Nature Girl (14 page)

They’re having the summer that Lucy and I were supposed to have. The summer of s’mores and wishing on falling stars and laughter and more laughter. The summer of no past and no future, no homework to do and no one to bother us, just best friends having an endless sleepover.

But Lucy didn’t come.

The two girls lie on the raft and drift around. They don’t paddle to get anywhere. They don’t need to. They’re together. That’s all that matters.

It’s not fair that they’re floating so free and easy
while I’m scrambling through the bushes. I mean, why couldn’t one of their moms have gotten sick? Why does it have to be Lucy who is worried to death? Only Lucy would never say “worried to death.” She never lets anybody say things like “I was so embarrassed, I could have DIED.” Or “That homework nearly KILLED me.” Or even “You make me SICK.”

Lucy is such a good person and Alison is such a nice mom. But Alison got cancer anyway, so Lucy got worried. And (even though I’m not as nice as they are) I got worried about Alison too, no matter how many times they said she had the
good
cancer. How can cancer be good? But I couldn’t ask anybody that. I couldn’t talk about any of my feelings. Not even to Lucy.

When I get to the lake, the water that looked so beautifully blue turns out to be muddy and gunky and choked with weeds and infested with slime-loving creatures JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER STUPID LAKES IN VERMONT.

I hate Vermont. I really do.

Please don’t be like my dad and tell me how the blue water is only reflecting the sky or whatever it does. I don’t want to hear anything logical. I just want Lucy and me to be those girls floating on a yellow raft.

Arp happily wades right into the water and has a nice drink. He doesn’t know about disappointment and sorrow. He’s just a dumb dog. He doesn’t even have any
friends, unless you count the cat that sleeps in the dry cleaner’s window and hisses at him whenever he trots past.

The girls stop playing with the raft and drag it onto the shore. Magenta Top spreads out towels. Green Top gets two bottles of purple Vitaminwater and a bag that looks like lunch out of a little cooler. I’m hoping it’s such a huge lunch that there’s plenty to share. But I’m worried because there are TWO girls. And when you’re talking about hanging around with friends, THREE is an unlucky number.

Still, I walk along the shore closer to them. After I go a little ways, I have to walk in the water because there are bushes in the way. Arp swims along with me. I think he has his eye on the lunch too.

Unfortunately the lunch is just two sandwiches. Even if you cut each one in half, it still wouldn’t divide up for three. It’s an impossible mathematical problem.

Green Top has hair just like Lucy’s. Dark and straight and never completely staying in a ponytail no matter how many times she smooths it back. Of course, the girl isn’t Lucy. Lucy doesn’t even have a swimming suit like that.

I’m anxious to see the second girl’s face. I mean, I know it isn’t me. OBVIOUSLY. But if it’s someone LIKE me, then it’ll be a sign. I never used to pay attention to signs until last year, when Lucy started picking up pennies for good luck. Actually, until last year, I never
needed signs of good luck because I always had Lucy. But now I’m desperate for some good news, no matter where it comes from. So I’m hoping hoping hoping as I wade past the bushes and get out of the lake to walk on the pebbly shore.

Suddenly I hear dogs barking way off in the distance. It isn’t Arp. He’s still swimming in the water. It’s a lot of dogs and they sound big. They sound so big that Arp gets out of the lake to be close to me.

The girls hear the barking too. As they stand up and look toward the sound, they notice Arp and me. Their eyes get wide when they recognize us. Then I realize what the dogs are for—sniffing us out.

I pick up Arp so we can run away really fast. But it’s too late for that.

“Wait!” the Lucy girl says. “You’re Megan, aren’t you?”

“And that’s your dog, Arf?” says the other girl, who (I have to say) has smooth yellow hair and looks much more like Patricia Palombo than like me.

“Arp,” I say.

“Wow!” the Lucy girl says. “Everybody’s been looking for you. They say you ran away.”

“I thought you were kidnapped or maybe even dead,” the blond girl says.

“I’m not,” I say.

“What are you doing in the Woods?” the Lucy girl says.

I don’t have much time to explain. The barking is still pretty far away, but it’s getting closer. “I need your help.”

“What for?” the blond girl says.

“You see, I was supposed to be having this wonderful summer in Vermont with my best friend. But her mom is sick. So she decided to stay with her mom even though she would rather have been having fun with me. She is very unselfish that way.”

“Oh,” the Lucy girl says, very sympathetically.

“So?” the blond girl says.

“So since my best friend couldn’t be with me, I decided to go on a journey to be with her,” I say.

“Why didn’t you just drive?” the blond girl says.

Why didn’t I?

“Because.” I pause. The barking is making it hard to think. “I can’t drive.”

The blond girl smirks. “Obviously. But your mother could.”

“No. Nobody can drive you when you’re going on a journey like this. When you’re making a quest to prove your friendship, you have to make sacrifices or the journey won’t mean anything. You have to endure hardships. You have to be brave. You have to go on a Hodgkin’s Hike.”

“What’s a Hodgkin’s Hike?” the blond girl says.

“It’s when you refuse to quit in spite of all the obstacles,” I say.

“Wow,” the Lucy girl says.

“So will you help us? The search party will be here soon. But we can’t get sent back now. We have to keep going until my friend and I are reunited,” I say.

“Of course we’ll help you! What should we do?” the Lucy girl says.

“Let me pretend to be one of your friends,” I say.

“But you don’t have a swimsuit,” the blond girl says.

“You can go in the water,” the Lucy girl says.

