Count Me In

by Sara Leach

  Ashley scowled and marched to the table, plopping onto a bench. Cedar grinned. “We keep trying to break the ones at home ’cause they’re so ugly and Mom won’t buy new ones until they’re all gone, but nothing works.”

  Tabitha smiled. Cedar wasn’t so bad sometimes.

  Tess turned off the campstove and lit three candles on the table. Max’s gentle panting filled the silence after the hissing of the gas stopped. “Dinner’s ready,”

  Tess said. “Let’s eat.”

  Tabitha sat on the bench at the opposite end of the table from Ashley, grateful to be out of everyone’s way. Ashley served the chickpeas and millet, passing her an extra large serving. Tabitha eyed it. Had Ashley guessed how she felt about the food and done it on purpose? She took a bite. The flavor wasn’t too bad, except for the spiciness, but the texture was awful. Mushy chickpeas mixed with gooey balls of millet. She choked down another bite.

  Halfway through the bowl, she gave up. She was still hungry, but she couldn’t face another chickpea. Using her spoon, she grouped the remaining chickpeas into piles, hoping that no one would notice that she wasn’t eating. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. There wasn’t enough room in her bowl for a group of 21.

  “What’re you doing?” Ashley asked.

  Tabitha shrugged and mushed all the chickpeas together.

  “Don’t you like the food my mom made?” Ashley asked, her voice loud and snarky.

  “I’m just full.”

  Ashley sneered. “Well, you’d better finish eating ’cause you can’t throw it out. We have to pack out what we pack in, and I’m not carrying your leftovers home.”

  “That’s enough, Ashley,” Tess said.

  Cedar reached for Tabitha’s bowl. “I’ll eat it.”

  Tabitha smiled in relief and passed Cedar her bowl.

  “I’d like to propose a toast,” Tess said. She lifted her mug of water. “To Dad. I’m sure he’s watching us now, wishing he were here.”

  Ashley and Cedar froze, then lifted their cups to clink with Tess’s. Tabitha raised hers in the air, not quite touching the others.

  “To Dad,” they whispered.

  “To Uncle Bruce,” Tabitha said. She followed Tess’s gaze to the kitchen, where the box with the ashes sat on the top shelf of the open cabinet beside the matches and a tin of tea.

  “It’s strange being here without him, isn’t it?” Tess said.

  Cedar nodded. His eyes glistened in the candlelight.

  Tabitha tried to shrink into the bench. Uncle Bruce had died in a mountaineering accident fifteen months earlier. This was the first time the family had been on their annual Thanksgiving hike to Lake Lovely Water since his death.

  The fire crackled in the woodstove, and Tess jumped up, breaking the tension at the table. She opened the black door and added another log. “Good job on the fire, Cedar. Dad couldn’t have done any better.”

  Cedar smiled. “Thanks.”

  Ashley scowled and muttered into her bowl.

  “What?” Cedar said.

  “I said, Yes, he would have.”

  “Would have what?” asked Tess.

  “Would have made a better fire.”

  “I was complimenting Cedar,” Tess said. “That doesn’t mean I was saying bad things about your father.”

  Cedar scooped up the last of Tabitha’s chickpeas. “Forget it.”

  “How about some dessert?” Tess held a squished bag of one-bite brownies over the table.

  “Sounds good,” said Cedar, grabbing four. Tabitha watched in amazement as he popped them into his mouth one after another. If she did that, she’d throw up.

  Cedar was still chewing his brownies when Tess put on her boots and walked out of the hut. She came back a few minutes later carrying a metal bucket. Ashley and Cedar groaned.

  “Couldn’t you let us finish dessert first?” Cedar asked.

  “You’ve had enough brownies.” Tess set the pail on the floor with a clang. “I was using the facilities and noticed that the toilet-paper bucket was full. Time to burn it.”

  The brownie turned over in Tabitha’s stomach. “Can’t it go in the outhouse?”

  Tess shook her head. “Because we’re at such a high altitude and the area is so environmentally sensitive, we’re not supposed to throw toilet paper in the outhouse. We burn it instead. The last people to use the hut didn’t do their job, so we’ll have to do it for them.”

