“If I could bottle a cool night breeze for keeping forever, I would,” Molly sighed.
Sometimes Mal wished she felt the same way as the other girls seemed to feel about doing dangerous stuff like this. Sometimes when everyone else was getting all excited, she just felt nervous, or weird. Not that there was anything wrong with weird. I mean, Mal was fine with weird. Mal knew that most of the best people out in the world were weird.
Just . . .
Why did everything have to be weird and kind of life-threatening?
Mal looked out into the deep, dark woods. “Seriously, though. Is it me,” she queried, “or are we always doing stuff like this? Like vaguely scary kind of crazy stuff.”
“At least this time we’re planning to do weird crazy stuff,” Molly said, “instead of doing something crazy because we’re being chased by something or because we fell into something or because someone is being held hostage by a god and needs to get saved.”
“This time,” Mal muttered.
“This time,” Molly agreed, lightly swatting a mosquito away from Bubbles, who was snoring a bit on her head.
Mal poked at the rip in her jeans.
“Hey,” Molly said, “we’re all in this together no matter what. Right? As long as we’re all together, it’s going to be okay.”
Mal stood up and stretched. “Fine,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m going to get a pre-bedtime pastry.”
CHAPTER 15
Mal wandered back to the mess hall, where the stash of muffins could be found in the secret fridge behind the regular fridge, as anyone who has ever done KP (which is kitchen cleanup) knows.
As she passed Zodiac cabin, Wren, the only member of the cabin still sitting on the steps, stopped playing her accordion, which let out a final soft weeeeeze. Wren blew the purple hair out of her eyes. Wren’s fingers were covered in rings she had made for her May the Forge Be with You metalsmithing badge. Mal noticed she was also wearing a vintage Le Tigre T-shirt, which, you know, good band.
“Hey!” Wren called. “You play music, right?”
For a bunch of reasons that were both kind of obvious and weirdly unobvious, Zodiac and Roanoke cabin didn’t always get along. Although Barney was a Zodiac, and everyone at Roanoke loved Barney. Mostly, though, Zodiac were still mad because of the small matter of Diane, who was once a member of Zodiac and also, possibly, a Roman goddess and who was involved in a mystery that Roanoke kind of solved, which also resulted in getting Diane kicked out of camp for a bit.
Mal paused. Then nodded. Twisting one of the rings in her ear, she replied, chill, “You guys were playing really good.”
Wren sighed, dropping her chin on her accordion. “We kind of suck.”
“What the Cyndi Lauper? You guys are totally great!”
Wren held up the accordion. “Well, we have an extra if you want to play with us.”
Mal pointed at herself, dubious. “Play with me?”
Wren frowned. “We need someone who can read sheet music. Hes is the only other one who can, and she’s not really into it . . . Can you? Read sheet music?”
“Oh yeah, totally. My mom and my grandma are musicians. My grandma is a flutist, and she taught me when I was little.”
“Can you play the accordion?” Wren’s accordion was bright red with flames painted along the sides, and shiny black keys and buttons.
Mal grinned. “No,” she said, “but I play the guitar, the tuba, the clarinet, the drums, the violin, the piano, and the flute, obv, so . . . how hard can it be?”
Wren rolled her eyes. What was it with Roanoke being good at doing, like, so many things?
“Okay,” she said, standing and putting her accordion back in its case. “We’re practicing tomorrow night before dinner.”
“Excellent,” Mal said, in a voice that only thinly disguised her total and utter excitement. It would be so great to play something again. It was kind of weird not playing music for so long, really, because that was pretty much all she did back home.
Even when she was a little kid, she would go to her grandma’s house every day and practice the flute while her grandma fought with her cats over stolen socks.
Maybe Zodiac would start a Lumberjane band! Maybe she and Molly could be IN the band! Or Roanoke could start a band, in between adventures . . .
Mal waved good-bye and trotted back to the cabin. Because sometimes when you get a really awesome idea in your head, other ideas like muffins get shoved out your ear.
That night, in Roanoke cabin, after teeth were brushed and all the flashlights were out, everyone dreamed.
