Green Mountain Academy, page 3
The truth was, I’d only picked the old wing because I thought it would be cheaper. Aunt Sissy was paying my school tuition and I knew it was already costing her enough, exactly how much, I wasn’t sure. She was too nice to tell me when I asked and only said, “Whatever it costs, it’s worth it if you’re happy.” It was only later I found out that all the rooms cost the same amount.
My voice when I spoke was sticky. “This wing is eighty years old,” I said, remembering what Lucy had told us when we visited in the summer. “It’s the original part of the guest lodge.” The walls of the original lodge were made of pine logs that had been fit tightly together and chinked with plaster. We could see the knots and cracks in the logs and the large beams that ran overhead. The floors were polished wood, only partly covered with multicolored woven rugs, and bearing the nicks and dents and scars of many years of use. When the sun dropped low in the sky in the afternoons, the wood glowed a soft, warm orange. The new wing was pretty too, brighter, with walls of a light, flat-paneled wood instead of log, and clean yellow linoleum floors. When we had visited in August, all the windows had been thrown open, gauzy white curtains billowing into the rooms from the fresh breeze through the window screens.
“There’s a lot to explore,” Danny said now. “Old buildings are always more interesting. Let’s go see the fire tower. I’ll help you put your stuff away.”
* * *
That first evening at the school, we gathered in the great room for dinner. The room was open and airy. Solid pine beams spanned the width of the building. Paintings of birds and wildflowers hung on the walls. They’d been painted by Lill, who had gone to art school before becoming a teacher. She’d made the frames too, I found out later, of old cedar boards she’d salvaged from a shed that they’d torn down on the property.
My muscles tingled and I had some slivers; Danny and I had climbed the fire tower ladder several times, timing ourselves to see how fast we could get up and down. I sat down to eat at the long wooden table with eight other girls and the two sisters under the warm light from two chandeliers made of weathered white branches that hung from the beams. Smells of fresh-cut grass and ripe apples swept in through the open windows, along with the chirp of crickets.
“Did you know you can tell the temperature by the speed of crickets’ chirping?” Lucy said into the burble of voices and clinking cutlery.
“Really?”
“It’s getting cooler, so they’re slower now.”
“Count the number of chirps you hear in fourteen seconds,” said Lill, raising her watch to check it. “I’ll time, starting…now.”
We sat listening and silently counting.
“Done,” said Lill.
“I got thirty-one.”
“Me too.”
“I only got thirty.”
“Close enough,” said Lill. “Now you add forty and that gives you the temperature in Fahrenheit. About seventy degrees. What would it be in Celsius?”
“Subtract thirty and divide by two,” said Lindsay. “So, something like twenty Celsius.”
“Twenty-one,” said Grace. “It’s more accurate to subtract thirty-two and divide by one-point-eight.”
“Okay,” said Lill. “Good. You’re right, Grace.”
I felt what I hadn’t felt in a long time: comfortable, even happy. I helped myself to a slice of warm bread that one of the girls had just taken from the oven. Nine girls sat around the table, passing around a big crock of rich stew made of moose meat, homegrown carrots and potatoes. By the time the snowstorm hit that November, there would only be eight girls. But on that warm summer evening, I could only think how glad I was to feel hungry again.
chapter four
Snow flung itself against the windows as we sat around the long pine table and listened to the storm sweeping in. Ms. B’s spaghetti brought heat back to my toes and cheeks gradually.
“I don’t know if the sisters are going to make it home tomorrow if this weather keeps up,” Ms. B said.
“Can you stay?” said Jasie, the youngest girl. Like me and Danny, she was new to the school.
“Of course I’ll stay,” Ms. B said. “I don’t think I have a choice.” She laughed nervously.
“Don’t worry,” she added, seeing Jasie’s frown. “Anyway, I’m sure they’ll find a way to make it back. You know Lucy and Lill.”
“Pass the salad, please,” Danny said.
