Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things (4 page)

FOUR

“Hold on, girls!” Robin shouts as she throws the van into reverse and guns it. She's craned around backward, we're thrust forward, and the jeep is skidding toward us sideways. Then, like it's hit a patch of ice, the jeep's back end swings around and slams into the side of the mountain.

“He crashed!” Bella shouts.

Robin puts on the brakes, then just sits there clutching the wheel, panting for air as she looks through the windshield.

Outside, everything is still. Everything but dust, drifting up through the air.

Finally Robin loosens her grip on the wheel and asks, “Is everyone all right?”

As a yes, we all start talking at once. “Man, that was close!” “Good driving, Mom!” “What's the
matter
with that guy?” “He could have killed us!” “Do you think he's hurt?”

Then the driver steps out of the jeep and Bella gasps. “That's Vargus Mayfield!”

Gabby gasps, too. “It
is
. . . !”

I turn to Cricket. “Who's Vargus Mayfield again?”

“That college student they were talking about earlier . . . ?”

“Yeah,” Bella says, scowling at Gabby. “The one with more attitude than aptitude.”

Robin gets out of the van saying, “You girls should probably stay put.”

We give it a second, look at each other, then all pile out.

Vargus Mayfield's mouth is busy four-wheeling through some rough verbal terrain as he looks over the damage to his jeep.

“The only person you should be mad at is yourself, Vargus,” Robin tells him. “There's no
way
you should have been driving that fast on this road!”

“Huh?” he says, blinking at her like he can't quite place who she is. One by one he gives each of us a blank look, but when he gets to Bella, it clicks. “Oh, spare me!” he whines, his whole face contorting. “The goody-goody Girl Scouts?”

Bella steps forward. “Don't make fun of
us,
buddy! We're not the ones with more attitude than aptitude! We're not the ones trying to run innocent people off the road! We're not the ones—”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Robin pulls her back and whispers, “Let me handle this.”

But Vargus is already going off. “Like this is
my
fault? I wouldn't be up here at all if it wasn't for that pigheaded Professor Prag! I left messages on his machine, like, twenty times, I taped notes to his office door, but does he bother to call me back? No!”

Robin squints at him. “So you came clear out here to, what,
find
him?”

“I was desperate, man! One of the other teachers told me he was probably at the Lookout, so I got up real early to catch him, but he's not there! Nobody's there.”

“What are you desperate about? What can possibly be so urgent?”

“He
flunked
me! He stopped me from graduating! I
so
did not deserve to flunk his stupid class and he knows it! I worked up at that miserable Lookout six weekends. Six weekends! I could have been home having a good time, partying with my friends, but instead I came up here. And for this I get a no credit? It's just not fair! It's not right! It's—”

Vargus had gotten all red in the face and looked like he was going to bust a gasket, so Robin grabbed his arm and said, “Hey, calm down.” But he kept right on ranting, so Robin grabbed him by
both
arms and shouted, “Vargus! Vargus, look at me. Look . . . at . . . me . . . !”

Vargus looked at her.

“Take a deep breath.”

Vargus took a deep breath.

“I know it seems like the end of the world now, but it's going to be okay.”

Vargus just stood there, holding his breath.

We waited.

And waited.

His face turned redder.

And redder.

His eyes started bulging.

“What is he doing?” Bella whispered.

“I don't know,” I whispered back.

Finally Robin told him, “It's okay to let it out, Vargus.”

A great burst of air shot out of him, straight into Robin's face, then he panted like crazy, looked at his jeep, and wailed, “I'm not gonna graduate, I wrecked my jeep . . . my dad is gonna kill me!”

Robin took a deep breath herself, and after she watched him sob for a few minutes, she headed for the jeep, saying, “I'm going to see if it'll drive or if we have to get you a tow.”

“Hey!” he said, charging for the driver's door. “I'll do it!”

She stuck her arm between him and the door. “I really don't think you're in any condition to drive, Vargus.”

“I'm
fine,
” he said, edging her aside.

Robin shrugged and backed off, and we all watched from a safe distance as Vargus revved up the jeep and maneuvered it away from the mountain until it was facing downhill.

“He's so lucky it was the back end that crunched and not the front end,” Cricket said.

“He's lucky he didn't go off the cliff!” Robin muttered. “Hey!” Vargus shouted, hanging out his window. “Move your van, would you?!”

