So Cricket faced off with Bella. “Quit being like that! Talk about embarrassing!”
“Oh, and you’re not? You’re hot for Quinn just like Gabby! You think no one can tell?” She gathered a huge load of wood in her arms and muttered, “You’re all idiots.”
For the next hour, we hauled the wood back to camp in silence, replaced missing boulders in the fire ring in silence, and got a fire going. In silence.
Then after we’d dug a latrine behind some bushes, we walked about a quarter of a mile to a spring and filled our canteens with water. It looked like clean, fresh water, but we still had to purify it, because in the wonderful Phony Forest there are even bugs in the water. They may be microscopic, but they can make you really sick.
Anyway, after that we boiled a pot of water and ate rehydrated Chicken à la King Noodle Dinner with rehydrated bread pudding for dessert. Everything we did seemed to take forever to do, so by the time we finally sat down to eat, it was seven o’clock and I was famished.
Now, it’s hard to say if something’s tasty or gross when you’re inhaling it, but I can tell you that I was looking around for seconds and there weren’t any.
Through all this, Gabby was weepy, and Bella was Mute Girl to everyone but her mother. And even though Robin tried to get them to make up, Bella’d have none of it, so the tension at dinner was thicker than rehydrated pudding. And then, as we were washing the dishes, a sharp sound cracked through the canyon like a whip, the echoes slapping one side, then the other. And before the echoes had even died out, it happened again.
My heart froze for a second because there was no doubt in my mind what it was.
Gunshots.
Now, I don’t know if my fear of guns comes from just not knowing anything about them or from the times I’ve had one stuck in my face.
Probably more to do with having them stuck in my face.
But according to Grams, her father used his rifle to bring dinner home from the wilderness. “It’s a way of life, Samantha. When you’ve done something your whole life, you don’t think it’s cruel or revolting or heart-wrenching. You don’t analyze it. You just do it.”
I said something about her eating Bambi and Thumper as a girl, but she just harrumphed and said, “And now you eat Bessie and Nemo, only you won’t look them in the eye.”
I didn’t touch any kind of meat for a month after that.
But anyway, standing there in camp, I don’t know what unnerved me more—the cracking sound of a gun echoing through the canyon or the chilling silence afterward. Every creature seemed to be holding its breath, every plant held stock-still. Even the air had stopped moving.
I choked out, “Is it hunting season?” and I was trying to be calm and reasonable, but this whole place, this whole Phony Forest, felt like one of those computer games where when you finally master one level, you get moved to the next level, where new and deadlier things try to kill you.
Robin shook her head. “There’s not supposed to be hunting of any kind here. It’s a restricted area because of the condors.”
We were all uneasy for a little while. But the shots had been a long ways off, and since we were safely up at the Lookout, why worry? Before long Gabby and Bella went back to feuding, and Cricket and I finished the dishes and stored all our food in the Lookout so Creatures of the Phony Forest Night couldn’t get it.
Robin tried to mend the fence between Bella and Gabby by bringing out a receiving gizmo that tracked condors, but Bella just stormed down the Lookout stairs saying, “I’m not falling for that, Mom!”
Robin handed the receiver to Gabby. “Why don’t you show Sammy how it works? I’ll have a talk with Bella.”
So Gabby took it and folded out the receiver, transforming it into something that looked like an old-fashioned TV antenna, only smaller and flatter. She plugged a cable from the antenna into a power pack, slung the power pack over her shoulder, and started scanning the skies with the antenna for a signal.
“What are we listening for?” I finally asked, because it didn’t seem to be picking up anything.
“A beep-beep-beep,” Cricket whispered.
“Or a loud clicking,” Gabby said, playing with the power pack controls. “Which would mean it’s really close.”
But after a while of hearing no beeps or clicks, Cricket grabbed me by the arm and whispered, “Let’s go.”
So we left Gabby to scan the dusky skies alone while I learned how to brush my teeth using only about two tablespoons of water and how to set things up for the night—flashlight and boots at the ready, tomorrow’s clothes in the sleeping bag to preheat against the chill of morning, today’s clothes in the sleeping bag stuff sack to use as a pillow.
