Nature Girl (15 page)

“Not if we hurry,” the Lucy girl says.

“But I can’t find my flip-flops,” the blond girl says.

“They’re right by the path. Come on. Hurry.” The Lucy girl grabs the raft, the cooler, and the towels.

“Thanks for saving us,” I whisper.

“Good luck,” the Lucy girl whispers back.

They disappear up the path. I hear the blond girl say, “Do you still want to watch that movie?”

The Lucy girl says, “Of course I do. Mom, can Lindsey come over?”

I don’t hear the answer. Their voices are swallowed by the Woods.

Those friends are still together. But Arp and I are all alone.

We share the sandwich fifty-fifty. He gobbles his part, but I try to eat slowly. It’s chicken on brown bread that is very bumpy with whole grains. I don’t take off the lettuce and tomato or wipe off the strange green spread. I guess good old mayonnaise isn’t allowed in Vermont. But believe me, I’m not complaining. It’s the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.

After I lick my fingers and chase down every last crumb, I stare at the two smushed rectangles in the grass where the girls lay on their towels.

“I meant what I said, Arp. We are on a quest to prove our friendship. We have to keep going until Lucy and I are reunited and I’ve proved to her that I won’t let her down anymore.”

Arp isn’t listening. He’s rolling in the dirt. So I put my
hand on his belly to stop him because I need someone to pay attention to what I’m saying.

“They won’t say that I’m a quitter after I’ve hiked all the way to the top of Mount Greylock. Right, Arp?”

He smiles. Although maybe he isn’t agreeing; maybe he’s just enjoying how I’m scratching his belly.

Then the yucky voice points out a huge problem.
“Lucy doesn’t know you aren’t a quitter anymore. Lucy is probably busy knitting Halloween costumes for her and Patricia Palombo.”

But she will know! When I get there. So it’s back to the Trail again.

Remember all those troubles I had getting to the little lake? Remember the bushes with their prickly thorns? Well, guess what? To get back to the Trail, I have to go through them all again. Only this time, I’m going UPHILL. Now it’s about two-thirty in the afternoon. The sun is blazing on my head. I get so hot that I’m almost tempted to go back to the lake. But even if I wanted to jump in that water, I couldn’t.

“Remember, Arp, we’re doing something so amazing that the Lucy girl wanted our autograph.”

Then just when we’re almost back to the Trail, I see something orange. It’s Trail Blaze Betty’s hat. THEN I remember why we left the Trail in the first place. We had to get away from her.

I grab Arp to keep him quiet and back a little ways down the hill.

The orange splotch isn’t moving. I hear a weird
spluttering sound. Is she snoring? Since she’s an old person, she might be taking a nap. Maybe if we hike way around her, we can get ahead of her again before she wakes up.

So that’s what we do.

Unfortunately this kind of hiking isn’t easy. Arp doesn’t care that we’re battling the Woods. He scoots under bushes. He’s SHORT! He isn’t getting scratched. He has FUR! He isn’t worried about being caught. He’s a DOG! But I’m really struggling. Each time I get poked or scratched or whacked by skinny little branches, it seems I’m being punished for not being a good enough friend to Lucy.

After about thirty minutes, I think it’s safe to go back to the Trail.

Guess what? I hear a helicopter!

I think, Come on, people. Didn’t you get my messages? We don’t need rescuing.

They probably didn’t get the e-mail yet. So we crouch down in the bushes and wait for the helicopter to go away.

That horrible noise makes me feel really anxious. I hold onto Arp really tight.
Thwacka thwacka thwacka
. Why can’t they let us finish our hike in peace?

“I know I told those girls that my journey wouldn’t mean anything without hardships, but do the hardships have to be so hard?” I whisper to Arp.

Finally the helicopter fades away. Arp and I return to
the Trail. The hiking isn’t torture anymore. But as we go along, I don’t see any inspirational butterflies. Or springs with delicious, fresh, cool water. Or mountains with stone monuments on top and stores where you can buy Oreos. I just see the dirt under my feet. My shoes are really dusty and muddy now. The rest of me is totally brown too, except for the red scratches on my legs and arms. I don’t know if the Trail is finding out my lies, but it sure is taking over my body.

