Ama barely heard the words of the conversation. She sat in a chair by the wall and stared at the nature poster and scratched her head. She felt like a little kid who hadn't learned to talk yet.
After that, Ranger Bob made more phone calls. Ama felt her head begin to droop and her eyelids fall. Her stomach rumbled.
She dreamed of food at first. In her dream she was in the kitchen at Jo's house, and Polly, with flour all over the front of her favorite cowboy shirt, made Ama pans of brownies and sheets of cookies and tins of fudge with chocolate chips and a pink cake with seven layers, but Ama couldn't have any of it.
“I can't afford it,” Ama said, watching in -wonderment as the sweet things burst into flowers, pans of tulips and daisies and crawling pink roses spreading through the kitchen.
“But it's free,” Polly said.
“Ama?” Ranger Bob broke into Amas dream. “It's Maureen, your group leader on the phone. She wants to talk to you.”
Groggy and disoriented, Ama took the phone.
“Maureen?”
“Ama, hon, I am so, so sorry for -what happened today.” Maureen sounded like she was going to cry.
Ama breathed out. “That's okay,” she mumbled.
“No it's not. It's really not. We left the campsite this morning -when it was still dark and we got scattered right away. I didn't see you or your pack, so I figured you'd gone -with the first group. As soon as we stopped for a water break, -we realized you weren't there. Noah and I ran back to find you, but you must have already left.”
Ama nodded, feeling her eyes fill. She should have just stayed where she was at the campsite and waited for them. That had been the obvious thing to do. At the very beginning of the trip, that was what the leaders told them they should do if they ever got lost or separated from the group.
“I feel terrible, Ama. We all do. We've all been -worried sick.”
“That's okay,” Ama said again. Had it really happened just this morning? It seemed so far away.
Ama said good- bye. She was too tired to recount what she had gone through or issue forgiveness.
When she hung up the phone she saw that it was black outside the windows.
“We're going to have you camp here at the station tonight,” Bob explained to her kindly. “That seems to make the most sense. Your group is going to pick you up on the bus in the morning. You'll leave the group at their next trailhead and your group leader, Jared, will drive you on to the airport. Your parents are arranging your flight home. They'll be in touch directly with the group leaders once they have it confirmed.”
Ama nodded. Nobody was asking her opinion about anything, she noticed. Nobody seemed to need her input.
“Why don't I make you something to eat? Are you hungry?”
Bob made her rice and beans from a bag. She was too hungry and too tired to taste it much. Or maybe it didn't have any taste to taste. She wasn't sure.
“My brother's name is Bob,” she told him, by way of dinner conversation.
“Is he Robert?” Bob asked.
“No, just Bob,” Ama said.
Ranger Bob nodded and that was about all they had to say.
After dinner Bob explained that he would be sleeping in a small apartment at the back of the little building, and he showed her -where she should lay her sleeping bag and also -where there -was a bathroom she could use.
It registered -with her that she -was sleeping in a strange place -with a strange man. That -was potentially a cause for concern, but she didn't feel scared. She felt tired and hopeful. She -was going home! She -was getting away from this place. She -would see her family! She -would fix her hair! She pictured the moment of her reunion -with her hair products.
And anyway, she trusted Ranger Bob. He -was a ranger straight out of central casting. He -was tall and deep-voiced and steady. They probably put him in the ads and pamphlets, if they had any. She felt sure he never littered or started forest fires.
Ama yawned and began laying out her sleeping bag. Suddenly she missed her boots. She realized she'd left them by the door, and she felt insecure without them. She lined them up carefully at the foot of her sleeping bag.
As she bid Bob good night and thanked him, she caught sight of the nature poster again.
“Excuse me, Bob.” She pointed to the poster. “Where is that place?”
“That place?” He looked at the poster and looked back at her. “It's here.”
“He did what?” If Jo had wanted to get Bryn's attention, she had definitely succeeded.
Jo switched the phone from one ear to the other. “Yep. He basically had his head down that girl's shirt. I saw them at the Chatterbox.”
