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Probably vegetarians were secretly grossed out when people were eating meat. Robin did a quick survey. Molly had brown juice dripping off her chin. Dad seemed to be taking bigger mouthfuls than usual. Mom was doing the soak-your-bun-in-the-chili thing. Robin had never noticed before how
yucky
chili looked.

After supper, Mom sent a protesting Molly in the direction of the bathtub. “But I was going to help April unpack! I was going to say where to put stuff!”

“Not tonight, young lady.”

Good, thought Robin. No Molly to butt into their conversation.

“Robin’s smiling,” wailed Molly.

“Molly, bathroom now!” Mom’s voice had the same sharp edge as in the truck. “And Robin, homework before anything else!”

Robin’s grin evaporated. “It’s April’s first night!”

“And we need to get back into a routine.”

What was going on with Mom? Robin sighed loudly. “I’ll help you as soon as I’m done, April. I’ve just got a little bit of math.”

A little bit of math turned out to be twenty story problems, Robin’s very worst thing. Finally, she stuffed her book into her backpack. The putting-Molly-to-bed noises had stopped a long time ago, and the house was quiet. Mom and Dad were in the living room. Dad was reading the newspaper, and Mom was asleep over a magazine.

The door to the computer room was shut. Robin tried to decide if there was light coming under it.
She squeezed the door handle and eased it open. The room was in half-darkness. Moonlight shone through the window and turned the welcome poster into a long pale ghost.

“April?” whispered Robin.

There was a thud and Jellybean jumped off the bed and stalked out the door. “So that’s where you’ve been hiding,” said Robin. She waited a few more seconds and then quietly shut the door.

She carried Jellybean up to her room and crawled into bed. He curled up in a lump under the blankets. “You’re a traitor,” murmured Robin, scratching his gray head. “But I forgive you...just this once.”

Chapter Four

Robin clattered downstairs at quarter to eight. Mom was hunched over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. Robin poured herself a bowl of Rice Krispies and plunked down beside her. “Where is everyone?”

“Dad’s gone to work, Molly’s looking for her show-and-tell, and April is asleep.”

Asleep? Robin choked on a mouthful of cereal. She stared at Mom.

“She can go to school on Monday. That will give her the weekend to settle in.”

“I told everyone she was coming today,” protested Robin. “Mr. Nordoff even brought in a desk. He moved some kids around so we can sit together.”

“It’s April’s first day here,” said Mom firmly. “She needs a chance to get used to this before starting school.”

Get used to what? Robin ate the rest of her cereal in silence. April had spent every Christmas and her summer holidays on the ranch for as long as Robin could remember. Mom and Aunty Liz always said that Robin and April were like sisters.

“Can I take my turtle?” Molly called from the doorway.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mom. “How do you think you’d manage the aquarium on the school bus?”

Molly stuck out her chin. “You could drive me all the way to school.”

“I have a fair number of other things to do around here, young lady!”

Robin winced. Mom didn’t need to explode like that. Molly always asked for ridiculous things. It didn’t mean that she really thought she would get what she wanted.

She glanced sideways. Mom was staring into space, her coffee forgotten. Maybe Mom had to get used to being home again too. Well, she’d better hurry up.

Robin pushed her half-eaten tuna sandwich to the edge of her desk. She took out a pencil and a piece of paper and scribbled some calculations. It was 12:35 PM, exactly 2 hours and 25 minutes until it was time to go home. That was, let’s see, 145 minutes or...Robin sucked the eraser on the end of her pencil and did some quick multiplying...8,700 seconds.

“What do you think, Robin?”

Robin pulled herself back to the conversation. Kim had called an emergency meeting to discuss plans for her birthday party. “What are the choices again?” Robin said.

“Bowling in town and Dairy Queen,” said Kim.

“Town” was what everyone called One Hundred Mile House, which was just under an hour’s drive from Bridge Lake. For big things, Robin’s family went to Kamloops, but for groceries and the occasional meal at a restaurant, they went to One Hundred Mile House.

“We went bowling at Jenna’s party,” said Bryn. “How about the Canada Games pool in Kamloops?”

“Too far,” said Kayla. “Unless we can stay overnight in a hotel?” she added hopefully.

Kim sighed. “Not a chance.”

“How many games would we get to play if we went bowling?” said Bryn.

