Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things (6 page)

It was a
question
.

“HELLO?” I called down, and when the echo was done, there was a moment of silence and then a reply.

“S
AMMY? . . . AMMY? . . . AMMY?
”

“Oh my God,” Cricket whispered. “Do you know anyone else who's backpacking?”

“Can't be,” I said, looking into the canyon. “There's just no way.”

But while my head was trying hard to be rational about the impossibility of it all, my heart was skipping around happily in my chest.

“CASEY?” I called. But when the echo died out, it was quiet.

“Casey?” I called again, but there was no answer.

Cricket grabbed my arm and squealed, “Casey's out here? Wait till Heather hears about this—she is going to
die
.”

Bella was all over me, scolding, “What are you
doing
? We can't have
boys
finding us out here! It's against the rules!” Then her face smoothed back and her jaw dropped and she said, “
That's
why you wanted to come with us? So you could hook up with some
guy
?”

Cricket scowled at her. “Oh, lighten up, Bella. That had nothing to—”

Bella spun on her. “You expect me to believe she
likes
camping? She fell apart on the hike, she freaks out about a little fly up her nose—”

“Stop it!” Cricket snapped. “This is her first time and she got really bad blisters and it's all just new to her. She didn't come so she could meet up with Casey! That's ridiculous.” She turned to me. “Right, Sammy?”

I used to be such a good liar. I could talk my way out of jaywalking tickets or off buses that didn't have stops where I needed them. I could fake my way into private parties or out of near arrests. I could put ketchup on an arm and make everyone believe I was dying. I lied, I lied a lot, and it didn't bother me a bit.

But somewhere along the line I started feeling bad about it, and as soon as that happened, I became terrible at it.

Especially around people who are nice to me.

Who stick up for me.

Who
look
up to me.

Or, at least,
used
to.

So I didn't jump in and say, “Of course not!” No, I hesitated. And hesitating when you're
supposed
to be lying is a dead giveaway that you
are
lying.

Or about to, anyway.

And in that moment of hesitation, Cricket's eyes got bigger and bigger and I could see hurt springing up all over the place inside her.

“No!” I said. “I knew he was going camping, but I didn't know
where
or even when.”

Bella snorted. “Yeah, likely story. Wait until my mom hears about this.” She pointed at me and said, “Boys are not welcome, you got it? It's inappropriate and against the
rules
.”

I put my hands up like her finger was a gun and I didn't want to get shot. “I have no problem with that, Bella. Besides, I don't even think it was him. He didn't answer, and it didn't
sound
like him. It was probably somebody who heard us shouting our names and was just playing around.”

And I should lie and say I really believed that it couldn't be Casey and that even if it was, the wilderness was too huge for him to ever find me.

But the truth is, inside I had this hope.

This stupid little hope.

SEVEN

About two minutes after Bella got done scolding me about boys being against the
rules,
Quinn's truck fired up. “Hey!” Gabby cried, charging off the rocks. “He can't be
leaving
. . . .”

Cricket scrambled to catch up to Gabby while Bella threw me a disgusted look and muttered, “This troop is a boy-crazy joke,” and headed for the truck, too.

“Quinn, stop! Where are you going?” Gabby shouted.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Quinn called, “but we've really got to get going.”

“But we were really, really,
really
hoping you'd take us to see JC-10.”

“I'm afraid—”

“Pleeease?”

“Knock it off!” Bella said through her teeth. “You're embarrassing all of us.”

Then
Janey
kinda leaned across the seats and said, “We'd love to take you out there, but we have work to do and—”

“
You've
been out there?” Gabby gasped. She looked at Quinn like he'd totally betrayed her. “You took
her
out there and you haven't taken us? After all the work we've done around here? After all the
time
we've spent waiting and watching?”

Janey eyed Quinn like, Uh-oh, then pulled back as Quinn said, “Sorry to disappoint you, Gabrielle, but we've got work to do.” And with that, he drove off, his condor flag flapping in the air behind him.

Bella scowled at Gabby. “You're a total embarrassment.” Then she headed for the Lookout, saying, “Excuse me while I go do something constructive.”

“Me too,” Cricket said, trying to cover up the fact that she'd also been swooning over Quinn, even if she'd been more discreet about it.

I followed, too, but Gabby just stood there, squawking, “Why are you being so mean to me, Bella? I didn't do anything wrong! Don't you want to see a condor before you
die
? We've been coming up here since fourth grade! Why does she get to see them and we don't? I'm sick of doing all this and never seeing a stupid condor!”

“
They're
not stupid!” Bella shouted back as she stormed up the stairs. “
You
are!”

Cricket and I both cringed.

“You're
mean,
” Gabby screeched.

“And you're a good-for-nothing tagalong who doesn't know two half hitches from a square knot!”

“I DO SO!”

“What's going on?” Robin asked, poking her head out through the Lookout doorway.

“This troop is a disaster,” Bella grumbled.