“We’ll air out today’s clothes tomorrow and keep rotating them,” she told me. “Sleep only in your tank top and undies. No socks, no sweatshirt, no—”
“What if I have to get up in the middle of the night? What if bears attack?”
Then I remembered that we were in the Phony Forest.
Scorpions, yes.
Bears, not likely.
Cricket chuckled. “Look, you can wear your gym shorts if you want to, but not much more. You’ll overheat.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “That bag’s rated to subzero, and it won’t get anywhere close to that tonight.”
So we got ourselves into bed, but we didn’t go to sleep. First we listened to Bella stomping around, saying stuff like, “There’s no way I’m sleeping in the same tent as her, Mom! I’d rather sleep outside and get attacked by coyotes!”
“Coyotes attack people?” I whispered.
“Bella’s just trying to worm her way into her mother’s tent.”
Bella shouted, “I’d rather die the slow, painful death of a hundred scorpion stings than sleep in the same tent as her!”
“Oh, Bella,” Robin said with obvious fatigue. “There are no scorpions up here.”
“There are, too!”
Bella kept at it, and finally Robin gave up. “Just get in here and get to bed. I’ve got a splitting headache and need some sleep!” Then she called, “I’m sorry, Gabby. I think we’re all just exhausted. Everything will be better in the morning!”
Cricket whispered, “I don’t know why Bella’s being so bratty.”
“Do you think she’s jealous of Quinn?” I asked. “Maybe she’s used to getting all Gabby’s attention and now some of it’s going to Quinn?”
I guess I forgot to whisper, because Bella shouted, “I’M NOT JEALOUS OF QUINN!”
I looked at Cricket like, Wow, and she nodded and whispered, “Voices carry.”
“She’s right, Bella!” Gabby shouted. “You’re just JEALOUS!”
“YOU’RE AN IDIOT!” Bella shouted back.
“BOTH OF YOU STOP IT!” Robin screamed. “I NEED SOME SLEEP!”
Cricket covered her mouth, trying to stifle a giggle, then whispered, “I shouldn’t think it’s funny, but I do. Normally I’m the one who’s left out.” She smiled at me. “I’m glad you came. I hope it hasn’t been too much torture.” Then she pointed up at the sky through the screen. “Look at the stars.”
You always hear about the billions of stars in the sky, but only a few of them seem to shine down on Santa Martina. For one thing, there’s a lot of fog at night. But also I guess just being in a city with electricity stops you from really noticing them. Oh, you see stars, and on a clear night you see what seems like a lot of stars, but looking through the tent screen, I realized that what I’d seen in Santa Martina was barely a twinkle in the huge night light of the galaxy.
“Wow . . . !” I said, and it came out all breathy and awestruck.
“This is why I go camping,” Cricket whispered. “My mom loved this place.” Then she added, “My family used to come up here a lot, but they don’t want to now without my mom.”
I snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag and looked up at the sky. “I’m sure she’d be glad to know you still come,” I said softly. And after a long
quiet time of just gazing at the stars, my eyes began to close. The cool breeze was so nice on my face. The warm bag so cozy around me. And the truth is, I was exhausted.
And I was almost asleep when Cricket whispered, “Good night, Mom.”
At first I thought she’d forgotten it was me in the tent, but when I opened my eyes, she was still gazing up at the stars.
EIGHT
I did not want to get up in the morning. I’d taken a quick little 2 a.m. trip to the bushes and knew—it was chilly outside! So Cricket and I stayed in our bags and played a few hands of rummy with the mini-deck of cards she’d packed, and I discovered that not only is Cricket not quiet, she’s a poker-faced shark! That girl remembers every card that’s been played, and she’s ruthless.
So she was having a great time, and even though she was chewing me up and spitting me out, I was having a great time, too. I could have sat in the tent playing cards all day. But Bella was outside getting the fire going, and Cricket started feeling guilty. “We should probably go help.”
