Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things (7 page)

“Wow . . . !” I said, and it came out all breathy and awestruck.

“
This
is why I go camping,” Cricket whispered. “My mom loved this place.” Then she added, “My family used to come up here a lot, but they don't want to now without my mom.”

I snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag and looked up at the sky. “I'm sure she'd be glad to know you still come,” I said softly. And after a long quiet time of just gazing at the stars, my eyes began to close. The cool breeze was so nice on my face. The warm bag so cozy around me. And the truth is, I was exhausted.

And I was almost asleep when Cricket whispered, “Good night, Mom.”

At first I thought she'd forgotten it was me in the tent, but when I opened my eyes, she was still gazing up at the stars.

                                                               

EIGHT

I did not want to get up in the morning. I'd taken a quick little 2 a.m. trip to the bushes and knew—it was chilly outside! So Cricket and I stayed in our bags and played a few hands of rummy with the mini-deck of cards she'd packed, and I discovered that not only is Cricket not quiet, she's a poker-faced shark! That girl remembers every card that's been played, and she's ruthless.

So she was having a great time, and even though she was chewing me up and spitting me out, I was having a great time, too. I could have sat in the tent playing cards all day. But Bella was outside getting the fire going, and Cricket started feeling guilty. “We should probably go help.”

I felt like saying, “Aw, do we have to?” but I'd promised myself I wasn't going to whine about
anything
anymore. So instead I said, “Sure,” and pulled on the army pants that Cricket had lent me.

Robin was talking quietly with Bella when we emerged from the tent, and when she saw us coming their way, she seemed to give Bella some final advice, then headed up to the Lookout calling, “Good morning, girls! I'm going to see if I can catch some flight activity. Let me know when the water's hot!”

We waved, and Cricket called, “Tell us if you get any signals. I want to show Sammy!”

“Will do!”

When we reached Bella, she grumbled, “Sorry about last night. I was a jerk and I know it and I'm sorry.”

I was pretty impressed. I mean, she
had
been a jerk, but that's not an easy thing for anyone to admit. It's a whole lot easier to just go on being a jerk and blame other people for the way you act.

I know all about that.

Anyway, Cricket sort of grinned and said, “But the real question is, are you an idiot?”

Bella gave her a tired smile. “Yeah, I'm an idiot. I'm a
huge
idiot.” Then her eyes came to life and her smile got brighter. “Just not about
boys
like
some
people.”

Cricket and I both laughed, and then Cricket lowered her voice and asked Bella, “Have you talked to Gabby yet?”

Bella shook her head. “I started to, but she's still asleep.”

Cricket whispered, “She can't still be asleep. She probably just doesn't want to come out. You should go in and talk to her!”

Bella looked over at Gabby's tent. “Will you guys get the water going?”

We both nodded. “Sure.”

So we grabbed the pail and headed off toward the spring, only we'd barely made it through camp when Robin came onto the Lookout deck and called, “Do any of you know where the receiver is? I thought I left it on the desk last night.”

But before we could answer, Bella comes scrambling out of the tent, crying, “She's gone! Mom! Gabby's gone!”

“What do you mean, she's gone?”

“She stuffed her sleeping bag to make it look like she's here, but her boots are gone, her flashlight's gone . . .
she's
gone!”

“Calm down, calm down,” Robin said, walking toward the tent. “Maybe she's out taking care of business,” which is Robin-speak for going pee.

“Why would she stuff her sleeping bag? Why would she take her flashlight? She's been gone since before daybreak!”

Robin checked out the tent, and when she emerged, she looked very sober. “Gabby!” she called. “Gabrielle!”

So we all started calling, “Gabby!” and after searching around the latrine and the spring and everywhere else in the general vicinity, Bella, Cricket, and I went to the rocks and shouted, “GABBY,” into the canyon.

No response.

We did it again and again, but all we got back was the lonely echo of the canyon.

“Where did she
go
?” Bella wailed. “Do you think she started walking home?”

I shook my head. “I think she's out tracking down a condor.”

Bella turned to face me. “You can't just hike into the canyon and find a condor!”

I shrugged. It didn't seem so crazy to me. “She knows about where they are, right?”