So we all piled into the van and Robin backed up until there was enough room for Vargus to get his jeep past her easily. She watched him in the mirror until he'd disappeared in a cloud of dust, then shook her head and said, “Well, that was exciting,” and headed up the mountain.

It was only another five or ten minutes before Robin pulled off the road, parking alongside a handful of other cars. “Here we are,” she said, tossing us a grin. “And in one piece!”

I slid open the van door and nodded at the other cars. “Do a lot of people hike up to the Lookout?”

“Sometimes,” Bella said, climbing out after Cricket. “But mostly people park here because it's the trailhead for a bunch of other hikes.”

“Yeah,” Gabby said. Then she pointed around, saying, “There's an awesome loop that takes you from here along Sky Ridge, down to Rocky Ravine, through Hoghead Valley, beneath Chumash Caves, and around that way to Deer Creek, Devil's Horn, Coldwater Pass, and the Bluffs. Then you can either cut off to go to the Lookout or loop around back to here.”

“Takes about a week,” Cricket said.

Bella opened the van's back doors and pulled out her backpack. “I wouldn't want to do it in the summer, though.”

Gabby nodded, strapping on her pack. “Too many ticks.”

“And rattlesnakes.”

“And scorpions.”

My eyes bugged. “Scorpions?” I turned to Cricket. “Rattlesnakes at least give you a little warning. But scorpions? And ticks? You didn't say anything about scorpions and ticks!”

Cricket threw Gabby and Bella a withering look, then said, “Don't listen to them. I've only ever seen one scorpion, and that was way off in Hoghead Valley.”

“One is plenty!”

Boy, was I sounding like a sissy. So what if I saw a scorpion? Like I couldn't just squash it with my tank-toed boot?

But . . . what if one got inside our tent and jabbed me in the middle of the night?

Or snuck up behind me as I was, you know, relieving myself in the wilderness?

Cricket unloaded my backpack, saying, “Don't freak out, Sammy. They're just bugs.”

Yeah. Bugs that'll kill you. Or give you Lyme disease. Or suck your veins dry of blood. Or . . .

“Take your backpack!” Cricket said, and she sounded kinda irritated 'cause I was just standing there like a moron while she held it out to me.

So I took it, and I strapped it on like I knew what I was doing. And after Robin had the van locked up tight, we hit the road, them happy, me hoping we weren't headed for Ticksville.

The first thing we did was cross over a bouldery gully, which was not a good way to get used to a backpack. I felt like I was going to topple over and wind up on my back like a potato bug, kicking and flailing, helplessly trying to get back on my feet.

But after we'd crossed the gully and had been going for a while, I got the hang of hiking with a backpack and actually started liking it. It wasn't a big burden like carrying a backpack of schoolbooks is. A hiking backpack is way bigger, and even though it's heavier, it
feels
lighter because it doesn't really hang from your shoulders. The hip belt hoists the weight and sort of suspends it. There is some weight on your shoulders, but it's mostly braced by your hips.

So the first half hour was great. I even forgot about ticks and scorpions and just hiked, keeping up with Cricket no problem. I think she was pushing herself kind of hard, too, because she wiped some sweat off her brow and panted, “I knew you'd be good at this!”

“Thanks!” The sun was starting to really beat down and I was pretty thirsty, so I said, “Can you see which pocket my canteen is in?” because I didn't remember, and the frame of the pack made it so I couldn't really tell.

She patted the side of my backpack. “Right here.”

We both took a break for water, but after two little sips she put hers away. “Don't drink so much, Sammy. Only a few swallows.”

I lowered my bottle “Isn't there water at the Lookout?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It's collected runoff. It needs to be filtered before you drink it.” She pointed to my water bottle. “That's got to last you all the way to the top, and it gets steeper.”

So I started to put the bottle away, but when Cricket began hiking again, I couldn't resist—I took a couple more sips. And a couple more. We'd put the canteens in the freezer the night before, so the water was icy cold and
so
refreshing. And really, how much farther could the Lookout be?

An hour later I understood that hiking five miles with a thirty-pound pack is nothing like walking five miles with a backpack of books. I was
dying
. The road was steep and dusty, the sun was blazing hot, and I had blisters.

Really
painful
blisters.

About the tenth time the group waited up for me, I finally broke down and said, “I need to put some Band-Aids on my feet. I've got blisters on my heels that are killing me.”

So everyone had to wait while I dumped my backpack, unlaced my boots, and got a little lesson in moleskin.