“You mean Effie?” Bryn demanded.
“Yes. Effie.” Jo hated her name. As much as she loved saying Zach she hated saying Effie.
“Wow. That sucks.”
“Seriously. Tell me about it.”
“Wait, so tell me exactly what happened. Tell me everything. Was it last night?”
Jo told the story faithfully, but Bryn kept interrupting her -with questions, and Jo got tired of the “exactly” and the “everything” of it pretty quickly. It might have been exciting to hear, but it was painful to tell.
“Wow,” Bryn said again at the end of it. “I thought he really liked you.”
Jo wondered whether she heard sympathy there or -whether it was something else.
She was going to say I thought he did too, but the words brought tears to her eyes and she wondered how much more she wanted to expose herself to Bryn. She was only grateful that she was telling Bryn this over the phone and not in person. She felt self- protective in a way she didn't remember ever feeling -with Polly or Ama. “It's not that bad,” she heard herself saying. “Maybe he's just not into commitments.”
“It's not that bad?” Bryn echoed incredulously. “Zach -was basically making out with another girl, totally forgetting you ever existed, and you say it's not that bad?”
Jo wanted to hang up now. She wondered why she had called Bryn in the first place. What was the point of this exercise? Jo dug deep to find some dignity. “Look, Bryn. His old girlfriend from last summer came back. He was psyched to see her. It's not like we're married or anything. It's not like that makes him an ax murderer.” Jo hoped the tears were not audible in her voice.
“Not as far as we know,” Bryn replied.
Jo would have laughed if she could have. “I'm pretty sure he's just the kind of guy who can't limit himself to one girl. I'm not exactly the poster girl for commitment, you know. I'm not so sure what I'd do if one of my old boyfriends came along.” This was pure fabrication, but it made Jo feel better to say it.
“Well, let me ask you this,” Bryn shot back. “Do you think he feels as bad as you do right now?”
Jo felt a tear ease down her face and drop onto her hand. She knew the answer to this question, but she didn't say it.
Ama awoke in the ranger station. She brushed her teeth and packed up her things, caught sight of her reflection, and cringed. Her night of sleeping like a tortoise had not helped matters with her hair.
She went out to wait on a bench by the road, as Ranger Bob instructed. By eight- thirty, the road was dusty and the sun -was already hot. Amas skin -was beginning to broil, and her hair, grown large and out of control, had begun to catch things. She tried to brush out the dust and debris, but the whole project was hopeless.
It was the wait of shame. For two hours nothing came by. Not even a bug. Ama decided she would have been happy to see an ant.
At last the yellow bus appeared on the horizon like a second sun, a grimmer, dirtier version. She pictured herself as the group on the bus must now see her, -waiting alone on the bench in the -withering sunshine, the lost and confused girl -with very huge hair. It -was hard to imagine feeling any stupider.
In a billow of dust, the bus ground to a stop and the door opened. Maureen, -who -was driving, squeezed Amas hand on the -way in, but otherwise the group -was silent. The noise of Am
as exertions -was magnified in her own ears. She dragged her stuff along, her boots clonking down the narrow center aisle. Her face burned from sun exposure and from shame.
There -was only one open seat and it -was next to Carly. Oh, -well. Ama noisily, gracelessly stowed her stuff and sat down. The bus began moving and she kept her burning face and eyes directly ahead of her.
Suddenly she felt something touch her hands. She looked down to see that Carly had placed something in her lap. She glanced side-ways at Carly and then back down at her lap.
Sitting there, quietly and unobtrusively, -were two brown hair elastics and the mythical travel- sized packet of Kiehl's Creme -with Silk Groom.
“My God, Polly. You've lost weight,” her mother said upon meeting her at the Friendship Heights Metro station on the last day of camp. Dia had -worked late at the studio for the last three nights, so Polly had barely seen her.
“Just one pound since last week,” Polly said.
“Are you sure?”
