I lifted my left foot onto my right thigh and started peeling off the old moleskin. “I’ll patch them up, don’t worry.”
“Quinn’ll come,” she said softly. “Quinn’ll find us and give us all a ride back to camp.”
I cocked my head at her. “Is that what you want? For Quinn to rescue us? Because you know what? I think I’d rather walk.”
Her eyes popped wide. “Why in the world do you say that?”
I grimaced as I pulled off the bottom doughnut of moleskin. “He bugs me.”
“You’re kidding!” Then she snorted and said, “Well, at least you’re not falling all over him like someone we know.”
I snorted back. “Someone who’s probably hoping Quinn’ll rescue her, too.”
Cricket gasped. Like the thought had never even occurred to her. “Do you think that’s why she did this? So Quinn would rescue her?”
I started peeling moleskin off my other foot. “No, I think she did it because Bella’s a brat.” I swatted away a fly. “What’s her deal, anyway? And what did Robin mean about her of all people knowing what it’s like to have people say cruel things?”
Cricket took a deep breath and thought a minute, then really fast she said, “Bella’s adopted. Her mom was in and out of jail all the time and had some loser boyfriend who didn’t want Bella around. So Robin adopted her. Robin was the mom’s social worker.”
I blinked at her. “Holy smokes.”
“Yup. Holy smokes is right.”
I thought a minute and said, “So I guess that’s why Bella has to be the center of attention. Childhood scars or whatever?”
Cricket nodded. “Probably so.”
“And maybe Gabby crushing on Quinn makes Bella feel like she’s getting abandoned for some guy again?”
Cricket’s jaw dropped. “Wow. That’s deep.”
“I don’t know about that. . . .”
“No, I’m serious. That makes perfect sense.”
I sighed. “It does. And it makes it hard to stay mad at someone when you understand them, huh?”
Cricket nodded, then shook her head at my feet. “I was never mad at you about hiking slow, but I sure do understand now why you were.”
I pushed at the blister on my heel. It was huge. So was the one on my other foot. They were at least an inch and a half across and full of fluid. “This is ridiculous. I’m going to pop them.”
“No! You’re not supposed to. They’ll get infected.”
“Well, I’m gonna.”
“But—”
Just then we heard voices. Voices and footsteps and . . . laughing.
“Oh, no!” Cricket whispered, because the sounds were coming from the direction of Miner’s Camp. The direction of the Camo Creeps. “Come on! We’ve got to hide!”
I looked at her and then at my feet, like, How am I supposed to go anywhere?
“Just put your feet in your boots and come on!” she whispered frantically.
So I shoved them in and shuffled after her, laces dragging, until we were safely behind some scrubby oaks.
Safely, ha! For one thing, it was kind of a lame hiding place. We were only about twenty feet off the trail, so if the Camo Creeps had heard us crunching through dead oak leaves, they could have found us, no problem.
But also, as the footsteps and talking and laughing got closer, I noticed that the little plants all around us had shiny green leaves. Shiny green leaves with a tinge of red.
And while I was looking at the plants, I saw something move in the sandy dirt in front of me. At first it looked like the sand itself was moving, but then I realized that something sand-colored was moving toward me, a thin layer of sand half covering it.
It was only about two inches long, but it had pincers.
And a tail.
A tail that was now curving up and aiming at me.
“Cricket!” I whispered, pointing at it.
“That’s a scorpion!” Cricket gasped, backing up like crazy.
I scrambled back, too, and that’s when I noticed the little brown things crawling up my pants, landing on my shoulders, coming at me from everywhere!
“Ticks!” I cried, and that was it. I lost my mind. I charged back to the trail in my stupid loose boots, doing a total freak-out dance as I twisted out of my daypack, threw off my cap, then ripped off my shirt and slapped myself like crazy, crying, “Aaaaaahhhh! Aaaaaahhhh!”
I didn’t care if I died at the hands of Camo Creeps!
I didn’t care who saw me in my underwear!
I just wanted those bugs off me!
But when I freak-danced my way smack-dab into the Voices on the Trail, I changed my mind.