“What?”

So Cricket and I sort of held our breath, waiting for her to tattle on us, but she just frowned and said, “Never mind,” and pushed past her mother and into the Lookout.

We went in after her like a little litter of naughty puppies, which was stupid, but that's how she was making us feel.

Bella looked around the room, which was now clean and tidy. “Anything stolen?”

“‘Unaccounted for' is what we're calling it for the time being,” Robin said.

“So what's ‘unaccounted for'?”

“A receiver, a shooting net, and the most recent record log. But Quinn thinks Dr. Prag or one of his interns might have them.” She shook her head. “And I can't really see why Vargus would want to steal them.”

“Are they expensive?” I asked.

“Moderately. But even if he listed them on the Internet, I don't think he'd be able to get much money for them.”

“So what's happening with Vargus?” Bella asked, picking up a pair of binoculars, putting them down, picking up a pad of paper, putting it down.

“Quinn thinks it must have been him. The sheriff's going to bring him in for questioning, so I guess we'll go from there.” She brightened. “The good news is there's still a receiver here, so we'll be able to monitor condor activity and . . .” She looked around. “Where's Gabby?”

“Who cares?” Bella snapped.

“You two are
fighting
?”

“She's an airhead, Mom.”

“Bella!”

“Well, she is. She's head over heels for Quinn, and it's the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen.”

Robin put her arm around her daughter. “It's a crush, Bella. Don't be so hard on her. You'll have one soon enough.”

Bella snorted. “Well,
I'll
never act like an
idiot
”—she shot me a look—“or do something as sappy as shout someone's
name
across a canyon.”

In theory, Bella was someone I might really have liked. She seemed spunky and competent, curious and smart. And even though her impression of me and her reaction to me were my own stupid fault, I
didn't
like her. Not one little bit. Maybe she was spunky and competent and curious and smart, but she was also a condescending tattletaling campaholic.

Robin took a deep breath and said, “Well,” and looked at her daughter like she didn't really know what to do with her. Then she sighed and said, “Bella, it's been an intense day, and I haven't even set up my tent yet. We need to gather firewood, purify water. . . .”

“I'm on it,” Bella said, marching past us and out the door.

So once again the naughty little puppies followed her. Down the steps we went, then across the clearing, past the tents, and toward a grove of oaks. Gabby was sitting on one of the big logs by the fire ring looking really dejected, so Cricket waved her over, calling, “Come on, Gabby! We're collecting firewood!”

It took a little while for her to join us, but it didn't take long for her to figure out that Bella wasn't talking to her.

Cricket pulled me aside and whispered, “I'm so sorry Bella's acting like this! She likes to be the center of attention, but she's never done
this
before!”

“This is worse than school,” I said with a smirk.

Cricket laughed. “At least she's not Heather.”

I laughed, too, because it was true. A condescending tattletaling campaholic has got nothing on Heather Acosta.

Nothing at all.

Anyway, after we'd spent a long time gathering what seemed like a ton of wood, Gabby went up to Bella and said, “Why are you acting like this? I didn't do anything to you.”

Bella finally quit the mute act and said, “Because you're an idiot,” which made Gabby burst into tears and run back to camp.

So Cricket faced off with Bella. “Quit being like that! Talk about embarrassing!”

“Oh, and you're not? You're hot for Quinn just like Gabby! You think no one can tell?” She gathered a huge load of wood in her arms and muttered, “You're
all
idiots.”

For the next hour, we hauled the wood back to camp in silence, replaced missing boulders in the fire ring in silence, and got a fire going. In silence.

Then after we'd dug a latrine behind some bushes, we walked about a quarter of a mile to a spring and filled our canteens with water. It looked like clean, fresh water, but we still had to purify it, because in the wonderful Phony Forest there are even bugs in the
water
. They may be microscopic, but they can make you really sick.

Anyway, after that we boiled a pot of water and ate rehydrated Chicken à la King Noodle Dinner with rehydrated bread pudding for dessert. Everything we did seemed to take forever to do, so by the time we finally sat down to eat, it was seven o'clock and I was famished.

Now, it's hard to say if something's tasty or gross when you're inhaling it, but I
can
tell you that I was looking around for seconds and there weren't any.

Through all this, Gabby was weepy, and Bella was Mute Girl to everyone but her mother. And even though Robin tried to get them to make up, Bella'd have none of it, so the tension at dinner was thicker than rehydrated pudding. And then, as we were washing the dishes, a sharp sound cracked through the canyon like a whip, the echoes slapping one side, then the other. And before the echoes had even died out, it happened again.

My heart froze for a second because there was no doubt in my mind what it was.

Gunshots.

Now, I don't know if my fear of guns comes from just not knowing anything about them or from the times I've had one stuck in my face.

Probably more to do with having them stuck in my face.

But according to Grams, her
father
used his rifle to bring dinner home from the wilderness. “It's a way of life, Samantha. When you've done something your whole life, you don't think it's cruel or revolting or heart-wrenching. You don't analyze it. You just do it.”