Cricket cut in, saying, “She's talking about AC-34 and JC-10, Bella. Gabby knows they roost in the Chumash Caves area.”

“That place is huge!”

“Not if you have the receiver,” I said.

Bella's eyes bugged, and without a word to us, she charged off the rocks shouting, “Mom! Mom! Gabby's got the receiver! Mom!”

Robin didn't want to believe that Gabby had actually taken off to track down a condor, braving scorpions and ticks and rattlesnakes and coyotes—not to mention scarce and buggy water. “But why?” she finally asked. “It makes a lot more sense that she started for home.”

“Tell her,” Cricket whispered to Bella, but Bella just stood there. So we both said, “Tell her!”

“Bel-la,” her mother warned.

So Bella looked down and mumbled, “I told her that she didn't care about condors, that she only cared about Quinn, and that she was a good-for-nothing tagalong who didn't know two half hitches from a square knot.”

“Bella!” Robin's faced morphed from shock through disbelief clear over to anger. “You of all people should know what it's like to have cruel things thrown in your face! Gabrielle
adores
you. You're the sibling she never had. The one she looks up to, the one she admires. How could you be so cruel?”

Bella started crying. “I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry! She was just being so stupid about Quinn, and I thought—”

“You thought you could manipulate her into submission by cutting her down? Doesn't this remind you of somebody?”

“I'm so, so sorry!” Bella wailed.

Robin held the sides of her head. “Well, what are we going to do? We have to go after her. She can't be out there
alone
. What if she gets bitten by a rattlesnake? What if she gets lost? What if she runs out of water?”

“She's a good Scout,” Cricket said, trying to be reassuring. But her eyes were kind of watery, and the way she said it was more like, She
was
a good Scout.

Like she was reading her epitaph.

Robin's hands moved around to cover her face as she muttered, “Why did Quinn have to take the radio?” She took a deep breath and held it for a long time, then finally dropped her hands, let out the breath, and said, “Okay. The best scenario is for us to all go after Gabby together”—she turned to me—“but Sammy, I'm afraid your blisters would prevent you from keeping up.
So
”—she took another deep breath—“Sammy and Cricket, you stay here while Bella and I try to track Gabrielle down. Quinn said he'd be back this morning, but I don't want to wait around. When he does show up, though, tell him what's happened and get him to drive out to the caves, keeping his eye out for us
and
Gabby. Hopefully he'll be able to give us all a ride back to camp.”

“What if Quinn doesn't show up at all?” I asked. “Can you make it out to the caves and back in one day?”

“One very long day, yes.” She turned to Bella. “We're going to have to hustle. Get your daypack. Bring water, purifying tablets, enough food for the whole day, matches, and your emergency kit.” She started for her tent. “I'll do the same.”

It took them all of seven minutes to get ready. And as they hurried down the back road, Cricket and I were both feeling really left out. Really
helpless.

I hate feeling helpless. I'd rather be angry or hurt or
tortured.

Anything but helpless.

Bella waved as they started running down the back road. “See you soon, I hope!”

“Call us on the echo phone if you need anything!” Cricket shouted.

Bella laughed and waved. “Will do!”

After they were out of sight, Cricket and I tried to be useful. We cleaned up camp, gathered firewood, aired out everyone's clothes and sleeping bags, and hiked to the spring for water. Cricket kept checking her watch, and finally she said what I knew she'd been thinking: “I wish we could have gone with them.”

“You should've just gone.”

“No way! This is your first time camping
and
it's against the rules.”

I rolled my eyes.

“It's a good rule, Sammy. The buddy system is not something you play around with. Besides, someone had to stay behind to tell Quinn. He's our real hope of finding her.”

We'd done everything we could think to do, so we went up to the Lookout and used the high-powered binoculars to scout the area for Quinn's red truck.

No sign of it anywhere.

“What does he do all day, anyway?” I asked.

I meant that as where-else-might-he-
be,
but Cricket lowered the binoculars and said, “You wouldn't believe all the things he does! He coordinates everything around here.”

Everything?

I looked around at the craggy nothingness of the Phony Forest. So far, I was not impressed.