And I changed it quick.
TEN
Thank God I had underwear on, because in running away from scorpions and ticks, I barreled right into two backpackers.
Two backpackers with a six-foot rattlesnake.
All I really saw was the snake. “Aaaaaahhhh!” I cried again, doing a U-turn back toward Cricket.
Cricket’s eyes popped wide when she saw the backpackers. She snatched my shirt off the ground and held it out to me, while a voice behind me called, “Sammy?”
I went from full-throttle freak-out to internal meltdown.
I knew that voice.
I knew it very well.
Oh, why hadn’t I let the scorpion kill me?
Why hadn’t I let the ticks suck me dry?
Why hadn’t I eaten poison oak and suffered a slow, agonizing death by suffocation?
Anything was better than dying of mortification!
I ripped the shirt away from Cricket, held it to me, and turned around. “Casey?” I choked out.
“I told you I heard her calling your name!” Billy said to Casey. “I told you!” Then he grinned at Cricket. “And she’s with Mo-jo Kuo-jo!”
Cricket blushed beet red.
“But . . . ,” Casey said, still not believing it was me. “Why are you . . . ?”
“Ticks!” I said, sputtering like a madman. “I was covered in ticks!”
Cricket tried to come to my rescue. “And there was a scorpion!” She held her fingers at least eight inches apart. “It was this big!”
“No way!” Billy said. He shoved the lifeless rattlesnake on Casey and cut off the trail toward where we’d been. “Where? Where was it?”
Casey just stood there, the rattlesnake U-ing from one hand to the other. He looked at my shoes with the laces all dragging in the dirt. He looked at my face, at my filthy, singed skin and cracked, flaky lips. And he did his best to politely not look at the rest of me. “What are you doing down here?” he finally asked.
I cringed. “Uh . . . backpacking?”
“WHERE’S THAT SCORPION, MO-JO?” Billy shouted from behind us.
“BY THE TICKS AND THE POISON OAK!” she shouted back.
Casey was still staring. “But . . . where’s your backpack?”
Cricket stepped between me and Casey and whispered to me, “Put yourself together! I’ll explain it to him.”
So I dashed for cover as fast as I could in my blistery feet and clunky, dangly-laced boots. Then I checked over my shirt, pulled it on quick, picked up my hat and daypack, and reemerged before the ticks could attack again.
“I DON’T SEE IT!” Billy shouted.
“IT’S BACK THERE!” Cricket called, then continued talking to Casey. “. . . So we decided to cut cross-country and try to find them. But Sammy’s feet are just raw with blisters and we had to stop to fix them, and then we heard people coming and thought it was those creeps we saw back at Miner’s Camp and got scared—no! We didn’t get scared, we decided to be smart and play it safe and hide from them. . . .”
“But then the ticks and scorpions attacked and I totally freaked out,” I said, finishing the story.
“Okaaaaay,” Casey said, still looking confused and uncomfortable.
But I didn’t want to explain any more. Or apologize for being a wilderness wimp. It seemed like it would just make th
ings more . . . pathetic. And since Coach Rothhammer is always telling us that the best defense is a good offense, I forced a little smirk and said, “So what are you guys doing with a rattlesnake, huh? Jumping rope down the trail?”
“Uh, no . . . ,” he said, but it made him sorta grin. Like he was on his way back into a universe he understood. He shook the rattler’s head and said, “This monster and Billy got into a little spat. Fortunately for Billy, Billy won.” He pulled a face. “But not by much.”
“MO-JO! WHERE’S THAT SCORPION?”
“IT’S PROBABLY IN MINER’S CAMP BY NOW!” Cricket shouted back. “It was moving fast.”
“So why are you carrying it around?” I asked Casey. “Why didn’t you just leave it for the birds to eat?”
Casey shrugged. “’Cause Billy wants to eat it.”
“No way!”
Billy was back. “I can’t believe you guys let an eight-inch scorpion get away!”
I looked at him. “What were you going to do, eat it?”