  Cedar grinned. “Looks like it’s Tabitha’s turn to do it. She was the last one in the lake today.”

  Tabitha’s jaw dropped. Cedar was as bad as Ashley. How could she have thought he was nice?

  “You can all do it together,” Tess said. “I’ll do the dishes.”

  Cedar and Ashley glared at their mom. Tabitha almost laughed—they looked so much alike—until they turned their glare on her.

  “Get going,” Tess said.

  Ashley and Cedar grabbed two kindling pieces each from beside the woodstove and used them to pick up the toilet paper and feed it into the fire.

  Tabitha did the same. It was the grossest thing she’d ever done. Why did anyone choose to go hiking? First you tortured yourself climbing straight up a mountain, then you took an ice bath, ate disgusting food and finished it off by watching someone’s poo burn.

  Ashley leaned nearer to Tabitha. “I wish you’d never come on this trip,” she said.

  Tabitha jerked back. The toilet paper fell off her sticks and onto the floor.

  “Ash,” Cedar warned.

  “I’m serious,” Ashley said. “This used to be a trip for the four of us, and now here you are instead of Dad. He’d never have let you on this trip. You’re too weak to hike with us.”

  Tabitha threw the toilet paper into the fire. The injustice of what Ashley had said turned her insides into burning coals. “I didn’t want to be here in the first place,” she said. “My parents made me come. I wish I could go home—away from here and away from you.”

  Ashley raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

  Tabitha didn’t bother replying. She brushed past Ashley and climbed the ladder to the loft.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tabitha pulled on her pajamas while the rest of the family clomped around downstairs. Usually she peed before going to bed, but that would mean going back down through the hut again and going outside in her pj’s. She decided to wait until morning to brush her teeth too. She rummaged through her pack for her headlamp, tucked it beside her and crawled into her sleeping bag.

  As she’d done all summer, she put herself to sleep by reciting the Fibonacci string to herself. She had it memorized to 1597, but she still liked adding the numbers together in her head. 1+1=2. 1+2=3.

  2+3=5. 3+5=8. Since she was little, she’d fallen asleep by counting, but the Fibonacci string was way more interesting than counting by twos. Ashley’s and Cedar’s voices drifted upstairs and broke her concentration.

  “Did you hear about Jason’s trip to Cerise Creek last year?” Ashley said.

  “No.”

  “He was walking to the outhouse, and he heard something in the bushes. Guess what it was?”

  “A bear?

  “No, a snake!”

  “Big deal,” Cedar said.

  “It was a rattler.”

  “Whatever,” Cedar said.

  Tabitha shivered in her sleeping bag. Could there be snakes way up at Lake Lovely Water? She hated snakes. 5+8=13. 8+13=21.

  “I’m serious!” Ashley said.

  “There aren’t any rattlesnakes around here. Jason was lying.”

  “Mom, Cedar won’t believe me. There are rattlesnakes in BC, right?”

  “In the Interior. Not around here,” Tess said.

  “Well, maybe Jason was wrong about the rattler, but I’m sure he saw a snake.”

  Cedar snorted. “Right. Or maybe he thought he’d tell a good story.”

  Tabitha stuck her fingers in her ears to block out their voices. 13+21=34. Cedar must be right. There couldn’t be any sna
kes this high in the mountains. And definitely not any rattlers.

  Once she shut out the noise from downstairs, it didn’t take long to fall asleep—somewhere around 987. In the middle of the night she woke up and needed to pee so badly, it hurt. She lay there, tossing and turning, willing her body back to sleep. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to recite the Fibonacci string, but it didn’t work.

  She sat up and tried to unzip her sleeping bag quietly. Loud breathing ate up the air in the room. Tess’s was the high-pitched whistling breath, Cedar’s the rumbling followed by a snort and Ashley’s—she paused. There wasn’t a third breath.

  “Watch for snakes,” a low voice called from Ashley’s bunk.

  Tabitha froze. “There aren’t any snakes. Nobody believes your story.”

  “How do you know? Maybe I’m right and they’re all wrong. Maybe it’s hiding in the outhouse, waiting to slither out and bite you.”