It's not
real
skin from a mole. It's this pink fuzzy stuff that you cut into a doughnut shape and put around your blister. At least that's what they told me worked best. Robin said, “You absolutely don't want to pop blisters—they'll hurt worse, maybe bleed, and probably get infected. The moleskin doughnut keeps the pressure off the blister and will keep the shoe from rubbing that spot.” When she was done helping me apply it, she smiled at me and said, “There. You're all set!”

Meaning get up and get hiking.

Which I did.

But I've got news for you—moleskin doughnuts work about as good as they'd taste.

The last thing I wanted was to be a whiner, though, so I just cringed and shuffled along, trying to keep up.

“How you doing?” Robin kept asking me, 'cause obviously I was lagging.

“Fine,” I kept lying, 'cause I'm not
used
to lagging. I'm used to being the one going, “Come on! Keep up! Can't you move a little faster?” But while the others were climbing up the trail like mountain goats, my feet were in pain, my thighs were aching, and I was so thirsty that all I wanted to do was stop and drink water.

“You've just got to keep moving,” Robin finally told me. “Stopping all the time makes hiking hard. Just go at a steady pace and don't quit—you'll find that it's actually easier.” Then she added, “And go easy on the water. You'll want some left for the last mile. It's steep.”

“Steeper than this?” I choked out. And I wanted to kick myself for sounding like such a baby, but I just couldn't help it. On top of everything else, it felt like someone had slipped big ol' boulders into my pack. My hips were aching, but loosening the hip belt so the weight was on my shoulders just made things worse.

Robin smiled at me. “Quite an undertaking for your first hike, especially in somebody else's shoes. But you'll make it.” She handed me a piece of gum and said, “This'll help.” Then she started hiking again and called, “When you get to the top, you'll feel great!”

As I trudged along, the others kept me in sight. I could tell they were annoyed that I was holding them back, and I
hated
that. Why didn't they just go on ahead instead of following their stupid
safety
rule that was making me feel like a complete loser.

Hmm. Maybe they were worried that I'd spot a condor without them.

Ha.

Like I'd even care?

Also, I didn't want them to know, but I'd run out of water. My lips were flaky and cracking, my face was scorched and dry. . . . I felt like I'd been hiking up an endless sand dune in the Sahara Desert.
Water,
my mind kept saying,
water. . . .

Then Cricket called, “We can see the Lookout, Sammy! You're almost to the top!”

Thank God.

I plodded along, and when I finally reached the top, I felt like shouting “Robin Terrane is a liar!” because I did
not
feel great.

I felt
destroyed
.

The others were already heading up the stairs to the Lookout, so I twisted out of my backpack and dumped it alongside the lineup of other packs.

But as I started up the stairs, Bella, Gabby, and Cricket came pounding
down,
and I could see from the look on their faces that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

FIVE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Vista Ridge Lookout is a one-room, square metal building on stilts. It has a set of metal stairs leading up to a green door and windows all the way around that are protected by brick-colored shutters. The top half of each shutter swings up and attaches to the roof awning, and the bottom half swings down, practically touching a deck that goes clear around the building. The deck has a chain-link “wall” to keep you from falling over, but it makes the Lookout seem like a prison guard tower instead of a birdwatcher's playhouse. A little barbed wire, a few guns . . .you'd be all set.

Anyway, there I am, parched and in pain, dying to get inside the Lookout for some water and shade, only the other girls are charging
down
the steps. Bella sees me and cries, “Someone broke in! Mom thinks they might still be inside!”

It didn't seem very smart for Robin to stay up there alone, but less than a minute later she came through the doorway and called, “Nobody home. But the place is turned upside down.”

“But why?” Bella cried, heading back up the steps. “Why would somebody do that?”

“Is anything missing?” Cricket called as we followed Bella.

“It's hard to tell.”

Inside, we all just stood around for a minute, trying to absorb the mess that surrounded us. There was broken glass from a window next to the door. You couldn't tell from the outside because the shutter concealed it, but it had been busted so somebody could reach inside and unlock the door. There was enough light flooding in through the open door for us to see that desks and chairs had been flipped over and that cups and books and pictures and binoculars and
beer
cans were strewn everywhere. But the corners of the room were in shadows, and the whole place felt really eerie.

Gabby made a sort of hiccupy sound, and when I looked at her, I saw that she was crying.

Crying.

And then Bella broke down and wailed, “I can't believe someone
did
this!”

“So what do we do?” Cricket asked.