Just then a piercing shriek rang through the air like something had sheared loose in the wind. A deep, shuddering roar seemed to roll over the roof of the school like a wave. The next moment, we were plunged into darkness. Our gasps went up all at once.
It’s funny how sounds seem to grow louder when you can’t see anything six inches in front of your face. I hadn’t noticed the way the wind moaned, slamming against the building like someone trying to get in. And I hadn’t noticed the creaks and groans of the school’s timbers or the high whistles where the storm found openings, reminding us we were no match for what it could bring. But in the dark, it all roared in my ears.
“Well, that’s the power out,” Ms. B said, her voice a little less bright than before.
“And the prize for stating the obvious goes to…,” someone said, which was a joke the girls often made, but which sounded ruder in the dark.
“Okay, okay,” said Ms. B.
Something brushed against my leg, and then Lilac, the cat, was in my lap. I jumped and she pounced off, leaving the imprint of her claws in my thighs.
“What was that noise?” Jasie’s voice squeaked out.
“It must have been the power line snapping,” someone said, either Grace or Lindsay; I couldn’t tell in the dark.
“I wonder if it was a tornado,” said Jasie. “Are there tornadoes in winter?”
“I don’t think we get tornadoes around here at any time of year,” Ms. B said. “It’s just a high wind, I think. Don’t worry, girls. We’re safe in this sturdy log building.”
“I’ll get the candles,” I said. I knew where they were because I usually set the table and they were in the same drawer as the cloth napkins.
“Flashlights?” Ms. B said.
“I’ll get them.” Danny’s voice.
It was so dark I had to feel my way along the wall, cross to the counter and feel for the end of the island. I fished in the drawer and heard the rattle of the wooden matches.
The match flared and as I touched it to the candlewick, everyone began to talk again at once.
“What about the emergency generator? Is it fixed yet?”
“No. Lill brought it into town. It’s still there.”
“We better fire up the woodstove.”
“I wonder where the power lines went down.”
“Probably a tree fell on it.”
“How long will it take to fix?”
“The old wing is going to get cold tonight.”
“Glad I’m in the new wing.”
“Me too.”
“I’m going to sleep in here, right by the woodstove,” Jasie said.
“Let’s all sleep in here. We can have a pajama party,” Meredith said. “Oh no! My pie! It’s not done yet.”
Meredith spent her free time perfecting her baking skills. During her online hour on Sundays, she scanned the internet for recipes. We got to enjoy the benefits.
As I carried two candles to the table, a beam of light swept the room.
“Got the flashlights,” Danny said. She was at the front door and shone the light out into the night. Snow was being driven sideways by the wind. A big gust tore the screen door from her hand and it clattered against the wall.
“Wow! The wind is crazy,” she said, struggling to pull the door closed.
“Oh, there goes Lilac!” Jasie cried, as the cat darted past Danny and out into the storm. “Catch her!”
Jasie was the only girl in the school who didn’t want to be there. On the first day around the dinner table, each of us had to introduce ourselves by telling a “first-day story” about what had brought us to the school. Jasie had said, “My mother’s a triathlete and she runs hundred-day ultra-marathons through the wilderness and that’s why I’m here, I guess. To make me stronger.”
Not only was her mother an ultra-marathoner, but her dad was a competitive cyclist and both of them were doctors volunteering in Burkina Faso, a place in Africa I’d never even heard of until she told us about it. Jasie said her parents’ families had both come from small villages in India. They wanted to help people who were growing up in places like their families had come from. “I grew up in Calgary,” Jasie said. “They think I need to toughen up. But it’s not going to work. I’m hopeless.”
“I’m hopeless” was Jasie’s favorite saying. She said it when we went on a hike and she forgot her water bottle, and she said it when we took a first aid course and were learning the Heimlich maneuver. She was practicing on Danny and she sprained her wrist. She said it so often, it became a little bit true, although I hate to say that about her.
