“Sammy, this is my leader, Robin Terrane. Robin, this is Sammy Keyes! The Sammy I’ve told you about? And guess what! She’s coming with us!” She hesitated. “If that’s all right?” But before Robin could say a thing, Cricket barreled ahead. “She doesn’t have any supplies, so we need to borrow a sleeping bag and a pad, and maybe some utensils and stuff. I have everything else at home! What do you say? Is it all right?”
Cricket was chirping so fast and Robin was giving me such a sharp once-over that I felt more like an item up for auction than a kid gathering camping gear. Then Cricket added, “She’ll do great, I promise! Sammy’s tough! Ask Coach Rothhammer. Sammy plays catcher for her!”
Robin’s eyebrows went up. “Catcher, huh?” She finally smiled and said, “Well, why not?” and led us to her garage. “Take what you need. I’ll get the forms.”
Cricket rummaged through the garage like it was her own, and in less than five minutes we had a down sleeping bag, a thin pad of dense foam, a plate, a cup, and utensils, plus medical release papers and a permission slip from Robin.
“Six-thirty a.m., right here. Don’t be late!” Robin said as we left with her stuff through the roll-up garage door. The door was halfway closed when suddenly it stopped and went back up. “Don’t be early, either!”
Cricket called, “I know, I know! Sorry!”
I eyed her as we zipped up the sidewalk. “You’ve been early for a six-thirty start time?”
She laughed. “I get excited.”
This was definitely an understatement. And on the long walk back to her house, she seemed to get even more wound up, chattering a million miles an hour about Robin and her daughter, Bella, who’s best friends with some girl named Gabby who both go to Bruster, which is our rival junior high.
And then she went on and on about Robin’s nephew, Quinn—how smart and strong and passionate about condors he is—until finally she wound down with, “He knows everything about the wilderness, Sammy. Everything!” She let out a dreamy sigh. “He’s amazing.”
Her cheeks were all rosy, and she was practically skipping down the sidewalk. “And cute, too?” I asked with a smirk.
She blushed. “You have no idea.”
There was a white pickup truck parked in the driveway of Cricket’s house, and when she saw it, she said, “Oh, good. Gary’s still home.”
Gary turned out to be her brother. Sixteen or seventeen, round face, lots of acne, and hair shooting out all over the place. He looked like a pimply porcupine that had had its quills dipped in black ink.
“Hey!” Cricket said, leaning into his dungeon of a bedroom. “Can we borrow your backpack?”
The minute it registered that there were intruders in the dungeon, Gary shrank the page on his computer quick. “Huh?”
“You haven’t been out of this room all day, have you?” Cricket asked, stepping inside it.
He ignored the question and asked one of his own. “Who’s your friend?”
He was talking about me, but he sure wasn’t looking at me.
“Her name’s Sammy. Can she borrow your backpack?”
Now he looked at me. For all of a nanosecond.
“Sure.” He got up and started rooting around his closet, and that’s when I noticed that his dungeon walls were decorated with—not swords or shields or random medieval weapons—no, they were covered in butterflies. Cases and cases of real butterflies.
Well, real dead ones, anyway.
There were small ones, big ones, colorful ones, plain ones . . . and at first I thought it was kind of neat, but then I noticed that every one of them had a pin sticking right through its body. They’d been mounted to look like they were in flight, but they were stabbed, straight through the heart.
Gary emerged from the closet and caught me staring at his collection. “My uncle got me started a couple of years ago.”
“Got you started?” Cricket asked. “He gave you his whole collection!”
“So?” He turned back to me. “I’ve traded up a lot. Some of them are pretty valuable.”
“They are not,” Cricket said with a scowl. “That’s just what your Internet buddies say.”
Gary blushed, but he came back fighting. “Oh, now you’re an expert on my collection? Like you know anything about it?” From the main compartment of his backpack he pulled out a small Super Soaker, a bright red rubbery football, and a pair of Rollerblades. Then he started emptying miscellaneous things from the side pockets, saying, “When I get my hands on a four-eyed viper-wing, you’ll envy me all the way to the bank.”
