by Jenny Goebel
“I know,” David said, his voice laden with disappointment. “It’s just temporary. You know, until we can find her a good home.”
It’s just temporary—that pretty much sums up our entire existence, I thought.
The dog chose that moment to lick my father’s hand, and Dad huffed. He fought to keep the corners of his mouth from rising and lost the battle. “Well, I suppose we can’t let her starve,” he said. “I need to head back to town to do a load of laundry anyway. I’ll pick up some chow while I’m there. But, listen, don’t let her in the trailer, and don’t give her a name, okay?” He groaned. “It’ll just make things harder on everybody when we have to give her up.”
“I’m calling her Annie,” David whispered in my ear, “like the orphan. What do think?” We were seated at the table, aka my bed. I was completing a social studies assignment, and he was focusing on geometry homework. He’d worked some of the mud clots out of the dog’s fur, fed her, and she was curled up on a floor mat outside the trailer.
I thought Annie was a perfect name for a dog as red as a Utah sunrise, but I bit my lip and shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess …” What if Dad’s reaction to my new job was the same as it had been to the stray dog? The offer to work with Rachel’s alpacas was the best thing that had happened to me in months. I’d be devastated if my parents said no. I was also worried if I brought up the meeting with Principal Stinger, they’d be so upset they wouldn’t say yes to anything for a long time. Telling them about the job had to come first.
I pulled Rachel’s business card from my pocket and nervously flicked the top right-hand corner with my index finger. With the extra stop for dog food, Dad was late getting back, and dinner had been rushed. Then our furry red visitor had commanded everyone’s attention as she gobbled down chow. Also, petting her as she lavished us with sloppy dog kisses had been essential. There hadn’t been a good time to tell my parents about the ranch … until now.
I cleared my throat and was about to open my mouth when Neil beat me to it. “Did you know there are fifty-three fourteeners in Colorado?” he said.
Dad let out a low whistle as he handed a clean dish to Mom to stack in the cupboard next to the sink.
Neil swung away from the computer to face the rest of us. “Don’t you think it’d be pity, a missed opportunity even, if we didn’t summit at least one of the fourteeners while we were here?”
David perked up. “I’ve always wanted to climb a fourteener.”
The skin on the back of my neck rose with tiny goose pimples. “What is a fourteener?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“That’s a great idea!” Dad said, ignoring my question as he rushed to join Neil at the computer. He seemed more animated than I’d seen him since we’d arrived in Winterland.
“But we’ll have to get acclimated first. We should start with some easier hikes. We can work our way up. I can’t believe we didn’t think of this sooner—a bonus challenge will get everyone in shape for skiing the black diamond.”
While Neil and Dad started making plans for a warm-up hike on Saturday, David turned to me. “To be a fourteener, a mountain peak has to rise at least fourteen thousand feet above sea level.”
My breath hitched in my throat.
“Climbing one is tough,” David said. “Strenuous activity, you know. Plus, at that altitude, the air is thin, and there’s a ton of exposure to heights. It sounds awesome.”
Heights? “I’m not going,” I blurted loudly.
Mom shut off the sink faucet. Dad turned to look at me and frowned. Adventures had always been a family affair. I’d always gone along with them, never really putting up a protest. But I’d never had any other options before. This time I did. I showed them the card Rachel had given me. “I … I have my own plans,” I stammered. “I got a job—working at an alpaca ranch.”
“You can’t have a job,” Neil said. “You’re a kid. People don’t hire kids.”
“Yes, they can,” I shot back. At the same time a flicker of doubt entered my mind.
“You’re just jealous,” David said, coming to my defense. “Just because you’ve never been gainfully employed doesn’t mean Amelia can’t be.”
“Why would you want a job?” Dad asked, like the notion was unfathomable.
Mom took the card from me and studied it. “The ranch is right down the road,” she said. “You could easily walk there.”
I nodded.
Mom and Dad exchanged a look that made me wonder if they’d been expecting this day to come. Like, maybe they’d suspected all along that I wasn’t as big of an adrenaline junkie as the rest of them and would one day find a way to worm out of family adventures.