Technically, everyone dreams every night, but sometimes those dreams are particularly awesome.
Molly dreamed about Bearwoman, stalking through the woods.
Jo dreamed about the basic mechanics of pulleys.
Ripley dreamed about unicorns.
Mal dreamed about making kick-butt music for a roaring crowd of screaming fans.
When April, who was up long after everyone else, finally fell asleep, she dreamed about the mountain.
GET ON UP BADGE
“Summit in the air”
All Lumberjanes aspire to achieve great heights, and mountain climbing is just one way to access high places. As mountain climbers, Lumberjane scouts must use their knowledge of knots, ropes, and the basics of gravity to surmount the mountain face. Like any endeavor, tackling a mountain of any size—even traversing a molehill—requires planning, careful footwork, and, above all, teamwork.
Mountain climbing teaches Lumberjane scouts the importance of concentration, application, and caution. Note that at the summit of every mountain, a Lumberjane must remember that what goes up . . .
CHAPTER 16
The Lumberjanes have a long and proud herstory of adventuring, as well as peril, mystery, and encounters—wrestling matches with the seemingly impossible.
Encountering and accepting the challenge of the impossible are pretty much what Lumberjanes do. They are reckless and brave.
Which is to say, being a Lumberjane is always a little bit about destiny.
Lumberjanes know well that tickly, cold, big-punch feeling of destiny, like a big bite of ice cream, except it’s a big bite of ice cream to the heart.
The next day, April woke up and bounced out of bed like a gymnast springing off a vault.
As her fellow Lumberjanes slumbered, April watched the sky turn from nighttime purple to morning yellow and blue. Of course, Jen was already up and out getting stuff done, because Jen was up even before the sun crept up over the horizon. Today, Jen had her camp counselors meeting, which was so super early it wasn’t even a morning meeting, it was a dawn meeting.
It was going to be a perfect day, April thought. She could feel it in all her bones: the little bones in her feet and her fingers, the Lego blocks of her spine, everywhere.
April stood on her bunk and reached up to give Jo, whose bunk was above April’s, a poke in the shoulder. “Hey!” she whispered loudly. “Jo? Jo! You awake?”
“Clearly not,” Jo said, face down in her pillow. The cover of the thick book Jo was currently reading, about molecules and other small things, peeked out from under her pillowcase.
“Okay, well.” April rested her chin next to Jo’s pillow. “You’re going to wake up soon, right? Because when you get up, we can get the show on the ROAD.”
“Mmmmhmmm.” Jo pulled her covers up tighter. At home, Jo’s dads had invented an alarm clock for her that woke her up by quizzing her on basic quantum physics.
April was much louder and more persistent than this alarm clock.
Also, April did not have a snooze button.
“Okay, so,” April said, jumping down to the cabin floor, “we’ve got to make our bunks, go for breakfast, get snacks. So that’s maybe thirty minutes. Which means we’ll have plenty of time if we can all RISE AND SHINE IN THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES!”
“WHA?!” Jolted awake, Mal sat bolt upright in bed, her one awake and open eye staring at April. “Wh
at time is it? What’s happening?”
April had already tossed on her shorts and a crisp, clean shirt and was slipping on her shoes. “It’s time to wake up!”
Jo stepped down from her bunk, finding a path on the floor that wasn’t covered by yesterday’s sweatshirts and sweaters and socks and . . . oh, a granola bar.
Taped to the door, in Jen’s impeccable handwriting, was a list of things “FOR ROANOKE TO DO” for the day.
Jo grabbed the list off the door. “Hey, we’ve got a lot of stuff to do today,” she said. “I’m guessing cleaning up the cabin is one of them aaaaaaand . . .Yes it is, item #42, ‘Clean Cabin.’”
April grabbed the list and shoved it in her pocket. “We can do it when we get back,” she said, quick quick. “Plenty of time. No problem.”
“All fifty-three items?” Jo queried. “Oookay.” She went back to her bunk to get dressed. Jo’s clothes were not among the piles of clothes on the floor. Her khakis were neatly folded in her drawer.