“A four-eyed viperwing,” Cricket said with a snort. “Right.”
He threw his sister a pimply-faced sneer, then handed his backpack over to me. “It’s sorta thrashed, but . . .” His voice trailed off as he gave a shrug. Like, what can I say?
“Thanks. I’ll take good care of it.”
“I wouldn’t notice if you didn’t.” He sat back down in front of his computer. “Not that that’s an invitation to thrash it worse . . .” And we were just starting to leave the dungeon when he asked, “Where you guys going, anyway?”
“Vista Ridge.”
He turned back to his computer. “Dodo safari, huh?”
Cricket spun to face him. “It is not a dodo safari! Dodos are extinct—condors are on their way back from extinction.” She frowned at him. “Just because you’ve given up doesn’t mean I have to.”
Gary was ignoring her, typing like crazy at his keyboard as he muttered, “I wonder what a dodo would be worth. Can you imagine if you had one of those?”
“You don’t live in the real world anymore, Gary.”
He opened one of the dodo bird links that had popped up on his monitor and read, “‘The last known stuffed dodo bird was destroyed in a 1755 fire at a museum in Oxford, England, leaving only partial skeletons and drawings—’”
“Hello . . . ? Gary . . . ? You’re researching dodos? You need to get away from that computer!”
He clicked on a link and said, “You’re not my mom,” as another page flew open.
Cricket’s face went stony for just a second, then she said, “But you know Mom wouldn’t want you living like this! She’d want you to—”
“Time for you to go,” he said.
“But she—”
“GO!”
Cricket grabbed the backpack from me and muttered, “Fine,” and marched out of his bedroom, up the hall, and into her own bedroom, which was not even remotely dungeon-like. It was tidy and sunny and felt like . . .springtime.
Cricket, though, was like a dark cloud, storming around inside it. “Mom would hate that he spends all his time like that. We were always outdoors before. Always together. We used to go up to Vista Ridge all the time—to camp, or just to picnic and watch for condors.” The storm cloud started to cry. “Now he lives on the Internet, Dad is always at work. . . . It’s like the whole family died when she did.”
I felt so helpless. I mean, what can you say to that? And maybe my own home situation isn’t the greatest—I have an absentee mom and an unknown dad—but neither of them’s dead.
Well, maybe my dad is, but from the way my mom and Grams won’t discuss him, I don’t think so.
But anyway. I barely knew this girl, and all of a sudden I’m in her house, borrowing her stuff, finding out all sorts of painful things about her life. And I am feeling totally sorry for her, but I also have a killer urge to get out of there.
“I’m sorry,” she says, flinging tears off her cheeks and trying to smile. “You probably think I’m a total dysfunctional loser.”
“No, I—”
“And now you probably don’t even want to go camping with me.”
“Well, I haven’t even asked my—”
“But tough!” she says, laughing. “You’re coming ’cause I really, really want you to, and I know you’ll have a great time.” She took a deep breath. “Now let’s get you some boots and let’s get packing!”
“I don’t know about boots,” I told
her. “I think I’ll just stick with my high-tops.”
She eyed my feet. “Those are really worn out, and they have no support, Sammy. You’ll feel rocks right through them. If you had some trail shoes or even cross-trainers, you’d be okay. But those?” She looked at me and pulled a face. “You’ll die out there in those.”
So I tried on her backup boots, and they seemed to fit fine. And I could tell what she meant by support. The boots had a tank for a toe and some really serious tread.
“They feel good,” I said with a shrug.
“Great!”
So we moved on to packing, which should have been easier than it was, but there was the whole complication of me not wanting to tell Cricket about my living situation. See, kids aren’t allowed to live in my grams’ apartment building, and if people find out I am, Grams and I’ll both get kicked out. So I had to practically ditch Cricket, then do what I always do—sneak up the fire escape and tiptoe down the hall and into the apartment.
