Nature Girl

by Jane Kelley

  Then Trail Blaze Betty says, “Don’t tell me who to yell at. I yell at anybody I want. Especially people who throw trash everywhere and don’t respect the Trail or themselves.”

  I’m glad she’s mad at them. Then I start wondering if she’s also mad at me. Why else would she be here? Did she watch the TV news and find out that my parents didn’t say I could hike the Trail? I slither down deeper in the slime and the gooshy leaves.

  “Now go on home!” Trail Blaze Betty says.

  “What about my cigarettes?” Joey says.

  “You kids shouldn’t be smoking,” Trail Blaze Betty says.

  “We aren’t. We’re just bringing them to Joey’s mom,” Blondie says.

  “I’m sick of your lies. Now git! DON’T MAKE ME TELL YOU AGAIN!” Trail Blaze Betty shouts.

  They mumble and grumble, but they leave.

  I stay hidden long after their voices fade. The Dorks are gone, but I’m just as afraid of Trail Blaze Betty. She’s probably sick of my lies too. After all, I lied about my family and I ate all eight brownies and littered. The Trail found out the truth about me and told her. She probably even knows how I almost killed a Hundred-Year-Old Maple.

  “Girl? You there, Girl?” she says.

  I’m afraid to breathe.

  “You find the spring, Girl?”

  I hold Arp’s mouth shut.

  “Okay, Girl. You got to do what you got to do,” she says.

  I have no idea what that means. But I’m scared to ask her.

  I hear her go along the Trail, back toward her place. She whistles “Home on the Range” as she walks. Or maybe it’s “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I can’t tell; she’s such a terrible whistler.

  I wait a little bit longer. When I can’t hear her anymore, I let go of Arp. While he rolls around in the dirt, I get up from my hiding place and sit on a rock.

  I’m a mess. Slimy leaves are stuck to my legs. I peel them off. The mud is still there. I just sit there, staring at my filthy legs. I probably should go back to the spring and get water to clean them, but I don’t. Everything seems stupid. Especially hiking. I mean, I know I shouldn’t pay any attention to what those Dorks said. But they weren’t exactly impressed by what I’m doing.

  I unwrap the blanket and peek inside the paper bag. There’s a half-empty bag of potato chips. I give a few to Arp, but I don’t even feel like eating them. At the bottom of the paper bag is the pack of cigarettes. I pick it up and rub my thumb along the sharp edge of the box. Then I open the box and rub my thumb over the tops of the cigarettes. There are seven of them. A book of matches is stuck inside the box. I take it out. There are sixteen matches. After I light one of the matches, there are fifteen left. And after I take a cigarette out of the pack and light it with the burning match, there are six left.

  Lucy would HATE what I’m doing. After Alison got cancer, we despised the smokers we saw on the street. They should have been going to doctors and having horrible treatments that made their hair fall out. But they weren’t. They were walking around puffing on their cigarettes, polluting the air.

  But Lucy won’t know if I’m smoking. Lucy isn’t here. Lucy didn’t come with me this summer. Maybe Ginia is right. Maybe Lucy thinks I’m a whining loser and she doesn’t care what I do anymore.

  I get so depressed that I actually take a puff. Then I nearly die.

  Here’s something you probably don’t know if you’re a kid like me. Cigarettes taste bad. I don’t mean a little bad, like a marshmallow that fell off your stick and into the ashes (which you eat anyway because it was the last one in the package). Cigarettes taste so bad there’s no way to describe it. It isn’t like a flavor. It isn’t even a taste. It’s a bad-tasting feeling. I have no idea why people smoke. Except that maybe cigarettes taste so awful that people have to feel better when they stop.

  Only that doesn’t work. Even after I take the cigarette out of my mouth, Arp has wolfed down the rest of the potato chips, my hike is still stupid, and Lucy still doesn’t care about me.

  So I just sit there, watching the glowing red-hot part of the cigarette creep closer and closer to my fingers. Pretty soon, I can feel its heat. That makes me nervous about getting burnt, so I accidentally drop it on the dead leaves. I quickly jump up to stomp it out before it starts a whole big forest fire.

  Then I jump up and down saying, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Not because there is one or anything, but because there could be one. In other words, I can MAKE A FIRE!

