Green Mountain Academy, page 6
I don’t think it was just me who was remembering something. I felt the let-down in the room, even from Ms. B.
Meredith clapped her hands as if to chase it away. “We should sing some camp songs!” she said.
Grace groaned. “Don’t you ever get tired?”
“The other day,” Meredith sang.
“The other day,” everyone sang back.
“There was some snow.”
“There was some snow.”
“Out in the night.”
“Out in the night.”
“Where we can’t go,” Lindsay added.
“Where we can’t go.”
“The other day there was some snow, out in the night where we can’t go,” everyone sang together.
“Ms. B said to me,” sang Meredith.
“Ms. B said to me.”
“They lost a plane.”
“They lost a plane.”
“And that’s a shame,” Ming sang back.
“And that’s a shame.”
Meredith hesitated. “Line? Anyone?”
“This song’s inane,” Grace sang.
Meredith stopped and her face flushed pink. “You would pick the most negative word.”
“It rhymes.” Grace got up from the blankets on the floor and grabbed the fireplace poker. “And it’s so fitting around you,” she added. But I could see that she was upset and trying to cover it. Danny gave me a look, as if to say what did I tell you?
I realized that Grace had meant to join in. She had not expected the reaction from Meredith that she got. And if it had been anyone else who’d said it, we all would have laughed. Danny was right. Grace was trying, but it wasn’t working.
“Danny!” I whispered.
The thing in the back of my mind that had been nagging at me had suddenly become clear. Danny and I had leaned into the wind when we were walking down the road to where the big pine tree had fallen. The wind had been at our backs when we headed back to the school. That meant the wind was from the north.
“I just realized something,” I said. “Remember the strange way those trees we saw were lying?”
“Like an alien had pushed them over.”
“Yeah. So, what if it was the plane?”
“What plane?”
“What plane? Are you serious? The airplane that’s missing with those three people on it. That we just heard about on the radio?”
“I just knew you were upset about that.”
“I’m not upset.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve been stewing about it. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“Okay, maybe it’s been bothering me. But listen. Everything adds up.”
“Everything? Like a few blown-over trees? That plane could be anywhere, Francie.”
“Not anywhere. It has to be somewhere between the Penticton Airport and Seattle. It would have to fly over here. You remember how we always hear planes droning overhead when we’re at the Sasquatch Caves? This is the flight path. Dad told me about it. If the wind is from the north, planes take off into it, then they turn and fly west above the mountains.”
Danny listened like she was considering it.
I went on. “Dad said the terrain can cause an optical illusion. Sometimes pilots don’t realize how high the mountains really are.”
“Did your dad fly?”
“No, he was just really interested in all that. We used to drive down to the airport and watch the planes take off and land.”
“That’s cool. You must really miss your dad.”
I looked at Danny looking at me. It wasn’t like her to say things like that. It’s not that she didn’t care; it was just that, like me, she preferred to show it without actually saying the words.
“You think I’m making this up because of him,” I said.
“It crossed my mind. I mean, I know you wish you’d gone looking for your dad, so maybe you’re just…”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know, Francie.”
We were not whispering anymore, and both Ming and Jasie were watching us.
I lowered my voice again.
“Well, I know one thing. If he was here right now, he’d agree with me. What if the pilot was trying to land? They missed the road, which would have been a logical place to land. The big pine was lying west to east across the road. Even though the wind was from the north. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe the wind changed.”
“It didn’t. And you know it. The other trees, the ones that looked like they’d been pushed down, they were also lying west to east. Maybe it wasn’t the wind that knocked them over. Maybe the pilot was trying to land the plane on the road but got caught up in the trees.”
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said.
“Well if you know, then why aren’t you listening to me?”
“I am listening. I just think you’re letting your imagination get carried away. Just stop thinking about it. Even if they did crash near here, which I doubt, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I can’t believe you would say that. You of all people.”
“Francie, look. I like adventures, but I have to be smart about what I do out here. If we go out and get lost in a snowstorm, I can forget about Uncle Charlie ever hiring me as a guide.”
I was quiet, watching the fire crackle and spit. I felt like I was sulking, and I didn’t want to sulk. She was probably right. No. She was absolutely right. There was nothing we could do. We had to stay inside where it was safe and warm while three people could be out in the worst snowstorm of the year, fighting to stay alive. It was what I’d done that night in the woods in Oregon. I’d found Dad’s toque. I knew he could be nearby, but I was afraid. That’s all there was to it. I was afraid, and I’d holed up and plugged my ears.
“Stop thinking about it,” Danny said again. “Are you going to finish that pie?”
“You can have it.”
“Cheer up,” Danny whispered, shoveling up a big forkful. “You know what my grandma used to say?”
“What?”
“Don’t borrow trouble.”
“What does that mean?”
