Nature Girl (2 page)

Then Lucy got on the phone and said, “What’s wrong, Megan?”

Her voice sounded far away. When I said how good it was to talk to her, she didn’t say anything. That was when I started shouting, “Lucy, are you there? Lucy, you’ve just got to be there! LUCY!”

Lucy isn’t answering. Something is wrong with the cell phone. I need to find a spot with a better signal. I inch way out on the branch. The bird flies away. The further out I go, the more the branch sinks from my weight. But I can’t worry about that now.

“LUCY!”

Finally she says, “Stop yelling, Megan. I can hear you. We’re waiting for Mom’s doctor to call. Mom’s really nervous.”

Lucy sounds nervous too, like she’s having trouble breathing. I wonder if I should try to make her laugh. I love her laugh. It doesn’t come from her mouth or her nose; it comes all the way from her belly—especially when she laughs at my jokes.

“Should I read you more of Ginia’s diary? Remember? ‘Oh how I love the hair on Sam’s knuckles.’” To tell the truth, I made that up. Ginia doesn’t even have a diary.

“Some other time, okay, Megan?”

“That’s okay. I can’t get it now anyway. I’m in a tree.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t turned into a Nature Girl. I came up here to call you. You won’t believe what happened to me yesterday. Mom took me to this pond to swim, but it was full of gunk and frog pee.”

But she interrupts. “Grandma said you said it was an emergency.”

“It IS an emergency.”

“If it happened yesterday, it can’t be an emergency today.”

Lucy gets all picky about stuff like that. It can be very annoying. So I get a little mad because she isn’t really listening to me. “It IS an emergency because I’m still suffering. You don’t know how I’m suffering. Nobody does. Nobody cares.”

“Nobody cares because you aren’t really suffering!”

“My hair stinks like rotten leaves! I’ll never get the slime out! Ever!”

“At least you HAVE hair!”

Lucy has hair too. Her hair is short and straight and shiny black. But Alison doesn’t have hair right now.

There’s a big silence again. Only this time I know it’s not the phone.

“Please don’t be mad at me, Lucy. I can’t help saying stupid stuff because I really am suffering. You don’t know because you aren’t here. But you should be. You should have come to Vermont with me like you promised!”

I stamp my foot for emphasis. Then I hear a loud crack.

There’s a moment when I think, Oh no, this can’t be happening. But I’m wrong. It is happening.

The branch breaks and I fall smack to the ground.

I guess I scream; I don’t know. I slam into the dirt so hard, the air is knocked out of my lungs. But it feels like more than that. It feels like my actual self whooshes out of my body and up into the sky. I hover over my old body. It looks really weird with its legs and arms sprawled in crazy angles on top of all these sticks and leaves. As I float higher and higher, I’m so happy that I’m finally getting away from Vermont.

Mom and Dad and Ginia run toward my body, carrying their paintbrushes.

“Megan, what happened?” Mom says.

“Looks like she fell,” Dad says.

Mom drops her paintbrush and kneels beside me. She brushes the hair back from my face and strokes my forehead like she used to when I was little.

“Is she unconscious?” Dad kneels on my other side.

They both look at me with worried faces. The past few weeks, their eyes were narrow slits that zapped me with laser beams of anger. But now their eyes are sympathetic and wide. They gently pat me all over, feeling for broken bones. After I slip back into my body, I try to smile at them. I feel really horrible and yet somehow better than I’ve felt since we came to Vermont.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Ginia pick up a small shiny rectangle.

I gasp.

“Did that hurt, honey?” Mom says.

“Maybe her leg is broken,” Dad says.

I send all kinds of sister messages to Ginia. Like, I will give you my allowance for a year and never tease you about Sam again and be your personal slave if only you put that little insignificant silver thing into your pocket and keep your big mouth shut.

She smiles at me. I smile back. I’m so relieved. I love my sister.

The silver glints in the sun as she holds out her hand. “Look what I found. I wonder how our cell phone got way over here on the ground?”

From the phone, a little voice says, “Hello? Megan? What’s happening?”

