She put her hand on his shoulder. He flinched and she moved it away. “Um,” she said. “Just so you know, that was like a whale of a freak-out, but—you know—I get it. And, um, everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
He released a long, ragged breath. “You say things that aren’t always true.”
She nodded for a second. “Only when someone’s life depends on it. But things really are going to be okay, so your life doesn’t depend on it, so I don’t need to lie.”
“I wish I was at home.” A tear leaked out of one of Hank’s eyes. Booler lifted his head and slurped it up.
Maisie sighed. She picked up a small stick and started drawing with it in the dirt. Hank could make out a stick-figure girl in a triangular skirt, a stick-figure boy next to her.
She said, “Is this a bad time to tell you that Booler also ate the rest of the ham and cheese?”
He sat up, brushed the dust off. “If I weren’t so tired I would go home right now.”
She put down the stick. “Don’t say that. We still have the marshmallows. And the peanuts, even though I hate them more than life itself.”
He sniffled again. “Why do you hate life?”
“What? Oh, it’s just a saying.” She went into the tent and came back with the paltry remains of their food. “Here, eat something.”
She handed Hank a marshmallow and popped one into her own mouth. Booler sniffed and watched her, his eyes intently following her hand as she took another marshmallow and put it into her mouth. “Yeah, you’ve had enough, Sandwich Sneak. That’s what I’m going to call you from now on. Sandwich Sneak.”
After a moment of silence, Maisie spoke again. “We could play Jungle Book.”
Hank shook his head.
“We could look for rocks,” she suggested hopefully. “Or sing?”
Hank shook his head again. He missed his family, his bed, his parents’ cooking. This was nothing like the camping trips he normally took. Those had a logic, a pattern. Hank pitched the tent. Hank and his dad made the fire. Hank’s mom unpacked and then played her guitar and sang songs while his dad joked about what a bad singer his mom was. At night they looked at the stars and told stories. In the morning they ate bacon. In the day they played UNO or his parents read books while Hank looked for rocks. That was camping. This was unroasted marshmallows. He took a sip from his water bottle.
Keeping his eyes on the ground, he said, “I’m going home tomorrow.”
Maisie didn’t answer.
He said it a little louder. “I’m going home tomorrow.”
She still didn’t answer. He looked up. Maisie was staring straight ahead, her body stiff except for her mouth, which smacked open and closed, and one hand, the thumb and fingers of which were pinched together and pulling on her shirt. She turned her head and looked right past him like he wasn’t there.
“Maisie? Don’t joke, Maisie.”
When she still didn’t say anything he shyly reached a hand out and shook her arm. “Maisie?”
She pinched her shirt, smacked her mouth. Then Maisie blinked and her eyes became heavy lidded. She swallowed and mumbled, “Did my… Where will… Yesterday.” She rolled into a ball, resting her head on her hands.
He shook her again. “Maisie, are you all right?”
“Tired,” she mumbled.
He was not sure what was going on, but he did know that—in his family—there was no sleeping outside the tent. “If you want to sleep you have to go in the tent,” he said. “Otherwise you might get nibbled on.”
“Okay,” she said without moving.
Marveling at this completely un-camperlike behavior, he brought Booler inside the tent and unfurled Maisie’s sleeping bag. He roused her until she crawled into her sleeping bag and let him zip her inside. Not knowing what to do next, he watched her sleep as he munched on the peanuts that Maisie hated. He knew that eating in the tent was also against the rules of camping, but he just didn’t care. Booler inched his way toward him, his eyes on the nuts.
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “Just one,” he said, putting a peanut on the nylon bottom of the tent.
It was not the normal camping way, none of it, and it scared Hank that he had no idea what would happen next. He pulled the framed picture of his family out of his backpack and crawled into his own sleeping bag. Then he clutched the frame close to his chest, and when Booler settled his long dog body on top of him he felt a warm wave of grateful. He tried to remember the names of all the rocks in his rocks and minerals collection. He reeled them off to Booler. “Adamite, amethyst, calcite, chalk, garnet,” and sometime after opal and before turquoise he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was dark outside. Maisie was shaking him, her flashlight shining in his face. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and when he did, the a’a feeling pinched him.