“Don’t know,” said Kim.

The girls fell silent. Robin stood up. What were Mom and April
doing
? She’d gone to the office and phoned home at recess and at the beginning of lunch hour. No answer. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

The answering machine wasn’t working, and Robin let the phone ring thirty-four times. Then she gave up.

The bell rang just as she got back to the classroom. She slid into her desk.

Kim turned around. “We decided on a sleepover,” she said.

Surprise, surprise.

Robin grinned. “Good.”

“I always have a sleepover,” sighed Kim.

“I know,” said Robin. “That’s what’s so good about it. Movies?”

“I think I can talk them into three. Two for night and one for morning.”

“Perfect.”

Mom was in a good mood. She was humming as Robin and Molly clambered over grocery bags into the back-seat of the station wagon. The worry line between her eyebrows had disappeared. And she didn’t erupt when Molly peered hopefully into one of the bags and said, “Did you get me anything?”

“There just might be a Kinder Surprise in one of those bags,” said Mom.

“I didn’t know you were going to town,” Robin blurted out.

“We didn’t know either,” said Mom lightly. “It was spur of the moment. Based on the sad contents of the fridge and cupboards.”

Mom was exaggerating. Things weren’t that bad at home. Usually everyone had lots of notice before a trip to One Hundred Mile House so they could add things to the list that lived on the fridge.

April spoke for the first time. “Are we going to tell them what happened at lunch?”

Mom’s mouth twitched. “I thought we were going to keep that a secret.”

Molly leaned forward like Jellybean smelling a mouse. “What happened?”

“Well...it was kind of embarrassing.” Mom was grinning widely now.

“You have to tell!” yelled Molly. “That’s the rule when you start something.”

Robin scowled. Of course Mom was going to tell. If Molly wasn’t so dumb, she’d know that. The car felt crowded with grocery bags and little sisters.

“Okay,” said Mom. “April and I went to Luigi’s for lunch.”

Luigi’s was a new restaurant in One Hundred Mile House. Robin had only got as far as peering through the window at the tables with fancy red tablecloths and candles in bottles. Mom had promised to take Robin with her the first time she tried it out.

“We’d finished eating and Aunty Jen was reading a newspaper,” said April.

“I was checking ads for tractor parts for your Dad and—”

“It caught on fire!”

“I dipped it too close to the candle.” Mom started to laugh.

Molly’s eyes were as round as marbles. “Did you stop, drop and roll?” she asked. “That’s what we learned at school.”

“The paper was on fire, not us. The waiter grabbed it and ran out of the restaurant, holding it. I think he panicked.” Mom was laughing too hard to finish. “You tell the rest, April.”

April turned around and grinned at Robin and Molly. “Aunty Jen said, ‘But I haven’t finished reading it yet!’”

That was it? Mom was killing herself laughing because she’d almost set a restaurant on fire? Robin’s face felt cold.

Molly slumped back against the seat. “Can I take April for my show-and-tell?”

Robin stared at her. “What’s that got to do with the fire?”

“Nothing,” said Molly. “I just need a better show-and-tell than Sally Penner. She brought her brother’s lizard.”

Robin snorted.

Mom said, “Oh, Molly girl, I missed you.”

Mom and April burst out laughing again. Robin frowned, shifting her thoughts away, and concentrated instead on her plans for training Kedar.

Chapter Five

Robin had to wait all weekend to have April to herself. While more snow fell outside, Friday night and most of Saturday had been taken up by an endless family game of Monopoly. Dad had declared himself King of Boardwalk and had torn up little pieces of red napkin to make extra hotels.

There was one bad moment early Saturday morning when April discovered that their Internet connection wasn’t working and probably wouldn’t be fixed for a week or two.

“How am I supposed to talk to my friends?” she had wailed. It wasn’t that big a deal, but April turned it into one. Robin even heard her telling Gran about it during her nightly phone call.

The news from Gran on Saturday night was about the same. Aunty Liz had stabilized, but no one quite knew what came next. Sunday morning Dad left when it was still dark to do his
rain-hail-sleet-and-snow
thing. Molly’s friend’s mother picked her up for a play day, and Mom retreated to her bedroom with fierce warnings that she was not to be disturbed “unless the chimney is on fire, the water pipes burst or there is a major appliance failure.”

