Nature Girl (3 page)

Oh, I really loved that day. I play it over and over again.

Then one morning, eight whole days after I spoke to Lucy and fell out of the tree, Mom and Dad are sitting side by side at the table when I come down for breakfast.

“Megan,” Dad says. “We give up.”

“You do?” I say.

Mom nods.

My stubbornness has worn them down. They’ve finally realized it’s really strength. I try to be cool but my heart’s jumping. HOORAY! HOORAY! Let’s get this conversation over with so I can watch something on TV before
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time begins—I wouldn’t even care if it was
Dora the Explorer
.

“This past week, we’ve waited for you to come to your senses,” Dad says.

“To do something positive for a change,” Mom says.

Actually I thought my torture plans were pretty positive.

“You’re going to be twelve at the end of August. You should be able to make wise choices. But you haven’t done that. So we have to make you do what’s good for you,” Dad says.

“It’s our duty to assert our authority as your parents,” Mom says.

My mood drops like a rock. Why didn’t I pay more attention when we studied the American Revolution at school? If I can come up with a good quote about declaring my independence to pursue happiness, I have a chance. But unfortunately I spent the entire unit drawing macaroni noodles on Yankee Doodle’s hat.

“You’re wasting your summer,” Dad says.

Whose fault is that? (I don’t say.)

“You could be in danger of wasting your whole life,” Mom says.

Look who’s talking. (I don’t say.)

“We have decided to start you on a plan of self-improvement,” Dad says.

What else is new? (I don’t say.)

“This morning you are going on a hike,” Mom says.

I’m stunned. They’re giving up
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time to punish me?

“With Ginia,” Dad says.

“What?” Ginia runs into the kitchen. “But you said Sam and I could go.”

“You can go,” Mom says. “And you can take Megan.”

Ginia turns a weird kind of reddish purple and her eyes bug out. I put my hand over my face. A smirk is beginning to spread. If you have siblings, then you already know this—the next best thing to your own happiness is your sister’s misery.

“But Sam was going to show me the beaver dam,” Ginia says.

“I’m sure Megan would like to see it too,” Dad says.

“You bet,” I say enthusiastically.

Ginia’s really squirming now. I know the only thing she wants Sam to show her is a place to M*A*K*E O*U*T.

“What about her injuries?” Ginia says.

She is totally desperate. But it doesn’t work.

“Go put on sturdy shoes,” Mom says.

When she says that, I start to worry. What kind of a hike is this going to be? Maybe I should have thought about it some more before I agreed to go.

As I climb the stairs, I’m thinking that maybe I won’t be able to find my shoes. I hear Ginia trying to get Mom and Dad to change their minds. That’s when I find out that their plan isn’t just about improving me. Something’s wrong with the air-conditioning in the car. Dad has to drive it halfway across Vermont to Rutland to get it fixed. Mom wants to go with him and visit some painter friends who are staying near there. But she doesn’t want to leave me alone in the farmhouse. I run downstairs with the answer to everybody’s problem.

“I can go with Mom and Dad to Rutland.” Any city, even one in Vermont, is better than a hike.

“That’s right,” Ginia says.

“I’m sorry, Ginia. But I don’t want you and Sam going off into the Woods by yourselves,” Mom says.

“Why not? We’re not going to DO anything,” Ginia says.

“If you’re not going to do anything, then there’s no
reason why Megan can’t go with you. She can spend the night with Sam’s family too,” Mom says.

So we’re all doomed, except Mom and Dad. After
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time is over, they get to drive to Rutland, see a movie while they wait for the car to be fixed, and then spend the night with their friends, who probably have an Internet connection AND cable TV.

Mom goes upstairs to get my sneakers and my school backpack. It’s still full of sixth-grade junk from last year. Notes from Lucy, unfinished homework assignments, my wallet with my emergency money, and a book that was supposed to be for independent reading.
My Side of the Mountain
. It’s about a boy who runs away and lives by himself on a mountain. Dad gave it to me last Christmas. It’s the kind of book grown-ups think you should read just because they liked it when they were kids in the last century. Dad wrote on the inside flap, “For Megan, who can do it too!” He always tries to be encouraging. Only I’m not sure what he means by “do it,” because I never read the dumb thing.

Mom starts to take the book out, but then she puts it back in.

“I’m not going to read on a hike,” I say.