“How did I get in the tent?” she said. “I don’t remember coming in here.”
Hank explained all that had happened.
Maisie sat back on her heels, letting the light from her flashlight shine on the top of the tent. “How long ago was that?”
He shook his head.
She sniffed and looked around the tent. “Did you at least give Booler his medicine?”
“I? What?” He squirmed in his sleeping bag. His voice defensive, he said, “You were supposed to be in charge of that.”
“I said I’d take the medicine—and I did; I snuck in when that realtor van was there—but I didn’t say I’d give it to him.” She riffled through her backpack until she found a baggie of little white pills. She handed two to Booler, who just sniffed at them. So she grabbed a marshmallow and pushed the pills into it. Booler swallowed the marshmallow-wrapped medicine without even chewing.
She rummaged in her bag again and then looked over at Hank. “Well, I guess that’s it. I guess you won’t want to be my friend anymore.”
He sat up in his sleeping bag. It had grown cold, so he pulled the sleeping bag up round his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“You saw! And now you know that I have seizures too.”
Confused, Hank’s eyebrows slid toward each other. “But Booler is the one who has seizures.”
“We both have seizures.”
“But you didn’t shake like Booler.”
She took the flashlight and began to shine it in her bag as she shuffled everything around. When she spoke she used a very Mrs. Vera voice, one with no highs and lows, just plain and matter-of-fact. “My seizures are different than Booler’s. Seizures can look different. That’s a fact. But we both have epilepsy. And no one wants to be friends with people with epilepsy. People just want to tie us up to trees and make us live alone, and not take us camping or let us go on sleepovers because ‘what if we don’t get enough sleep and then have a seizure,’ even though I might just have a seizure any old time so why does that matter? Or they want to walk behind us in the halls and whisper, ‘seizure, seizure, seizure.’ Like they’re rooting for it to happen.”
She dragged her hand across her crying face and then pulled a days-of-the-week pillbox from her bag and chased a small handful of pills down with water.
Hank saw himself in the school hallway. He heard the people behind him whispering, “seizure, seizure, seizure.”
He slid closer to Maisie, afraid and sad and every kind of lonely. “I don’t want to do those things.”
Maisie sniffed. “Why not? That’s how it was at my old school. No one wanted to talk to me or sit next to me or invite me to their birthday parties because they were afraid to catch my epilepsy.”
Hank’s eyes bulged. “Can I—”
“No! No,” Maisie assured him.
Hank looked Maisie right in the eye. “I would never do those things.”
She cocked her head, her mouth a crooked line. “Really? That’s what everybody else does.”
He swallowed. “I’m not like everybody else. I’m different.”
Her eyes swelled and her crooked line of a mouth shook until
all she could do was lie back down in her sleeping bag and let the tears slide down the sides of her face.
What could Hank do but do the same? He lay next to her, his hand in hers.
He said sadly, “Can we go home tomorrow?”
She sniffled, sighed, and said, “Do whatever you want, Hank.”
He listened to her sniffle some more. He listened to the sounds of the night—wind, an owl, a raccoon or skunk shuffling past the tent. He felt a lot of things, most of which were so knotted together that it was impossible to know what they were, where they started, where they ended. But he did know this: There was definitely shame involved. It was the way she said, “Do whatever you want, Hank.” That was the clue. He’d heard that tone before—in his mom, when she really wanted him to do something and he just wouldn’t do it and so she just finally gave up, disappointed, annoyed.
But surely—after everything that had happened—going home was the right answer. Wasn’t it?
The shame poked at him. He could almost hear his mother say, “Are you being a good friend, Hank?”