I said something about her eating Bambi and Thumper as a girl, but she just harrumphed and said, “And now you eat Bessie and Nemo, only you won't look them in the eye.”

I didn't touch any kind of meat for a month after that.

But anyway, standing there in camp, I don't know what unnerved me more—the cracking sound of a gun echoing through the canyon or the chilling silence afterward. Every creature seemed to be holding its breath, every plant held stock-still. Even the air had stopped moving.

I choked out, “Is it hunting season?” and I was trying to be calm and reasonable, but this whole place, this whole Phony Forest, felt like one of those computer games where when you finally master one level, you get moved to the
next
level, where new and deadlier things try to kill you.

Robin shook her head. “There's not supposed to be hunting of any kind here. It's a restricted area because of the condors.”

We were all uneasy for a little while. But the shots had been a long ways off, and since we were safely up at the Lookout, why worry? Before long Gabby and Bella went back to feuding, and Cricket and I finished the dishes and stored all our food in the Lookout so Creatures of the Phony Forest Night couldn't get it.

Robin tried to mend the fence between Bella and Gabby by bringing out a receiving gizmo that tracked condors, but Bella just stormed down the Lookout stairs saying, “I'm not falling for that, Mom!”

Robin handed the receiver to Gabby. “Why don't you show Sammy how it works? I'll have a talk with Bella.”

So Gabby took it and folded out the receiver, transforming it into something that looked like an old-fashioned TV antenna, only smaller and flatter. She plugged a cable from the antenna into a power pack, slung the power pack over her shoulder, and started scanning the skies with the antenna for a signal.

“What are we listening for?” I finally asked, because it didn't seem to be picking up anything.

“A
beep-beep-beep,
” Cricket whispered.

“Or a loud clicking,” Gabby said, playing with the power pack controls. “Which would mean it's really close.”

But after a while of hearing no beeps or clicks, Cricket grabbed me by the arm and whispered, “Let's go.”

So we left Gabby to scan the dusky skies alone while I learned how to brush my teeth using only about two tablespoons of water and how to set things up for the night—flashlight and boots at the ready, tomorrow's clothes in the sleeping bag to preheat against the chill of morning, today's clothes in the sleeping bag stuff sack to use as a pillow.

“We'll air out today's clothes tomorrow and keep rotating them,” she told me. “Sleep only in your tank top and undies. No socks, no sweatshirt, no—”

“What if I have to get up in the middle of the night? What if bears attack?”

Then I remembered that we were in the Phony Forest.

Scorpions, yes.

Bears, not likely.

Cricket chuckled. “Look, you can wear your gym shorts if you want to, but not much more. You'll overheat.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “That bag's rated to subzero, and it won't get anywhere close to that tonight.”

So we got ourselves into bed, but we didn't go to sleep. First we listened to Bella stomping around, saying stuff like, “There's no way I'm sleeping in the same tent as her, Mom! I'd rather sleep outside and get attacked by coyotes!”

“Coyotes attack
people
?” I whispered.

“Bella's just trying to worm her way into her mother's tent.”

Bella shouted, “I'd rather die the slow, painful death of a hundred scorpion stings than sleep in the same tent as her!”

“Oh, Bella,” Robin said with obvious fatigue. “There are no scorpions up here.”

“There are, too!”

Bella kept at it, and finally Robin gave up. “Just get in here and get to bed. I've got a splitting headache and need some sleep!” Then she called, “I'm sorry, Gabby. I think we're all just exhausted. Everything will be better in the morning!”

Cricket whispered, “I don't know why Bella's being so bratty.”

“Do you think she's jealous of Quinn?” I asked. “Maybe she's used to getting all Gabby's attention and now some of it's going to Quinn?”

I guess I forgot to whisper, because Bella shouted, “I'M NOT JEALOUS OF QUINN!”

I looked at Cricket like, Wow, and she nodded and whispered, “Voices carry.”

“She's right, Bella!” Gabby shouted. “You're just JEALOUS!”

“YOU'RE AN IDIOT!” Bella shouted back.

“BOTH OF YOU STOP IT!” Robin screamed. “I NEED SOME SLEEP!”

Cricket covered her mouth, trying to stifle a giggle, then whispered, “I shouldn't think it's funny, but I do. Normally I'm the one who's left out.” She smiled at me. “I'm glad you came. I hope it hasn't been too much torture.” Then she pointed up at the sky through the screen. “Look at the stars.”

You always hear about the billions of stars in the sky, but only a few of them seem to shine down on Santa Martina. For one thing, there's a lot of fog at night. But also I guess just being in a city with electricity stops you from really noticing them. Oh, you see stars, and on a clear night you see what seems like a
lot
of stars, but looking through the tent screen, I realized that what I'd seen in Santa Martina was barely a twinkle in the huge night light of the galaxy.