Small as an Elephant

Elephants can sense danger. They’re able to detect an approaching tsunami or earthquake before it hits. Unfortunately, Jack did not have this talent. The day his life was turned completely upside down, he was caught unaware.

He was in a little Hubba tent at Seawall Campground, on Mount Desert Island. The night had been cool, and Jack had been glad he’d insisted on taking his warmer sleeping bag when his mom tried to talk him into the other one, the one that was lighter and easier to scrunch up.

But now it was morning, and he was hot. His sweat-soaked hair stuck to his neck and forehead. Clothes dryer — that’s what the tent smelled like: a trapped-heat smell that filled his nostrils and told him the sun was high.
It’s gotta be lunchtime,
he thought, kicking off his sleeping bag. Why hadn’t she woken him up? He raced the tent zipper around its track and scrambled out into fresher air.

Dang!

The rental car was gone! He stood there, rooted, as if his eyes just had to adjust to the light, had to let forms take shape, and the car would be there, right where she’d left it. But the car was really gone. So was the little tent his mother had pitched on the gravelly ground next to his.

Jack tried to take a deep breath, but the air outside was now as heavy and suffocating as the air inside the tent had been.

Had she moved sites? Maybe the ground beneath her sleeping bag was too rocky and she’d decided to find a better site. Which would make sense, he suddenly realized, because the camping gear they’d spread across the picnic table was no longer there, either.

All that was left on the site was Jack and his Hubba.

He fumbled for his phone to call her. No reception in the campground — at least not in this spot.

Relax,
he told himself. It probably had nothing to do with what had happened yesterday. A softer site — or one closer to the ocean — had probably opened up. She’d jumped on it and was now sitting there, looking out at the Atlantic, waiting for him to show up.

From what they’d been told, cars lined up every morning to get a spot at this campground — first come, first served. But Jack and his mother hadn’t come at dawn. In fact, they hadn’t arrived until late last night, and the ranger who explained the system said they were lucky — a family had just left because of a sick kid. Jack figured his mom got back in line first thing this morning to see what else was available. This was their summer vacation, and they were planning on camping here in Acadia National Park for three nights. She’d want it to be extra special.

Question was, should he pack up his tent and take it with him? Or find her first? His stomach growled; he’d look now and pack later.

Like most campgrounds, this one had lots of looping roads twisting through the woods. Jack began with Loop A and Loop B, figuring those would have sites on the water. But unless he was mistaken, or had missed a road or two,
none
of the campsites had ocean views. So he scoped Loop C and Loop D, slowly enough to get a good look at the sites, fast enough to not look suspicious. Lots of places had a single tent, and since Jack’s mother had borrowed both of the tents they were using, and because they had pitched them in the dark, Jack couldn’t even say for sure what his mom’s tent looked like. So he stuck to looking for the rental car.

His mother had specifically asked for a Prius. Not just because they were traveling all the way from Boston to Maine and gas was expensive, but because she believed in doing what she could to save the earth.

“So what does this car run on?” Jack had asked. “Biodiesel?”

“Nope. Gas and electricity.”

“You can make energy from elephant poop, you know,” Jack had said. “The Dallas Zoo calls it poo power!”

“P-U, talk about
biogas
!” his mother had said.

He’d laughed. His mother was so quick with one-liners.

Him? He was an expert on all things elephant.

Right now he wished he had the memory of an elephant. Was the car white or silver? Walking in circles suddenly felt ridiculous, so when he passed his own tent for the second time (it being on the only campsite with one tent and
nothing
else), he decided to stop looking. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his spending money, and tossed it onto the picnic table. Fourteen dollars and sixty-three cents. He was going to find food.

There were no concession stands in the campground, no restaurants — not even a convenience store — so Jack jogged out to the registration hut and asked the woman behind the counter (who was reading a fantasy by Robin McKinley, the same one his friend Nina had read earlier this summer) where the nearest market was.