But what did she know? She wasn’t stuck in a tent with a crying Maisie—never in his life did he think he’d see a crying Maisie! A crying Maisie was like a crying lion. It just didn’t happen.
Until it did.
He should have known. That’s what he began to tell himself. A good friend would have known. At least twice he’d seen Maisie fall asleep for no reason—once up at Two Medicine Lake, once at her house. He hadn’t even thought about it. And then earlier—when she’d been pinching at her clothes and then fell asleep again—all he’d cared about was that she was trying to sleep outside the tent. It hadn’t even occurred to him that something was really wrong. She was his best friend and it was like he had never even seen her at all. A good friend would have seen her.
He pulled his sleeping bag higher. He had not seen her, but now he did. And he was the hero in this story. He would not let her down.
11.
Morning light flooded the tent. It was the longest Hank had ever been away from his mom and dad. He had dreamed of them. They had been eating pancakes and laughing about something silly Sam had done. He could almost taste the maple syrup when he opened his eyes. But then he knew. There were no pancakes. There was no Sam, no Mom, no Dad.
He wanted to be home. He wanted it more than anything.
He turned his head and saw Maisie watching him, her legs crossed, her eyes still puffy from crying. Booler sat next to her.
She said, “I know you want to go home, but just listen for a second.” She began to fidget with the strap of her backpack. “You know how the sad book makes you all ‘Ack! I can’t stand this anymore’? That’s how I feel when I see Booler tied to that tree. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how scary it is to have a seizure, to wake up all alone and confused, or to suddenly see a bunch of people looking at you all terrified—like you hurt them, like they’re the ones suffering.” She looked up, shook her head. “It’s not okay. So this is me burning down the bathroom. I’m not leaving. I’m saving Booler. I have to.” She shrugged. “Because we’re the same.”
“You’re… You’re not Booler.”
“I feel like Booler,” she said simply as she petted the resting dog. The light streaming through the tent had cast her skin a bluish color, making her look tired and a little sickly. “And if people can keep him tied to a tree or put him to sleep because he’s too much work, then what does that say about me? What could people do to me?”
Hank crawled out of his sleeping bag and slid next to her.
“But no one can do those things to people,” he said firmly.
“The Nazis did. And there are even places now where things like that happen.” She unzipped the tent and, holding Booler’s leash, got out. She looked down at Hank, her hands on her hips. The sun was behind her and he had to squint to see her. “So I’m staying. And I want you to stay too. But if you’ve got to go, then fine. Booler and I will take it from here.”
Booler stretched and went and stood next to her.
Hank got out of the tent. He looked her right in the eyebrows and said, “I see you.”
Maisie nodded. “That’s because I’m right here.”
Hank lifted his chin. He looked around the campsite. “We’re gonna need food.”
Maisie’s head snapped toward him, a shocked look on her face. “You’re staying? Really?” Without warning, she wrapped her arms around him. A new energy warmed her cheeks as a smile burst from her lips.
Booler let out a happy bark. He lifted himself onto his back legs and began licking their faces.
“I have an idea,” said Maisie, leaning into Booler’s kisses. She walked over to the little clearing, the one with the view of the cow paddock.
“I was thinking about it before you woke up,” she said. “I thought about the book, and I thought maybe we could survive on nuts and berries, but you know I cannot abide nuts. Then I thought—ha! The answer is staring me right in the face, or rather, right outside the tent.” With a dramatic flourish she pointed to the cow paddock.
Hank looked at the paddock, perplexed.
Maisie made her dramatic flourish again. “Ta-da!”
Hank looked from Maisie, to the cows, and then back to Maisie, a blank look on his face.
“Remember the baby cow?” she said. “It’s got to have a mama, right? And if there’s a mama, there’s milk, and if there’s milk we can drink it, and if we can drink it we won’t be hungry because my mom says milk is basically liquid chicken. We can survive on milk and marshmallows… and your disgusting peanuts. And maybe—if we can find them—berries. Isn’t that a genius idea?”