Billy grinned at Casey. “You told her about my battle with the beast?” He took the rattler from Casey. “It was intense!” He started dancing around with the snake like they were boxers in the ring. “He jabbed, I dodged. He jabbed, I dodged. He jabbed, I dodged—”
“Did you shoot it?” Cricket asked. “We heard two shots last night. Was that you killing the snake?”
Billy looked shocked. And kinda hurt. “No, I didn’t shoot him! I went at him man-o a snake-o! Serpent against human! Ancient biblical enemies colliding again in the New World!” He quit dancing around and shrugged. “I used a rock.”
“A big rock,” Casey added.
“I was gonna roast him at Miner’s Camp, but those pig poachers chased us off.”
“Pig poachers?” I asked, picturing a big vat of water with a pig in it. You know, like you’d poach an egg. “Those guys dressed like trees are pig poachers? How do you poach a pig?”
“You kill ’em!” Billy said. “When you’re not supposed to!”
“They’re boar hunters,” Casey said, dropping his voice. “It’s illegal down here, but that doesn’t stop people.”
My mind scrambled around, adjusting to the fact that there were no vats of water involved in this sort of poaching. “But how do you know they’re boar hunters?”
He snickered. “Just look at them.”
Billy jumped in, shifting his eyes side to side and making his voice all breathy as he said, “They track ’em. They use their keen wits to uncover signs of piggy activity. They look for hoofprints. And broken twigs. And . . . and piggy poop. Especially piggy poop. And when they’ve tracked one down, they stalk it until it’s in a place where they can face off with it. Then they throw little rocks at it until it’s all angry and pawing at the earth and snorting through its big, ugly, hairy snout. That’s when they get their bows ready. They get their bows ready, and when the boar charges, pa-choom, pa-ching! They let those arrows fly!”
Casey grinned at Billy. “And if they miss . . .”
Billy laughed. “They run.”
“Wait,” I said. “They don’t use guns?”
They both shook their heads, and Casey added, “Guns are not sporty enough for boar hunters. They’re into the hunt. It’s a game to them—”
“Like paintball!” Billy said. “With wild pigs!”
“Only they use arrows and they kill them?” I asked.
Casey smirked at Billy. “Yeah. Minor differences.” He turned back to me. “They don’t use twangy kid arrows, either. They use compound bows.”
Billy nodded. “Which is like using a high-powered rifle instead of a BB gun.”
“But they don’t use guns. At all? Ever?”
Casey shrugged. “Hard to say. And I’m not into hunting, but if one of those boars was charging at me, I might shoot it. They’re big and hairy and have tusks. They can kill you.”
“Like this sucker!” Billy said, shaking the head of his snake.
“So wait,” I said. “Does this mean you’re a snake poacher?”
“No way!” he said. “This beast attacked me.”
Casey eyed me. “Which is how boar hunters get around the no-hunting laws. They say they shot in self-defense.”
“Even though they provoked them?”
Casey nodded. “Exactly.”
Cricket checked her watch. “Which way are you guys going? Because we really need to get moving.”
Casey looked at Billy.
Billy shrugged and gave a little grin.
Casey gave a little grin back, then looked at us and said, “Wherever you’re going, that’s where we’re going.”
Billy wagged his rattler at us. “We’ve got enough food to share.”
Cricket scowled. “You need to cut the head off that thing before you inject yourself with venom, Billy.”
Billy’s eyes got wide. “How stupid do you think I am?”
We all looked at each other and laughed. Then I said, “Not stupid, Billy. Just wild.”
“Hmm.” He looked at the snake. “Time for the guillotine, you goliath serpentine!”
So while he went to hack off the head, I got busy trying to fix my feet. And the minute Casey saw the blister on my heel, he said, “Holy . . . uh . . .”
“Smokes?” I said, thinking it was really cute that he didn’t want to cuss around me.
“Yeah—holy smokes! You walked from where with those?”
All of a sudden I felt really good. Like, no, I wasn’t a wimp. I was just stupid for ever giving up my high-tops.
He saw me getting some moleskin ready and said, “You can’t do the whole doughnut thing on those. You’ve got to pop those.”