“Tired of Dinty Moore?” she asked. “Seawall Camping Supplies. Right down the road.”

Jack knew all about Dinty Moore stew — not from camping, but from the nights when his mom had to work late and he made his own dinner. “Do you know if —” He was going to say,
If a woman with short blond hair and a light-colored Prius has come through,
but a feeling in the pit of his stomach made him change his mind midsentence. “If that store you just mentioned has those bright — those neon-red hot dogs?”

The woman laughed. “Red snappers! Absolutely!”

Jack smiled. As least one of the things his mom had promised on the drive to Maine was going to happen. He was going to bite into a glowing red hot dog and hear a
snap.

The first thing Jack did once he’d left the park and was on Route 102A was pull out his phone again. There was a single bar — he had a tiny chance of reaching his mother. He punched in the number. Yes! It was ringing!

But she didn’t pick up. He wished they hadn’t argued in the car last night. He wished he’d tried to be a little more understanding.

He hung up and tried again, this time listening to her voice-mail message: “Becky Martel here — or
not
here, to be exact. Don’t leave any old message. Wow me!”

He waited for the beep and then shouted, “Where are you?”

Seawall Camping Supplies didn’t look like any store Jack had ever visited. It was a cabin — with a porch and everything — and had signs all over it.
HOT SHOWERS AND LOBSTER POUND
, read one sign. Another said,
IT’S COOLER ON THE COAST
. He would have felt nervous about walking into the strange place if not for a third sign that read,
COIN-OP SHOWERS INSIDE STORE. CHANGE AT THE COUNTER
. The sign made him laugh, and he wished his mother was there to share the joke.

A rack of stuffed animals greeted him just inside the door: lobsters, seals, moose, and black bears — but no elephants. The decklike wooden floor creaked as he ambled — among maps and maple syrup, fishing line and Goldfish crackers, all jumbled together — to the counter, where a woman in an apron was waiting to take his order.

“How much are the hot dogs?” Jack asked.

“You can have two dogs, chips, and a small soda for four dollars,” she said.

“Red ones?”

“Of course. What do you want on ’em?”

“Mustard,” he said, taking a five out of his pocket and then, before handing it over, asking, “Can I buy a paper, too?”

The woman nodded at the pile of newspapers by the door and added the price of a
Bangor Daily News.

Jack sat down at a table on the porch to wait and scanned the headlines, barely giving himself enough time to read the words.
Breathe,
he reminded himself after a moment, the way his mother would.
What’s the worst that could have happened?

Car accident. Definitely. The only thing he knew for sure was that his mother had taken the car. She’d taken the Prius and had headed off somewhere this morning (
Last night? As soon as I fell asleep?
) and, although she was a good driver — in fact, that was her job, driving a shuttle for the Intown Inn — he figured anyone could speed off these twisty island roads.

BLACK BEARS
caught his eye, but it was an article about a football team and not wild animals. Another headline, about a missing nine-year-old girl, stopped him. (Did adults get kidnapped?) Jack was reading this story when the woman brought his food.

“Scary, isn’t it?” she said, glancing down at the paper. “Sure hope they find her safe and sound.”

Jack nodded, thinking about his mom and pushing the paper away. He took a bite of his hot dog and heard the snap — the snap his mom had told him about, the snap
she
was supposed to show him . . . show him and laugh about.
She
was supposed to show him the hot dog’s thick casing and its candy-apple color, then they were supposed to laugh and eat and talk about the first time she’d ever had a red hot dog in Maine.

He felt heaviness in his arms and put the hot dog down. Dang it! These were supposed to be the best three days of his whole summer. The ones that were going to make up for all the boring days he’d spent in their nothing-to-do apartment. Mom, in her exploding firecracker way, had borrowed equipment, read online reviews, made lists of all the best places to visit, circled maps, and even downloaded music for the car ride. She could hardly stop talking about Sand Beach, Thunder Hole, and all the other great things she wanted him to see on this trip.