Robin took a deep breath. “I guess the best course of action is to see if we can find the shortwave radio. If we can, I'll get in touch with the sheriff and try to reach Quinn. He told me he was coming up last night, so I don't know where he is. It's not like him to be late.”

“There's no cell service?” I asked, because Robin had a cell phone clipped to her pocket.

Robin shook her head. “But we'll be able to radio down to the base station.”

“The base station?”

“The main fire station in Santa Luisa.” Then she added, “We can also reach the sheriff or Professor Prag at the college.”

Robin handed Cricket a small ring of keys and said, “Would you and Sammy go outside and open all the shutters?”

“Sure.”

The padlock of the broken window's shutter had been put back through its latch so the shutter still
looked
locked, but the loop part of the lock had been cut near the base.

“Did they
saw
through it?” Cricket asked, studying it, too.

“I don't think so. See how the metal looks pinched? I think they used bolt cutters.”

“What are bolt cutters?”

“My friend Hudson has a pair. They've got long handles for torque and a curved pincer-looking blade. I saw him cut open a rusted lock in his garage once—snapped right through it.”

Cricket moved to the next window and unlocked it, her lips tight, her nostrils flared.

“You okay?” I asked as I helped her hook open the top shutter.

“No,” she said, “I'm
mad
.” She went on to the next window. “You have no idea how upsetting this is. A lot of people work really hard to fix up this place and then some
moron
comes along and trashes it. Why? Why would anyone want to
do
this?”

I helped her with the next shutter. “Maybe because they're mad at someone?”

At first she didn't get it, but then her eyes got really wide. She dropped the shutter she'd been lifting and ran inside the Lookout crying, “Robin! It was Vargus! It had to be Vargus!”

“Calm down, Cricket. I know. You're probably right.” Robin was collecting beer cans, potato chip bags, and other trash in a plastic bag. “But he's long gone and will deny it, so we need to find the radio.” She took a deep breath and looked from Cricket to me and back. “It would help a lot if you could open the rest of the shutters.”

Gabby and Bella had filtered some water, so after I downed as much as they'd let me have, I made a quick stop at the area around the broken window. I didn't see a thing. No snagged hairs, no clothes fragments, no blood . . .

Too bad for us, this was real life, not the movies.

So I went back outside and helped Cricket open the rest of the shutters. “Wow,” I said when we were all done and I finally noticed the view.

“Amazing, isn't it?”

I nodded. It wasn't that it was so beautiful, it was that you could see so
far
. The hills just seemed to roll away, getting soft and fuzzy in the hazy distance.

“Here, do this,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Walk around the whole thing. Don't look down, just out.”

When we'd made it halfway around, I said, “Wow,” again, and it came out all breathy. Like I really meant it.

“Doesn't it feel like you're on top of the world?” she whispered.

I nodded and watched a hawk riding a thermal along the canyon. It didn't flap, didn't seem to put in any effort at all. It just glided along, tipping slightly from side to side as it circled and swooped and rode the wind.

“You see hawks up here all the time,” she whispered. “Them and crows.” She laughed. “I hate crows.”

I laughed, too, because I'm no fan of crows myself. They're big and ugly and oily and scary, and they
caw.
Like it isn't bad enough to be big and ugly and oily and scary? You also have to
caw
?

But anyway, there we are, having a laugh about crows, when all of a sudden I see a little flash of light down in the canyon. Like someone signaling with a mirror. And then I notice a trail of dust rising into the air. “What's that?” I ask, pointing.

Cricket squints, then runs inside the Lookout. “Someone's coming up the back road!”

“There's a back road?” I ask, following her.

Cricket grabs a pair of monster binoculars and races outside again, the rest of us right behind her. She studies the flashing puff of dust a minute, then squeals, “It's Quinn!”

“Really?” Gabby says, grabbing the binoculars away. But before she can even get focused, Bella pulls them from
her,
saying, “Let me see!”

“How can you tell it's him?” I ask Cricket.

She grins at me. “Red truck, condor flag . . . it's him!”

Robin heaves a sigh of relief and says, “Thank you, Lord,” then goes back inside the Lookout.

It took about twenty minutes for Quinn's truck to finally reach the Lookout. There was a blue and orange mountain bike in the bed of the truck, and he had a passenger with him—a woman with amazingly long honey blond hair.

Gabby and the other girls raced down to greet Quinn, but I stayed upstairs with Robin. She'd cleaned up the room a lot but was still very firm-lipped.

“Do you think it was Vargus?” I asked.

