Lost at Running Brook Trail (2 page)

“You would think there are no backwoods or rugged outdoor places in Ontario. No, we have to go all the way to Alberta, like we’re playing
Survivorman
or something.” Kimberly continued to look at her face in the mirror, turning this way and that to get a better look. Susan was lost in her own thoughts, musing about how she would survive out there. She didn’t even like the name Running Brook. It suggested too much activity. And the thought of sleeping outdoors with mosquitoes and all sorts of other insects was too much to fathom.

Elaine
 

Elaine Johnson walked home deep in thought, the sun blazing on her back. She could feel watermarks beginning to form around the pits of her arms. Although she was a straight-A student, she was carrying a letter that would send her to the wilds of Alberta. Her mother would have pointed questions about why Elaine was being sent on this trip.

Elaine opened the door with her key and stepped into the house. All was quiet. She knew her mother was working upstairs in her home office. She padded upstairs in the direction of her room, hoping to take off the sweat-stained grey-and-white tunic before she faced her mother.

“Is that you, Elaine, honey?” her mother called out.

Well, so much for changing into fresh clothes. Elaine stepped into the office. “Hi, Mom.”

Elaine’s mother was alternately typing on her laptop and tapping the keys of a large calculator. She looked up and drummed her fingers on the glass-top desk. “Sit down and tell me about your day.”

Elaine sat in a black swivel chair with wheels. There was nothing interesting to tell, with the exception of the letter. She may as well just get it over with. That was how she got on with her parents, her mother in particular.

“I’m going to Alberta for a part of my summer holidays. I have a letter for you to sign. I just know you’re going to give your consent.” Elaine half pivoted in the chair. She didn’t want to pre-empt what her mother was going to do, but experience had taught her that there were not a lot of objections when a letter came from Anne Beaumont High. It wasn’t that her mother was a follower; she wasn’t. She was the quintessential “strong black woman.” But letters from school were rare, and they usually meant something not so good. Girls weren’t sent to Alberta on a bus for nothing.

“So you know how this is going to go down?” Elaine’s mother laughed.

“I just know how you make decisions when it comes to certain things. I’ve had to live with them for fifteen, almost sixteen years, so I know.” Elaine swiveled in the chair again.

“First of all, stop spinning. It’s distracting. Second, I need to know what you did so I’ll know if you’re right about my decision-making skills.” Elaine’s mom clasped her hands in anticipation.

“I borrowed a couple books from the library. These books are in high demand, so they have to be returned in a few days. I kept them too long, and other people wanted to use them. That’s really the long and short of it.”

The phone rang, and Elaine’s mom held up an index finger. She picked up the phone and listened. “No, no this is what I want done. Close the account and use the set procedures and guidelines. We don’t want this to come back and bite us in the butt. Let’s go by the book.”

She hung up and sighed. “Rules are rules.” Elaine wasn’t sure if her mother was referring to the phone call or to what she’d said. But her mother was looking right at her.

“I understand that, Mom, but Mrs. Hamilton said that I was greedy to be hoarding all those books. I can’t see how that’s greed.”

“Were you using all the books?”

“Not all at once, but if you don’t keep them, when you need them you’ll never get them. They’ll all be out, and then I’d have to wait forever for them to come back. They should just buy more books for the library. They have the money.”

Elaine’s mother leaned back in her own black, high-back leather swivel chair and gave Elaine one of her famous looks—the one that said the system may not be perfect, but we have to work within said system.

“Whether they should or shouldn’t buy more books isn’t the issue here. That’s just your way of skirting around what you did. Books have due dates for a reason.”

“But do you think I should be going all the way to Alberta because I missed the due date? Isn’t that a bit out there?”

Her mother entwined her fingers behind her head, bunching up her jet-black hair. “The letter says this isn’t the first time.” She took her fingers from behind her head for a moment and held the letter high in the air to get Elaine’s attention. “You didn’t just miss the dates. Your actions were deliberate, excessive and selfish.” She sighed. “You were born and bred in Ontario. It’s good to go somewhere different from where you know. Alberta is a beautiful, interesting place. It wouldn’t be so terrible.”