Hank frowned. He knew now that he had an easy rapport with cows, but he was quite certain that this was not a genius idea. “I’m not milking a cow.”
“I’ll milk it,” Maisie assured him. “You just have to tell me what to do. You saw kids do it, right?”
Hank screwed up his face, trying to remember. All he could tell her was that hands had gone under a cow, milk had come out in a thin stream, and—when they’d had a chance to take a sip—the milk surprised him by being warm.
But none of this flustered Maisie, who just answered, “I can wing it.”
She handed Hank the leash and made her way to the edge of the trees, where she crept down and looked from side to side before sprinting to the fence.
Hank was walking toward her—an eager Booler leading the way—when Maisie started to run back. The problem, she said, was that there was no way to tell which of the cows was the mama cow since all of the cows sort of looked the same except for the bull, which had horns, and the calf, which was adorable and small. Did Hank have any ideas?
Hank had no ideas.
She ran back to the fence and then just as quickly returned again. The other problem was that they didn’t have anything to put the milk in. Did he have any ideas about that?
Hank had no ideas about that either.
But he did have other ideas, and he wanted very much to tell them to Maisie. For example, he wanted to tell her that her plan was a real stinker, that he was not at all convinced she would be able to milk a cow, that milking required more than just squeezing an udder—that much he knew. A person had to know what they were doing. A person who did not know what they were doing might get kicked in the head. But before he could say any of this, Maisie sprinted back to the fence once more. This time he watched her climb into the paddock and run halfway across the pasture before running back to him.
Panting, her face red, she said, “Another problem is I’m actually a little scared of those cows. So what do you think I should do about that?”
Hank thought they should go back to the tent and eat some more marshmallows. So they did. Afterward, they went ahead and finished the peanuts. Maisie ate her portion without complaint and they both looked on a little sadly when Booler inhaled his in one gulp.
“I’m still hungry,” said Hank.
“
We could look for berries?”
Hank did have a bit of expertise there. It was not unusual for him and his mom to look for wild huckleberries when they camped, but twenty minutes of searching with Maisie only left them both hungrier and crankier than before.
Maisie sighed. “We’re going to have to get that milk.”
Her plan was a stinker, but Hank had to agree—especially after he took the final sip from his water bottle. They needed that milk. Even if he had wanted to go home now, he would not have been able to make it, not without something to eat besides marshmallows, and definitely not without something to drink.
They crept down to the cow paddock, together this time.
“Did you mean it?” Maisie said.
“Mean what?”
“Are you gonna be my friend, even when we get back?”
He nodded.
“Remember that time I said you were my best friend?”
He pushed away a clump of tall grass and nodded again.
“Truth is, you’re my first friend. I mean, I’ve had other friends but they weren’t real friends because once they would see me have a seizure they wouldn’t want to play with me anymore. They just watched me with scared eyes and stopped inviting me to their houses. At least it was that way in my old school. I was hoping no one would find out about my seizures here. But that never works.”
He shook his head and, in a voice as solid as any rock he owned, he said, “I won’t tell anyone.”
Maisie rubbed her eyes and blinked. “You’re really not a lemon at all, Hank.”
They reached the paddock, Hank holding Booler’s leash and Maisie holding the empty peanut container, which she had christened their new milk pail. This time they got lucky. The cows had spread out into groups of one or two, and by whose side did the calf cling? Its mama, of course. She was one of the smaller cows, brown with white spots—just like the rest—but with a narrow face and massive, drooping udders.
At the fence, Hank tied Booler to a post—“Just for a little bit, I promise,” Hank told him—and followed Maisie into the pasture. Avoiding manure and the bull, they tiptoed toward the mother cow. He tried to channel the authority he had felt the first time they tromped through the paddock, but he just couldn’t do it. As much as he knew the plan was necessary, he also knew how horrible it was. His stomach pinged and made a worried gurgle.
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