Over bowls of cereal, Robin tried to decide how to approach April with her idea. April didn’t want to make plans, but this would be fun. Finally she took a big breath and burst out, “Why don’t we ski to the cabin? Dad says I’m allowed, as long as I let someone know I’m going there.”

April hesitated, and Robin was sure she was going to say no. Then she shrugged. “Yeah, okay, though I won’t be able to ski as fast as you.”

The cabin was behind the ridge on the other side of the lake. It had belonged to a trapper and had been abandoned fifty years earlier. Dad had fixed it up before Robin was born, patching holes in the roof, adding a porch and repairing the metal chimney. He had carried in supplies on horseback, and Robin’s
family liked to go there for picnics or to warm up on snowshoe or cross-country-ski trips.

Robin filled her fanny pack with oatmeal cookies and two Japanese oranges left over from Christmas. She scribbled a quick note for Mom.

The girls laced up their ski boots, grabbed tuques and mitts and headed outside. They stepped into their skis and slid down the slope to the lake. Robin squinted in the brightness and checked out the old ski track. All that was left in the fresh snow was a faint ridge. She set off across the bay, pushing herself hard. She sucked in gulps of cold air and let everything slide out of her mind. Sometimes breaking a new ski trail was like plowing through wet cement, but today the snow was powdery and fast.

When she reached the far shore, she waited. April looked small and far away. It was easy to imagine the house wasn’t there and to pretend that they were the only travelers on a vast snowy tundra. They used to play this game all the time. Inuit hunters, struggling to reach their camp...

She decided to take a chance. “We have to keep going, Ootpik,” she gasped as April caught up. “Polar bear...behind the island...no bullets left.”

“Any provisions left?” puffed April, and Robin felt herself relax.

“I ate the last frozen fish, but there’s always our bootlaces. We could eat those.”

“Aaargh!” said April.

“We’ll head for the igloo,” said Robin.

The igloo was the snow-covered abandoned beaver lodge in the bay at the end of the lake. The girls took off their skis and stuck them in the snow and then climbed to the top of the mound.

“Remember sliding down this when we were little kids?” said April suddenly. “It seemed so big.”

“Yeah. Even Molly’s outgrown it now.” Robin touched April’s arm. “Look.”

A moose had stepped out of a clump of willow trees. He stood very still and stared at the girls, as if trying to figure out what they were. Then he loped through the deep snow along the shoreline, his long legs reminding Robin of an ungainly giraffe. With one last look back, he scrambled up the bank and disappeared into the trees.

April shivered. “It’s so lonely out here.”

Robin never felt that way. She loved the lake in the winter. She searched the shoreline for the split pine
tree that marked the beginning of the cabin trail. “Let’s go!”

The girls put theirs skis back on and skied to the shore, and then they started to climb up a steep hillside. The snow was deeper and softer here. Robin checked for blazes on the trees to make sure they were going the right way.

At the top of the hill, she leaned on her poles, panting, and whooped, “We made it!” Below her, the trees opened into a sloping meadow. At the bottom was a long, narrow, snow-covered pond with a small cabin tucked at one end.

April shoved off with her poles and shouted, “Race you!”

It was like skiing through clouds. The powdery snow floated around Robin’s knees. Her cheeks stung with the cold. Perfect!

They skied almost to the door of the cabin. They stuck their poles and skis in the snow, and Robin tugged on the door.
Oomph!
It clung stubbornly for a few seconds and then gave in with a grunt.

It seemed colder inside than outside. There was a table and two wooden chairs, an old black wood-stove and wooden bunks with sleeping bags stored
underneath in plastic bins. A board shelf was cluttered with dishes, a lantern, some tins of food and a smoke-blackened pot.

In the end, they decided to eat their cookies and oranges outside in the sun, stamping a flat place in the snow with their skis.

They munched in silence for a few minutes. Then Robin licked the last bit of orange juice off her fingers and gathered up the peels. April leaned back against a big spruce tree and closed her eyes.

A sudden picture of Aunty Liz hit Robin with a jolt. Last Christmas, they had all skied to the cabin. Aunty Liz had been resting against that same tree where April was now. Molly had crept up with a mitten full of snow and slid it down Aunty Liz’s jacket. Robin could still hear her pretended roar of rage.