Elaine inspected her shoes. Black shoes and grey socks to match grey skirts and grey ties. Michael, her older brother, would no doubt be doing something exciting in Ontario while she was off doing God knows what in some cowboy’s paradise.

“So I’m going?”

“There’s a lesson to be learned somewhere in all of this, and hopefully you’ll be the better for it.”

“I can’t see what that lesson could be.”

“That’s why you’re going, so you can find out.”

“Aren’t you going to get Dad’s input on this?”

Her mom unclasped her hands and moved her body and the chair forward so that her face was close to her daughter’s. “We could wait for him, but why put off the inevitable? My decision is his decision.” She took the letter, gave it a precursory read, took a ballpoint pen from its holder and made a flashing movement of the hand. She pushed the sheet toward Elaine, who looked down to see a perfect “Marjory Johnson” that almost matched the black of the typeset in its intensity against the pure white paper.

“You were right after all,” Marjory Johnson said. “You’re going to wild rose country.”

Elaine walked to her room, still looking at her mother’s signature. Her fate wasn’t only signed in black; it was also sealed, because there would be no changing her mother’s mind in this matter.

Miriam
 

W
hen Miriam received her letter, she thought it was about the soccer camp that would take place that summer. But when she opened it and saw that it was the infamous trip to Alberta, Miriam felt simultaneously hot and cold. Mostly she felt hot, like the rush of adrenaline that she got when she was playing soccer and knew she was going to score a goal.

Miriam thought she could hear her heart thundering in her chest. It was almost as if it was racing to beat itself out. When she’d received the letter from Mrs. Hamilton, she had gone into the gymnasium to sit, hoping for distractions when she saw what the letter contained. Mrs. Hamilton had said nothing about going to Alberta, although in hindsight it now became clear why she had asked if Miriam loved the feel of fresh air in her lungs. Again Miriam had thought that the principal was referring to the impending seasonal change of soccer from indoors to outdoors.

Mrs. Marks, one of the gym teachers, was conducting an aerobics class in the background. Miriam sat on a bench close to some lockers and listened to the sounds of girls doing jumping jacks. She listened but didn’t really hear because her entire body shook so hard she could hear the letter rattling in her hands. Her breath came in rapid gulps. It seemed like she was struggling to get it in. She wanted to calm down, but it wouldn’t happen, and this lack of self-restraint caused her to shake even more. All she could register was the paper flapping between her fingers. So she ripped the letter into tiny bits until all she could see was a ragged stream of confetti in her hands, some fluttering to the ground. The tension in her head eased a little.

“What have we here?” Ms. Cross, the soccer coach stood before Miriam. She carried a match ball under her right arm.

“Nothing, just poor test results.” Miriam was so out of it, she didn’t even know which direction Ms. Cross had come from.

“So that’s how you fix it, huh?”

“I just didn’t expect it to be this bad.”

“Well”—Ms. Cross moved the ball from under her arms and held it with both hands in front of her—“those little shreds you have in your palms won’t make it any better.”

Miriam thought it might be a good time to tell Ms. Cross that she wouldn’t be going to summer camp. She really didn’t want to say it because it meant acceptance of what was written in the letter. But if she didn’t say it, what difference would it make? It wasn’t going to change anything. That was probably the crux of the matter; she was unable to alter any of the circumstances that mattered most to her.

“I won’t be coming to soccer camp this summer.”

“That’s not good news. You’re one of my best players. You could learn a lot and enhance your skills there.” Ms. Cross put the ball back under her arm. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that Amanda incident, does it?”

Miriam didn’t want to hear that girl’s name another time for the day. Amanda Dean had stuck her foot out, tripped Miriam and then took off laughing like nothing had happened. Miriam had lain face down on the soccer pitch and watched as Amanda strolled away in her black Adidas soccer shoes. In retaliation, Miriam had scrambled to her feet, run Amanda down and let her know that she was a dead girl walking.