I felt like saying, “Aw, do we have to?” but I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to whine about anything anymore. So instead I said, “Sure,” and pulled on the army pants that Cricket had lent me.
Robin was talking quietly with Bella when we emerged from the tent, and when she saw us coming their way, she seemed to give Bella some final advice, then headed up to the Lookout calling, “Good morning, girls! I’m going to see if I can catch some flight activity. Let me know when the water’s hot!”
We waved, and Cricket called, “Tell us if you get any signals. I want to show Sammy!”
“Will do!”
When we reached Bella, she grumbled, “Sorry about last night. I was a jerk and I know it and I’m sorry.”
I was pretty impressed. I mean, she had been a jerk, but that’s not an easy thing for anyone to admit. It’s a whole lot easier to just go on being a jerk and blame other people for the way you act.
I know all about that.
Anyway, Cricket sort of grinned and said, “But the real question is, are you an idiot?”
Bella gave her a tired smile. “Yeah, I’m an idiot. I’m a huge idiot.” Then her eyes came to life and her smile got brighter. “Just not about boys like some people.”
Cricket and I both laughed, and then Cricket lowered her voice and asked Bella, “Have you talked to Gabby yet?”
Bella shook her head. “I started to, but she’s still asleep.”
Cricket whispered, “She can’t still be asleep. She probably just doesn’t want to come out. You should go in and talk to her!”
Bella looked over at Gabby’s tent. “Will you guys get the water going?”
We both nodded. “Sure.”
So we grabbed the pail and headed off toward the spring, only we’d barely made it through camp when Robin came onto the Lookout deck and called, “Do any of you know where the receiver is? I thought I left it on the desk last night.”
But before we could answer, Bella comes scrambling out of the tent, crying, “She’s gone! Mom! Gabby’s gone!”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“She stuffed her sleeping bag to make it look like she’s here, but her boots are gone, her flashlight’s gone . . . she’s gone!”
“Calm down, calm down,” Robin said, walking toward the tent. “Maybe she’s out taking care of business,” which is Robin-speak for going pee.
“Why would she stuff her sleeping bag? Why would she take her flashlight? She’s been gone since before daybreak!”
Robin checked out the tent, and when she emerged, she looked very sober. “Gabby!” she called. “Gabrielle!”
So we all started calling, “Gabby!” and after searching around the latrine and the spring and everywhere else in the general vicinity, Bella, Cricket, and I went to the rocks and shouted, “GABBY,” into the canyon.
No response.
We did it again and again, but all we got back was the lonely echo of the canyon.
“Where did she go?” Bella wailed. “Do you think she started walking home?”
I shook my head. “I think she’s out tracking down a condor.”
Bella turned to face me. “You can’t just hike into the canyon and find a condor!”
I shrugged. It didn’t seem so crazy to me. “She knows about where they are, right?”
Cricket cut in, saying, “She’s talking about AC-34 and JC-10, Bella. Gabby knows they roost in the Chumash Caves area.”
“That place is huge!”
“Not if you have the receiver,” I said.
Bella’s eyes bugged, and without a word to us, she charged off the rocks shouting, “Mom! Mom! Gabby’s got the receiver! Mom!”
Robin didn’t want to believe that Gabby had actually taken off to track down a condor, braving scorpions and ticks and rattlesnakes and coyotes—not to mention scarce and buggy water. “But why?” she finally asked. “It makes a lot more sense that she started for home.”
“Tell her,” Cricket whispered to Bella, but Bella just stood there. So we both said, “Tell her!”
“Bel-la,” her mother warned.
So Bella looked down and mumbled, “I told her that she didn’t care about condors, that she only cared about Quinn, and that she was a good-for-nothing tagalong who didn’t know two half hitches from a square knot.”
“Bella!” Robin’s faced morphed from shock through disbelief clear over to anger. “You of all people should know what it’s like to have cruel things thrown in your face! Gabrielle adores you. You’re the sibling she never had. The one she looks up to, the one she admires. How could you be so cruel?”
