Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things (12 page)

THIRTEEN                                                      

It's not something I like to broadcast, but when I sleep, I drool. Not always, but when I'm really tired, big puddles of saliva seem to just drain out of my mouth. Some mornings it's so bad you could row a boat from one side of my pillow to the other.

Seriously.

And it's not like having a boy-girl slumber party in a tiny tent with only two sleeping bags wasn't awkward enough or that being crusted in dust with a sunburned nose, cracked lips, and little bits of snake between my teeth wasn't
revolting
enough, I also had to worry about drooling.

So I parked myself on the opposite side of the tent from Casey, grabbed a corner of one of the sleeping bags, and turned my back. And I must've been really,
really
tired, because I don't remember a thing after that. I just conked out.

In the
morning,
though, I got woken up by a little tickle on my chin. So I open my eyes, and there's Billy Pratt, kneeling over me, seeing how far he can make a stream of my drool stretch.

“Grab a life jacket!” he says when he sees my eyes open. “We're gonna drown!”

Gabby and Cricket giggle while I wipe my mouth and bolt upright.

And that's when I see that what I've been half hugging and drooling all over is the calf part of Casey's leg.

“Oh!” I try to wipe his pant leg dry. “Oh, I'm so sorry!” And for the second time in two days, I wanted to shrivel up and die. I mean,
I'd
been the Sleep Zombie. I'd migrated over, used his leg as a pillow . . . and drooled!!

It was beyond embarrassing or humiliating or even mortifying.

It was ego-slaying!

And really, when your ego's been slain, there's only one thing to do.

Run!

So I bolted from the tent and went around in circles doing nothing for a minute, my ego-free mind frozen in my thick, drooly skull. Then I went over and checked on Marvin. Somehow I felt connected to him. Injured and ugly, we were birds of a feather.

He was pretty subdued, just sitting in the tent. I talked to him a little, but he just looked at me with sort of blank brown eyes. “We'll get you some help,” I told him, then muttered, “Wish the same was true for me.”

Billy squatted beside me and slipped the last chunk of rattlesnake into the tent. “Don't swallow it whole, big guy. I don't know how to Heimlich a bird.”

“Do you know how to Heimlich a human?” Gabby asked, coming up from behind.

Billy grinned at her. “Choke on something and I'll demonstrate.”

She huffed off, and since Casey was on his way over, I rushed away to help Cricket clean out the tent.

“Hey,” Casey said, catching up to me. “It was just a little drool—don't be so embarrassed.”

“It was a
lake
.” I covered my face and took a deep breath. “My nose is fried, my lips are cracked, I'm a terrible camper, and I drool!”

He peeled my hands away and smiled at me. That's all, just smiled. But that smile said more than any words between us could have. He didn't care that I was uglier than a sunburned warthog. He didn't care that I was a miserable camper. He didn't care that I drooled. So all of a sudden I
didn't
feel uglier than a sunburned warthog. I didn't feel like a miserable camper. Okay, the drool would always be embarrassing, but still . . . I just felt happy to be standing there with Casey's hands wrapped around mine.

Happy to be soaking in his beautiful brown eyes.

His smile.

His . . .

“Would you two get over here and help us!” Gabby snapped.

We looked at her and Cricket, tearing down the people tent. “I think she's talking to us,” Casey said with a grin.

“Yeah,” I said, grinning back. “Must be.”

After that I felt a lot better. And after we'd torn down camp, I decided to focus on helping Cricket get us back to the trail. So while she laid out the map and tried to figure out where we were, I used the binoculars to scout out the landscape. I climbed to the top of a big, crumbly rock formation and found out that I could see a lot farther. A lot
more
.

“You know what?” Cricket called up to me. “I think my compass is broken.”

“You're kidding!” Gabby said, hovering over her. “How can your compass be broken?”

“Maybe when I stepped on my pack yesterday . . . ?” She handed it to her. “It's telling me everywhere's north.”

“Oh,
great,
” Gabby said after playing with it for a minute. “Just
great
.”

Now, the way she said it was really snotty. Really
mean
. So I called down, “Just use yours, Gabby.”

“I didn't
bring
mine,” she snapped.

“Oh,” I said, looking at her through the binoculars. “So I guess this is all Cricket's fault.”

It took her a minute, but when she got it, she screeched, “Shut up!”

“Sure,” I called back. “If you'll quit
snapping
at everyone all the time.”

Without missing a beat she called back, “At least I don't
drool
on people.”

I lowered the binoculars, studied her for a minute, then raised them again, muttering, “I definitely need to get out of here.”

Then I spotted something on the canyon wall behind where we'd made camp. Not directly behind—to the right a ways. It was an area of white rock with some shrubs and trees and stuff, but the trees were sparse compared to everywhere else. And the rock had strange formations. They were sort of long, flat openings. Like a bunch of fat-guy bellybuttons.

“Hey!” I called down to Cricket. “What do those Chumash Caves look like?”

“Can you see them?” she called back, already charging up the rock to join me.

“Do they look like fat-guy bellybuttons?”

She stopped, then raced up the rest of the way. “Yeah!”

I handed over the binoculars when she reached me and pointed. “Over there.”

“That's them!” she squealed. Then she lowered the binoculars and said, “We
passed
them?”

“What do you mean, we passed them?” Gabby asked, coming up the rock. “How could we have passed them?”

Cricket didn't answer. She just handed her the binoculars, saying, “Wow, were we ever lost!” She jumped up and down a little. “But
now
I can figure out where we are!”