It’s Mrs. T.

What happened to Lucy? She must be really mad at me. And that makes me mad. I jump up. “It isn’t my fault. I had to call. It was an emergency! None of this would have happened if you let me call Lucy last night. But you only do what you want. You never do what I want.” I stamp my foot.

“I guess her leg isn’t broken.” Dad walks over to the tree.

Mom sighs as she takes the phone from Ginia.
“Hello, Mrs. T.? Don’t worry about Megan. She’s fine. How’s Alison?”

I’m not fine. I’m shaking. My head hurts, my arm is scraped, my legs are scratched, and my favorite black T-shirt with the New York subway map on it is ripped. But I’m not lucky enough to be taken to a hospital where a nice nurse will fluff up my pillows and I can lie around watching cable TV. I have no broken bones to heal.

Dad examines the tree limb. The part where it broke looks like a big angry mouth with jagged teeth. Dad lifts the branch. For a moment, the mouth is closed. But then he lets it fall down again and the mouth opens wider than ever.

“I’m sure the doctor will have good news. Please give Alison our love. Let us know if there’s anything we can do. Good-bye.” Mom hangs up the phone.

She doesn’t even ask me if I want to say good-bye to Lucy. But I can’t talk anyway; I’m trying so hard not to cry. I hate them. I hate them all. I limp toward the house.

I only get about three steps before I hear Mom say, “Where do you think you’re going? We’re not finished here, Megan Knotts.”

Let this be a lesson for you. As bad as you think things are, they can always get worse.

These are my punishments.

First: no using the cell phone for the rest of July. This is especially painful because now I can’t call Lucy to find out if she’s mad at me.

Second: reparations to the tree. Reparations are what Dad makes me do to try to fix things. I have to write a letter to the farmer we’re renting the house from. I have to pay for a visit from the tree doctor with my own money. And I have to write an Apology Poem to the tree and actually go outside and read it to the tree. Out loud.

Third (and most horrifying): no TV for the rest of the summer. None. Not the news, not the PBS station, not even that awful yoga tape
Kundalini Kids
. No screen time whatsoever no matter how educational or boring.

Mom says this isn’t a punishment; it’s a way of helping me. Of course, my mother is one of those anti-TV types. The only show she likes to watch is the summer Olympics and that only comes on once every four years.

“We know you’ve been unhappy up here, sweetheart. It isn’t as much fun for you without Lucy. But you haven’t given Vermont a fair chance.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Stop wishing for what you can’t have. Live where you are. This is the country. You should embrace nature. Dive into that pond.”

That’s easy for her to say. She doesn’t have slime growing in her hair. She wouldn’t have noticed even if she did. Her hair is short and spiky. She likes to dye the gray parts different colors anyway. But my hair is light brown and would reach way past my shoulders if it weren’t so curly. I already washed it six times, and let me tell you, that green is not going away.

“What does that disgusting pond have to do with watching TV?” I say.

“TV only provides a temporary diversion. It fills you with sweets so you can’t have a healthy hunger for real pleasures that will truly nurture you.”

I hate it when my mother rambles on like a crazy
person. I make the mistake of rolling my eyes. Then she gets mad and says the thing a kid can never argue with.

“It’s for your own good.”

She snatches the rabbit-ear antenna off the top of the TV and takes it upstairs.
Clomp, clomp, clomp
. The sound of her clogs on the wooden floor is like someone hammering nails into my coffin.

I’m stunned. I can’t believe she took the antenna.

“Whatever happened to spanking? Can’t you beat me and get it over with? Now I’ll be in agony ALL SUMMER LONG!”

I fall to the floor and wail so loud the dog starts barking. Does Mom care? No. I could be oozing blood from an organ that burst when I fell out of the tree, but she doesn’t even bother to check. She comes back downstairs, without the antenna, and picks up the dog to comfort HIM.

That’s when I decide I won’t suffer alone.

I plan out separate tortures for each of them.