  When he sees me get excited, Arp barks. We both jump around until we fall down exhausted. I give Arp a big hug.

  “Isn’t it great, Arp? We have a blanket and matches. We don’t need to worry about finding another shelter. We can make a real campsite wherever we want.”

  I cram the blanket in my pack. I put the precious matches in my pocket and we start off again.

  “The ideal campsite should be by a little babbling brook and kind of in the open but still surrounded by nice trees. It should be on a hill with a view of a valley. And flowers nearby. And campers that were there before should have accidentally left a big picnic basket full of sandwiches and cookies. Oh, and dog food.”

  When he hears “dog food,” Arp barks and looks up at me like, “Where is it?”

  “No, Arp. We don’t have any. I’m just hoping that we’ll find some dog food.”

  Arp barks again.

  “What are you complaining for? You ate all the potato chips. You shouldn’t want any dog food.”

  Arp barks again.

  I sigh. Talking to a dog can be challenging, no matter how loyal he is. “Never mind. Let’s go find our campsite.”

  We walk and walk. We walk through the late afternoon when the flies are bad. We walk in the early evening when the mosquitoes are bad. (Isn’t it nice how they take turns annoying me?) We don’t find the ideal campsite. In fact, we don’t find a campsite that has even one of the requirements. But we’re getting tired and hungry. When the DARK creeps out from the trees again, I get nervous. Sometimes you can’t wait for the ideal place. Sometimes you just have to make the best of what you’ve got.

  I stop where a dead tree stretches out of the Woods across a grassy place. “What about this spot, Arp? Hey, maybe that tree could be a bench for me to sit on!”

  Arp doesn’t say what he thinks of my idea in actual words. He trots right over and pees on the tree. Luckily it’s a very long tree, so that wet spot doesn’t have to be part of the bench. I go off in the bushes. I’m getting better at finding bathrooms now. I’ve learned to avoid places with lots of sharp branches.

  We’re both starving but I decide to make a fire before we eat. Maybe the peanut butter sandwiches will taste better toasted.

  I find three short logs and stack them like logs always are in pictures of fireplaces.

  “Stand back, Loyal Dog, and watch me make a fire!”

  He doesn’t move. But I figure when the big burst of flames leaps up into the sky, he’ll get his little butt to safety.

  I light a match and hold it next to the logs. The match burns down near to my fingers, so I drop it on the logs. The match burns a little longer and then it goes out.

  “Maybe the wind blew it out?”

  Arp wags his tail.

  “Stop that! You’re making a breeze.”

  I light another match and hold it near the logs. Then I light another. And another. Nothing’s happening.

  “I don’t get it. I have matches and wood. So why can’t I make a fire?”

  I’m hearing that yucky voice again. “After all that boasting about making a fire, you can’t do it, can you?”

  The sun is setting. The DARK will come. That’s practically the only thing I can be certain about—that the Earth will keep turning on its axis. The Earth won’t wait until the fire is a cheerful blaze. The Earth will just spin us right into the pitch-black night.

  I light another match. It burns out. Now there are only ten left.

  “Who cares about a fire anyway? It’s not like we
have hot dogs to cook.”

  I throw the matches at my pack. I kick the biggest log. Then I sit down on it and put my head in my hands.

  Here’s the thing. Say you have a terrible day at school and you come home and slam the door and sit on your bed and sulk. Well, so what? Nothing bad will happen. Eventually your mom will call to you and make you eat your dinner.

  But if I sulk out here in the Woods, then Arp and I will have a long, cold, dark, miserable night. So even though I don’t feel like doing anything, I have to try again.

  It’s getting cold, so I put on the sweatshirt. Then I see that book. Since it’s about a boy surviving in the wilderness, maybe it has some good advice for me.

  I skim the first chapter. It tells how he has a house in a tree and a deerskin blanket and even a fireplace in there, so he’s snug and warm in a snowstorm. But it doesn’t explain HOW he made the fire. I flip around and read other parts. Mostly he just blabs on and on about his rabbit-fur underwear and gives recipes for making soup out of turtles and jack-in-the-pulpit roots, like he’s some old lady.

