Halfway to the Sky

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  “To who?” I said.

  “Lisa,” Mom said in a come-on-you-know-this voice.

  I'd met Lisa exactly once, a few weeks earlier. Dad and I went out for pizza and she showed up at the restaurant. She had bleached hair and she spent the whole dinner picking the toppings I ordered off her pizza with her painted fingernails. “Dad said she was someone he had just met,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Mom.

  “So why is he marrying her?”

  Mom answered carefully, like she was walking toward a land mine. “I think it was the right thing for them to do, considering that they're going to have a baby.”

  I put my hands over my ears and clamped my eyes and mouth shut.

  “C'mon, Dani,” Mom said, louder, so I could hear even with my hands over my ears. Her voice sounded impatient and angry. “You had to know that much. It's obvious she's pregnant. She's almost five months along.”

  “I hate you!” I said. I uncurled myself, sprang up, fast, furious, and took off running through the woods. My boots weren't laced. I stumbled on a rock and fell facefirst. I lay flat, tight, holding myself down. It hurt, but I didn't make a sound. I'd had enough crying to last me.

  I felt something wet run down my hand over my fingertips. Warm dripping blood, my own. I sat up. I'd sliced my wrist on a sharp rock, not deep enough to do real damage, but deep enough to bleed pretty hard. I wiped the blood away with my other hand.

  Mom came down the path, her hands in her pockets and her collar up against the cold.

  “It's your fault,” I said. Not mine.

  “Got a first-aid kit in your pack?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Got a stove?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got matches?”

  I did have matches. I'd taken three books of them from the restaurant at the lodge.

  I turned my face away. “I hate you.”

  “Okay. Let's cook breakfast after we bandage your arm. I'm starving.”

  Mom didn't touch me as we walked back. She kept her hands deep in her pockets. I had to hold my bleeding hand elbow up so that the blood didn't get onto my clothes. Near the shelter I looked and looked for Beagle. I didn't see him anywhere. Where could he have gone? Was he finished already? Had he disappeared?

  “Honey, is everything okay?” a woman asked us. I looked up. It was the same woman hiker I'd spoken to on the summit of Springer.

  “No,” I said.

  “She's fine,” Mom said.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “No,” I said again.

  But all I had for a first-aid kit were some antiseptic wipes and a couple of Band-Aids, and the Band-Aids weren't big enough for the cut on my wrist. The woman went through her own pack and came up with some gauze squares and adhesive tape, and a tiny foldable pair of scissors. She cleaned my cut with my wipes and wrapped her gauze around it.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  #x201C;You're welcome,” she replied. She looked at my mom and hesitated before asking, “Anything else I can do?”

  Mom shook her head. “We're okay. I hope I didn't wake everyone up when I came in last night. Dani took off without telling us; we were worried about her.”

  “Who's we?” I asked. “Dad doesn't even know.”

  Mom gave me a sideways glance. “Of course he does. I called him.”

  “In Jamaica?”

  You'd think the woman would've had her eyes bugging out of her head with curiosity by now, but she didn't seem all that interested. “I'm Vivi,” she said to Mom. “That's my Trail name anyway. I made it up this morning. Sure you'll be able to get off this mountain okay? I could go with you.”

  Where is Beagle? I thought.

  Mom blew out her breath and nodded. “We'll be fine.”

  I made as much oatmeal as my one pot could hold. It didn't taste a whole lot better hot than it had when I tried to eat it cold, but I was so hungry I didn't care. I took a bite and handed the spoon to Mom. I had only one spoon and no fork. I did have a Swiss Army knife. Hard to eat oatmeal with that.

  Vivi had gone back to her own business with her own stove, but now she walked over again with a cup in her hands. “Coffee?” she asked Mom. “Your girl pack any?”

  “I packed tea,” I said. “But I can't boil water with the pot full of oatmeal.”

  Vivi nodded toward the cup. “Share that, then. I've got a bit left if you need more.”

  Mom sipped the coffee, then handed the cup to me. While I drank she spooned another bite of oatmeal. The coffee tasted like poison. “Tell me what you were thinking,” Mom said. “Tell me your whole plan.”

