouraged me. “As in cool-different, cool-unusual. Who wants to be usual?”
“We are not arguing about my quantity and degree of weirdness!” Caleb said, so outraged in such a prim, proper, Caleb way, that I had to laugh.