“I'm sure. You were just used to seeing me,” Polly said. And it was true that you could spend weeks living alongside a person and not see them, especially if you happened to be Polly's mother. Polly had once walked around with pinkeye for four days before Dia noticed. Sometimes it took an absence to make a person look.
“I don't know, honey.” Her mother looked perturbed.
“You shouldn't lose any more weight, all right? You don't look healthy.”
Polly nodded, but she didn't really agree. She was happy, in a way, that her mother had finally noticed. She felt a tiny spark of pride that she was good at losing -weight when her mother struggled and failed at it. It was so rare to be better than a grown- up at something; Polly would take this thing.
Polly's mother put her arm around her as they walked across the parking lot to the car. Polly felt oddly distant and close at the same time.
She realized she hadn't eaten at all that day. She felt empty and small, and she liked that feeling. You spent your whole childhood getting bigger. You spent the whole time getting carried less, getting held less, until it was never. There was a strange pleasure in getting smaller instead of bigger for once, in feeling like you could also go backward if you needed to.
“I'm going to drop you home and go back to the studio, okay?” her mother said.
“Okay. Hey, Dia?”
“Yeah?” Her mother pulled out of the parking lot. She squinted like she had a headache.
“Do you want me to come to the studio with you? I could draw or read. I won't disturb you at all.”
Polly used to do that when she was much younger. She'd had a playpen there when she was a baby and a desk -with all her drawing things later on. She'd had a little cot where she napped sometimes, and where her mother sometimes sketched her -while she slept. The studio had been packed full of sculptures and photographs and wood and clay and piles of things her mother had found on the street, sketches she had taped to the walls, stacks of food, and the odd -withered houseplant.
When Polly -was six Dia had done the sculpture for -which she'd -won a big national award. It -was cast in bronze and put in the plaza in front of a building downtown, -with a plaque in front of it. After that Dia had been asked by a gallery in New York City to show her -work and had been given lots of important commissions.
Over time, her mother had gotten backed up in her -work and had ended up not finishing most of the commissions. She'd postponed her gallery show year after year. Polly often thought Dia had been happier as an unsuccessful artist than she -was as a successful one.
“Oh, Polly.” Her mom took her hand off the steering -wheel to drink her iced coffee, but she kept her eyes on the road. “Not today. I've got to really concentrate today. But soon. Okay?”
They drove quietly through Bethesda and made the turn onto Solomon Street.
“Hey, Dia?”
“Yeah?”
“There's this modeling and talent convention in New York City next month. All the girls at camp -were talking about it. I really -want to go.”
Dia raised her eyebrows but didn't look over. “In New York?”
“It's three nights. The big scouts from all around the country come for it. You have to get accepted, and I might not. But I sent in my application just in case.”
“Let me guess—they accept you so you can pay them hundreds of dollars?” Dia muttered. “Polly you are getting carried away with all this. I don't know what's gotten into you. You're losing -weight and obsessing over all this modeling stuff. You've never been like this before. I don't get it.”
Dia was wrong. Polly had been like this before. She was a girl of serial passions: butterflies, papier- mâché, pirates, the novels of Philip Pullman. She'd had many, just not this one, before.
“I'm just interested in it, okay? I want to see if I could be any good at it.”
Dia pulled the car up in front of the house and turned to Polly. “What's there to be good at? You just stand around trying to look a certain -way. I think there's better use for your talents. I really do.”
Polly picked at the stitching on her seat. “If I get in, I really want to go.”
Dia tapped the steering -wheel. Polly knew she was eager to get going. “It would be expensive. Someone would need to go with you. No, Polly. I don't see how it would -work.”
“Please, Dia?”
Her mother let out her breath. “I don't think it's a good idea.”
But she didn't say no, and Polly got out of the car, shut the door, and strode up the walk -with her hopes undimin-ished.
Because Dia was tired. Not just for today, but for all the days. Because sticking to no took a lot more energy than saying yes. That was the factor Polly counted on again and again. Because her mother had little -will, and Polly had almost nothing else.