  “I'm going to be in Maine by the middle of August,” I said. “I'm going to climb Katahdin on the first day of September. I'm going to walk the whole way there.”

  Mom sighed and looked at me with heavy eyes. She took the coffee cup from me and wrapped her hands around it. “Why the Appalachian Trail?” she asked. I shrugged. She shook her head. “How much money do you have?” She gave the spoon back.

  “Five hundred dollars. Almost.” I ate and gave the spoon back.

  She scraped the spoon around the edge of the pot. “So it was all your own money. You didn't take any.”

  “Of course I didn't! I wouldn't steal!”

  “The only problem is”—she scraped the pot again and handed me a full spoon—“five hundred dollars will barely get you to Damascus. It's not nearly enough.”

  “I'll make it be enough.”

  “Honey, nobody's going to give you baby-sitting jobs along the way.”

  I flung the spoon into the empty pot. “You think I don't know anything, but I do,” I said. “I can hike as good as you can. I read books about it. I practiced. I know all about it and I can do it, I can make it all the way, I know I can, and it's so rude of you to say I can't when it doesn't matter anyway. I know you're going to make me leave.”

  “I have to make you leave, Dani. You're not being rational. You're twelve years old, and anyway, people don't abandon their lives.”

  “Why'd you do it?” I asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Hike the Trail. You did it before. Were you abandoning your life?”

  Mom stretched her feet out in front of her. She was wearing her good running shoes. They were covered in mud. “I don't remember,” she said.

  “Please,” I said. “If you don't want to let me go by myself, come with me.”

  “I can't.”

  “You could if you wanted to.” I sniffed. A big globby tear fell out of my left eye and pinged against the side of the pot. We both ignored it. “You just won't do it because I want you to.”

  “Katahdin.” Whenever my mom used my full name, it meant I'd pissed her off. “What you want and what I want have nothing to do with it. I have a job, a mortgage on our house, an ex-husband—”

  “Is he paying alimony?” I asked. “Is he paying child support?”

  “He won't be paying anything if he finds out I've let you run off into the woods,” Mom said. “He'll be suing me for custody instead.”

  “You would have done it for Springer,” I said.

  It was a low blow, even I knew that. Mom's face went white.

  “Don't ever say that again,” she said. “Don't ever say that again.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  I poured water into the empty oatmeal pot and started to clean it. “And don't use so much water,” Mom went on. “Water's precious, you've got to carry it and you've got to filter it. Just use enough to get the big chunks off the pot, then dry it good so it doesn't get germy. Here. Let me.” She used her fingers to wipe out the pot. “Where's your towel?”

  “I didn't bring one.”

  “No towel?”

  “Just a little one. But I use it to wash my face. I don't want oatmeal on it.”

  Mom sat back on her heels. “Most people start a thru-hike with way too much stuff. You're the first person I ever met who started with too little.”

>   “I didn't want to have more than I could carry,” I said.

  “Good thinking,” Mom said. She looked at me for a long time. “Why does it matter so much?”

  “I don't know. It just does.” I started to shove the stuff back into my pack, first any which way, but after a second's thought, more carefully. We'd still have to walk down the approach trail.

  “Why hiking?” Mom asked. “What can you get here that you can't get at home?”

  I shrugged.

  “What if we stayed out here a few more days?” Mom said. “Just a few. Would that help?”

  “How many?”

  Mom blew out her breath. “You really exasperate me, Katahdin. God as my witness, you do.” I didn't say anything. Vivi came back and Mom handed her the empty cup.

  “Suches,” Mom said. “It's the first town on the Trail.”

  “I know,” I said. It was twenty miles away.

  “Write it down, Katahdin,” Mom said. “Pay attention. I'm going to walk twenty miles up frozen mountains in blue jeans and running shoes. I'm doing it for you.”