Ripley’s clothes were all over the floor.
“Mmph,” Ripley slithered out of bed, crept across the floor like a caterpillar, and twisted into the T-shirt lying on the floor next to her bunk. After a few minutes of wriggling, her head emerged through the neck hole. POP! “Pants. Socks. Breakfast,” she murmured. “Doughnut.”
Bubbles the raccoon was still curled up in Molly’s morning hair, which looked like an artful blonde bird’s nest. “Ooooo. Definitely doughnut.” Molly yawned, stretching in the coziness of her sleeping bag, which she was pretty sure was the coziest thing in the universe. “Has anyone seen my socks?”
Outside, the horn section of the Lumberjanes’ get-out-of-bed brass ensemble blasted the opening bars of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation.”
“Look at them,” Wren grumbled, peering through the window of Zodiac cabin as Roanoke marched to breakfast. “Do they even SLEEP?”
Roanoke was the first cabin in line. Roanoke was in line before there even WAS a line of scouts waiting for breakfast. Breakfast was not doughnuts but a healthy meal of muesli, bananas, and fresh-squeezed orange juice, prepared by the scouts of Roswell cabin, working on their Sound of Muesli badge.
Mal stepped up and grabbed her bowl off the counter.
“Is it me,” she mused, “or is there a badge for every culinary occasion?”
“It’s not you,” Molly said. “I’m getting my S’more the Merrier badge next week.”
“Barney told me they’re getting their Gourmet It Over With badge! They’re making FONDUE!” Ripley cheered.
April was so excited she could barely think about food.
The camp counselors were all sitting at a table in the corner, already knee-deep in their Counselor Brainstorm Session, which is basically the meeting where counselors talk about stuff the campers are doing and what to do about it. Also it’s the meeting for figuring out who has what duties, like moose stall maintenance and KP. The counselors were all in their green and yellow uniforms, their little green berets all perched perfectly on their different-shaped heads.
Maddy, the counselor for Woolpit cabin, had just finished discussing the upcoming volleyball tournament, which the members of Woolpit, who were all really into sports, were hoping to totally and completely DESTROY. Jen was at the head of the table, taking minutes. Which was something she liked doing. Jen particularly liked the part where she got to say, “Let’s bring this meeting to order!”
At Roanoke’s table, April was bringing breakfast to order, which meant making sure everyone ate a lot and very fast.
“All righty!” April shoveled two giant spoonfuls of grains into her mouth, chewing speedily. “Let munching commence posthaste!”
“Jeez, April,” Mal groaned, “how about letting a girl finish her orange juice?!”
“No time!”
Ripley pushed a few extra spoonfuls of muesli into her cheeks. Bubbles jumped off Molly’s head and did the same.
Jo finished her juice and slipped a few bananas into her pack.
Molly munched her muesli and wondered what Bear-woman ate for breakfast. Maybe fish?
The day was already getting away from them! April thought. She jumped up from the table and started ushering everyone out. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Rosie, carrying a giant sack of who knows what, was stomping in just as the scouts of Roanoke were charging out the door.
“In a rush?” Rosie inquired, dropping the sack on the ground with a giant THUMP. She peered down at Ripley’s bulging cheeks. “Storing up for winter?”
“MUFLI!” Ripley pointed to her cheeks.
Bubbles gave a muffled squeak.
“Just eager to get out and revel in the beauty of the great outdoors,” April gushed, wrapping her arms around Ripley.
“Excellent!” Rosie said, picking up her bumpy-looking sack and resuming her path into the mess hall.
“Is it me,” Jo wondered aloud, “or is Rosie always carrying something that is just a little mysterious?”
Jen didn’t notice the scouts of Roanoke come or go in the mess hall, in part because they came and went so fast and in part because as they were leaving, Jen was knocking on the table and calling out, “Let’s bring this meeting to order!”
“Jeez,” Marcie, the head counselor of Dighton cabin, fumed, “we’ve come to order four times in the last ten minutes. Can we get a move on?”