“Spill the details,” Mom said.
So, I told her all about Rachel and Fleece on Earth, and I let her assume that I’d wandered into the store looking for new clothes instead of a tissue because I’d been crying my eyes out.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, Amelia Jean … Working? At your age?” Dad said dubiously.
“Why do you have to say no to everything?” David grumbled.
“What that’s supposed to mean?” Dad asked.
“I think he means the dog,” I said.
Dad sighed heavily. Then, while I had him on the defense, I drove in the nail with one of his favorite Tolkien quotes. “ ‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,’ right? This is what I want to do with the time given to me. I want to spend Saturday working with alpacas, not going on some ridiculously hard hike just to get ready for an even harder one.”
Dad looked on the verge of blowing a gasket.
“I think,” Mom said calmly, “that a compromise can be reached. I’ll contact this Rachel, and if everything checks out, Amelia Jean can work there as long as it doesn’t interfere with her schoolwork.”
“Or our family adventures,” Dad added. “Amelia, you need to be going on these hikes even more than the rest of us …”
My skin prickled. Why? Because I was the weakest physically or because I still hadn’t conquered my fear of heights? Either felt like a slap to the face.
“I’ll make an exception for this Saturday, since you’ve already given your word,” Dad continued. “But after that, school and family come first. If you don’t have enough time for all three, you know which one has to go.”
I nodded, because what other choice did I have?
“You’ll have plenty of years to work when you’re older,” Dad said. “I think after a taste of it, you’ll change your mind about how you want to spend your time.”
Apparently, Rachel made a good impression on my mom (which wasn’t a surprise), because when I got home from school the next day, my parents didn’t go back on our agreement. They made me promise to behave, and not get in the way. They didn’t ask any questions about the incident outside the carousel, or the mean boy who’d teased me to the point of tears. So I knew Rachel hadn’t ratted me out, and that made me like her even more.
Still, I felt like I was on shaky ground. I didn’t want to give my parents any reason to doubt that I could handle school and a job. Like, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to bring up that I’d been carrying around a note from school for a few days because I’d gotten off to a rocky start. Not until I could prove to my parents that I had everything under control. The thing was, the longer I kept it a secret and nothing happened, the easier it was to think the problem might just go away on its own.
Unfortunately, it didn’t. At the end of the school day on Friday, my last-period teacher handed me another note from Ms. Horton about scheduling a meeting with the principal. All my panic came flooding back. I have to tell them, I thought. I have to give Ms. Horton’s notes to my parents. But it was so close to being Saturday. An image of the adorable alpacas sprang to mind—I couldn’t do anything to jeopardize seeing them the next day. Besides, I reasoned, the school office will be closed over the weekend. My parents couldn’t reach Ms. Horton if they tried. I crumpled the letter and cramme
d it in the same pocket of my backpack as the first.
I’d worn my colorful new scarf and it had garnered me a few looks—it really wasn’t scarf weather, but I didn’t care. And it didn’t escape Ryan’s attention on the bus ride home. “Do us all a favor, Brows,” he said, “and wrap that thing a little higher, so it’ll cover your ugly face.” He’d probably been working on the insult all day and couldn’t wait until we got off the bus to sling it at me.
Cat and another girl were seated in a row diagonal from mine. The second girl, whose name I didn’t know, smiled at me pityingly. “My aunt says if a boy is mean to you, it’s because he likes you,” she said.
I knew she meant well, but I also knew that wasn’t true. It was something adults said to make you feel better. I smiled back weakly and turned to face the window.
“That’s stupid,” I heard Cat say to the other girl. “If you like someone, you should never intentionally be mean to them. End of story.”
I had an urge to thank Cat. To say something to her, anything. But I quickly squashed that idea. By now, I knew my way around the school. Her services as an “ambassador” were no longer needed. Plus, things had been even weirder between us since the incident outside the carousel. I mean, she did follow me out the door, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t made her feelings clear before then. She didn’t want me to be a part of her life in Winterland. She didn’t want me to be a part of her life at all.
