Rumors (10 page)

Natasha made a gasping sound. “Oh my gosh! That's so sad!”

“Eda kept calling her parents, and nobody answered. So Katherine had to stay at camp for days and days after it was over, and nobody was here but Eda and all the counselors getting ready for the second session.”

“What happened?” asked Ashlin. “Did somebody pick her up eventually?”

“Yeah, eventually. But it wasn't her parents. It was some relative or something. Now she doesn't live with her parents anymore. They're alive and everything, but they put her up for adoption when she was seven. Isn't that terrible?” Laurel-Ann was propped up on her elbows, whispering softly to us.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “That sounds pretty unbelievable.”

“It's a true story! I swear! You want to know how I know?” asked Laurel-Ann. “Katherine told me herself. Last summer. She didn't always hate me so much. I thought maybe the two of us could be friends. But then she turned on me for no reason.”

“Does it have something to do with Rainbow Trout?” I whispered.

“What's Rainbow Trout?” Natasha and Ashlin asked at the same time.

Suddenly a flashlight clicked on, and the beam was shining right in our eyes. “Oh, is that you girls talking?” We heard Rachel's voice through the darkness. “I thought we had a chipmunk invasion. All I could hear was chatter, chatter, chatter.”

“We'll be quiet,” Natasha told her.

And that was enough to make Laurel-Ann close her mouth.

Rainbow Trout. Rainbow Trout. I lay there in my sleeping bag, imagining all kinds of crazy stories. Did it have something to do with fish? Or rainbows? Or was it a code phrase of some kind?

I rolled over on the hard ground and glanced at Laurel-Ann's still form beside me. I doubted she'd ever tell me the story behind it. But she wasn't the only one who knew what it meant.

Katherine did too. Maybe she'd be willing to talk. I knew it was some big secret, but I was good at keeping secrets.

Most of the time.

“What a quiet group,” said Rachel, looking around at all of us. “I wonder what happened to the chatty bunch that was here last night?”

We were huddled around the campfire, only this morning there was no fire burning, just a pile of ashes and some dead embers. Breakfast was instant oatmeal and dried fruit, but it didn't taste as good as last night's dinner.

Nobody was talking much this morning because everybody was sore, cold, and tired from sleeping on the ground. When I'd first woken up, my sleeping bag was soaking wet with dew. Camping out was fun, but it did have its downsides.

As soon as breakfast was over, we had to get ready to leave. Jerry poured water on the already completely dead fire and spread out the embers with a stick, just to be safe.

“My back is killing me,” Natasha groaned as she pulled on her backpack.

“I know. Mine too,” I agreed.

“Can you believe that corny joke they played on us?” asked Ashlin. We'd woken up to find strands of red yarn hanging from lots of the tree branches. Lori insisted that the ghost of the redheaded woman had visited us during the night.

“I'm sure I heard her calling,” she kept telling us. I'd liked the story, and I thought it was funny to find all that red yarn.

We fell into a long line in about the same spots we'd been in yesterday, with Laurel-Ann and me toward the back and Katherine far enough away not to bother her. Nobody was talking much, including Laurel-Ann.

Even though this morning's hike wasn't quite as much fun as yesterday's, I still tried to enjoy it. I noticed a couple of tiny mushrooms shooting up among the dead leaves on the ground. They were bright orange with long, slender stalks and little caps. I'd never seen anything like them before.

“I think everyone's half-asleep,” Rachel called out
from the front of the line. “Let's make some sound!” Then she started singing the hiking song.

I was beginning to learn some of the camp songs, but there were so many, it was hard to keep up with all of them. This one was to the tune of “I've Been Working on the Railroad.” Ahead of us, everyone else was singing, so I mumbled the parts I knew.

Come go hiking on some trails, girls, if you want some fun!
Hike these mountains every day, girls, in the wind or rain or sun.
Yes, you know adventure's waiting,
Backpacking, camping, and trailblazing.
Get your compass and your flashlight—
Let's go on a hike!
Hiking we will go, hiking we will go,
Hiking we will go today, today!
Hiking we will go, hiking we will go,
Hiking we will go today
!

The trail was getting steeper now as it wound higher and higher through the trees. I wondered if everyone
else was as tired as I was. We hiked on and on, and I kept thinking what a long hike it had been yesterday, which meant we had to go just as far today. Finally the hikers at the front of the line stopped.

“Anyone ready for a quick break?” Rachel shouted.

We all groaned with relief and slipped our backpacks off our aching shoulders. Laurel-Ann sat next to me on a flat rock. Everybody else sat on the ground or on a fallen log that was just off the trail. Sunshine was coming through the branches overhead and making a pattern of dancing light on the leaf-covered ground.

Rachel passed around a big bag of gorp, and we each scooped out a handful. I watched Laurel-Ann eat all the peanuts and raisins first and save the M&M's for last.

“Why is this stuff called gorp?” Natasha asked.

“I've heard it stands for ‘good old raisins and peanuts,'” said Jerry from where he stood, leaning against a tree with his arms folded across his chest.

“But what about the M&M's? Maybe it should be called marp,” Laurel-Ann suggested. Brittany let out a loud laugh, and everyone turned to look at her.

Katherine was sitting a few feet away with a book in her lap, and she was busy writing in it. Brittany and Erin were looking over her shoulder and laughing.

“What's so funny?” Ashlin asked them.

Brittany looked up with a little smile on her face. “Oh, nothing!” she said lightly.

Laurel-Ann motioned for Natasha and Ashlin to come over to where we were sitting. “That's what they were laughing about last night. I know she's writing something about me! I just know it!” Laurel-Ann whispered to the rest of us. “I wouldn't be surprised if she was writing something about all of us.”

