Green Mountain Academy, page 14
“Where’s Diamond?” I said.
“You’re awake,” said Danny.
“I’m right here, Franny,” Diamond said, and I saw her then. A blanket was wrapped around her shoulders as she sat by the fire. “Your friends have fixed me up.” She showed me her leg secured in a brace made of branches and tied with scarves.
“Where’s Jasie?”
“Ming and Grace took her back on a stretcher,” said Danny. “They tried to warm her up, but they felt like it would be better to get her to the school as soon as possible.”
“Is she—?”
“We don’t know,” said Carmen.
I didn’t know what to say. It couldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen that Jasie would be in danger because she had saved me.
“And John-Lee?” I looked over at him.
“We have to get him out, too. But we’ll wait for Ming and Grace.”
“You just need to stay warm. That’s your job now,” Carmen said. She got up from the fire and handed me a cup of steaming hot chocolate. “Drink this. We’re looking after things.”
She explained the plan to me.
While the rescue was going on, Carmen and Lindsay had put together this camp in a clearing close to the cave. They’d built a quick lean-to with a large tarp and some strong rope and covered the floor of it with spruce and fir boughs. Another tarp was laid on top of that and they made our beds on it. Then they’d built up a good fire in front of the lean-to entrance so it radiated heat into it. More spruce and fir boughs lay around the fire for seats. They’d helped Diamond to sit beside it and made a brace for her leg.
Meredith had stayed back at the school with Ms. B to prepare food for when we returned and to try and make contact with someone if the power came back on.
The idea was to take back the injured first, on a sled that Grace and Ming would bring with them when they came.
Just then Lindsay came tromping into the circle of light from the fire, dragging some long branches for fuel.
“Francie! You’re awake,” she called. “No sign of Grace and Ming?”
“Not yet,” said Carmen.
In the soft roar of the fire, we were all silent, each lost in her own worries. Jasie was the biggest worry. The smallest girl in the school and she had stepped out onto the thin limb of her own fears, not once, but twice. She’d been alone in the fire tower as the storm raged and probably shuddered the timbers of the tower and she had kept a vigil for me and for Danny. I could picture her squinting against the flying snow, sending the beam of her flashlight up into the dizzying whirl of white.
As if reading my mind, Danny spoke from the edge of the fire.
“You should have seen Jasie. She noticed a little dip in the snow, like a funnel. It was a tiny crack that only she could have fit down. We didn’t even know for sure where it would lead. She said, ‘I bet this is part of the cave system she’s in.’ Meaning you, Francie. She said, ‘I can go down there.’
“Grace, you know Grace, she said, ‘That’s a stupid idea. Like we’re going to send you down there alone.’ And then Ming said, ‘Wait. Maybe there’s a way.’ We had no other ideas. So Ming tied the rope around her and she just did it. I was so impressed.”
“Little Jasie,” Lindsay said, her voice holding a touch of awe. “She was amazing.”
We fell silent again. I sipped my hot chocolate, the mug warm in my hands.
Jasie’s parents were far away, in Burkina Faso. Would they need to come home if—? I could hardly let my mind think it. Even if she recovered, would they pull her out of the school when they heard what happened? This could be the reason the school closed down for good.
What about the rest of us? Danny’s mom, as chief financial officer of their First Nation, traveled often. At those times, Danny either had to stay home alone or stay with cousins. But also, she said that if she wasn’t at Green Mountain Academy, she’d have to go to school in town. And it was a forty-five-minute bus ride each way.
As for me, there were two choices, both of them bad: live with Grandpa and his moods or move to the city with Aunt Sissy and live in an apartment on the tenth floor, where when you looked out the window, all you saw was other apartments. In fact, you didn’t even need to look out—the windows of the other buildings looked in on you: people in their kitchens making dinner, TVs on, or lit but empty rooms that felt like unblinking eyes, waiting for something. Aunt Sissy said it didn’t bother her. She was used to it.
Last time I visited her, a weekend was enough for me. The view was beautiful. At night I could see the lights on Grouse Mountain across the city and the lit-up dome of Science World; in the daytime, boats and water taxis crossed False Creek like toys. But I couldn’t wait until breakfast was over and we could get out. After coming down the elevator and crossing the mirrored lobby, we stepped out into the street and I took in a huge gulp of fresh air like I’d been holding my breath.
Aunt Sissy laughed. “Feeling a bit claustrophobic?” she said.
“I guess,” I said, not wanting to tell her the truth. I felt suffocated. I wanted to run, climb a tree, listen to the silence.
“You can do all that in Vancouver,” she told me another day, when we were discussing what she called “my options.” “Vancouver is an outdoorsy city. Two minutes from here and you’re on the ocean in your kayak.”
“I guess,” I said. Maybe it was all in my head. But the problem for me was not being able to just step out the door and be gone into the woods.
Breathing in the cold, piney air around me now, I couldn’t believe how quickly my mind had gone from worrying about Jasie to worrying about myself. I felt ashamed.
