This was strange, because Ripley was normally exhausted. From bouncing. But tonight, there was a little pain in Ripley’s chest. A tender spot where she just felt . . . sad. Sad for Eggie.
Imagine being in a big family of eggs and then one day you’re alone in your nest. With nothing but shells.
There is actually a movie about this, about a kid whose parents left him all by himself in his house over Christmas. It was Ripley’s least favorite movie.
Lying in her bunk, curled around her favorite stuffed toy, Mr. Sparkles, Ripley could picture Eggie. Eggie was not snuggled in a cabin, surrounded by friends, in a fluffy sleeping bag, with a night-light. Eggie was surrounded by dark, in the woods, alone.
“Do you think Eggie is scared?” she whispered to Mr. Sparkles.
Mr. Sparkles looked back at Ripley with sad button eyes.
“Me too,” Ripley whispered.
At home, Ripley shared a room with her sister, who snored and talked in her sleep. At camp, she shared a room with the members of Roanoke, who also snored. So Ripley could sleep through just about anything.
But the idea of Eggie sleeping alone put a pit in her stomach and kept her eyes wide open.
Ripley had never slept alone. There was always someone close enough to grab if she had a bad dream.
Eggie had never slept alone either, Ripley thought.
Ripley slipped out from under the covers.
“Let’s go keep Eggie company,” she whispered to Mr. Sparkles.
With Mr. Sparkles and her blanket tucked under one arm, she grabbed her sneakers and, unnoticed, crept out the door.
CHAPTER 12
Night in the forest has its own unique soundtrack.
Chirp-chirping becomes a long, echoing hoohoo. Sharp barks give way to distant howls.
Somewhere in this forest, on this particular dark night, there was the soft squitchy sound of rubber boots on mud.
Rosie ran her flashlight over the ground, unconcerned with the noises around her. The noises around her were noises she knew well. Noises of the dark. Rosie’s concern was for the footprints pressed into the mucky forest floor.
For several days now, Rosie—who, of course, had her Right on Track badge (because she had almost every badge a scout could have, including a few no one had ever heard of)—had been keeping tabs on the comings and goings of several sets of prints in the woods outside of camp.
Of course, this being a forest, there were lots of tracks; there was the common double lima bean of the caribou track, the skinny long fingers of the raccoon print. In addition, each scout had their own specific patterns and gaits that Rosie had learned to identify over the years.
Lately, though, there were new prints. These were a concerning sight, these footprints, even more concerning than the very large three-toed tracks she’d spotted in the woods many days earlier. These tracks were shoe tracks, human tracks; two sets of shoe prints—human, one deep, one shallow—she’d noticed first on the edge of the forest. And a single track, a tire track, that wiggled between the prints like a dizzy beeline.
Rosie bent over and picked up a wrapper next to a smudged footprint. Sniffing the paper, she detected a faint whiff of artificial flavoring.
“Beef Gravy Double Bubble Gum,” she mused. “Interesting.”
“INTERESTING?!” growled a voice behind her. “HOW ABOUT LITTERING?”
“Hello, you old coot,” Rosie said, pocketing the piece of paper and spinning around, just as the woman the scouts called Bearwoman, which was not her actual name, shifted shapes from Bear into grouchy old woman.
Who today was covered in burrs.
“You get stuck in the brush?” Rosie asked. “You’re looking a little burrier than usual.”
“Keep laughin’, Red,” Bearwoman huffed, picking the spiny plants off her tattered coat. “Once again, the borders of the camp are trespassed and you do nothing.”
“I would think by now you’d see that I’m very much aware of what’s going on, and I am very much taking care of things,” Rosie said. “Maybe not to YOUR standards—”
“No, NOT to my standards,” Bearwoman interrupted, pushing up against Rosie so they were standing nose to nose (sort of, maybe more like chin to face). “But then, you are well aware of that.”
“I am,” Rosie said, taking a step back and pulling a burr off her shirt. “As much as I appreciate this visit, and the ongoing assessment of my performance as camp director, and I do . . . the eggs hatched. So we should be fine.”