She nodded.

I shook my head. “But you know what? He didn't seem drunk, and he didn't
smell
drunk. Did you smell anything? Like when he blew that breath in your face?”

She stopped and stared at me, then frowned. “And I got a good whiff, too.”

I went over to her trash bag and pawed through it. “There are at least ten cans in here. And all these chip bags? It's like there was a party up here.” I took a leftover chip and bit into it. “These are totally stale.”

Just then the girls came in and announced, “Quinn's here!” and then in strode . . . a samurai.

Wearing hiking boots.

And jeans.

And a T-shirt.

Okay, so it was just his
head
that looked samurai-ish. Dark hair held in place by a tattered strip of black fabric tied around his forehead, deep brown eyes . . . But the way he carried himself was very fluid. Very
light
. Like he was walking on a stream of air.

He got directly to the point. “The girls think it was Vargus. Do you agree?”

“I don't know who else.
But
”—Robin showed him the trash sack—“not even Vargus could down a case of beer and not be drunk.”

“Maybe he came up last night?”

“He said he came up this morning to talk to Dennis about not passing his course, but he could have been lying. He was in a hurry and very agitated.”

Quinn nodded. “I'll radio the sheriff.”

“But we can't find the radio!” Robin said.

“It's in my truck.”

“Oh,
you've
got it . . . !” Then she asked, “Were you up here at all yesterday? Was Dennis?”

He shook his head. “I was running behind all day, and I'm pretty sure Dennis had meetings.” He glided toward the door. “I'll call the sheriff. We need to have Vargus questioned.”

So Quinn went down to his truck. His long-haired friend was leaning against the tailgate and looked really outdoorsy—tan skin, good muscles—like she was ready for anything.

She hung out with him as he used the shortwave radio, but she didn't come up to the Lookout afterward, which Gabby and Cricket sure didn't mind. They sort of melted at Quinn's feet when he returned, and Gabby said, “We're
really
hoping to see a condor this time, Quinn. Do you think we will?”

“Pretty good chance, I'd say!” He smiled at her. “I checked on JC-10 and AC-34 last week. They're doing great.”

“Who are JC-10 and AC-34?” I whispered to Cricket.

“Juvenile Condor Number Ten and Adult Condor Number Thirty-four,” she whispered back.

“You saw them?” Gabby squealed. “At their cave?”

Quinn nodded.

They were all so excited. And not only did the switch in mood feel weird to me, it also seemed strange that all of them were so attached to birds that didn't even have real names. I mean, ugly or not, if they'd named them something like Swooper or Flygirl or Buzzilla, that would be one thing. But AC-34? How could anyone care about a big ugly bird named AC-34?

“Can you take us to the cave?” Gabby was asking. “Can you
please
?”

Quinn hesitated, then gave her a bit of a samurai squint. “Too much human contact is not a good idea. I've been up there twice in the last month, but that's because I wanted to make sure their roost was still free of glass and bottle caps.”

“Glass and bottle caps?” I whispered to Cricket.

Cricket whispered back, “Condors feed that stuff to their young.” She shrugged. “Nobody really knows why.”

“Wouldn't that kill them?”

“Exactly,” Quinn said, extending a hand as he did a samurai glide over to me. “Quinn Terrane. And you are . . . ?”

I put out my hand, and all of a sudden I understood what made Cricket and Gabby so . . .
buttery
over this guy. He was like a black hole of magnetism, his eyes sucking you in, not letting you go.

“S-Samantha,” I stammered. “Samantha Keyes.”

My own voice kind of snapped me free of his magnetic pull. Samantha?
Samantha?
I never introduce myself as Samantha. That's how my
grandmother
introduces me. Did I think it made me sound older? More sophisticated?
Smarter?

What kind of embarrassing moron was I?

I pulled my hand away and said, “But I go by Sammy.”

“Well, Sammy,” he said, “Cricket is right. Why condors feed their young dangerous shards and bottle caps is unclear. What
is
clear is that human influences have compromised the condor's safety for over a century.” He flashed a glistening white smile. “I take it you've joined the ranks of those committed to fighting back these influences?”

Now I was mad at
him
. What did he take me for? Some gooey-eyed teen who'd swoon at his eco-happy feet?

Please.

So inside I'm going, Yeah, dude. I'm here to help save that rare, intelligent species that feeds
glass
and
bottle caps
to their young. I can't think of a more worthwhile cause to devote myself to. . . .