I try to encourage Arp. “Mount Greylock has got to be just past that next hill.”

But it isn’t.

“Okay. So it must be just past this hill.”

But it isn’t.

So I stop saying that.

We walk and walk. We drink some water and walk some more.

It’s getting close to five o’clock. Soon it will be dinnertime. Only there isn’t any dinner. It seems like we ate that half a sandwich three days ago.

Now Arp won’t walk, so I have to carry him. He shouldn’t be so heavy, since he’s such a little dog. But he is.

I wish someone would carry me.

Oh, Lucy, I think.

If only I could call her. She’d say something encouraging. I know she would.

Maybe if I send her a thought, she’ll send one back. Amazing things can happen. I mean, I’m climbing these
hills even though I’m hungry and tired and carrying a dog. If I can do THAT, then why can’t my thoughts whiz to her? Weren’t we always thinking the same thing at the same time? Well, maybe not always. Maybe not so much last year. But we used to. Like the time we were meeting at the playground and I forgot to tell her to bring colored chalk but she did anyway.

I shut my eyes and think really hard. (But I open them after I trip over a root.)

Lucy, this is the hardest part. Maybe you think seeing the Bear was worse. Bears are scary and they smell bad. But you don’t need a friend to escape from a Bear; you just need some cookies to throw. You do need a friend to keep you going through the tough times. When you’re completely worn down
.

You’ve been worn down too. You’ve been on a long hike with a big hole in your sock. You’ve been thirsty and tired and hungry. And scared and lonely. And hungry. I guess I said that already. The ground is so hard it feels like it hits you each step you take. The bugs are so bad that you can’t ever even stop and rest because they’re out to get you
.

I don’t want to rest anyway. Not until I make it to the top of Mount Greylock. I don’t care how much I suffer. I have to finish my Hodgkin’s Hike for you and your mom
.

I stop walking because my heart’s pounding too loud and I want to make sure I can hear her answer.

Lucy. Are you there? Are you listening?

Maybe I should have kept my eyes shut. Maybe we’re too far away. Maybe telepathy doesn’t work.

“
Or maybe she doesn’t want to answer,”
the yucky voice says.

Unfortunately I can hear the yucky voice loud and clear.

But the voice is lying. Lucy would want to answer me. Wouldn’t she?

The yucky voice says,
“Why should she help you when you never helped her? In fact, you got mad at her for wanting to be Joan of Arc and called her selfish!”

The yucky voice is right. I did.

Now, of course, I know that Lucy wasn’t being selfish. She was the OPPOSITE of selfish. She wasn’t thinking about herself at all. She was just one big ball of worry about her mom.

Now I remember that after I called her selfish, she said, “I thought you were my friend.”

Did I say, “Lucy, I am your friend. I’m your friend when it’s kindergarten-easy because all you have to worry about is taking turns on the swing. And I’m still your friend, especially now that we’re older and everything is more complicated.”

Well, what do you think? Did I say that?

No. I said, “I thought you were MY friend.”

I sit down on a rock.

Arp comes trotting over. He sits down too and cocks his head at me.

“What?” I say.

Then he barks two short barks. I figure that means food. Basically that’s all Arp ever talks about.

“How can you be hungry? We had that nice sandwich.”

Arp barks again as if to say, “That was just a half of a half a sandwich. And besides, we ate that hours ago.”

I’m thinking the same thing.

But I don’t open up my pack. I mean, I know what kind of food is in there.

I just sit there feeling miserable.

Then I remember something Mom always said to me whenever I came home from school upset. It didn’t matter if the teachers were awful or if Patricia Palombo made mean comments about my carbs and my clothes or if no one laughed at my jokes. Mom would say, “You’re just tired and hungry.”

Then I would say, “NO I’M NOT,” and slam the door to my room.