  Ashley was so full of it. Tabitha stalked to the ladder, no longer trying to be quiet. But as she climbed down, a cold feeling threaded its way from her stomach to her throat. What if there really was a snake hiding in the outhouse? She shook her head to get rid of the idea. Ashley was trying to scare her. She’d probably made up the whole story just so Tabitha would hear it.

  The light from her headlamp flashed on Max, sleeping by the door. She grabbed her jacket. “Wake up and come with me.” Max didn’t move. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  He labored to his feet, took a few steps away from the door and plopped back on the floor.

  “Fine, I’ll go by myself.”

  She started shivering the moment she stepped out the door. A mottled, inky sky loomed over her. No moon lit the path. Not even one star winked at her. She hurried to the outhouse, scanning back and forth with her headlamp.

  The outhouse door squeaked as she pushed it open with her toe. She shone the light into the pit. Disgusting. But no snakes. She closed her eyes, held her breath and peed as fast as she could, imagining writhing serpents below her butt.

  Her headlamp bounced on her head as she hurried back to the hut. Max’s snores greeted her at the door.

  “Night. Some help you were.” She clambered up the ladder and into her sleeping bag.

  Everyone else was sleeping. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the fresh air and the fear left her wide awake.

  Ping. Something clanged on the metal roof. She tensed, listening hard. More pings. Louder and faster. Was the hut being attacked by squirrels? What if they found a hole in the roof and came looking for food?

  Her body relaxed as she figured it out. Not squirrels, rain. A lot of rain by the sounds of it. The pings grew closer and closer, faster and faster, until they blended into a solid roar. She’d made it back from the outhouse just in time.

  She groaned. Tess had planned for them to hike to a nearby peak the next day. Would she make them go in the rain? Which would be worse, hiking in the downpour or being stuck inside the hut all day? If they stayed inside, Ashley would spend the day reminding Tabitha that she didn’t like her. She rolled over and tried to find a comfortable position. It was no use. The wooden slats of the bunk pushed through the thin foamie.

  Finally she drifted off. Minutes later, it seemed, Tess got up and went downstairs to make tea. Cedar followed. Tabitha lifted her head and peered out the window. Gray fog stretched across the trees like cobwebs. She couldn’t even see the outhouse, let alone the mountain ridges. She snuggled farther into her sleeping bag. Surely they wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  A teacup clinked on the wood table. “What are you doing up so early, Cedar?”

  “Thought you’d want some company.”

  Tea poured into a second cup. “Just because your dad used to get up with me doesn’t mean you have to.”

  “I was awake, that’s all. And thirsty.”

  Silence for a moment. Tabitha imagined Cedar gulping hot tea.

  Footsteps moved to the window. “No point in hiking to the ridge this morning,” Tess said.

  “The weather report looked good for the weekend.”

  “Bad timing,” Tess said. “We need the rain though. And it’ll make finding water easier on the way home.”

  It had been a hot, dry autumn. Tabitha’s classroom at school was so hot that no one could concentrate, not even the teachers. Everyone had been grumpy.

  Thinking about school made her grumpy, too, as she lay in her sleeping bag. She hadn’t had a good start to the school year, thanks to Melissa Rogers. Even thinking her name made a knot twist in Tabitha’s stomach.

  “Nice shoes,” Melissa had sneered as Tabitha sat at her desk on the first day of school. The girls sitting around Melissa—girls Tabitha had known most of her school life—giggled.

  She was wearing the same runners she’d worn all summer. Pale blue. Used, but not ragged. Comfortable. She didn’t think about them, she just put them on. Melissa and her giggling friends all wore ballet slippers decorated with shiny sequins.

  “Do you have dance class today?” Tabitha asked, bringing on another fit of giggles.

  “Where’ve you been all summer?” Melissa said. “Everybody’s wearing ballet flats this year.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t bother telling them that she’d been at math camp in Manitoba for half of August.

  Things got worse day by day. Girls snickered behind her back. Groups in the hallways broke apart as she approached. Kids pretended not to notice her. And no one told her what she’d done wrong, why she’d been singled out this year.