But Cricket was just warming up. “He's a zone biologist, and he's made lists of the birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that live in this biome. He can tell all about any animal up here! He knows the phylum and genus and species and”—she laughed—“and whatever else zone biologists know.”

“But what good does that do? Why not just let the bugs and snakes live happily ever after? Why make lists and categorize them?” I squinted at her. “And who
pays
him to do this?”

“The more you study something, the better you understand it, the more you can protect it from human interference.” Then she added, “And the government pays him. He got a grant.”

“But I still don't get it. Why not just
not
come up here? Wouldn't the best thing be to leave everything alone?”

She shrugged. “People are going to come. People like to camp and backpack and be part of nature. We
are
part of nature. What Quinn does helps people understand how to share the forest with the rest of nature.” All of a sudden she got really excited. “See?
Not
knowing how to share the forest with the rest of nature is exactly how humans drove condors to near extinction. It's a perfect example! That's why Quinn makes lists! To protect the biggest and littlest creatures of the forest.”

I scowled at her. “Creatures like ticks and scorpions and rattlesnakes?”

“They're all part of the balance of nature, Sammy. Birds eat bugs, snakes eat rodents . . . it all balances out.”

I sighed and muttered, “I still can't believe he gets
paid
to make lists of bugs.”

Cricket held the binoculars to her eyes and muttered, “And I wish he would just show up.”

I let her scan the area for a minute, then asked, “So where else could he be? Or maybe he already ran into them on the way up?”

She shook her head. “He went down that way,” she said, pointing toward the road we'd hiked the day before.

“The roads don't connect?”

“It's a long way around.”

“But it is possible?”

She nodded, then said, “I guess so.”

After another minute, I said, “You want to go to Echo Rock and make a call?”

She laughed. “Sure.”

So we got down to the outcropping of rocks and called, “HELLO!” and waited through the echoes.

There was no answer. The wind was gusting upward, out of the canyon. It was warm and dry and didn't seem to know where it wanted to go. First it gusted to the left, then the right.

“HELLO!” we shouted again.

Again, no answer.

“NO . . . QUINN,” we yelled, hoping that Robin and Bella might hear us and that they'd understand.

After that we took turns scouring the canyon with the binoculars for signs of life, but all we saw were a few birds flapping by.

“Hey, look!” I said. “There goes a condor!”

“That's a
crow
.”

I laughed. “No, it's not! It's a condor!”

She tossed me a grin. “Very funny.”

Then all of a sudden we looked at each other, our eyes wide.

“Did you hear that?” Cricket whispered.

I put up a finger, and we both held our breath and waited. And there it was again, riding the winds up, out of the canyon, “Help!”

Cricket shouted, “GABBY?”

There was no answer.

“BELLA?” we both shouted into the canyon.

We waited, but again, all we heard was the wind.

Finally Cricket said, “We did hear ‘help' . . . didn't we? Maybe we imagined it?”

“We both imagined the same word?”

“Maybe it was just the wind?”

I shook my head. “It was someone calling for help.”

“Do you think it was Gabby?”

“I have no idea.”

“What if it was Bella or Robin? What if something happened to them? What if . . .” She was looking really panicky. “I hate this feeling. And I hate doing nothing! Why isn't Quinn showing up?”

We scoured the area with binoculars some more but saw no sign of Quinn. And even though it didn't make any sense, even though I knew I shouldn't say it, it was nearly noon and I was sick of standing around in the dusty heat doing nothing. “You want to go try to find her?”

Cricket's eyebrows flew up. “And leave you here? No way!”

“I meant both of us. My blisters don't hurt
that
bad anymore.”

“So why do you shuffle around like you do?”

“I'm thinking I could put another level of moleskin on. You know, build it up? Pad it more?”

Cricket hesitated, balancing what we should do against what she wanted to do.

“Get me some moleskin,” I said, plonking down on the ground to unlace my boots.

“It makes more sense to st—”

“Get me some moleskin.”

Ten minutes later I was patched up, and we both had food, water, and emergency supplies in our daypacks. Then we left a note for Quinn inside the Lookout, locked the windows and the door, and took off. We didn't even bother to think through the reasons we were going. Neither of us tried to talk the other one out of it. After all, what was there to discuss?