“See?” I said to Cricket.
And before she could say anything about infection leading to future amputation or whatever, Casey had swung his pack off and had a first aid kit out. He sterilized the tip of a needle with a match, then got down on one knee in front of me. “May I?”
I tried to banish insane thoughts about him being down on one knee and stuck out my foot, which was embarrassingly filthy. “Go for it.”
“Cute feet,” he said with a grin.
“You’re a real comedian.”
He cleaned the heel with some sort of wet wipe, then held the needle above the blister and said, “Ready?”
I nodded. “Hours ago.”
He eased the point of the needle through the skin, and when he pulled it out, a geyser of clear liquid shot out. “Wow!” I laughed, then pushed on the skin, keeping the geyser flowing until the blister was empty. “That feels better already!”
“And now,” Casey said, “forget Band-Aids, forget moleskin. . . .” He produced a roll of athletic tape. “We tape it closed and leave it that way the whole time you’re out here. It’s like a second layer of skin, but it won’t move, so you won’t get a blister.” He finished wrapping it up, then said, “And yeah, it’ll hurt when you pull it off, but you’ll be back home, where you can deal.”
He did the same operation to my other foot, then cleaned up the blood-crusted blisters on my little toes and taped them up, too.
Now, while all this foot repair business was going on, Cricket had sort of eased away from us, supposedly to watch Billy behead the snake. And in between trying not to giggle because my feet were ticklish, I was trying really hard not to blush, because the way Casey was handling my feet wasn’t analytical or medicinal . . . it was really tender.
“There,” he said, sort of patting the tops of both my feet when he was all done. “You’re good to go.” He packed his first aid kit up, saying, “If it still hurts too much to walk, we can try putting a doughnut of moleskin on top of the tape, but tape by itself works best for me.”
I started shaking out my filthy socks, but he snagged them away and handed me a clean pair out of his backpack. “Fair trade.”
“Oh, right,” I said, but his socks had nice soft padding around the heel and toe, so I didn’t argue. And when I laced my boots back up, the hee
ls did still hurt some, but it was nothing like before.
“Well?” Cricket asked when she saw me standing.
“I think I’m good.” And after testing them out a little I said, “Let’s go!”
So Cricket and Billy and the beheaded snake led the way, while Casey and I brought up the rear. And the four of us talked about the goofiest things as we hiked along, munching on trail mix and energy bars—what would go good on a rattlesnake sandwich, how a hogshead is an actual unit of measure, how cows’ eyes are on the sides of their heads and mountain lions’ are in front . . . stuff like that.
But we also talked about more serious things. Like hunters and hunting and the gunshots we’d heard. And Cricket got to give both the guys a huge earful about condors and their reentry into the wild and how important it was to educate hunters about burying gut piles and using lead-free ammunition and all of that.
“Have you ever actually seen a condor?” Casey finally asked. “Because rumor is, they’re butt-ugly birds.”
I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it—I busted up.
Cricket spun on me. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to live!” She scowled at Casey. “And no, I haven’t.”
“Sorry!” he said. “Sor-ry!” Then he snuck me a look, which cracked me up all over again.
I did actually feel a little bad about laughing. Cricket had been so nice to me. But with Casey and Billy around, it was hard not to keep on laughing as we hiked down the trail. They’re just fun to be around, and of course Billy being Billy, the entertainment is never-ending.
Fifteen minutes later, though, Cricket was still kind of pouty, but Billy fixed that. “Yo! Yo! Listen up! I got me a rhyme!” He turned around and walked backward so he was facing Casey and me as he said,
“I got big ol’ wings and I love to fly,
I get up in da air and I block da sky!
I’m lookin’ for a carcass, a pile o’ guts,
And if you think I’m ugly, you should see your butts !”
He pointed at Casey and me when he said the bit about the butts, and that was it—Cricket busted up.
After that, we were all having a good time, and I have to admit that I’d kinda forgotten what our mission was. I wasn’t thinking about condors or Gabby or intercepting Quinn or the cry for help. I was just hiking along with my friends, having a good time.