Even though I could’ve easily walked to the ranch, my parents insisted on driving me there on the way to their hike. Mom wanted to meet Rachel before leaving me under her supervision. She was fidgety in the front seat of the cab—adjusting the AC and turning down the music. I realized she was nervous. My parents had hardly ever left me in someone else’s care. Here I was a middle schooler—one who had been in countless dangerous situations, which she and Dad had led me into, no less—and she was worried about leaving me with an elderly woman and her sweet, furry animals? No wonder I’d never fit in with my peers.
“This is it,” Dad said after less than two minutes behind the wheel. He pulled the cab off the main road onto a long dirt drive. Rachel’s herd was behind a fence off to the right. They raised their fuzzy heads in interest, and Dad stopped the truck while I rolled down the cab window to get a better look.
The alpacas came in an array of colors—white, tan, brown, gray, and black. Some were puffy as cotton balls; others had long silky locks. Their eyes looked disproportionately large for their heads—that is, the eyes I could see. Some of the alpacas had floppy bangs hiding everything on their faces except their protruding noses. Every single one was adorable, in a decidedly awkward way. I picked out the creamy white one from the rest, the one who’d taken the carrot from my hand. I couldn’t wait to meet the others.
We continued down the drive for a bit until we found Rachel standing on the wraparound porch of a quaint mountain home. The house was made of wood and stone and had pointed dormer windows. Sunflowers and wild grasses sprouted along either side of the road. A large barn sat catty-corner from the main house. Around it, there were a number of small pastures, and a maze of fences and gates and small three-sided structures.
“ ‘Still round the corner there may wait. A new road or a secret gate,’ ” I said. I met Dad’s gaze in the rearview mirror. The lines around his eyes crinkled as I quoted Tolkien. I smiled back at him.
It all seemed so inviting. Even Mom sighed when she saw the little greenhouse near the side of the structure. This was more than a place where people lived. It was a home. A place where a family nurtured plants and animals and, over time, built a life together. The Gnarly Banana came close, and I’d heard the saying “Home is where the heart is” hundreds of times. No doubt, my heart was with my family—even if that meant it was on wheels. But lately, I’d been longing for something else. Something more.
The entire Amundsen family filed out of the truck, except Annie (aka the nameless dog), who remained in the back seat. David had somehow convinced my parents to let him bring her along.
My brothers acted like they were only interested in heart-pulsing action. But I think a quieter life called to them, too, now and then. Neil’s eyes scanned the ranch. His gaze landed on a window looking into Rachel’s kitchen. There was a large granite island, stainless steel appliances, and a breakfast nook. The ample-sized eating area was flooded with natural light. He raised an eyebrow, then looked at me and nodded in approval. “Almost makes me want to skip the hike, too,” he said. “Almost.”
It was the open fields that drew a look of longing from David.
Rachel and my parents exchanged pleasantries. Mom reminded me for the billionth time not to be a nuisance—which seemed very unprofessional and made me blush, because I was here to work, which is the opposite of being a nuisance. Then my family loaded back up. Rachel and I stood on the gravel drive and watched them leave.
“Well.” Rachel’s eyes flicked to the scarf around my neck, then back to my face, and she smiled warmly. “Why don’t we meet the alpacas first?”
Don’t get me wrong, I adored Sugar Plum, the carousel alpaca. But real-live fluffy and silly alpacas were on a whole ’nother level. As she led me through a hinged gate leading to a small pasture, Rachel said I should approach the alpacas slowly and calmly and use a soothing voice when speaking to them. “Some are a little skittish, but most of mine enjoy being petted gently on the neck or back,” she explained.
She introduced me to Ed first. Ed’s trunk and legs were gray, and he had a white stripe running up his chest and neck. He jutted his bottom teeth out at me—his only teeth. I hadn’t noticed it before, but apparently alpacas don’t have any incisors along the front of their upper jaws. Just smooth pink gums.