“It could be anything,” said Natasha. “I doubt it has anything to do with us.”

“You don't know Katherine like I do! She's always saying mean things about people.”

Laurel-Ann twisted the end of one braid nervously between her fingers. Then she looked at us, and her eyes got really big. “We've got to figure out some way to get it and see what they're saying about us.”

“Okay, break's over!” Rachel announced. Everyone stood up and put on their backpacks again.

“Why don't we just ask them to let us see the book?” Ashlin suggested.

“I think we should just forget about the whole thing,” said Natasha. She took off her glasses and rubbed the lenses on her T-shirt before putting them on again.

“But don't you want to know what it says?”

“I'm a little curious,” I admitted as we fell into single file again and started down the trail. But I was a lot more curious about what Rainbow Trout meant. Who knew what they were writing in the book? It could be anything.

Something funny, obviously. But that didn't necessarily mean it was about all of us. Or even about Laurel-Ann. I doubted that Erin and Brittany would be like that. They'd both been really nice to me.

“We've just got to get our hands on that book!” Laurel-Ann whispered to me.

“How?” I asked.

Then she spent the next ten minutes making all these crazy plans to cause a distraction the next time we stopped to take a break, so that we could secretly switch backpacks with Katherine and then read the book when no one was looking.

“I honestly don't think that's going to work,” I tried to tell her.

From the front of the line, we could hear lots of laughter again. It was Brittany, because by now I recognized her laugh. But also Jerry. And sometimes Rachel and Lori.

“What's going on up there?” I asked Natasha and Ashlin, who were in front of us.

“I'm not sure,” said Natasha. She and Ashlin slowed down a little so that we could catch up with them on the trail.

“I think they're teasing Jerry, asking him if he'll ever get married,” Ashlin explained. “I heard them asking him if he'd make his wife camp out on their honeymoon, and he said, ‘What other kind of vacation is there?'”

More and more laughter. Whatever they were talking about sure was cracking them all up. I had to admit that it was a little annoying always being on the outside of the joke. It would've been nice if they could've let the rest of us in on it.

“Do you think Katherine's up there making fun of us?” Laurel-Ann asked me.

I let out a tired sigh. “Honestly, Laurel-Ann, I don't. They're talking about Jerry.” I wanted to remind her that not everything was about her, but I didn't want to sound annoyed with her. Even though I was. She really was kind of paranoid.

I looked up to see Katherine standing off to the side of the trail. She seemed absolutely furious about something. Her face was bright red, and her teeth were clenched. She looked like a firecracker about to explode.

“Are you okay?” asked Natasha as she and Ashlin got close to her.

Katherine didn't answer her. She stood there breathing heavily in and out, staring at a spot on the ground.

Ashlin and Natasha watch her curiously as they walked past, and then they looked back at Laurel-Ann and me with surprised expressions. I could tell Laurel-Ann didn't even want to go near Katherine, but we were about to pass her on the trail.

Katherine didn't so much as blink when we went by. She just kept staring at the ground and frowning. Her chest was heaving up and down.

I looked over my shoulder to see what she was going to do. She was still standing there, and now we were all walking away from her.

“What was that all about?” asked Ashlin, looking back at Katherine, who hadn't moved from her spot.

“I have no idea,” I answered.

“I bet I know!” Laurel-Ann said suddenly. “I bet she's mad because they're all teasing Jerry about his future wife! Didn't you notice how yesterday she was constantly following him? ‘Oh Jerry, I'll help you get firewood. Jerry, what's the name of that tree? Jerry, what's the longest hike you've ever been on?'” she said in a singsongy voice.

“Hey, you guys,” I said, looking back. “She still hasn't moved. Maybe we should tell someone. We can't just leave her behind.”

Now we couldn't even see her behind us anymore. I didn't want the whole group to get so far away from her that she couldn't catch up with us. “I think I'll go check on her,” I told them. Ashlin called out to the front of the group for the others to stop for a minute.

I turned and hurried back down the trail to where Katherine was. She hadn't moved. Her long, tangled hair was hanging in her eyes, and her face was still flushed.

“Katherine, is everything all right?” I asked.

She shifted her eyes in my direction and then looked at the ground. “Go away!”

“Um, everyone is waiting for us. Maybe we should keep walking and catch up with them,” I suggested.

“Why don't you leave me alone?” she snapped at me.

I turned and walked a few feet away from her. “I know you're upset. But I'm staying with you till you feel better.” I was about to take a seat on the trail when she suddenly started moving.

“Fine! I'm coming!” she bellowed. “I don't know what the big deal is. If I got lost, no one would even notice.”

We were both walking up the trail now. Katherine made a point of walking far behind me, but at least we were moving again. Pretty soon we were back at the end of the line of hikers.

“Everything all right back there?” Jerry yelled to us. I could just see his face over the heads of everyone else in line.

“Yep, everything's fine,” I shouted. Laurel-Ann glared at me, but I just shrugged a little and hung back from the other hikers so that Katherine could keep up with me.

She was intentionally walking very slowly. I had to admit, there were times when I felt like just walking away and leaving her, but I forced myself to slow down too. I had no idea what she was so mad about. Maybe Laurel-Ann had been right. Maybe she was upset that Brittany and the others were taking up Jerry's attention now, but whatever was wrong, I felt sorry for her.

She seemed like such an unhappy person. And I could relate to that—all these girls around you having a great time when the only thing you could think about was that you'd rather be somewhere else.

Katherine had stopped to pick up a walking stick, and I could hear her back there slashing at all the stray branches and leaves along the path. It sounded like she
was blazing her own trail instead of bringing up the rear of the one we were on.