She’s a sweet girl. Dad used to say I was eighty-five pounds soaking wet. Jasie wouldn’t be that on a good day. She had a delicate, worried face like a nervous bird and she barely ate enough to keep a frog alive. Even now, I could see in the candlelight her plate of spaghetti barely touched, her fork dropped mid-bite. She liked to push her food around her plate, to try and make it look like she’d eaten more than she had, and that’s what it looked like now, all heaped on the edges.
Danny had slipped on a pair of rubber boots that were always by the front door and now she was out in the snow, trying to catch Lilac.
“Don’t worry,” Meredith said, patting Jasie’s arm. “She’ll catch her. You know Danny.”
“No she won’t,” Jasie said, her voice trembling.
I was afraid she was right. Lilac loved to be carried around (mainly by Jasie) and she slept on the bed of whoever left their bedroom door ajar (mainly Jasie), but she loved even more to be outside. Escaping outside after supper was one of her favorite games. Sometimes she carried tiny mice held gently in her mouth into the school and released them, live. In nice weather, it could be grasshoppers or moths. The sisters warned us to be careful when we went in and out. If the cat got out at night and we couldn’t get her back in, she could be carried off by a coyote or even a big eagle or owl.
Tonight the added worry was the snowstorm. If we couldn’t find her before bedtime, she’d be out overnight in the cold and snow.
I heard Jasie’s sniffles and then turned and saw, in the candlelight, big tears rolling down her cheeks as she sat stock-still and tried to pretend she wasn’t crying.
Ms. B got up and went to the front door. She opened it and drew a sharp breath as the wind blasted in. “Danielle!” she called. “Come in and finish your supper. The cat can look after herself.” I knew that Ms. B wasn’t only worried about Danny finishing supper. I could feel her nervousness rising with the worsening storm.
After a minute, Danny appeared, her hair and clothes rimmed with snow. She stomped her boots on the mat then pulled them off.
“She doesn’t want to come. I could see her eyes looking at me from under the porch. Sorry, Jasie. I didn’t think she’d run out in this weather.”
We finished supper quietly by the flickering candlelight as the storm grew even fiercer. Every once in a while, the wind tossed something against the house and Ms. B tried not to look nervous, but failed, her face alert and listening for trouble. All of us listened.
With Jasie’s quiet tears in the soft darkness, maybe all of the girls felt, as I did, a little more lonely than usual.
“Help me get Lilac back in?” Danny said, after we’d piled the dirty dinner dishes beside the sink to wash once the power came back on.
“Jasie won’t sleep tonight if we don’t,” I said.
We both knew that was true. But we also knew that we’d need a good story if Ms. B was going to let us go out in the snowstorm tonight.
We went to ask her together. When Ms. B called Danny Danielle, she didn’t even correct her. We nodded and agreed to be back in half an hour, whether we’d caught Lilac or not. We stuck flashlights in our pockets. Jasie handed me a can of cat food and a fork.
“Tap on the side of the can,” she said. “That usually brings her running.”
I was thinking she was unlikely to hear it above the roar of the wind, but I took them from her and I smiled into Jasie’s worried face to try and reassure her.
The other girls were bringing their blankets and pillows into the great room and spreading them in front of the fireplace that cast a warm orange glow on the walls.
“My pie isn’t done,” Meredith called from the kitchen. “But I’ll try to finish it in the woodstove oven. I’ll make hot chocolate!”
Danny and I put on our boots, waved, and plunged into the storm. Once the door was closed firmly and we had left behind that cozy room, a fizz of excitement bubbled through me. The mystery of the storm pulled us in, the bite of wind, a curtain of snow across a world of possibility.
“Lilac!” I called out. Then I burst out laughing, and so did Danny. The wind had snatched my voice and it was lost in the whining gusts. Calling her was useless.
Danny squatted and shone her flashlight under the porch. “I don’t see her!” she shouted.
“She likes the shed at the end of the driveway!” I shouted back.
Danny took my arm and we leaned into the wind, our flashlights beaming a halo into the driving snow.