The campsite had a sense of calm the next evening. Ama herself felt subdued as she -worked alongside her group members. They had gotten so efficient at dividing up jobs and assembling dinner that they hardly needed to talk. The pasta -with tomato sauce tasted uncommonly good. Now that Ama knew she -was leaving, she felt she could relax. When Noah tried to steal her chocolate chip cookie, she laughed and fought back. She played along a little, even though he -was kind of a jerk.
After dinner, Ama felt quiet and thoughtful. She -wandered to the edge of the campsite and perched on a smooth rock overlooking the valley below. The sky -was rippled with bands of pink and orange as the round red sun dipped into the mountains. It seemed to her the first sunset she'd seen in a long time.
When Polly had mentioned Pony Hill to her on the phone, it had seemed like a joke to Ama, and it had filled her -with indignation. Was it even called Pony Hill? Was that its official name, or -was that just what they called it? Even so, she kept thinking about it. She pulled her sleeves over her hands for -warmth and tried to remember -what she had loved about it.
She had liked running down it, feeling her body getting ahead of her legs, her legs moving more by gravity than effort, feeling a little bit out of control. When they used to visit their trees after school they would always arrive at the top of the hill and look down at the little woods below. You had to run down Pony Hill to get to the trees. It was too steep to walk. Sometimes she and Jo and Polly would hold hands and go as fast as they could, pulling each other and screaming. Sometimes they made it to the bottom still standing on their legs, but more often they ended up rolling down the last part of it. She remembered picking bits of grass and dried leaves out of her pants and shirt and socks and hair. Sometimes they rolled on their sides from the top to the bottom, trying to keep their legs straight and their arms tightly at their sides but usually unraveling along the way. In -winter when there was snow, they slid to the bottom on the backs of their down jackets, usually headfirst. On -weekends they brought out Jo's sled.
Ama had loved how fast you could go. She loved the feeling it gave you in the bottom of your stomach. And the grass -was soft or the snow -was soft, so you never hurt yourself. She'd
liked the view from the top of the hill. She'd liked trying to pick out their trees in the -woods beyond, even though you couldn't really see them from up there.
Ama put her chin on her hand and felt her joints softening a little. It seemed to her she'd felt differently in her body back then. She'd lived in more of it. She -was closer to the ground then.
She also remembered the particular kind of tiredness you got from being outside all day. It -was a nice kind of tiredness, languid rather than grumpy. She had that feeling now.
The sun dipped behind the mountains and the valley glowed a beautiful color. Ama thought she recognized it from the poster.
She opted to sleep outside the tent that night. She -wasn't sure -why.
“I -won't bring anybody in the tent. I swear,” Carly pledged.
Ama laughed in spite of herself. “Thanks. But I just feel like being in the open tonight.”
While she lay there, her ears tuned in to the many noises. There was the occasional snap of the fire dying yards away. There was the light wind blowing and rustling against every kind of thing. Most of all, there were the birds. There were many kinds of birds, and probably owls among them. There was a keening sound that could have come from a bird or a coyote or even a wolf. She expected her nerves to begin to coil, but they didn't. Her limbs felt heavy and loose, like they were sinking into the ground. She wasn't in a mood to be fearful, for some reason. She'd made it this far -without being eaten by a wolf; she'd probably make it another night.
Who are you and what have you done with Ama? That was how Jo used to tease her -when she acted in some way that was unexpected. It had been a long time since Ama had surprised herself.
She relaxed into the layers and layers of bird sounds. As she grew sleepy they stirred a memory even older than rolling down Pony Hill. The sounds stirred a deep- down feeling of Kumasi, where her memory existed in bits: images and sounds and smells rather than full scenes. The bird sounds were different there, but she did think of them. She thought of rough, squawky birds and delicate, -whistling birds that stood and cried to her from the mango tree outside the front door. She thought of the birds that had settled in the courtyard -where she used to play and how sometimes at a loud sound, like a blasting car horn, they'd all rise and fly away together. Ama pictured herself playing on a blanket on the grass and looking up and seeing the cloud of them against the bright sky.