Green Mountain Academy, page 11
I looked up to try to find the signals from the fire tower in the sky. But branches blocked my view. Without a light, without anything to orient myself in the whiteout, I knew I was in trouble. Then, beneath the roar of wind, I heard a different sound: a faint whistle. I stood stock-still and listened. Moan of wind, squawk of trees bending.
Was there something else? It whispered then faded in the wind. The path couldn’t be far, but I had no sense of which way to go. I felt paralyzed by uncertainty. Then again, the whistle. Two high, two low. Only one person I knew could whistle like that.
“Danny!” I shouted. “I’m here!” I couldn’t whistle at all, but I wore a whistle around my neck and I dug it out now. My frozen lips closed around it and when I blew, the sound came out high and feeble.
“Danny!” I called again.
Then I saw the light, bobbing through the driving snow like a headlight on a lonely road. I whistled again. For a moment, a beam of light blinded me, then Danny said, “I found you! I was starting to think I was wrong. I mean, I was wrong. I should have listened. I knew it, I just couldn’t tell you and I thought you’d just—I never thought—I mean I never told you, so—holy smokes, Francie, am I ever happy to see you!”
She clapped me on the shoulder, then we hugged and laughed, though my mouth was so frozen I sounded like a cackling witch.
“But if you’re here, then who’s in the fire tower?” I asked.
“You’ll never believe it. It’s Jasie!”
“Jasie? I saw her signal.”
“She woke me up. She told me you’d been gone a long time. She’d seen you with your jacket on, and when you didn’t come back to your sleeping bag, she got worried. And I just knew then.”
“Danny, I found the plane.”
“I knew it! Where did they land? Are they okay?”
“They crashed in a tree. The pilot’s dead.”
“Dead?” Danny stared at me as the storm howled around her. We’d been shouting over the noise of it and now she spoke so softly it was hard to hear her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I—”
“We couldn’t have helped him. But what do we do now?”
I explained about the crash and Diamond and her brother.
“I told Jasie if she saw the SOS signal to go for help,” Danny said.
“I sent the signal. She saw it. She sent back the reply.”
“Then she’ll be going for help. But we have to get you to shelter. I think we should go back to the school. You can get warm and direct the rescue from there.”
As we’d been standing there talking I’d been stomping my feet and getting colder and colder.
“I can’t leave Diamond much longer. I could go back to her and you could go to the school.”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I made a fire for her. But it’ll burn down and—”
“Okay,” Danny said, her voice firm and calm. “Here’s what we’ll do. Come on. You need to walk. Take me to the crash. We’ll warm you up there. Grace will know what to bring—rope, good lights, blankets.”
She handed me my headlamp and put her own on.
“You forgot it,” she said. “I saw it with your stuff, so I grabbed it.”
“Thank you.”
“Wait. What are you wearing on your feet?” she said.
“A running shoe. It’s a long story.”
“Take my boots,” she said, kneeling down to untie them.
“Your feet are bigger than mine. You won’t be able to wear my boot.”
She hesitated and thought for a minute. “Okay, that running shoe looks big enough. Switch that with me. You take my boot.”
I grabbed her arm. “Danny, I—”
She thought I was going to argue. “No, listen. I was wrong before, but I’m right now. You’re too tired to be making decisions.”
“I was just going to say I’m glad you’re here.”
We both laughed, my cackle tight in my cold mouth. I bent and took off the snow-soaked running shoe, then slipped on her warm, dry boot. She didn’t wince as she wedged her foot into the wet shoe.
* * *
Danny led me back to the path. I’d only been steps away, but even a few steps in the blank, snowbound woods could have been enough to lead me hopelessly off course. Just having Danny with me had made everything seem possible again. I even felt warmer.
Danny hurried along the path at a light jog, glancing behind now and then to make sure I was keeping up. I felt the blood returning to my feet. When we got to the bent pine, we had to slow down.
“I can barely make out Secret Trail,” Danny said.
We paused as I pointed out pieces of wreckage to Danny.
“Searchers would never find this now,” she said. She was right. The white pieces of airplane had become almost impossible to see in the drifts of snow.
When we reached the place where the plane had finally come down and broken over the trees, it was even stranger. I scanned the area, seeing no trace of it. Danny stared too.
“Are you sure this is where you saw it?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. I’ve read that when people are close to death, their whole life plays out like a video on fast-forward in front of their eyes. I wasn’t close to death—at least I hoped I wasn’t—but something like that seemed to be happening to me as I stood scanning the trees for the airplane. Was it real? Was there even a school called Green Mountain Academy? Lucy and Lill, the sisters—had I met them for the first time back in August? Had Aunt Sissy driven me into the deepening forest with clearings now and then bathed in golden light while Mom lay in St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver?