“You might want to read it when you’re spending the night with Sam’s family. Did I tell you that they have their very own cider mill?”

This plan gets worse and worse. And then Mom puts things in my pack: two water bottles, a tube of sunscreen,
a bottle of insect repellent, a sketchbook, three charcoal pencils, a pencil sharpener, a rain poncho, and a sweatshirt. Finally she puts this totally stupid baseball cap on my head. It says “I ♥ Vermont” (translation: I Am a Dork!).

Of course I take it right off. “What’s all that junk for?”

“These things will come in handy on your hike.”

“Two water bottles?”

“There won’t be drinking fountains along the trail. And you should never drink water from a stream. You’ll get sick.”

If I have to carry all that junk, I definitely don’t want to go. “Maybe hiking is too dangerous for a girl like me.”

Then Dad comes into the kitchen. “What do you mean? Hiking is just what you need. You’ll come back with a whole new sense of accomplishment. You’ll have a wonderful time. Just think what you’ll discover.”

I know all I’m going to discover are new ways of being miserable.

“So why don’t you take a hike?” I mumble. But like I said, as soon as
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time is over, they’ll drive off in the car and they won’t be back until tomorrow.

Since I can’t drag them along, I decide to bring our dog, Arp. He’s sleeping peacefully in his usual spot under the woodstove. I yank him out by the collar and put on his leash. “C’mon. You’re going too.”

He looks at me like he’s saying, “Why are you taking me outside? It’s not time to pee.”

Arp is a city dog. He’s white and fluffy and about the
size of a bag of tortilla chips. We’ve had him since I was in first grade. I wanted to call him Poppleton. But, as usual, nobody listened to me. Instead Dad named Arp after a dumb painter who invented Dada. Dada isn’t baby talk. Dada is a bunch of guys who sat around talking about how beautiful painting was a bunch of baloney. I don’t get why teachers like Dad think those guys are such geniuses. If I say how dumb everything is, they drag me to museums and make me stare at paintings until I learn to APPRECIATE.

Arp should be on my side, since he hates Vermont as much as I do. But Arp is Mom’s baby. He always whines until she picks him up and carries him around. He won’t even eat unless she feeds him from her hand. It’s disgusting how much nicer she is to him than to me.

Mom puts a bag of dog food in my backpack and hands Ginia a paper bag.

“What am I supposed to eat?” I say.

“Your food is in there too.” Mom points to the bag.

“Can’t Megan carry her own lunch?” Ginia says.

“It was easier to put everything in the same bag,” Mom says.

“But Ginia is such a pig, she’ll eat it all,” I say.

“I am not!” Ginia says.

“Are too!” I make pig noises.

“Then you carry the lunch,” Ginia says.

She shoves the bag at me. It feels so heavy, I’m sorry I said anything. Especially since it won’t even be worth
carrying. Whatever is in there is sure to be way too healthy and self-improving. But I put it in my backpack.

Sam drives up in his dad’s old pickup truck. Ginia runs outside to meet him. They kiss like they haven’t seen each other in a zillion years.

It’s worse than I thought. The hike is going to be a big, fat slobberfest.

“Mom, please don’t make me go with them,” I beg her. “You see how they are.”

“That’s why you have to stay with them. To keep your sister out of trouble,” Mom says.

“That is so totally unfair!” I say.

“Sometimes life isn’t fair,” Mom says.

Like that’s going to make me feel better?

She holds up the hat and my backpack. I put on the backpack. I ignore the hat. She sticks it in the backpack as I drag Arp outside.

Ginia leans real close to Sam to whisper. She deliberately does it loud enough so I can hear. “I can’t believe she has to come with us. Why should we suffer just because Megan is a lazy slug?”

“Mom!” I wail. “Did you hear what she called me?”

Mom is standing right there, choosing her brushes from the tin can on the back porch. She turns to Ginia like she’s going to scold her, but all she says is, “Ginia, don’t ignore your sister. Include her.”

“I don’t want to be included in what they’re going to be doing,” I say.

“Megan, remember that Ginia is in charge.”

The last thing I want is Ginia bossing me. I jerk Arp’s leash and stomp down the driveway. I kick a few stones out of my way. I’d rather be kicking Ginia. And then she says in her fake-sweet voice, “Oh, Meggie, you’re going the wrong way.”

I stop.

“Did you think we were going to hike on the road?” Sam says.