“Basically, you’re just dreaming this up. You’re imagining trouble that hasn’t happened. It’s not your problem.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. Okay, okay. You’re right.”
“Music to my ears, as my grandma would say.”
But telling yourself to stop thinking about something is harder than it sounds. I lay down and pulled up my sleeping bag, while Meredith and the others launched into their own version of “The Ants Go Marching One by One.”
Ms. B got up from her knitting with a heavy sigh and went around the room blowing out the candles.
“I’ll just be right here,” she said, settling down on the couch, “if anyone needs me. I’ll try my best not to snore.”
“Ms. B!” Meredith groaned.
“Good night, girls.”
“Good night, Ms. B!” everyone sang.
I watched the firelight dancing on the wall and tried to appreciate how lucky I was. A warm sleeping bag, a good fire, a building that had stood against wind and storms for eighty years. There was nothing to worry about.
I don’t know about yours, but my mind doesn’t work that way.
The more I tell my mind not to think about something, the more it wants to go there. It’s like being told I’m not allowed in the second-floor rooms of the old wing. Suddenly, they’re way more interesting than any other rooms I can go in any time.
First, my mind went to the plane soaring above the trees, looking for a place to land. Then I was at Grandpa’s house, watching him dip his used teabag into his teacup as he sat at the kitchen table staring out the window at the overgrown garden. The garden had once been Grandpa’s pride and joy. Once, he had scarlet runner beans climbing eight-foot poles and covered with red flowers that the hummingbirds liked. He grew pumpkins the size of beach balls and tomatoes as big as grapefruits. Hollyhocks grew against the fence and Phoebe and I made dolls from them with toothpicks, the flowers becoming pink and yellow and red skirts. But not anymore. The garden had grown parched and dusty, with weeds his only crop. It would look dead now, in late November, probably half-buried in snow tonight.
Then I was in the cockpit of the plane with snow flying at the windshield and I felt the fingers of someone’s hand dig into my arm. Thinking about the pilot trying to guide the plane higher made sweat spring up on my skin, right there in front of our cozy fire. I could feel the plane tip and struggle to climb. And then I was on the ground, scrambling out of the plane.
Where was I?
Thick forest and biting cold wind. Dad’s yellow rain jacket, bright against the browns and grays of the Oregon forest in spring. Half snow, half rain. He fishes his GPS from his pocket and studies it again, the thin line that is supposed to be the road up ahead.
chapter eight
A few weeks earlier, back in October, we had all been out in the woods practicing dead reckoning, which is a way to estimate your location based on your starting point and speed of travel. In the warm sun, a spicy aroma of leaves and pine needles filled the air, along with the whistling of hawks and the laughter of girls moving through the trees.
I realized at that moment that I was happy. For once, no sick feeling chewed at my stomach. I was glad I’d come to Green Mountain Academy. Although I’d told Aunt Sissy that I wanted to be there, I hadn’t really been sure at all. I just knew that I couldn’t stay in Penticton trying to live the life I’d had before. But that day in the sun-soaked woods, air soft like a warm bath, I knew I’d made the right decision.
A crackle came over the two-way radio that the sisters sometimes used when one of them took a group of us out.
“Lill, it’s Lucy.”
Lill unclipped the radio from her hip. “Go ahead, Lucy,” she answered.
“We have a visitor. Over.”
“Copy that. Who is it?”
“It’s Francie’s aunt. Can you bring her back to the lodge? Over.”
“Copy that. We’re on our way.”
Suddenly my stomach clenched and the soft happiness I’d felt disappeared. Why would Aunt Sissy have come to the school? Why wouldn’t she have sent an email if she had something to say? Something had happened. I knew it. And I guessed it had to do with either Mom or Dad.
Lill left Grace in charge and we hiked back, quickly covering the ground we’d taken out slowly in the morning. Lill was not the chatty type, but she looked at me sideways once and said, “Don’t go getting all caught up in conjecture. You’ll know soon enough why she’s here.”
Which, if it was meant to make me feel better, failed.
Aunt Sissy, when I saw her, didn’t help any either. I could tell she had something to say by the way she hugged me—tightly, but almost in a hurry—and asked me how I was and how I liked the school, without really listening to the answers. I had to wait until Lucy brought tea and cookies to where we sat in the sunroom watching finches at the bird feeder in the yard.
Once Lucy had left us, Aunt Sissy took a sip of her tea and then pulled a brown envelope from her purse.
“They found something they think is your dad’s,” she said. “It’s a GPS. A hunter found it.”
I held my breath.
“The sheriff wants you to have a look. See if you recognize it.”
She slid a photograph from the envelope and passed it to me.
I knew right away. It wasn’t just the kind of GPS, with its eight small buttons in a half circle around a bigger round button. It was the lanyard that Dad had attached to it so he could loop it around his neck when he walked. The lanyard was dirty, but I could tell it was the blue one that Mom had brought home from my old school. The letters KVR MS that stood for Kettle Valley Railway Middle School were still visible.