At that moment, John-Lee groaned. Diamond tried to get up, awkward in her leg brace, but Carmen stopped her. “I’ll go,” she said. She jumped up and came over to him in the lean-to.
“Try not to move,” she told him. “You’re safe. You’ll be out of here soon.”
“What’s taking them so long?” Lindsay said softly to Danny.
Diamond’s anxious eyes met mine.
“Let’s sing something for John-Lee,” she said.
“‘Catch Me’!” said Lindsay. “We know all the words.”
So as the moon sank behind the trees and the fire shape-shifted, rising, twisting, turning, Diamond sang and our voices joined hers, sending a message ringing through the forest—we are still here.
chapter twenty-three
We heard them first—the distinct crunch of boots in the snow. Then their light bobbed through the trees and we all let out shouts of relief.
“They’re back!”
“Finally!”
“We’re getting out of here.”
“How’s Jasie?” Carmen called as Ming and Grace stepped into the firelight.
They stole a quick look at each other before Grace answered. “She’s not good.”
“The power’s not back on yet and it’ll probably be a few hours before it is,” Ming added. “The driveway is completely plugged with a giant snowdrift, so there’s no driving out or in until we get a tractor in to clear it. We can’t contact anyone.”
“What are we going to do?” Lindsay asked.
“I. Don’t. Know,” Grace said, her voice hard. “Do any of you have any good ideas? We’re miles from anything—we’re in the wilderness, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Grace,” said Ming softly.
“Everybody knew what they were signing up for when they came to this school. It’s a wilderness school; that’s the idea. And now you’re all chickening out?”
“Nobody’s chickening out,” Lindsay said. “I just asked what we were going to do.”
“Well how should I know? Since when am I in charge?”
“Nobody said you were.”
“It’s starting to feel that way.”
“Listen, girls,” Diamond began.
But Grace’s anger marched right over her voice. “This school has been everything to me. It’s the only family I’ve got. It’s my home. And now I’m going to lose it all.”
There was silence, but the air rang with her words and seemed to echo from the trees and rocks like a chorus.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Lindsay said quietly. “I don’t know what you’re losing. I mean, what? The school? Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re still here.”
Grace shook her head angrily. In the firelight, her face looked twisted, like she might cry. I had never seen Grace cry.
“You really don’t get it? The school was on the brink of closing already. There’s not enough students. Nine girls.”
“Eight,” Lindsay said.
“Eight. Okay, if you must remind me, Lindsay. Eight girls. I mean, where do you think the money’s coming from to keep the lights on and feed us every day? You, Carmen, Ming. You have no idea what it’s like to have nowhere else to go.” She looked over at me and Danny, but didn’t include us.
“Well, wait a minute,” Carmen said. “What are we even talking about now?”
“You all know the school’s broke!” Grace shouted. She sat down heavily beside the fire. “Now this. This’ll be all over the news. The school is finished. You might as well start packing your bags.”
A giant ember popped from the fire and landed in the snow at Grace’s feet. She stomped on it.
“You know,” Diamond said. “You girls must be exhausted. You’ve been up all night. Things can look impossible at night. ‘Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.’”
“The Jungle Book,” said Lindsay.
Everyone turned to look at her. “Things will look better in the morning. That’s what Bagheera says to Mowgli.”
“There you go,” said Diamond. “Wisdom for the ages.”
“Anyway,” said Ming. “It’s not helping anything to worry about things that haven’t even happened yet.”
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Danny said. “My grandma.”
Diamond’s musical laugh broke out and echoed in the dark. “Wise words!” she said.
But even her bright laughter couldn’t erase the gloom of Grace’s words. I didn’t think the others knew what Danny and I knew from Lucy’s email. Unless a miracle happened and Lucy and Lill found a way to bring in more students—and I had no idea how that was supposed to happen—the school was going to shut down. Their brother Larry had said so. Before Christmas, he’d said. We’d be home before Christmas.
I know Christmas is supposed to be the greatest thing—even for people who aren’t religious, as our family wasn’t, and even for some people who have other traditions and celebrate it just as a fun holiday. But Christmas had stopped being fun for me a long time ago.
Once, it was magical. I think of it as always Christmas Eve, Phoebe and me in our new flannel pajamas that we were always allowed to open that night. They had a fresh smell like candy canes. Hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa’s sleigh, we hung over the back of the couch and looked out the picture window at moonlight sparkling on snow. Christmas-tree smell filled our small house, Mom in the cramped den with the door closed, the sound of crinkling wrapping paper and scissors slicing through paper, and occasionally a swear word.
She wasn’t good at wrapping. It was a family joke. Dad’s wrapping was neat and precise with crisp, tucked edges and Santa faces or kittens lined up so they appeared whole. Mom’s wrapping was a bumpy, bunched-up bulge, sometimes twisted like a firecracker on two ends, way too much tape and often patched together with two kinds of paper.
Dad teased her gently. “Oh, look at that! One of the reindeers must have wrapped this one!”
Phoebe and I had snickered. Even at five years old, we only half-believed in all of that. But we wanted to believe. And late at night, too excited to sleep, we lay awake and whispered to each other and then we heard tapping on the roof. Our bedroom door creaked open and Dad’s head appeared in the crack of light.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes!” we both said in one excited breath.