At the end of the driveway, we ducked into the shed. The thin walls made a six-foot by six-foot cube of calm where we caught our breath. Snow clung to the hair around our faces. Lilac was not there.
“This is crazy,” said Danny.
“Trees will come down tonight for sure.”
“Let’s walk down the road and see if we can see what caused the power outage.”
“What about Lilac?”
“I bet she’s hiding out somewhere near the house. We can hurry.”
I checked my watch. “We’ve got exactly twenty-one minutes.”
A few minutes down the road, a shadowy bulk rose out of the white blur. As we got closer, I realized the blur was a huge pine tree that had fallen across the road. It had brought down the power line, which had snapped and now lay snaked in the snow and tangled among the pine branches.
But the strange thing was that in the woods beyond the fallen tree, a swath of trees had been pushed partway over. They were leaning on each other, like they’d been pushed by a giant hand. Could it have been a tornado?
Danny and I stood staring at it, puzzled.
“Is that what they call a blow-down?” Danny asked, her voice catching on the wind.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” I answered.
“It had to be some freak wind pattern,” said Danny. “Or aliens.”
The wind blasted up the road, rocking our bodies as we tried to stay in place.
“We’ve got nine minutes to get back and find Lilac,” Danny shouted.
We ran up the road with the wind at our backs this time, almost lifting us off our feet. Near the school, I got out the can of cat food and the fork and I sang Lilac’s name into the night.
Her orange-and-black head appeared from under the porch and she bounded to the front door before us.
“Lucky!” said Danny. I looked at my watch. As we opened the door, it had been half an hour on the dot.
chapter five
The great room was aglow with candles burning in lanterns placed on bookshelves and tables. Jasie jumped up and ran to scoop Lilac into her arms. She buried her face in the cat’s fur. The tears still ran down her cheeks, even though Lilac was found.
She’s homesick, I thought, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to make her feel better. Stepping into the warm homeyness of the school, a tide of homesickness washed over me, too. The girls lay on their stomachs on sleeping bags and blankets in front of the fireplace. Ms. B sat at the dining room table with her knitting bag. She had brought the transistor radio from the kitchen and extended the antenna its full length. The station she’d picked up was not quite tuned in; a staticky voice faded in and out.
“This fire is so mesmerizing,” Meredith said from the nest of sleeping bags in front of the fireplace.
“It’s our own fireplace channel,” Carmen said. “Sorry, you two, we used all the air mattresses. If you want to sleep here, you’ll have to sleep on the floor.”
“You snooze, you lose,” said Grace. “Wilderness survival rule number twenty-seven.”
On the day that everyone had introduced themselves around the dining room table, Grace had said, “I’m the girl who’s hard to like.” That had had the reverse effect of making me determined to prove I could like her. But she didn’t make it easy.
“I just say what’s on my mind,” she’d continued. “Apparently, that’s not what you do if you want people to like you. Honestly, I don’t care if you like me or not. If you do something stupid, I’m probably going to say so.”
“She means it,” Meredith had said. Meredith was in eleventh grade with Grace and Lindsay, the girls who’d been there from the first year.
Lucy, with a strained look on her face, had smiled and said, “Thank you, Grace. Who would like to go next?”
Taking another piece of bread from the stack on the table, Grace had added, “It’s nothing personal. You might as well get used to it. Pass me the butter. Oh, and the sisters are my step-aunts.”
Meredith told us later that after Lucy and Lill’s mother died, their father remarried, to a woman who already had a daughter of her own. A few years after the marriage when the daughter, Grace’s mom, was in her late teens, she took off. She’d gone missing for many years, and when she showed up again she had a child of her own and nowhere to live. She and Grace had lived with Lucy and Lill’s father and his wife, and then eventually she disappeared again, leaving Grace behind. Because of that, Grace attended Green Mountain Academy tuition-free, which was too bad, Meredith said, because the school needed all the paying students it could get.