  Well, I don’t have rabbit-fur underwear or a fireplace in a tree. And I don’t know what jack-in-the-pulpits are.

  Then the yucky voice says, “You see? He knows how to survive in the Woods. But you don’t. So you’ll never make it.”

  The book makes me so angry that I throw it into the bushes where I went to the bathroom. But I don’t care. I’m not going to get it. It’s useless.

  “Dad, why did you want me to read about that boy?”

  I start getting a different kind of upset, just thinking about my dad. He made a fire in the farmhouse fireplace every rainy night. And since it rained practically all the time, that means he made at least twenty fires.

  “How come you never watched him and learned how to do it, Arp?”

  Arp wags his tail and makes his wrinkle-nose smile, like he’s saying, “Because I’m a dog.”

  Arp is right, of course. He’s a dog and I’m a girl. I should have paid attention to my dad. But I didn’t. Now I start missing him something awful. I miss his goofy smile and the way his glasses always fall into his dinner plate and how proud he is of his Vermont beard. I wish he WERE here to give me a lecture about something. I would listen—especially if it was about how to make a fire.

  Then I remember. I’m so excited, I tell Arp.

  “Remember the night Dad asked Ginia to bring in the firewood? And she carried in three smooth, round logs? Dad asked her why she picked those. She said she didn’t want to scratch her arms on the rough, splintery ones. Then Dad had her try to light the fire. Only it wouldn’t burn. Remember?”

  Arp wags his tail.

  “Then Dad told her to go back and get kindling. She said, ‘Do I have to? Can’t Megan do it?’”

  I don’t want to remind Arp of what I said, because it wasn’t very nice. Those days I was very grumpy about Lucy not being there. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. The point is that Dad brought in kindling and split logs. He put most of it on the side and carefully laid a few little sticks in the fireplace. Then he said, “Remember what a fire is. A fire is combustion that happens in oxygen. Where is oxygen? In the air. If you try to burn a thick log, not enough oxygen can get to the place of combustion.”

  Then, since he is my dad, he blabbed on and on about how Rome wasn’t built in a day. The Sistine Chapel took years to build and even more years to paint. Naturally I thought he was nuts. What did the Sistine Chapel have to do with making a fire? But now I understand. You don’t build a fire by piling on huge logs. You do it one twig at a time.

  “One twig at a time, Arp. Go get us some little sticks.”

  Maybe you think dogs are experts at fetching sticks. But Arp only picks up the sticks I find for him. And then he gets them all slobbery and wet, which makes them TOTALLY useless.

  So I have to gather all the wood. Then I crumple up the brown paper bag. I light a match and light the paper. That makes a nice little flame. But I don’t stop to admire it. I feed the flame little sticks, like it’s a baby learning how to eat. And you know what? IT WORKS!

  Then I’m so totally psyched because I DID IT!

  I REALLY DID! ALL BY MYSELF WITHOUT HELP FROM ANYBODY!

  After a few more minutes of piling on bigger and bigger sticks, I’ve made a huge blaze. That three feet of flickering orange heat and light will definitely scare away the bears. And it completely destroys that pack of evil cigarettes. I don’t even mind the stink; I’m just glad they’re gone. Now Lucy can’t be mad at me for having them.

  My fire is absolutely beautiful. Now I can toast the last two peanut butter sandwiches. I stick the bread on long thin sticks. Arp isn’t too happy about the burnt crusts, so I give him the nuts from the trail mix and a carrot. We drink some water. Then I wrap myself up in my blanket and Arp jumps up into my lap. We watch the flames wave as they stand up against the dark sky. I tell you, it’s just like TV. No, better than TV. Because I made it myself.

  I draw a picture of the flames dancing along the logs. But that seems too ordinary for how amazing I feel, so I add a few other things. Because if I can make something warm and light out of a bunch of dead sticks, then I really can do anything.

  11

  Starving to Death

  When I wake up the next morning, the fire is out.

  I poke around in the ashes with a stick. They look exactly the way I feel. Cold and gray. They look so pathetic I want to light the fire again. But I don’t. I only have nine matches left. Besides, what good will a fire do? Even if I get one started (which is doubtful, because for some reason everything is all wet), I don’t think I’d feel as wonderful as I did last night. I’d still be hungry—and lonely.