Am I desperate enough to put my whole body in that disgusting water? Luckily I get another idea. “What if I wrap up in your towel?”

The blond girl wrinkles her nose. I guess I’m pretty gross after all that sweaty hiking and three days without a shower.

But the Lucy girl hands me her towel and puts a big floppy sun hat on my head. “Put your backpack by the cooler. Sit down with your knees up. Now drape the towel over your shoulders.”

“The dogs will smell her,” the blond girl says. “I can smell her.”

“We have to keep away from them,” the Lucy girl says.

“What if we all get on the raft?” I say.

“There isn’t room,” the blond girl says.

“Then you can stay on shore,” the Lucy girl says.

“Fine then.” The blond girl sits down on her towel and folds her arms across her chest.

I pick up Arp. The Lucy girl holds the raft steady while we climb on. I drape the towel around my shoulders and cover up Arp. Then the Lucy girl gets on and paddles us out into the middle of the lake.

The barking dogs burst over the hill. Four big German shepherds strain against their long leashes. Two men run with them down to the edge of the water where Arp and I started wading.

“Hey, girls!” a man with a brown beard shouts over the barking.

“Hey!” I try to sound normal, like I talk to men with yelping dogs all the time.

“You know about the runaway girl, right?” Brown Beard says.

“Sure do!” the Lucy girl says.

“Megan.” The blond girl says it in a way like she could have been naming the name. Or she could have been calling me out.

“Have you seen any sign of her?” a man with a black beard says.

“Well …,” the blond girl says.

I’m so nervous; I squeeze Arp too tight and he whimpers. But he doesn’t bark.

“No,” the Lucy girl says firmly.

“Are you sure? The dogs were definitely following a scent,” Black Beard says.

“We haven’t seen anyone all day,” I say.

The dogs snuffle around right where Arp and I went
into the water. Their leashes get all tangled up as they try to figure out where to go next.

“What time did you get here?” Brown Beard asks me.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what time it is. What if I say a time that’s after the time that it actually is? I move my arm to check my watch. Then the towel slips down off my shoulder. I’m making a mess of everything AGAIN.

But the Lucy girl saves me. She spins the raft so the men can’t see me pull the towel back up. “We came here at ten o’clock,” she says.

The towel won’t stay, so I have to use my chin to hold it. The men are staring at me.

“Ten o’clock?” the blond girl says.

“That’s right, because my mother dropped us off on her way to her yoga class, so I’m POSITIVE it was ten,” the Lucy girl says. “We’ve been here this whole time and we haven’t seen anyone.”

“Could Megan have been here before ten?” Black Beard says.

“Don’t see how she could have made it this far at all,” Brown Beard says. “We’d better head back toward where she was last seen by those other kids.”

“She should have stayed put! People are much harder to find when they wander around,” Black Beard says.

“Let’s go. Come on, girls!” Brown Beard shouts.

I hold my breath. But he’s calling the dogs. They yelp as everybody runs back up the hill.

I shut my eyes. I feel my muscles go limp. But none of us move for at least five more minutes. Then Arp wriggles out from under the towel and jumps around so much he tips the raft. The Lucy girl and Arp topple over into the water. But I hang on for dear life.

“Good thing that didn’t happen before,” the Lucy girl says as she pulls the raft to shore.

“Hmph,” the blond girl says.

I climb off and give the Lucy girl back her towel. She doesn’t use it to dry herself; she puts it far away.

“Thank you. You saved our lives,” I say. That reminds me that we’re dying of something else too. “It’s kind of embarrassing to ask you this, but do you have anything we can eat?”

“You can have what’s left of my sandwich.” The Lucy girl gives it to me.

“Thanks.” I put it in my pack.

Then she hands me her bottle of Vitaminwater too. I drink it all right away. I’d forgotten how delicious it is.

“Can we have your autograph?” the Lucy girl says.

“Really?” I can’t believe it. Mrs. T. likes to get autographs from Broadway stars. But they’re famous actors. I’m just a kid who’s going on a hike. I try not to smile, but I’m really happy.

“What you’re doing is so amazing!” the Lucy girl says.

I take out my sketchbook and draw a picture of Arp and us with the raft.

“Huh,” the blond girl says. “My mom says you’re just a juvenile delinquent who ran away to be with her boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend? Geez. I won’t even be twelve until next month,” I say. Lucy will die laughing when she hears I have an imaginary boyfriend.

“I’m glad you told us about your Hodgkin’s Hike,” the Lucy girl says. “I knew you had a good reason for running away.”

“So people are pretty worried?” I say.

“Of course they are,” the Lucy girl says.

I don’t like to think about that. “Didn’t they find the note I left on the Trail?”

“Yes, but they’re still worried,” the Lucy girl says.

They probably don’t believe I can take care of myself. But I can—at least until I get to Mount Greylock.

It’s hard to finish the drawing because I have to keep wiping my eyes. I wish I could explain everything to my parents. After I’m done, I say, “You think if I gave you a letter, you could mail it for me?”

“Mail it?” the blond girl says like that’ll take forever.

“I mean, e-mail,” I say.

I write my mom’s e-mail address on another piece of paper. Then I stop writing. I still don’t know what to say.

I would write more, but a horn honks. I jump.

“Don’t worry. It’s just my mom,” the Lucy girl says as she takes the papers.

A mom-sounding voice calls, “Amelia! Lindsey! Time to go!”

“Coming!” the Lucy girl says.

“Will she come down here?” I whisper.