“I guess it does.”

“So Amanda will be at the camp and you will not.” Ms. Cross threw the ball up in the air and caught it. “Tough.”

“So you do think this is unfair too?” Miriam assumed that’s what Ms. Cross meant. Miriam was the better player, and it was Amanda who had almost injured her and was getting away with it.

“That’s not what I meant. You play a contact sport. People are going to run into you. You’re going to stumble and fall in almost every game.”

“But I didn’t just stumble by myself, she
made
me fall!”

“That’s the contact part. She was reaching for the ball.”

This conversation was going south as far as Miriam was concerned. She looked down to the far end of the gym, where everyone was jogging in place. Miriam had had one conversation already with a person in authority – the principal, albeit a very one-sided conversation. Mrs. Hamilton didn’t talk about physical contact being allowed in the rules of the game. She mainly rambled on about school violence, how it was getting out of hand and how important it was that every student felt safe at Anne Beaumont.

“She got one of my legs instead, and she could have apologized.”

Ms. Cross sat beside Miriam on the bench and dropped the ball between her feet so it wouldn’t roll away. “She could have; she didn’t. An apology isn’t a rule of the game. It’s not the end of the world. You get up and you play your game—that’s how it works.”

If it was that easy, that’s what Miriam would have done. As for this violence that Mrs. Hamilton spoke about, it was just an excuse for her to exact severe measures, such as sending her on a trip to Alberta.
All threats will be taken seriously … what a joke.
She wondered if the principal had a quota to fill. Miriam had said that she was going to kill Amanda for tripping her, but there was no way she meant that literally. She’d been venting.

“How it works sucks!”

“There is no perfect system. We use the rules we have. Amanda was carded; that’s her punishment. We play on. We don’t verbally abuse each other. That’s how professionals work.”

Everybody liked to tell her how the system worked, especially in the hallowed halls of Anne Beaumont. It was a school with a holier-than-thou reputation. Miriam had been lectured today about safety in school. They made it seem as if she was some sort of physical threat to the peace that reigned at this Ivy League high school. Miriam had not hit anyone. All she had done was defend herself, and for that she was going to miss soccer and be forced to go hiking.

“Well”—Ms. Cross got up and picked up the ball—“I’m sorry you’ll not be at the camp, but you have a long way to go in this school. There will be other camps. Lots of time for you to learn.” She left and walked toward Mrs. Marks, who was now putting the girls through marching paces.

It wasn’t that Miriam minded going hiking and camping. It was the
reason
she was going on the trip that ticked her off. She could feel her jaws clench, and she had to exercise them to make them relax. It was Amanda’s fault this was happening, but Mrs. Hamilton in her wisdom had told Miriam that it was her own fault because she had made the choice to go after Amanda.

Now that she had ripped up the letter addressed to her mother, Miriam had to come up with some way to get her mother to write and sign another letter for her to take back to school. Her mother would want to know why there wasn’t an original letter, and the principal would want to know the same when it came back to her. So much explanation. Her mother would also want to know why she was required to write permission for Miriam to go to Alberta. That would be another lecture that would start out with
if your father was here
. And in her head, Miriam would agree—if he
was
here, things would be different. But he wasn’t, and that was that. What could she do? Miriam was sorry she had torn up the letter.

The Start
 

After a long two-day bus ride and checking into the Running Brook Mountain campground, there was nothing to do but sleep. The tiring and cramped sitting on a bus with sulking companions who clearly didn’t want to be there had been stifling. The rugged site wasn’t as bad as they’d thought it would be. It actually had some civilized amenities, such as flush toilets, hot water, showers and electricity.

The morning had broken cool but quickly turned hot. They set out at nine with their backpacks, anticipating the long trek ahead.

Mrs. Marks, one of the gym teachers who was the leader of the group, gave them a pre-walk talk before they set out. “Please remember to stay together as a group. Do not, I repeat, do not go off on your own.”