When I told Grams what was going on and that I’d be gone for four days, part of me was hoping she’d say, “No, Samantha. I don’t know these people, it’s too dangerous, you cannot go.”
But another part of me was thinking that if I went camping with Cricket, I’d be able to tell Casey how cool it had been and how I’d seen deer drinking from the rivers and condors swooping through the air.
And a secret, very stupid part of me was thinking that maybe I’d run into Casey while I was camping. I mean, what if he was hiking in the same area? It’d be a blast to hang out a little with him and Billy in the wilderness.
So the smart part of me didn’t really want to go, and the dumb part of me did.
Grams, though, settled the whole thing. “You’re going to see condors?” Her whole face lit up. “That’s wonderful!”
I squinted at her. This was very un-Grams-like, and I don’t know . . . it made me kind of defensive. Normally she worries about everything, and now it was suddenly A-OK that I’d be hiking in the wilderness with strangers?
Wasn’t she worried?
Didn’t she care?
She must have read my mind because she scoffed and said, “They’re Girl Scouts, Samantha. And this is a wonderful opportunity! Why, I would love to see a condor!”
“Since when do you know anything about condors?”
She patted her hair in an oh-so-superior fashion. “If you would watch the local news with me . . .”
I scooped up my cat, Dorito, and flopped into a chair. “Oh, please, Grams.” But then I sat up. “They covered condors?”
Grams nodded. “A few weeks ago Grayson Mann did a series for KSMY.”
“A series?”
“Well. Several two-minute segments spread out over the week. You know how they do.”
I stroked Dorito and grunted.
“He went up to a condor watchtower in a helicopter. It’s probably the same place you’re going. I thought the whole topic was fascinating.”
I gave her a wicked grin and said, “I’ll bet you did,” because anything Grayson Mann reports on she finds fascinating. Not that she has a granny crush on him or anything—she’d better not. He’s only about forty and she’s . . . well, she wouldn’t want me to say. But anyway, I’m sure it’s not him—I think it’s his hair. It’s all feathery and sort of permanently swooped back. Like the wind is his stylist.
Anyway, so Grams had no problem signing the papers. But by the time I’d collected everything I needed, trudged back over to Cricket’s, and had Gary’s backpack fully loaded, it was nine-thirty and I was exhausted. And since we had to be back at Robin’s early in the morning, and since there was no way I wanted to try sneaking into the Senior Highrise with a load of camping gear, the only thing that made sense was for me to spend the night at Cricket’s.
Gary never came out of his room. Not that I saw, anyway. Cricket’s dad came home from work around eight, poked his head in to say hello, then disappeared to his own corner of the house. There were no pets, no sounds, no music . . . but Cricket gave the house life. She chattered about everything and seemed so excited to have me there. Like I was her first sleepover or something.
Finally I said, “Cricket, I’m so tired. Where can I crash?”
“Oh! Right there!” she said, pointing to her bed.
“No way,” I told her. Then I asked, “Is there a couch?” because that’s exactly what I sleep on at home.
“No, really, Sammy. I never use the bed.” She slid her closet door open about two feet, crawled inside, then peeked out at me and smiled. “This is where I sleep!”
At first I thought she was joking, but then I saw that she was totally set up inside her closet. She had a thin mattress that bowed up against the wall and the sliding doors, a sleeping bag, a big flashlight, a small stack of books, an alarm clock, a hugged-to-death stuffed deer, and a bottle of water. The only thing that didn’t seem to belong was a pair of Rollerblades crammed in a corner at the foot of her mattress.
“Wow,” I said, truly amazed. “You really do like camping, don’t you?”
“I even have stars in here. Check it out!”
“Stars?” This I had to see. So I crawled in beside her, and after she closed the door, I could see glow-in-the-dark stars and moons shining faintly from the inside of the door.
“Cool, huh?” she said, opening the door again. “So see? You get the bed.” She grinned. “Sorry.”
So I slept in a bed for the first time in ages. It was a great bed, too, with soft, fluffy covers and pillows and the faint scent of bleach. And flowers . . .