Rachel told me to open my hand, and then she dumped an apple cut in small, bite-sized pieces into it. Ed took the first slice, brushing and tickling my palm with his fuzzy lips, and rolled the morsel around with his tongue. He then attempted to pulverize the piece by smashing it against the roof of his mouth. A little apple juice came squirting out, and I took a step back.
Rachel laughed. “Alpacas are very efficient at eating grass, but apples not so much.”
Ed happily worked his jaw side to side, and occasionally his lips smacked together. He’d hardly finished the first bite before he was sniffing around for more. He greedily snagged the next one from my hands, and I got another look at the long teeth poking out of his bottom jaw.
“Ed is due for a trim,” Rachel said.
“His teeth?” I asked.
“Yes, they’ll keep growing and growing until they extend over his upper jaw. He’ll become very uncomfortable unless we get them grinded down soon. I’ll put it on the to-do list for this weekend.”
I watched her carefully. Did she want me to take part in grinding Ed’s teeth? Going to the dentist made me squirm. How would I ever inflict that kind of discomfort on another living thing?
But Rachel seemed too distracted by her thoughts for me to clarify her intentions. When her gaze returned from somewhere off in the distance, she said, “I’m afraid I haven’t been able to stay on top of things like teeth trimming since my husband passed away. My son and his wife help all they can. My daughter-in-law, Julie, is running the shop today. And Heath, my son, is delivering orders for our composted alpaca manure. But the ranch operations are more than the three of us can handle without Harold.”
I shifted my weight around on my feet the same way Ed rolled the apple with his tongue. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was, in more ways than one. I was sorry for her loss, and also because I hadn’t known until then that this job came with a void larger than anything I could ever fill.
Rachel patted my hand. “I shouldn’t concern you with my problems. Let’s go see some of the others, shall we?”
We continued walking through the field. She introduced me to Lulu next. Lulu was puffy, soft, and white all over, except for her eyelashes, which were black as night. She tipped her head to one side and batted her
long lashes as if to say, Am I not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?
And she was, she truly was—like a cartoon animal, with eyes drawn overly large and expressive. I took one look at her and couldn’t help but give her the choicest apple slice I had left in my hand. Unlike Ed, she munched it daintily, and not a single drop of apple juice escaped her lips.
“I know,” Rachel said, reading the expression on my face. “And I swear she does, too. Lulu is our resident diva.”
Something gently bumped me from behind, and I turned to find an alpaca the color of golden wheat sidling up to me. His fur hung long, and it was shiny and almost curtain-like instead of being all fluffed out like a teddy bear.
“That’s Benny. He’s a suri alpaca. They’re not as common as the huacaya”—she said this like wa-Ki-ya—“but they both come from South America. The huacaya fleece is good for making things like socks, mittens, sweaters, and scarves—like the one you’re wearing. Suri fibers have more luster and are better for outerwear—like coats and shawls. Both are softer than sheep’s wool, water-resistant, and hypoallergenic.”
The wheat-colored alpaca nudged me again, and Rachel added, “Benny’s a real charmer, but watch out for Carl—the two of them are inseparable. While Benny is distracting you with snuggles, Carl will sneak off with your hat or water bottle.”
Sure enough, a lighter-colored suri alpaca was teasing the last apple slice from my fingers. I hadn’t even noticed. I opened my hand and let him take it.
“What about llamas?” I asked, thinking of Dan’s comment that alpacas were, in his opinion, superior to their more famous cousins. “Do you have any here on the ranch? Do they have soft fleece, too?”
“Well, llama fleece is typically coarser and not as consistent. It doesn’t come in as many color variations as alpaca fleece—alpacas come in twenty-two different shades, and their fibers dye beautifully. Llamas are about twice the size of alpacas, and their ears are longer, more banana-shaped,” Rachel said. “While alpacas have been bred for their soft fiber, llamas have been bred for their strength. They’re used more as a pack animal. You know, to carry heavy things around for us humans. Oh, and they also make good guard animals. I don’t have any here on the ranch, but I’ve been thinking about adding some, along with goats, to keep the sagebrush down and mitigate fire danger. But, the more we expand, the more labor that’s required and …”