  Over the summer almost every other girl in the class had grown breasts and an interest in makeup. Tabitha still had a flat chest and didn’t own any makeup. She figured she made an easy target. But even when she tried to fit in by wearing some of her mom’s lipstick to school, it didn’t make a difference.

  Getting out of bed in the morning became the hardest thing to do. Her mom had to force her to eat breakfast and make it to the bus on time. She even sent Tabitha to the school counselor, which only made things worse. The counselor told her everything would be confidential, but after they spoke, Melissa was called to the principal’s office.

  When she came back to the classroom, she made a detour past Tabitha’s desk. “Snitch,” she hissed.

  After that, nobody talked to Tabitha anymore.

  She overheard her mom on the phone with a friend. “Tabitha’s depressed.” Hearing that had made Tabitha feel even worse. She wanted to storm over to her mom and shout, “I am not!” But she couldn’t force herself off the couch. Her parents had thought hiking with her cousins would make her feel better. Not likely.

  Max woofed at the bottom of the ladder. At least he liked her. She unzipped her bag. There was no going back to sleep now.

  “Morning, Tabitha,” Tess said. “How’d you sleep?”

  Tabitha gave Max a morning rub and kiss. “Okay. I’m not used to sleeping on a bunk. Or with other people around.”

  Tess nodded. “I remember the first time I slept in a hut. There were fifteen other people in it, and it was minus ten outside. One guy snored so loud I thought he’d start an avalanche, and another kept farting in his sleep.”

  Tabitha laughed. She couldn’t imagine her parents ever saying something like that. In her family, they didn’t fart; they were flatulent.

  Max walked in circles by the door, wagging his tail and barking.

  “Oh, now you want to go out, do you? All right.” Tabitha grabbed her jacket and boots and turned to her aunt. “Do I need a leash?”

  “No leash laws up here. Max is pretty good at staying nearby.”

  Cedar threw her a paper bag. “Catch. You’ll need this.”

  Tabitha grabbed the bag off the floor where it had fallen. “What’s this for?”

  “Your pooper scooper.”

  She cringed. It was too late to back out of taking Max; he was wagging his tail and waiting for her at the door. “What do I do with it when it’s full?”

  “Empty it into the outhouse, then bring
the bag back and we’ll burn it,” Tess said.

  Tabitha sighed. She never knew there was so much poo involved in camping. “C’mon Max, let’s get this over with.”

  As she opened the door, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Ashley hung her head over the edge of the loft, smirking. Tabitha walked out the door. After it shut, she turned and stuck her tongue out in Ashley’s direction.

  The rain pelted her face and ran down the back of her neck. It was completely different outside than it had been the day before. Gray waves churned up the water, which looked dark and uninviting. She shivered at the thought of swimming in it. Even Max stayed away. He did his business by the path, and she scooped it up.

  They ran to the outhouse. At least in daylight, she wasn’t worried about snakes. She emptied the bag into the pit as quickly as she could, holding her breath.

  “Let’s go back, Max. Even spending time with Ashley is better than this.”

  Before this trip she hadn’t seen Ashley for several months. Her cousins’ house in Squamish was an hour’s drive from Tabitha’s home in Vancouver. Since Uncle Bruce’s funeral, they hadn’t seen much of each other, although Tabitha’s mom had tried. She’d even tried to convince Tess to move to Vancouver and live with them for a while. Thank goodness Tess had rejected her mom’s idea.

  When Tabitha and her cousins were little, they used to play together all summer while Tess took classes to upgrade her midwifery degree. One time, Ashley and Tabitha played doctor. Of course, Ashley was always the doctor. Ashley had said Tabitha’s belly button stuck out too much. To fix it she put a marble in it and told Tabitha to lie very still in the grass for half an hour. Tabitha lay on her back in the hot sun, trying not to let the marble roll out. Ashley was off playing with Cedar. After a while Tabitha’s mom called them for lunch. Tabitha lay like a statue. Had it been half an hour? After the third call she got up, worrying as the marble rolled onto the grass.

  “Where were you?” her mom asked, annoyed.

  “In the backyard.”

  Ashley finished off her sandwich and grinned. “Is it an inny now?”

  Not much had changed between them since.