Bearwoman scrunched up her face. “HUMPH! Should be. Should is for suckers.”
Rosie lifted her head and sniffed the air. Though she wasn’t keen to get into it with her, Bearwoman was right. There was definitely something afoot.
“Someone is here,” Bearwoman said. “They are here.”
“And we will deal with them,” Rosie said. “If and when the moment arises. But as I said, the eggs have hatched.”
“We shall see about that,” Bearwoman said before rumbling off into the woods.
Suddenly, there was a cry, a human cry, from the edge of the forest.
Rosie’s blood chilled two degrees.
She turned and started to run in the direction of the voice in the dark, which was crying out, “IT’S GONE! EGGIE! EGGIE IS GONE!”
RIGHT ON TRACK
THE TRACKS OF YOUR PEERS
Through rain, or snow, or the cold wind . . . a scout with this badge must demonstrate the ability to not only identify but also, successfully and undetected, trail a variety of birds and animals through their natural habitats using only the prints they leave in their wake.
A scout with this badge can glance at the forest floor and determine the foot traffic, or flights, of the many creatures come and gone.
To understand the meaning of a creature’s mark is to understand a complex history of adaptation, migration, and . . .
CHAPTER 13
Ripley kneeled in the nest, the sharp edges of the wood digging into her knees, her heart beating so hard, it felt like it was going to break out of her chest like a cannonball.
Eggie was gone.
A sob filled her throat, made her nose prickle, her eyes hot.
GONE!
And Eggie hadn’t rolled out a little hole in the nest like last time.
Someone had cut right through the side of the nest. The way you cut a piece of pie when you’re taking a really big piece and not leaving a lot of pie for the next person.
Just looking at the cut edges of the branches made Ripley’s heart hurt.
“Eggie,” she whispered, rubbing her face into Mr. Sparkles, clutched to her chest. “Oh, Eggie.”
Suddenly there was a light, bobbing in the dark. Boots on mud.
Kalop! Kalop! Kalop! Kalop!
“Ripley?” Rosie called out into the night. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” Ripley croaked back.
Rosie reached the edge of the nest and rubbed the fog off her glasses. “What happened?”
“S-s-someone stole Eggie,” Ripley whimpered.
“STOLE egg?” a gruff voice growled from behind Rosie.
Bearwoman materialized next to Rosie and adjusted her spectacles. “What egg? I was told the eggs had hatched.”
“I thought they had,” Rosie said, looking into the nest. “They had.”
“There was”—Ripley’s eyes started to well up with hot little tears—“an egg. A last egg. It r-rolled out of the nest.”
Ripley pointed to where she and Barney had chased after Eggie. “Barney and me brought Eggie back. And we p-put it here. So the parent could come.”
“And it appears,” Bearwoman growled under her breath, “that something else has come instead. As might have been predicted. If anyone was paying attention.”
Rosie stepped up into the nest and put her hand on Ripley’s back. “It’s okay, scout. Take a deep breath.”
Ripley shook her head. “N-not okay.”
Bearwoman ran a finger over the edge of the sliced nest. “We need to star
t looking . . . NOW. They can’t have gotten far.”
Bearwoman turned and took a step back from the hole that had been cut into the side of the nest. She bent over and pressed her palms, which were sometimes paws, into the mud and sniffed.
“Gravy,” she muttered. “Beef Gravy Double Bubble Gum. We know what that means.”
Also. There were the prints. Shoe prints. Not unlike the ones Rosie had spotted days earlier.
Just then, there was another rustling in the trees, through which burst a very worried April and Jo.
“Hey!” April called out, her face full of worry. “What happened?”
“Ripley,” Jo said, quietly, “are you okay?”
The other members of Roanoke burst through the trees, trailed by Jen, who was wishing that her scouts would spend one, ONE, night peacefully slumbering in their beds and not disappearing.
“Ripley!” Molly cried, jumping into the nest and bundling Ripley up into her arms. “Are you okay?”