Where was Dad? Was it really true that the last time I’d seen him he was wearing a backpack and a yellow rain jacket and hiking into the rain falling on the tall firs of the Oregon forest, leaving us behind? It didn’t seem possible, Dad who walked all day in his job as a mail carrier for Canada Post and who spent every night after work sitting in a reclining chair that had the imprint of his head and elbows and legs in the soft green cushions. What had happened to my life? Was it all a dream?
Danny shook my arm gently.
“It’s okay, Francie, I see it now,” she said.
chapter fifteen
Danny’s reassuring voice brought me back to the reality of snow and sharp wind. I saw then what she saw: the jagged ripped cedar tree, the blue and red stripes on the white airplane body—broken in half and being buried slowly by snow and cedar branches so deep green they looked black in the light from Danny’s flashlight. The smell of fuel had disappeared and, with it, the sense that anything had just happened here. Instead, it seemed grown over, old, an accident that we were discovering years after it had happened.
“Whoa,” said Danny quietly. “It’s amazing anyone survived that.”
“Diamond is this way. I hope the fire is still burning.”
“Are you cold?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
As we scrambled over the snow-covered rocks and boulders, I tried to listen for John-Lee’s cry below the howling wind. He had to be in one of the caves underneath us. Somehow, like me, he must have fallen down a hole while trying to find his way. He must be scared and freezing. I just hoped we could get to him in time.
After a few minutes of careful climbing, Danny suddenly cried, “I hear something!”
We stopped and listened, Danny’s hand up like she was directing traffic.
“Do you hear it?” she said. “It sounds like…singing.”
“It’s Diamond!” I shouted. I blasted my whistle three times to let her know that we were coming. Not that she’d know what it meant. It might even confuse her. “Let’s hurry.”
“Don’t hurry, Francie. You’re always telling me that. These rocks are dangerous.”
“I know, I know. You’re right.”
“Just take it slow and steady. That’s what my grandma used to say.”
“Sounds like my grandma.”
“Francie, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Now?”
“I just want you to know. Why I didn’t want to search for the plane last night.”
“I thought you said I was imagining the whole thing.”
“I know. But that wasn’t quite true. I did think there was a chance the plane could be near here. But I didn’t want to go look.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said, a snap in her voice. “My grandma—she was fifty-nine when she died. I know that sounds old, but she wasn’t that old.”
I wondered where Danny was going with this. What did her grandma’s age have to do with a search for a missing airplane? I took a step onto a large boulder and it shifted under my foot. Danny grabbed my arm and pulled me up before I landed.
“Careful,” she said.
I was too tired to make our usual joke.
“She wasn’t a typical grandmother. She hunted. She’d go out for a week with just the basics: a little pot, some tea and sugar, flour, salt, a jug of water. She’d bring her .22 and a small tarp. And shortbread cookies. She could kill a deer with a .22 in one shot. No suffering.”
Danny stumbled, then fell to her knees on the rocks. I helped her up.
“Ouch,” she said. “I don’t want to do that again.”
“Careful,” I teased her.
“Anyway, I know some people think hunting is cruel. But we never waste anything. It’s almost all used and what can’t be used is left for the coyotes and wolves and bears,” Danny said. “And it’s not just for fun like some people think. Our people have always hunted and fished. But you can’t just take. You have to give back, too.”
“And your grandma?” I asked.
“Well, she went out one fall day like she usually did. It was five years ago. I was eight. She got caught by a snowstorm. She never came home.”
“Oh Danny.”
“We found her five days later. She’d broken her leg. What they figure is that she couldn’t walk to find wood to make a fire and she froze to death.”
I knew how Danny felt, knowing a person you love needed your help, and you weren’t there to help them.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was comparing what happened to her to what happened to your dad. Grandma died doing what she loved,” she said. “And I didn’t want you to think I was chicken.”
“I would never think you were chicken. You’re the bravest person I know.”
Danny made a snorting noise. She didn’t like compliments and she didn’t like mushy. We had that in common.
The singing was getting louder, but there was still no sign of Diamond, no sign of a fire. Danny and I crab-walked the next few feet over a bad slippery section.
“I guess I’ve been a bit afraid of winter storms ever since then,” Danny said.
“I would be, too.”
“But I shouldn’t have let you go out alone.”
“You didn’t know. I snuck out. I did it on purpose. I didn’t want you to try and stop me.”
“But I should have known.”
“You’re here now. And we’re close to Diamond. I can almost make out the lyrics.”
“Is it ‘Catch Me’?”
“I think it’s her new one—‘Burn Me Twice.’”
“Where is she?”
“I can’t see the fire,” I said. I swept my headlamp across the boulders and into the trees.
“Diamond!” I called. But the wind threw the name back into my face.
“She’s close,” said Danny.
“She should be under those trees, I think…”
“John-Lee?”
I swung my flashlight and there she was, huddled under the tree, with snow draped over her one exposed side. The fire was almost out. We could have walked right by her.
“Find some firewood, Francie,” Danny said. “I’ll get my stove going and brew up some hot chocolate. You both need to get warm.”