  March 3

  Hawk Mountain Shelter (Georgia)

  Miles hiked today: 5.1

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 7.6

  Weather: sunny, cold

  While Mom went off to do something in the bushes—pee, I guess, though I wasn't going to ask—I found Beagle. He'd packed his gear and was sitting behind the shelter with his eyes closed. “That's my mom,” I said.

  “Figured,” he said, opening his eyes. “So you're busted, huh?”

  “Not really. Sort of. We're going to Suches.”

  “Cool,” he said. He stood up. “See you.”

  Don't go, Beagle, I thought. Or let me come with you. “Thanks for breakfast,” I said. “I mean, yesterday.”

  He turned around. “Don't tell people you're all right when you're not, okay? Here's your mom, frantic, and yesterday you were saying she knew you were up here.”

  I didn't know what to say. I looked away.

  He came closer and tapped me on the chin. “Hey, whatever. Right. Look, the Trail's been here seventy years. It'll be here a hundred more. It'll be here when you come back.” He walked away.

  Mom was going through my pack. “That's mine!” I said.

  “Do you have an extra hat?” she asked.

  “Why would I want an extra hat?”

  She grunted. “Good question. Why would you? Where'd you get all this stuff ? Did your father buy it for you?”

  “I bought it,” I said. “I didn't tell him anything.”

  Mom took off her shoes and socks, put on my extra pair of socks, and put her shoes back on. She rolled my sleeping bag and tied it with my tent, and strapped the whole thing onto her back. “If this doesn't work, we'll take turns with the pack,” she said.

  “How'd you find me?” I asked.

  “You left enough clues,” she said. “There's a program on the computer, I can see what sites you've been visiting— hiking, hiking, hiking, Trail, Trail, Trail. Good thing, too. I was afraid you might have met someone online—one of those creeps in a chat room—I was so afraid.” For a moment her voice trembled. “You still have no idea, the meaning of this, what you did to me. I can see you have no idea.”

  “You're mad at me,” I said.

  “Of course I'm mad at you! What mother wouldn't be?” She nodded at my pack. “Put that on. Let's get going. Long walk today.”

  “One who didn't care,” I said, looking at the ground.

  “What?” She'd lost it already, stopped paying attention.

  “Never mind.”

  Sometimes I thought her eyes were steel marbles, the way she could glare. “There's not a mother on earth who wouldn't care, Dani,” she said. “Not a single one.”

  Stomp, stomp, stomp, away she went. I hurried after her but I couldn't catch up. She had less to carry than I did, and she was strong.

  We'd gone a quarter mile down the Trail when we ran into a man walking the wrong way. He had a pack on his back—a full, towering, overstuffed pack—and he was sweating hard. His breath sounded like a bellows. I stepped aside to let him pass. I stared. I knew he was one of the ones who hadn't made it, who'd quit right there at the start.

  Mom started to let him go by, then held out her hand. “Hey,” she said. “You headed back to Amicalola?”

  “Ma'am,” the man puffed. “I surely am. This was the stupidest of all stupid ideas that ever came into my head.”

  “Can you take a message?” Mom scrabbled in her coat pockets and came up with a ballpoint pen from the bank. She searched a bit more and found an unused Kleenex in the pocket of her jeans. “Call this number, and leave a message on the machine. Say that Dani's found, she's fine, and we'll be in touch soon. Say it's from Susan. Okay?”

  The man held the Kleenex delicately in his gloved hand. “This number, Dani's fine, from Susan. No problem.”

  “Thanks.” Mom pulled out her wallet, but the man waved it away. “It's important,” Mom said.

  The man smiled. “Then I won't forget.” He wheezed away, limping.

  “Quit staring,” Mom told me.

  “I just can't believe anyone would quit. If you let me do this I would never quit.”

  But even with Mom carrying part of the gear, it took us three hours to walk five miles. It was not a particularly difficult section—downhill a good part of the way, and then a long, slow climb over a mile or so. It was a good deal easier than the hike up Springer the day before. But now my muscles hurt and I could feel a blister starting on one toe; my knees ached and so did my shoulders. Mom walked slowly, too, limping a little after she twisted her ankle on a rock. I worried about her wearing blue jeans; the books said not to because of the risk of hypothermia. Once we walked past a sign that marked an old cemetery. I didn't look. I didn't want to see the graves. We ate raisins twice. By eleven-thirty I was starving.