Ripley shook her head.
“The Order. They have taken the egg,” Bearwoman snapped, wagging a finger at Rosie.
Bubbles crawled down from Molly’s head and wrapped himself around Ripley’s neck like a blanket.
Jen shone her flashlight into the nest. “What’s going on?”
Rosie stepped out of the nest, careful to avoid the tracks Bearwoman had pointed to. “Jen, I need you to take these scouts back to their cabin.”
Jen nodded, only a little shocked to hear her name come out of Rosie’s mouth. Which meant things must be particularly serious.
“What’s happening?” Mal asked.
“Eggie,” Ripley mumbled, from inside the muffle of Bubbles’s fur.
“Eggie,” April repeated.
“Gone,” Ripley said into Bubbles’s fuzz.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it,” Rosie said. “Just go back to bed.”
Jo tried to take in as much as she could see with the beam of her flashlight.
“Okay, scouts,” Jen said, her voice as serious as Rosie’s. “Back to the cabin.”
Molly wrapped her arm around Ripley and walked her out of the nest. “Come on, Ripley.”
Ripley buried her head in Molly’s shoulder.
“I promised,” she sniffed, tears running down her cheeks.
“I know,” Molly said, squeezing Ripley as they slowly moved away from the empty nest, the place where Eggie once was.
“We need to fix this,” Bearwoman growled.
Falling forward onto her front feet as her body shifted back into bear form, she pressed her nose to the ground.
“I know,” Rosie said.
Pushing her glasses up her nose and looking up into the night sky, she felt a small twist of very un-Rosie-like worry. “I know.”
CHAPTER 14
The next morning, even when Kzyzzy came by with a stack of cornmeal waffles topped with blueberries and whipped cream, Ripley wasn’t hungry.
And Ripley was always, like, ALWAYS hungry, even when most people were no longer even thinking about the possibility of food. When most people would say it would be physically impossible to keep eating, Ripley had another pancake.
It was what Ripley did, reliably and certainly.
But not that morning.
That morning, Ripley had NO pancakes. Zero. NONE.
Not even one of those little pancakes the size of a dime that accidentally get made when you make regular pancakes.
That morning, all Ripley would eat was a slice of orange. And even that she nibbled without a drop of zest or zeal.
It was almost like Ripley wasn’t Ripley that morning. Like if you saw her sitting at the table you would lean forward and introduce yourself to this noneating, unhappy little scout.
Molly rubbed Ripley’s back, which is what Molly knew to do when people were sad. That and get glasses of water, which is something lots of people do when people are sad, although no scientific study that Jo had ever read suggested a glass of water did anything for feeling sad.
April did what April knew to do when people are sad, which is talk about how things could possibly get much better than they are now.
And they could be, in April’s estimation, because Rosie and Bearwoman were on the case.
“I mean, Holy Serena and Venus Williams,” April gushed. “You want to talk about dynamic duos? You want to talk about who you want on a case like this? I mean, this is what Rosies do, right? They come in and kind of already know what’s going on?”
“Like Angela Lansbury,” Jo noted.
“YES! I mean”—April held her fingers together in a tiny pinch pose—“I heard Rosie once found a grain of sand in a barrel of rice. I heard she once found a pearl at the bottom of the INKY WINKY Sea, with her eyes closed!”
Ripley thought an egg is not a grain of sand, and a dark forest is not a barrel of rice.
“I bet you they find that egg so fast, you don’t even notice it’s missing,” April said, crossing her arms with a sharp nod.
“Except”—April put a finger to her lips—“I guess you already know it’s missing. BUT you won’t know for LONG, I guess that’s what I’m saying. Right. Like ANY MINUTE now Rosie and Bearwoman are going to come charging in here with Eggie, and you’ll FORGET you ever were missing Eggie, THAT’s what I’m saying.”
Jo watched April catch her breath.
Ripley kept her eyes on the orange slice on her plate.
Everyone waited for Ripley to say something.