Ginia gets the cut-ahead treatment. Whenever she’s on her way to the bathroom (and oh by the way there is only ONE stinking bathroom in the place—unless you want to count the actual I-kid-you-not wooden outhouse by the barn), I run and duck in ahead of her. Then she yells, “Mom!” and I say, “Sorry, but I really have to go.” Then I run the water in the sink like I’m peeing buckets and roar with silent laughter while she pounds on the door.

Dad’s punishment is more devious. My parents are both high school art teachers. But Dad especially loves to tell you stuff. Sometimes he talks about something interesting, like how they made the original Disney cartoons. (Did you know they had to draw every little flapping wing over and over by hand, since they didn’t have any computers?) But now whenever he tells one of his stories, I just stare at him. When he finishes, I say, “And I needed to know all that because?” Then he gets a hurt look and smooths his beard. (That’s right—he grew a beard, because it’s some kind of Vermont law that ALL men up here have to have furry faces.) Finally he says, “I guess I thought it was kind of interesting.”

But the best punishment is for Mom.

I start spending all my time staring at the blank TV screen.

“What’s wrong, Megan?” Mom asks.

I don’t answer. I just sigh.

“Can’t you find anything to do?”

I sigh again.

“Sitting there will only make you more depressed.”

I shake my head. I’m already as depressed as anyone could be.

Then Mom starts in on her list of
WHY-DON’T-YOUs
. Why don’t you read, why don’t you draw, why don’t you write Lucy a letter, why don’t you walk the dog, why don’t you do yoga, why don’t you explore that hiking trail behind the field?

I still don’t say anything. Not talking to her is part of her torture. I hear the anger rising in her voice like the water filling up the back of the toilet. Then SWOOSH—out comes a great flushing rush of rage. MEGAN, YOU CAN’T SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE LIKE THIS!

Part of me thinks, Sure I can. But another part of me thinks, What if I have to?

This lasts for a whole week. Just between you and me, I’m getting pretty sick of it. The only good part is that whenever I stare at the blank TV, I pretend I’m watching home movies of my favorite days with Lucy.

We’ve had so many wonderful days together. There was the day Mrs. T. took us to see a Broadway show and we got to go backstage and meet the star and ride in three different taxis. There was the day that Lucy and I made an entire city out of shoe boxes and then we played like we were giants destroying everything. There was our first sleepover, when we pretended we were camping out in Lucy’s living room and had s’mores and everything. There was the day that Alison took us to her office on the fifty-second floor and we got to meet an author who was very nice even though we never heard of the book she wrote.

But the most perfect day was one year ago, in the summer right after fifth grade. (To be honest, there aren’t very many happy memories from sixth grade.) As a reward for surviving elementary school, Dad took Lucy and me to
Coney Island in Brooklyn. First we went to the aquarium. The penguins were cute and everything, but the best part was when I got Lucy laughing by pretending to kiss this big, fat, ugly walrus through the viewing window and calling him “my Blubber Boy.” As we started to leave, the walrus followed me. That made Lucy laugh even more. Luckily the walruses are right by the bathroom, because she laughed so much she desperately had to go!

Then we went across the boardwalk to the beach. Lucy found two lucky quarters when we were making sand creatures. After I didn’t find any no matter how deep a hole I dug, she said I should have the one with the state of Missouri on it because my name starts with
M
. Lucy always shares like that. We spent so much time making mythological beasts that Dad said we didn’t have time for the amusement park. I started getting upset, but Lucy had the brilliant idea of asking Dad what his favorite ride was. He told a long story about taking Mom on the Wonder Wheel. Lucy said he just HAD to ride it again to keep the memory alive. And you know what? He agreed! But first we had corn dogs for dinner—hot dogs dipped in dough and cooked in a yummy way. Then we all rode the Wonder Wheel. (Luckily Dad sat alone in a car with just his memories.) From the top, we had the most incredible view of the ocean and Brooklyn and everything like it all belonged to us. I was so happy, I said, “Oh, Lucy, the sky is glowing pink from my
happiness.” But Lucy didn’t say, “Duh, the sun is setting,” like Ginia would have. Lucy sighed and said, “The world outside and the world inside match.”