  “Any water anytime soon?” Mom called out. She was behind me, hiking more slowly now.

  I stopped and turned. “I've got some in my bottles.”

  Mom caught up to me. “If we hit a source soon, we can make something hot for lunch and have a good drink. How far do you want to go this afternoon?”

  I took out my map. The hiking store at home sold beautiful topographic maps for every section of the Trail, but they cost a pile of money—the full set was more than my pack and tent combined. I'd bought the ones for the first section only. After that, I hoped I could borrow some, or maybe learn that I didn't need them.

  Mom looked over my shoulder. We were almost to Hawk Mountain Shelter, which was near a stream. After that it was eight miles to the next shelter, Gooch Gap, and four more past that to the road that led to Suches.

  Mom sighed. “So we're tenting it tonight, eh? I doubt I can make it to Gooch Gap.”

  I folded the map and stomped ahead. I knew I could make it to Gooch Gap. I could make it to Katahdin. No matter where we stopped tonight, we'd be in Suches tomorrow.

  At Hawk Mountain Shelter we ran into Vivi again. She was hunched down watching the pot on her stove. “A watched pot never boils,” I said, then bit my tongue.

  Vivi smiled. “It'd better,” she said. “I'd hate to have to eat noodles raw.”

  When Mom came up, she and Vivi fell to discussing Trail cookery like it was the main task in their lives. Vivi didn't ask why Mom was in blue jeans or what we thought we were doing, with one pack for the two of us. I supposed she'd overheard everything at Stover Creek. I got busy cooking lunch.

  Mom broke away from Vivi. “How much food do we have?” I showed her my food bag. She nodded. “Plenty.”

  I said, “We don't even have to eat, we're only going to be out here until tomorrow.”

  “Three hours ago,” Mom said, “you were pretty happy about being out here until tomorrow.”

  “Not happy,” I said. “I wasn't happy.”

  Mom looked at me for a moment and then went back to Vivi, who was having trouble with her
stove. I took off my boots. My left sock liner had bunched up down by the toe, and that was causing what felt like a blister. I took both pairs of socks off. It wasn't a full blister yet, just a red spot on my skin. My right foot was okay. I put the socks back on, carefully pulling them smooth.

  Vivi was telling Mom that a lot of faster hikers had gone past her. “Did you see Beagle?” I asked.

  Vivi looked up. “Which one was Beagle? The one you were hiking with yesterday?”

  Mom swiveled to face me. I couldn't interpret her look. It wasn't happy. “Um, yeah,” I said. “I wasn't actually with him ….”

  “Didn't see him,” Vivi said. “He's not too old, is he? About your age?”

  “He's a lot older than me,” I said. Mom looked ticked.

  After lunch we rested for half an hour before we got going again. Vivi left us behind. “What did you think of the hemlocks?” Mom asked.

  “What hemlocks?”

  “Hemlocks? This morning? Those great big trees?” Mom sighed. “You do know what a hemlock is, don't you?”

  “Who was going to teach me that?” I asked. “Dad? You?”

  Mom held up her hand. “Okay. Those big trees this morning, right after the shelter, those were hemlocks. That's the biggest stand of virgin hemlocks outside of the Smoky Mountains park.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Did you notice the big trees?” Mom asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “How about the log bridge? The cemetery?”

  “I noticed the cemetery,” I said.

  “We were both quiet for a moment. Then Mom asked, “Who's Beagle?”

  “Somebody I met the first night.”

  March 3

  Justus Creek (Georgia)

  Miles hiked today: 11 Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 13.5

  Weather: dark, cold

  “What are you writing?” Mom asked.

  We were both inside the sleeping bag with the zipper pulled halfway up and Mom's coat thrown over us like a blanket. It was very hard to move. I scrunched forward, aiming Mom's flashlight onto the page. “It's my journal,” I said.

  “I didn't know you kept a journal. That's a good idea.”