“I have a stomachache,” she said, finally, pushing back from the table.
Saying you have a stomachache is a way of saying you’re really sad and worried when it’s hard to say you’re sad and worried.
Scouts were emptying out of their seats and heading to Theater Workshop.
“Okay, well,” Jo said, “I’ll come check on you later, okay?”
Ripley nodded. She took small sad steps to the door, the most un-Ripley-like steps Jo had ever seen.
Inside the cabin, Ripley climbed up to her bed and sat down next to Mr. Sparkles.
“What do I do?”
She tried lying down, but lying down seemed to make everything even more sad, like lying down was dumping all the sad directly into her brain.
So she sat up.
A Ripley thing to do would be to sing. This is how Ripleys normally think and fill the air when it’s quiet.
But when Ripley opened her mouth to sing, nothing came out.
There was no song in Ripley’s heart that morning.
Not even a note.
Not even a little one.
Another Ripley thing to do would be to bounce, but Ripley didn’t have any bounce in her either. She didn’t even want to stand up. Her arms felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.
It was the least bouncy Ripley had ever felt.
“What do I do?” she repeated to herself, so quietly the words barely left her lips.
All Ripley wanted to do was save Eggie from whatever had taken Eggie out of its nest. But no one seemed to think that was a Ripley thing to do. April thought it was a Rosie thing.
But the idea of saving Eggie was the only thing that filled her heart.
Ripley turned and looked at Mr. Sparkles.
“Eggie is OUT there, Mr. Sparkles!”
Mr. Sparkles was propped up so he looked like he was sitting with one hoof under his chin, gazing at Ripley with attentive button eyes.
It seemed to Ripley that if any of her fellow cabinmates had found Eggie and lost Eggie, they would go to help Eggie. That would be what Jo would do; that’s definitely what April would do. And Mal and Molly.
Even if Rosie was on the case.
They wouldn’t be sitting in the cabin with a stomachache they didn’t even really have.
Why can’t you help Eggie? Mr. Sparkles seemed to wonder with his little yarn mouth turned down slightly.
This is a very Lumberjane question, incidentally.
Lumberjanes do not ask, why? They ask, why
not?
Ripley squished her face up with determination.
“I will save Eggie!”
Ripley slammed her fist into her hand, which was something she had seen April do many times before April did something.
Moments later, Ripley bounced into Zodiac cabin, where Barney was sitting with a book on their lap. Because Barney, who had heard about Eggie, and who also didn’t actually enjoy doing Butoh, also had “a stomachache.”
“BARNEY!” Ripley announced. “I don’t know how, but we need to go save Eggie.”
“YES, WE DO!” Barney slammed their book shut. Because that was exactly what Barney had been thinking ever since Vanessa told them what had happened.
“YES, WE DO!” Ripley cheered, because it felt good to cheer.
Barney paused. “What should we do?”
Ripley squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think.
Ripley wondered if, when some people were asked to think of something, they looked into their heads and found a box full of ideas. Ripley did not see a box of ideas. I mean, there was STUFF in there, lots of stuff (like pictures of unicorns and a list of her favorite cereals, cartoons, and dance moves), just not the things she imagined other people saw, like plans and maps and useful stuff like that.
Ripley sighed. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.
A tiny thought occurred to Ripley. Maybe the reason some people were the kinds of people who could save people and some people weren’t was BECAUSE some people had filing cabinets in their brains and some didn’t.
Maybe that meant Ripley couldn’t save Eggie.
Barney held up a finger.
“We know how to observe!” they noted. “And I’ve been reading up about TRACKS! Why don’t we go back to the nest and see if we can see anything that maybe Rosie and Bearwoman missed!”
THAT sounded like the beginning of a plan.
“Hurray!” Ripley cheered. “Back to the nest!”
CHAPTER 15
The Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady-Types Library is much like every other library, in that it contains many books categorized by subject, smells like old paper, and is run by a very knowledgeable librarian who hates noise but loves heavy metal music.
The Good Egg Page 5