“Better get to sleep quick then,” he said.
After Phoebe died, all the magic was gone out of Christmas, not just for me but for Mom and Dad too. The sounds then from the den were not swear words, but Mom’s stifled sobs as Dad and I sat at the round dining room table picking at store-bought cookies and trying not to look at each other. The lump in my throat, the knot cinched around my heart has never totally gone away.
chapter twenty-four
While I’d been daydreaming, Grace had moved away from the fire and was working on fitting the sled to carry the injured back to the school. The cordless drill bore into the quiet of the forest. Danny and Ming jumped up to help her and the rest of us sat and waited. Diamond began to sing again, more quietly, almost to herself, a haunting song I didn’t know.
I felt the cold more now. John-Lee cried out softly and shifted in his sleeping bag.
“Francie?” he whispered.
“I’m right here.”
“This is my fault.”
“What do you mean? Nothing’s your fault.”
“Yes, yes, listen.” The sleeping bag rustled with his movement and he tried to muffle his ragged groans.
“Stay still!” I whispered back. “You’ll be out of here soon. A few more minutes.”
“No, listen. Where is Rico? I was the one who wanted to fly tonight. Diamond wanted to wait. Rico said he’d do what we wanted. I was the one who pushed it. It’s my fault. Where is he? I know why you’re not—”
His voice caught as he stifled another gasp of pain.
What should I tell him? Was it right to keep lying to him about the pilot?
“Our concert in Seattle. That’s all I cared about,” he said. “And now Rico—”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew what it felt like to blame yourself. Would Phoebe have died if I had acted differently? That day in the woods beside Gem Lake. We’d been playing hide-and-seek. Phoebe wasn’t allowed to run because Mom was worried about her heart condition. But I’d already lost twice and so I’d cheated, weaving at full speed through the trees when she wasn’t looking. She caught me and dug deep, the way she sometimes did, to find something to say that would hurt me. She knew just where to look.
“You’ve got skinny legs,” she said.
“I do not.”
It was something the bigger boys at school teased me about and she knew it.
“Yes you do. I don’t know how you can even walk, let alone run.”
I took the bait. That’s what Mom would say.
“You can’t run at all,” I shot back.
That had been enough to spur Phoebe on, and she had run, she’d run like the wind, like a deer bounding over deadfall and rocks. She was like lightning. I wish I could have told her so. But I never did.
Things happened one after another, tumbling along like duck feathers in the wind, rolling across the surface of the lake. Phoebe went into the hospital and she never came out. It was not my fault. It was not because she’d been running. Everyone told me that. I wished I could believe it.
Give up all hope of a better past, Grandma used to say. In my better past, I would not have taken the bait. I would have understood how hard it was for Phoebe to be constantly watched by Mom, when even the doctor was not so cautious, how it felt to always be left out of things, to be asked how she was feeling. In my better past, I wouldn’t have cheated. I would have said, “I like my skinny legs just fine,” and then Phoebe would have laughed and we would have crawled into the fort we made and checked to see how many pine cones we had saved in our pine cone stash.
And then there was Dad’s hat by the creek in the Oregon woods. If I had crossed the creek that night. If I had kept looking for him. There was a chance I could have found him.
I tried to think of some wise words to say to John-Lee. “It’s not your fault,” was all I said, echoing what had been said to me back then. But I knew from his silence that the words meant no more to him than they did to me.
* * *
“We’re ready for you,” Grace said, her dark shape silhouetted against the orange light of the fire. She pulled the sled in close. She’d added boards to it to make it longer and sides so that they could immobilize John-Lee. She, Ming and Danny bent to John-Lee where he lay on the tree boughs.
“All hands on deck,” Grace said. “Everyone who can walk. Not you, Francie.”
“Take Diamond first,” John-Lee whispered.
“You don’t get a say,” Grace said. “We’re taking people in the order of most injured first. It’s only logical.”
“I weigh a hundred and eighty pounds. How are you girls going to get me over all those rocks?”
“We’ve had practice,” Ming said. “We’ve portaged a few canoes over worse terrain.”
“Do you want to stay with Francie and Diamond?” Carmen asked Danny.
I saw her hesitate. She wanted to help with the rescue.
“I’m okay,” I said. “We’ll be fine. You go ahead.”
“You’re sure?” Danny said. “I can stay.”
“I’m sure.”
“You’re shivering,” said Carmen. “Come on. Move around a bit. Then sit by the fire with Diamond.”
I wriggled out of my sleeping bag cocoon and I did as she said, windmilling my arms and shaking out each leg as the girls carefully lifted John-Lee into the sled. They packed the sleeping bag around him and Ming tied him in snugly.
“Francie!” John-Lee spoke.
I moved closer.
“Thank you,” he said.
chapter twenty-five
I opened one eye and saw the cozy fire crackling in the fireplace. Sleeping bags bulky with sleeping girls lay in front of it. But daylight had lightened the room.