There was no doubt.
“It’s his,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Well, that’s what I thought you’d say,” said Aunt Sissy, taking another sip of tea, a frown creasing her forehead.
“Where did they find it?”
“The sheriff said to tell you it was not too far from the creek where you found his toque. As I said, a hunter came across it a few days ago. They’ve searched the area again, but they haven’t found anything else.”
“So it was just on the ground? How did it get broken?” One corner of the GPS looked as if it had been crushed. The clear plastic front was cracked. The screen had water under it and the lanyard was gray with mud.
“He said the clasp to the lanyard was broken,” Aunt Sissy said. “He thinks he probably dropped it when he was walking.”
“Which side of the creek was it on, north or south?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask him that.”
“I wonder if it still works.”
“I didn’t ask him that either. These are all good questions, Francie. I’ll be calling him. I’ll ask him all your questions.”
It was a clue. Good or bad? I wasn’t sure. Probably not good. He could have dropped the GPS by accident or he could have thrown it away because it didn’t work. Neither of those were good. Was there any way it could be good?
Piece of crap. That’s what Dad said when something he’d bought broke too soon, like the rope of mini-lights on a string that he’d wrapped around the railing of our front step at Christmas that worked for half an hour and then never worked again. Piece of crap. It was from a Neil Young song he liked. The chorus was pretty much those three words.
I could picture Dad walking through the woods with the GPS in his hand. The screen’s gone blank again, like it did at home the first couple times he used it. He gives it a shake.
“Piece of crap,” he says, then tosses it into the mud.
Maybe. But probably not. Dad wouldn’t throw something into the trees, even if it was junk.
He had dropped it by accident, just like the sheriff said. That was more likely.
Aunt Sissy was watching me. I had become used to people watching me, waiting to see if I’d crack. Like Mom had cracked.
“I know this is upsetting,” she said. “That’s why I drove out to tell you.”
It was upsetting, but what I didn’t tell Aunt Sissy was that it was less upsetting than not hearing anything at all.
I had watched Aunt Sissy drive away. I had gone back out to the woods to try and recapture that warm feeling I’d felt. All the questions I had about Dad’s disappearance had come crowding into my mind again, settling there like a dark cloud. Jasie had hugged me with her thin little arms and no words. She didn’t even know what had happened, but she could read it in my face.
That night just as darkness was falling, a car engine in the school yard had startled us. No one traveled way out here on those rough roads at night. I was startled to see, in the square of light at the doorway, Aunt Sissy standing there. At first I’d imagined she’d had car trouble, something like that, some reason she’d had to turn around.
I had rushed to the door. Her face was ashen and gray under the hall light. I knew instantly. One question had finally been answered.
* * *
After Aunt Sissy left the school that afternoon, she had been almost down the hill taking her back to town when she’d picked up a cell phone signal and a message from the sheriff. When she called him back, he was having supper.
As I had imagined, Dad had not set up the tent. He’d unpacked it and draped it over his shoulders, and he’d sat under a tree, probably to wait for the rain to stop. He had not woken up, the sheriff told Aunt Sissy. Exposure, they called it.
I don’t know why the detail about him having supper stuck in my mind or why Aunt Sissy told it to me. I could picture him at the kitchen table with his family around him, a jug of milk in the middle of the table, plates and forks and knives all orderly and ordinary. I could picture a TV on in the background, a jumble of running shoes on the mat at the front door. The normal things that made up a normal life I would never have again.
chapter nine
Ms. B rolled over on the couch with a groan and in a minute, she was snoring. The singing had stopped; a couple of giggles bubbled up from the sleeping bags in front of the fire. The rustlings and coughs in the room quieted and, one by one, the girls’ breathing slowed into the soft ins and outs of sleep.
“Are you asleep?” I whispered to Danny.
“Almost,” she answered.
“I had another thought.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled.
“That noise we heard when we were out hiking.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you remember?”
“Hmm.”
“We heard a weird roaring noise overhead. You said it might be a plane. What if it was the plane? What if they were lost? Maybe it flew right over the school.”
A log shifted in the fireplace and an ember popped.
“They can’t close the school,” Danny said, her voice drowsy. In a minute, she was asleep.
I tried to sleep myself, but every time I felt myself drifting, I saw Dad alone in the woods, huddling at the base of a tree, trying to stay out of the freezing rain. And then I couldn’t help thinking about the plane again. I had a gut feeling, so strong I couldn’t shake it. They were out there, and someone needed to help them.
I waited a few more minutes to be sure everyone was asleep, then I got up. I would need a few things.
The fire threw enough light that I could make my way out of the great room and into the hall. I found my way blindly along it to our room, then clicked on my flashlight. My knapsack was in the closet. I pulled it out and threw it on the bed.