“Actually yes. Because walking on a smooth, flat surface would be the SENSIBLE thing to do!”

Then they all laugh at me. Well, ha, ha, ha.

Sam and Ginia join hands and walk in the other direction. As they stroll past the garden, Sam picks a flower and gives it to Ginia. She acts like it’s the most wonderful thing that anyone has ever done. They pass the Hundred-Year-Old Maple and go into the big field that surrounds the farmhouse and the barn. They’re about halfway to the Woods, but I’m still standing in the driveway. I’m so angry my feet are burning holes through my shoes.

Mom sighs. “Sweetheart, you’re not getting off to a very good start. Can’t you try to be more …”

The last thing I need is another lecture. “Just leave me alone!”

I drag Arp across the field after Sam and Ginia. As horrible as they are, at least I can count on them to ignore me.

Let me explain something because you might not know this. If you’re a city kid or even a suburb kid, you probably think the Woods are just, like, six trees sticking up out of the ground the way you drew them in preschool. Tall, straight trunks topped by a fluffy circle of leaves. A few friends to make some cool shade or be a backrest for you if you’re sitting down to have a snack.

But that isn’t the real Woods. First of all, there are way more than six trees. There are so many that you don’t even think of them as separate trees that can be counted. They spread on and on, up over the mountains and down the other side, on and on until forever. Still, it wouldn’t matter how many there were if they stood in line like the trees in Central Park. But they don’t. They all crowd together. Their branches are twisted and tangled up. The ground below them is crammed with smaller trees trying to fight their way up to the sun, and
under those trees are bushes and brambles and weird plants. The trees that have died lie around rotting and hiding under piles of brown leaves, just waiting to trip you. There aren’t any paths or spaces to walk. The Woods don’t want you to walk in them. And don’t forget the swarms of biting insects that hang out there, waiting to suck your blood and give you nasty diseases.

Nothing is worth all that torture. So why would anyone want to go in there? It’s not like there’s anything fun to do in the Woods. How come Arp and I are the only ones who know that?

Ginia and Sam are almost to Dad’s beloved stone wall. But Arp and I have only just started walking in the field. I’m dragging my feet. Actually we can’t walk very fast because the grass is taller than Arp. Walking through it is like wading through water. The sun feels warm on my head. The meadow smells nice—not like Ginia’s perfume, but clean and good. A yellow butterfly floats above the little blue flowers.

“How about stopping here? This is a good place for lunch.”

They ignore me—of course. Ginia is babbling, What’s that flower, what’s that bird, what’s that rock, what’s that buzzing, biting insect, like she’s going to write a report about this hike. I slow down even more so I won’t have to hear her icky little voice say, “Oh, Samster, you know so much about the world.” Besides, Arp is pulling me in the other direction. He already took his
dump by Mom’s precious raspberry bush. He doesn’t understand why he can’t go back to the farmhouse and have a nap.

Up ahead, the trees look so dark that I start thinking about all the stories I ever read where something goes terribly wrong in the Woods. Kids get lost; witches eat them; trees attack them. You know, people didn’t just make that stuff up. They had their reasons. You probably think I’m being ridiculous. Those were old-fashioned times and we live in the twenty-first century. Maybe we do, but the Woods are back in the Dark Ages.

“Oh, Samster, what kind of rocks are those?” Ginia says.

“Heavy ones,” Sam says.

What a funny guy.

They’re at the stone wall. Dad is sitting beside it on his little camp stool, sketching the rocks so he can paint a different part of the wall. The wall is the boundary between the field and the Woods. But I don’t get the point of it. I mean, the wall is only about three feet tall—not nearly high enough to keep any wild animals in the Woods from coming out.

“Bye, Dad,” Ginia says.

“Bye, Ginia. Bye, Sam. Be sure to thank your mom for letting my girls spend the night and see your cider mill,” Dad says.

“No problem. She loves showing people what real cider’s like,” Sam says.

“The girls are in for a treat,” Dad says.

I can hardly wait. I think the last time I had apple juice was from my sippy cup.

Sam scrambles over the wall and holds out his hand to help Ginia, like it was some huge obstacle or something. Give me a break. If he tries to help me over, I’ll slap his hand away. But he doesn’t wait. He and Ginia just continue on into the shadowy forest. Her white shorts turn gray. Then Sam and Ginia disappear completely.