Now I realize that Mom’s partially right. I AM tired. I AM hungry. That’s why my hike isn’t going very well anymore. But I can’t tell Mom she’s right. She isn’t here.

Suddenly I miss her so much I almost start crying again. Only I know that would be a total waste of water. So I open my pack. I put on the “I ♥ Vermont” hat because I know Mom would want me to wear it. (Besides, the sun is in my eyes and I’m too tired to turn to face the other way.) Then I get out my sketchbook and I start to draw The Best of All Possible Worlds, like we always
used to do. When I was little, we mostly drew circuses, because I always wanted to be in the Greatest Show on Earth. I would be the funniest clown, and Ginia would be a snarling lion in a cage.

But now I draw Mom wearing the Chinese shirt I like that has the big dragon. I draw me sitting next to Mom. I know I should put Dad in there too, but I’m tired of drawing people, so I just draw his glasses. I do draw Arp. But I figure that Ginia’s probably off somewhere with her boyfriend, Sam. Then I draw a picnic blanket. I cover the blanket with food. Fried chicken, potato salad, brownies, watermelon. Then I think, Hey, this is a picture. I can have whatever food I want. So I draw banana splits and shrimp cocktail and egg rolls and big tall chocolate milk shakes.

Drawing makes me so hungry that I could eat the paper. But I don’t. I get out the lunch bag. “Come on, Arp. Let’s have some delicious dinner!”

I say it in a really loud, cheerful voice. But it doesn’t help. There are only two things in the bag. A package of white tofu covered in brown slime. And a bag full of what used to be purple grapes but is now pale green scum.

I open the tofu package. I offer to share. Arp doesn’t even give it a sniff. He’d rather eat something he finds in the dirt. I don’t blame him.

“There are people in the world who like this kind of stuff. I’m not kidding,” I say.

After that inspirational thought, I hold my nose, open my mouth, and drop in one of the strips of slimy tofu. It sort of slithers down my throat. Then I eat the rest of the strips and the smushed grapes.

You probably expect me to tell you that they’re actually delicious. They aren’t.

THEY’RE THE MOST DISGUSTING THINGS I’VE EVER EATEN!

By the time I recover from eating the tofu, it’s after six o’clock. Arp seems to think we should just make a camp where we are. But I want to hike some more. About thirty trees further along the Trail, I can see a lot of huge boulders. I think that if I climb up on them, I can see above the trees. And since mountains are so big, I should be able to see one in the distance, especially one with a tall stone tower on top.

“Then we’ll know how close we are,” I tell Arp.

When we get to the boulders, they are even bigger than Elephant Rock. But Arp isn’t interested. He lies down on a pile of dead leaves and goes right to sleep.

“Wait here for me. Guard my pack, okay?”

He doesn’t answer. (But then, he never does.)

So I climb.

The boulders are smooth and pale yellow. At first, I climb ones that are like stair steps. Then I get to one
that’s as big as a truck. After I walk along the top of the truck, I realize I picked a dead end. There’s a huge gap about three feet wide between it and the other boulders. I’m going to have to turn around, go all the way down and climb up a different way. What a total waste of time—and energy.

I look at the gap again. Too bad I can’t jump across it. I stick out my arm to measure the distance. Then I realize it only seems far. I take a few steps back to get a good running start. Then I race toward the edge and take a huge leap.

I’m flying through space. It feels so great. Then I realize something else. I didn’t hear the yucky you-can’t-do-it voice! It didn’t tell me that I’ll never make it, I’m going to fall, and that’s a really deep gap so I’ll probably kill myself.

“YAHOOOO!” I shout.

I fly so far that I stumble as I land. My hands scrape on the boulders. But hey, who cares (even though the palms of my hands are probably the ONLY parts of me that aren’t already scratched or bit or sore from hiking). The yucky voice is gone!

I feel so good I look for more places to leap across. I don’t find any, so I dance around as I climb to the top of the pile. From there, I can see for hundreds of miles. It’s like being up on the Empire State Building, only I don’t see other skyscrapers; I see the Woods and meadows and lakes and green mountains.