And I was in the middle of having this great dream about floating through the air on a current of puffy white dandelions . . . just drifting up, down, gliding gently through the air . . . when suddenly clingidy-cling-cling-clang Cricket’s alarm blew the closet door open and booted Cricket into the room.
“Huh?” I said, totally disoriented.
Cricket flicked on the light. “Let’s go camping!”
THREE
Cricket’s “troop” turned out to be the most un-Girl-Scoutish group of girls I’d ever seen. Not a patch or merit badge in sight. And their uniform? T-shirts, hiking boots, jeans, ball caps . . . no sashes or vests or, you know, neckerchiefs.
Also, when you think of a Girl Scout troop, you think of a big group. But this troop consisted of Robin’s daughter, Bella—who speaks with very precise diction and has dark curly hair that springs out in all directions—Bella’s best friend, Gabby—who has big ears and a little mouth—and Cricket, and me. That was it. I was one-fourth of a “troop,” and I wasn’t even officially in the group!
We all piled into a well-worn van and were on the road by six-forty-five, with Robin driving, Cricket and me in the seats behind Robin, and Gabby and Bella in the seats behind us. And by the time we’d been on the road about an hour, I knew exactly why Cricket was so excited to have me come along. In this troop of three, she was odd girl out. See, Bella and Gabby are best-friends-forever kind of friends. Bella leads, and Gabby’s the adoring copycatter, agreeing with Bella about everything, sticking up for her about anything.
It got old in a hurry.
And the trouble is, Cricket was trying to act like best-friends-forever with me, which became really embarrassing. She wasn’t being an adoring copycatter, but it was almost worse—she kept telling Gabby and Bella stories about things I’d done to Heather during the year. At first Bella laughed, but then she started getting annoyed, and before long she was rolling her eyes and pulling faces like she flat-out disliked me. Which of course made Gabby do the same.
“Stop it!” I whispered to Cricket for about the fiftieth time. “Don’t say another word!”
If I could have turned around and gone back to the boredom of living in an apartment building with a bunch of old people, believe me, I would have. But I was stuck. And by the time we were bumping along the potholes of a narrow mountain road, I was in a serious frump. How had I let myself get suckered into this?
It wasn
’t just that the people were driving me crazy. It was the scenery. Everything was so brown. So dry. There were no pine trees, no picturesque mountain streams, no twittering wildlife. And the farther up the mountain we climbed, the more it seemed that this “forest” we were in was really just a wasteland of rejects. Like all the plants and animals that hadn’t made the cut for real forests were collected and put into this place. Crows and flies, scrub oaks and dusty dirt, dried grass and tumbleweeds . . . who wants those in their forest?
Not me.
Robin seemed to pick up on my mood because I caught her watching me in the rearview mirror. “So, Sammy,” she called. “Has Cricket told you about the Vista Ridge Lookout project?”
“A little . . .”
“A little? Cricket . . . !” Robin scolded, but she was grinning. “Whatever you’ve been bending her ear about couldn’t have been as important as the Lookout project!”
Cricket blushed.
Robin made a careful turn of the wheel as she negotiated a switchback in the road. “We’ve been helping with the Lookout project for”—she glanced back at Bella and Gabby in the mirror—“how many years, girls?”
“Since fourth grade!” they answered in harmony.
“Since sixth for me,” Cricket said quietly.
Like I cared? I didn’t want to hear about condors or some goody-goody Lookout project. I’d been promised camping, but instead I was trapped with a bunch of condor fanatics who’d probably spend the whole time talking about “environmental issues.”
And any secret hope of running into Casey and Billy was gone. Why would they waste their vacation in this desert of a forest? They were probably someplace with real trees, having a great time actually camping.
“Are you okay, Sammy?” Robin asked. “You look a little green.”
If I’d have been thinking, I’d have said I was sick and had to go home. But I was a moron and said, “I just don’t really get it, that’s all.”
“Get what?”
“Well, how you track condors, for one thing. Is the Lookout like a radio control tower? Like at an airport?”