“Without a compass?” I asked.

She nodded. “I've done plenty of hiking down here. I just needed a bearing!” She started pointing around. “The trail's somewhere over that way, but Deer Creek winds around
that
way, and we really need water!” She took her binoculars back from Gabby and started down the rock, crying, “Deer Creek, here we come!!!”

Billy and Casey had been taking care of the behemoth bird and were looking kind of worried when we joined them. “I don't think he's doing too well,” Casey said. “He's really lethargic.”

“Water!” Cricket said. “We'll get him water and get him out of here!” She was acting all hyper. All
happy
.

“Huh?” Billy and Casey said.

“Sammy spotted Chumash Caves. I know exactly where we are! Well, not
exactly,
but close enough! Come on! Let's go!”

So Casey and Billy strapped on their packs, and since my daypack was practically empty, I went up to Billy and said, “Hand over the bird.”

He eyed me.

“I'm serious, Billy. You've got a full pack; I've got next to nothing.”

“Is this a stickup?” he asked, one eyebrow arched high. Then his eyes popped and he said, “Aaagh! She's got drool!” and shoved Marvin into my arms.

“Yeah, I've got
major
drool,” I told him across the top of the wadded-up tent. “And I'm not afraid to use it!”

After that, everyone seemed to be feeling better. Even Gabby. She started apologizing to Cricket as we were hiking along, so I dropped back and let them have some privacy. I think I heard Gabby crying some, and I think she also gave Cricket a hug, but it was hard to tell with a big ol' bird in my arms.

Casey offered to carry Marvin a couple of times, but I told him, “Back off, buddy, or I'll hose you down!”

The truth is, though, Marvin was heavy. He felt like fifty pounds, but that was partly because the combination of him and tent was so bulky and hard to handle. I was wishing someone else would carry him, but I wasn't about to ask.

I was through being the weak link.

By the time we found Deer Creek, I was exhausted, sweating, and
parched
. I put Marvin down and I was about to throw myself into the creek, but Cricket held me back.

“What? I'm going to drown in
that
?” It was all of a foot deep.
Maybe
.

“Wet feet will give you big blisters. Just splash some on your face and neck. You'll feel a lot better.”

So that's what I did. That's what we
all
did. And it turns out that Billy and Casey had a portable water-purifying pump, so we didn't have to wait twenty minutes for the purifying tablets to work before drinking. They just pumped it through their purifying gizmo and passed it around. And you know what?

Water is wonderful.

It's the nectar of the clouds!

Man, is it good.

Anyway, after we were done splashing in water and eating a bit, we gathered our stuff and followed Cricket “thataway!” We hadn't found the trail yet, but she seemed really confident about where it was.

And I was really hoping she did know, because Marvin wasn't doing well. We'd tried to get him to drink at the creek, but he'd barely taken in any water. And he was feeling heavier by the minute.

Not that I was going to
complain
. . .

Anyway, there we are, just hiking along in a file—Cricket, Gabby, me, then Casey and Billy—hoping that we'll find the trail, when Cricket points and calls out, “Chumash Caves, on your left!”

Casey says over my shoulder, “Hard to believe Indians used to grind their acorns up there, huh?”

I nod and keep looking at the caves. “You know, before this trip I never thought of myself as being even remotely wimplike, but after the two days I've had out here, I can't imagine living like they did. It must've been so hard. What's there to gather around here besides acorns? I haven't seen a single berry. And what did they hunt? Venomous snakes? Boars with killer tusks?”

“Condors!” Billy calls from behind us. “Hey,
they
could tell ya they taste like chicken!”

Gabby shouts, “They didn't even know what chicken was!”

Cricket stops and turns around. “They did not eat condors, Billy. They
revered
condors. They saw them as a symbol of power. They painted them on their cave walls and on their pottery, and they wove them into their blankets.” She takes a deep breath, then says, “Native Americans believed that the beating of the condor's wings brought thunder to the skies. Which is why they call it the thunderbird!”

My jaw dropped. The
thunderbird
?

All of a sudden the bundle in my arms felt radically different.

I was hauling around a
thunderbird
?

I told myself I was being stupid. What difference did it make what you called it?

It was still a big ugly bird.

But . . . a
thunderbird
?

Cricket had started hiking again, so we all fell in line behind her. And we'd only been hiking another five minutes or so, when all of a sudden she cries, “Trail!”

At that point she's probably forty feet ahead of me, and believe me, no one's more anxious to get a glimpse of the long-lost trail than I am. But as I'm hurrying along, the toe of my boot kicks into a little pile of horse poop.

Now, I may not know piggy poop from coyote poop, but horsey poop is a different story. If you've ever been to a parade, you know what it looks like and you know what it smells like. It's just processed grass, usually done up in tidy nuggets.

Like barbecue briquettes, only bigger.

And made out of grass.

Or hay.

Or, in this case, Phony Forest foliage.

Anyway, at first I'm like, Horse poop, so what? But then something clicks.

Hard.

I screech to a halt, do a U-turn, and bumper-car Marvin right into Casey.

“What's up?” Casey asks as Billy bumper-cars him from behind.

“Uh, I'm not sure.” I kick over a few horsey briquettes, scout around a little, and hand him the bird. “Could you hold Marvin for a sec?”

But when he sees me following a faint trail of crushed grass toward a ring of trees
away
from everyone else, he passes the bird over to Billy and calls, “Hey, Cricket! Wait up!” as he hurries to join me. “What's going on?” he asks me.