I dropped my pack under the tree, glad to have Danny taking charge.
“John-Lee?” said Diamond again.
“I’m Danny. I’m here to help.”
She set down her pack and started pulling things out as I went to gather some wood. I knew she’d asked me to do that because I needed to keep moving until the fire was going again. I also knew that Diamond’s confusion was a bad sign. It meant that she was moving to the second stage of hypothermia—what search and rescuers call the “umbles”—stumbles, mumbles, fumbles and grumbles. If we didn’t get her warm soon, she’d be in real danger.
As I broke dead branches from the lower limbs of the pines and stripped some twigs of orange fir needles for tinder, I tried to think logically about what we should do. First, we had to let the other girls know where we were. But what would we do next? Even if one of us hiked back to the school to ask Ms. B for help, there was no way of driving out. The road had been blocked by the fallen tree and, in the other direction, the road just petered out. There were no houses back that way.
Without cell phone service, with the power out, there was no way to get a message out. The only possibility would be for some of us to hike out on the road. But it was almost twenty kilometers to the nearest house. It would take hours. When the weather cleared and daylight came, they’d be looking for the plane, but that would be hours, too.
The only chance John-Lee and Diamond had of surviving was in our hands—the girls of Green Mountain Academy. Everything we’d been learning about in the classroom and what Lill called “scenarios” had become real. We couldn’t make any mistakes. Two people’s lives depended on us.
chapter sixteen
Fire crackled and threw dancing shadows on the fallen snow that had drifted under the tree. Squatting beside it, Danny fed more branches into the red embers. She looked mesmerized by the twisting flames, but I knew Danny enough to know she was worried. In the firelight, her forehead was wrinkled and her dark eyebrows were set in a fierce line.
Diamond and I cupped in our hands the sweet hot chocolate Danny had mixed up for us. I could feel my chilled body warming as I leaned in closer to the fire. The fir boughs, full of sap, sizzled and snapped like electricity and spit a shower of sparks that landed harmlessly in the snow.
“Take your boots off, Francie. Warm your feet,” Danny said.
I did as she said and sat rubbing each icy foot as the little fire slowly brought the color back to them. Danny had stacked some bigger boughs between two trees to make a wind break. She’d laid a plastic tarp on top of other boughs so that we wouldn’t have to sit on the cold ground. And she’d brought fleece blankets that she’d wrapped around Diamond and me. Danny took out cookies, peanut butter ones that Meredith had baked the day before, and passed them around.
“You girls,” Diamond whispered, and she tried to smile.
“Are you feeling any better?” Danny asked her.
“Much better. But I don’t think I can walk.”
“You’re not going anywhere for now. One of us will stay with you and the other will go back to the path to meet the other girls.”
“But John-Lee,” I said.
“We should wait until we have help,” Danny said.
I knew she was right. My body was only too happy to wait. I could have stretched out there, pulled the fleece blanket over my shoulders and let Danny watch over the fire as I slept. I was so tired. The night would not let up.
I looked at my watch: 3:05 a.m. It was the time of night when I was stranded in the Oregon woods that I felt like I’d never see morning again, when the chill of night dug into every bone in my body and made sleep almost impossible. It was the time when I thought I couldn’t go on anymore.
Even now, months later, I’d wake up in the room I shared with Danny, my mouth dry and my heart pounding and my bed spinning in the dark until I slowly recognized the gooseneck lamp beside my bed, the desk, the patchwork quilt, and the shape of Danny hunched beneath her blankets in the next bed. The ache of missing Mom and Dad sat like a big black dog on my chest, its massive paws pinning me down as I struggled to catch my breath.
Then I thought of Phoebe. I felt her hand reach down for me and pull me up from the deep dark hole I was slipping into. I clung to the memory of her and tried to breathe.
Now, with the night and the storm raging on just beyond the light of our cozy fire, I replayed the moment I spotted Dad’s blue and red Canada Post hat that night in the Oregon woods. All the things I should have done then to find him marched through my mind. There was no end to things I thought of that would have been better than what I did do.
I had crawled into a shelter and saved myself. I had done the right thing, searchers told me again and again. My brain knew it to be true. But I had not convinced my heart.
“Danny,” I whispered.
She looked at me across the fire. I could tell she already knew what I was going to say.
“I’m going to look for John-Lee.”
Diamond had curled up by the fire with the blanket wrapped around herself. I didn’t think she could hear me.
“I have an idea where he is. If he’s injured, he might not last the night.”
“You know you shouldn’t go into those caves alone,” she said.
“I’ll set up the rope anchor we usually use,” I said. “I can lower myself down that way.”
“We could wait for Ming,” she said. But I could hear in her voice that she agreed with me.
“I know my way around down there. I can always come back to the rope to get out.”
“Okay,” Danny said. “But I’ll set up the anchor. And I need to be right there in case you get into trouble. We’ll find John-Lee then I’ll go out to the trail to meet the other girls. If they don’t find us first.”