Standing outside Roanoke cabin, April was ready to move. While everyone else got their bags, she paced. The buzz she had from this morning was all over her body now: She could feel it in her nose and her hair and her toes and her small intestine. It was excitement! It was time! April jogged in place, her pack bouncing. “Onward!”
Ripley and Bubbles were the first to bounce out the door. They jumped in the air in a tandem starfish formation.
“UNICORN!” Ripley cheered.
“SQUEAK!” Bubbles squeaked.
“WE’RE OFF!” April hollered.
And so they were.
CHAPTER 17
Finding a herd of unicorns the second time around required a bit of fancy footwork and retracing of steps, which was tricky because, as Jo noted, unicorns don’t leave footprints.
“Isn’t it hoofprints?” Molly asked, as they made their way through the first round of trees and forest, following the map from the flora and fauna guide.
“Maybe it’s tracks,” Molly continued, as they carefully stepped across the Babbling Brook, balancing on the few stones poking above the water’s surface. “Unicorns have tracks, right?”
Mal cautiously stepped over a bit of brush, still keeping an eye out for vines and other possible predators, of which there could be infinite numbers just waiting for an ambush.
You really never knew.
Molly listened to the crunch of the forest floor under her feet. Nature’s carpet, she thought. She imagined having big paws and feeling her claws dig into the damp forest floor as she ran.
Just then, Molly felt a small tug on her foot. Dropping down on one knee, she thought she saw, just for a second, a tiny green sliver twisting through the pine needles on the ground. But it was only for a second.
“Molly?” Mal stopped and looked back, pushing her black hair out of her face. “You okay?”
“Yep,” Molly called forward. She stood and jogged up to Mal. It was probably nothing, she thought. Bubbles, waking from a brief nap on Molly’s head, chirped excitedly, and bounced off to chase after a butterfly.
“Don’t get lost,” Molly called.
“The forest smells so lusciously foresty today,” Ripley said, twirling after Bubbles.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Jo noted.
“Hey,” Mal said, once Molly caught up, “guess who got invited to play accordion with Zodiac cabin?”
“You?” Molly guessed.
“Yeah! I haven’t played anything in so long. I hope I don’t suck.” Mal was practically hopping, she was so excited. Maybe she could play one of the songs she wrote back home? Molly wou
ld love it. Hey, it could be a surprise!
“You’re going to be awesome! What are you talking about?” Molly pushed her hands into her pockets. “So. I mean, you’ll be practicing a lot with Zodiac, then?”
Mal nodded vigorously. “I mean, I’m in a band at home, right? We practice all the time. I mean, that’s practically all I do at home. My mom always says you gotta practice if you want to get good. Before she was in a band, she played guitar since she was, like, six. Which SHE did because my grandma was obsessed with practicing. She practiced like eighty hours a week or something!”
Molly bit her lip. It was dumb, obviously, to feel a little bit jealous about someone you cared a lot about finding something they liked a lot that wasn’t something you were going to do together.
She shook her head, trying to shake loose whatever thought was hitting the bottom of her stomach. It was silly.
“Hey,” Molly said, kind of quietly, like just above the sound of the crunch of their feet on the ground, “do you ever think of the ground in the woods as nature’s carpet?”
Mal was already thinking about accordion band names. “Hey, we’ll be back in time for my practice before dinner, right? I mean, we can’t be gone all day and all night, right?”
“Sure,” Molly said quietly. As she stepped forward, the small green thread, slightly vine looking, clung to the heel of her sneaker.
CHAPTER 18
April forged ahead, eyes, shining like high beams of determination.
A day with a plan was always a good day. The feeling of possibility was invigorating, like the few cups of coffee she’d tried over the past year: a jolt to the brain.
The night before, lying on her bunk, while everyone else was snoring, April sketched the mountain, from memory, into her notebook, currently tucked in her back pocket.
Because it was from memory, it wasn’t a very detailed sketch. Mostly it was just a jagged line going up, then a little bit down, then up and up and up into the clouds, then down the other side. All around the mountain, she drew little stars (and a few unicorns for good measure).