Bella started crying. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry! She was just being so stupid about Quinn, and I thought—”
“You thought you could manipulate her into submission by cutting her down? Doesn’t this remind you of somebody?”
“I’m so, so sorry!” Bella wailed.
Robin held the sides of her head. “Well, what are we going to do? We have to go after her. She can’t be out there alone. What if she gets bitten by a rattlesnake? What if she gets lost? What if she runs out of water?”
“She’s a good Scout,” Cricket said, trying to be reassuring. But her eyes were kind of watery, and the way she said it was more like, She was a good Scout.
Like she was reading her epitaph.
Robin’s hands moved around to cover her face as she muttered, “Why did Quinn have to take the radio?” She took a deep breath and held it for a long time, then finally dropped her hands, let out the breath, and said, “Okay. The best scenario is for us to all go after Gabby together”—she turned to me—“but Sammy, I’m afraid your blisters would prevent you from keeping up. So”—she took another deep breath—“Sammy and Cricket, you stay here while Bella and I try to track Gabrielle down. Quinn said he’d be back this morning, but I don’t want to wait around. When he does show up, though, tell him what’s happened and get him to drive out to the caves, keeping his eye out for us and Gabby. Hopefully he’ll be able to give us all a ride back to camp.”
“What if Quinn doesn’t show up at all?” I asked. “Can you make it out to the caves and back in one day?”
“One very long day, yes.” She turned to Bella. “We’re going to have to hustle. Get your daypack. Bring water, purifying tablets, enough food for the whole day, matches, and your emergency kit.” She started for her tent. “I’ll do the same.”
It took them all of seven minutes to get ready. And as they hurried down the back road, Cricket and I were both feeling really left out. Really helpless.
I hate feeling helpless. I’d rather be angry or hurt or tortured.
Anything but helpless.
Bella waved as they started running down the back road. “See you soon, I hope!”
“Call us on the echo phone if you need anything!” Cricket shouted.
Bella laughed and waved. “Will do!”
After they were out of sight, Cricket and I t
ried to be useful. We cleaned up camp, gathered firewood, aired out everyone’s clothes and sleeping bags, and hiked to the spring for water. Cricket kept checking her watch, and finally she said what I knew she’d been thinking: “I wish we could have gone with them.”
“You should’ve just gone.”
“No way! This is your first time camping and it’s against the rules.”
I rolled my eyes.
“It’s a good rule, Sammy. The buddy system is not something you play around with. Besides, someone had to stay behind to tell Quinn. He’s our real hope of finding her.”
We’d done everything we could think to do, so we went up to the Lookout and used the high-powered binoculars to scout the area for Quinn’s red truck.
No sign of it anywhere.
“What does he do all day, anyway?” I asked.
I meant that as where-else-might-he-be, but Cricket lowered the binoculars and said, “You wouldn’t believe all the things he does! He coordinates everything around here.”
Everything?
I looked around at the craggy nothingness of the Phony Forest. So far, I was not impressed.
But Cricket was just warming up. “He’s a zone biologist, and he’s made lists of the birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that live in this biome. He can tell all about any animal up here! He knows the phylum and genus and species and”—she laughed—“and whatever else zone biologists know.”
“But what good does that do? Why not just let the bugs and snakes live happily ever after? Why make lists and categorize them?” I squinted at her. “And who pays him to do this?”
“The more you study something, the better you understand it, the more you can protect it from human interference.” Then she added, “And the government pays him. He got a grant.”
“But I still don’t get it. Why not just not come up here? Wouldn’t the best thing be to leave everything alone?”
She shrugged. “People are going to come. People like to camp and backpack and be part of nature. We are part of nature. What Quinn does helps people understand how to share the forest with the rest of nature.” All of a sudden she got really excited. “See? Not knowing how to share the forest with the rest of nature is exactly how humans drove condors to near extinction. It’s a perfect example! That’s why Quinn makes lists! To protect the biggest and littlest creatures of the forest.”