  I haven’t seen my family in two days and two really long nights.

  It’s breakfast time. I wonder what they’re doing. Is Dad looking for his glasses? Does anybody tell him they’re on top of his head and laugh when he puts them on upside down? Is Ginia using the side of the toaster for a mirror? Does anybody tease her so she’ll stop being so vain? Is Mom making oatmeal? Does anybody tell her to stop talking about the different kinds of perspective and stir so it won’t burn on the bottom again? Are there four blue bowls on the table? Or did Mom only put out three?

  I hope someone gave them the note I left for them along the Trail. They must have been really surprised to see that picture I drew of Arp and me hiking. I hope they know we’re absolutely fine—except for being hungry.

  Arp comes over, wagging his tail like he’s glad to see me. Only I know that to him, I’m not a unique human being with special ideas and powerful feelings. To him, I’m a food dispenser. Or I’m supposed to be.

  This is the food we have left: two carrots, a package of slimy tofu, a bag of mushed grapes, two granola bars, and the weird bits of dried fruit from the trail mix. I refuse to count the potato chip crumbs that cling to the empty bag—that would be totally depressing. I give us each a carrot and a granola bar. Arp gobbles his up quickly. That reminds me of Ginia’s fast-food diet. She believed that if she ate fattening food fast enough, it couldn’t stick to her thighs.

  But dogs aren’t supposed to be on diets. After Arp eats, he looks at me and wags his tail. He cocks his head to one side. His ears perk up. He puts his paw on my knee. He’s so cute. Or he would be cute if I could walk over to the cupboard and get him a dog biscuit.

  “Sorry, Arp. But this is my breakfast. You had yours already.”

  He cocks his head the other way and barks while I eat my carrot and my granola bar. It isn’t a vicious bark. Still I wonder what he would do if he got really, truly hungry. After all, he’s an animal that used to be a wolf.

  “We better get going.”

  I don’t even want to think about how many more miles to Mount Greylock and how many steps my poor aching legs have to take before we get there. I put my shoes back on my aching feet. Now I have a hole in my sock. When did that happen? I try to rearrange it so the hole isn’t right over the sore sp
ot. But this is hard because the hole is the REASON there’s a sore spot. I stuff the blanket in my backpack. I make sure the matches are in my pocket. Then I get back on the Trail.

  “We’ll find more food. Look at all the food we found so far. Maybe brownies and potato chips aren’t very healthy, but they ARE food. We won’t starve. Soon we’ll be in Massachusetts with Lucy.”

  Arp actually sighs like he’s wondering how soon that will be. Since I can’t answer that, I keep talking about Mrs. T.

  “Mrs. T. isn’t the cookie-baking type of grandma. But she loves to eat, so there will be food. There must be Chinese takeout in Massachusetts. Don’t you worry.”

  Only Arp isn’t the one who’s worried. After all, he’s a dog. He doesn’t have a yucky voice in his head.

  “What about water? You only have one and a half bottles left. What if you go crazy from thirst and drink from a puddle and get poisoned by frog pee?”

  We walk and walk. Birds are singing. Little drops of water decorate the spiderwebs that hang across the Trail. A soft gray mist fills in the gaps between the trees. When the sun gets high enough to peep through the leaves, it makes rays of pure gold. I’m trying to ignore the yucky voice and enjoy the scenery.

  If Mom were walking with me, she would say, “Oh, Megan, isn’t it magical? Just like an enchanted forest!” If Dad were here, he’d tell me the reason for the little drops of water. If Ginia were here, she’d tease me about my frizzy hair. But since I’m walking by myself with a dog who isn’t very good at conversation, I can’t think about anything except food.

  “Hey, Arp! Look how loose my shorts are! Isn’t this a great diet we’re on?”

  He doesn’t say anything. He won’t even look when I lift up my shirt to show him the space between my skin and the waistband.

  By ten o’clock, the mist and golden rays are gone and the magical forest is the same old Woods. By noon, the walls of my stomach are rubbing against each other. By one o’clock, the acid in my stomach that’s supposed to digest food is trying to digest my stomach. I’m so hungry; I don’t think I’ve EVER been this hungry in my whole life.