The first thing to do was build a fire pit and put a circle of rocks around it to contain the flames. I remembered reading about that trick in a book about a boy who got lost in the wilderness with nothing but a hatchet. My plan was to pull the wagon back to the banks of the Nooksack and fill it with river stones. But the aliens couldn’t come with me. What if we ran into Tate and his Scouts again? One close call was plenty. Besides, it would only take a couple of minutes.
I figured the best way to get them to behave was to keep them busy. “Okay, guys, you see these sticks lying around?” I picked up a fallen branch from the forest floor. “We need a bunch of these in order to make a fire. They need to be about this size, and you can find them right around our campsite here. I need you all to help collect them, okay?”
They stopped chasing each other around a rotting cedar stump. “Is it like a contest?” one of them asked.
Great idea. Even though I’d seen Tyler and his brothers fighting all the time back home, I had forgotten the magic of sibling rivalry, which apparently extends beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. “It sure is. Whoever can make the biggest pile before I get back is the winner, okay?” As I left with the wagon, they were scampering around the campsite, grabbing sticks. “Remember, stay right around here until I get back,” I called over my shoulder.
It took less than five minutes to walk down to the riverbank. I filled the wagon with river stones and was lugging it back to the trail when I heard something both wonderful and terrible.
“Hey! Scrub!”
I turned. Amy was walking toward me from upriver, picking her way across the rocks and driftwood in bare feet.
Adrenaline flooded my body. Again. I remembered my health teacher explaining that adrenaline is a powerful drug, and I wondered how many doses my heart could take in one day before it short-circuited.
I tried very hard not to look in the direction of my alien campsite, which would draw Amy’s attention up there. And then I tried very hard not to spin around in circles, anxiously searching for Sheriff Tate, who could step out from behind any one of a thousand trees, holding a daughter-protecting rifle. I took a deep breath and concentrated on calmly looking at Amy. Trying to appear even semi-cool is harder than it seems.
“Hey,” I said, my nerves making the word squeak out. “Why—I mean, what are—you know? How did you get, um…here?” I guess that even semi-coolness is beyond my reach.
Amy got closer, balancing carefully as she walked along a fallen tree. “My dad.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah. He’s a troop leader, and every summer he takes his Scouts out here camping. Tonight’s the big night. That’s why he was looking for me when he found us at the park.” She was right in front of me now, holding a little plastic bucket half filled with some kind of berries. Her legs were really tan, and her toenails were painted pink. I tried not to stare. “I stay out of their way and do my own thing. Which is fine with me. I grew up in these woods.”
“Your dad.” I said it flatly this time. An accusation. “You mean your dad the sheriff, the one who wants to close my grandma’s place down and probably put me in jail?”
“I’m so sorry, Scrub.” Amy pulled at the fraying ends of her denim cutoff shorts. “He’s not always that bad, I promise. He just takes his job way too seriously sometimes. It’s been like that ever since my mom moved to California.”
We were quiet then, the sounds of the river filling up the silence between us. As usual, I had no idea how to act when someone said something upsetting. Words of consolation? An apology? Questions about what happened? I had no clue, so I just stood there.
I was relieved when Amy started talking again, especially since she changed the subject, even though I know it was lame of me to feel that way.
“But what are you doing all the way out here?” she said, looking at my wagon full of rocks.
Yikes. Maybe her changing the subject wasn’t such a good idea. Even if I were a great liar, it would be hard to think up a story that would explain this. I decided to stick as close to the truth as possible.
“Oh…just, you know…getting some rocks together to make a fire pit.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. If you heat up river rocks, they’ll explode.”
“Really?” I studied her face, watching for the smirk. I didn’t want to blindly walk into another one of her jokes.
“Really.” She seemed serious enough. “Water seeps into the cracks, and then when it gets hot enough it expands and shatters the rock. What’s the matter, haven’t you ever read So You Think You Can Camp?”
I just sighed and rolled my eyes at that. “I’ll have to pick up a copy.”
“So you’re camping out here?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool! I was worried about when we might have the chance to hang out again, with my dad being so weird, but this is perfect. The swimming hole is really close to here. Want to come with me?”
It was almost impossible not to look up in the direction of the campsite. “Um…I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Well, your dad, you know? What if he finds us and—”
“When my dad is with his Scouts, nothing distracts him. They’ll be chopping firewood and tying knots and scribbling in their nature journals until way after dark.”
“Well…what if he comes to check on you?”
“Nah. He lets me do my own thing. My tent is pretty close, but it isn’t technically at their same campsite, to make sure I don’t mess up their male-bonding time or whatever.” She reached out and took me by the hand. Just like that. “Come on, at least pick some berries with me,” she said.
I snuck a look up in the direction of my campsite. All clear. Then I looked back at Amy. I noticed for the first time that her eyes were two different colors, one greenish and one brownish. Very cool. Amy stood between me and the river, and when the late evening sun glinted off the surface of the water, it almost looked like she was glowing.
Amy’s hand was warm against mine. She gave it a small tug, pulling me upriver. “The red huckleberry bush is right over here.”
I exhaled, relieved. I could still watch the campsite—or at least keep an eye out in that direction—while we stood at her berry bush. I could spare a couple of minutes. “Sounds good. But what are huckleberries?”
“You’ve never had a huckleberry? Here, try one.” Amy plucked a berry, small and pink and perfectly round, and put it in my mouth. It was really good, kind of tart and sweet at the same time.
It took us a little while to fill up the bucket, partly because the berries were so small, but mostly because we ate two or three for every one that we dropped in. I tried to keep an eye on the hill, in the direction of the Jungle Boys, but to be honest, it was pretty easy to forget about the aliens for a few minutes because Amy and I were talking the whole time.
And this time I wasn’t really nervous about talking with a girl. Maybe because we had broken the ice earlier at the park, but it was just like talking to a normal person. Okay, of course I realized she’s a normal person. It’s just that it was really fun and easy to talk with her, like talking to a friend or something. Maybe she was my friend. Whatever.
Anyway, it was nice to know we had so much in common. I thought it might be hard to keep a conversation going with someone who lived 3,000 miles away, but with the Internet and TV and stuff, it turned out we had a lot of the same interests. She even liked to play video games, which was cool, because not many of the girls I know are interested in gaming. Then we started talking about our favorite bands, and I learned that she had taken guitar lessons for over three years.
“You really play guitar?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ve been practicing on an old acoustic I found at a garage sale. But I’ve been hinting that I want an electric Fender for my birthday next month.” She munched on a few huckleberries. “Actually, I guess hinting isn’t really the right word. More like begging. But sometimes my
dad is pretty clueless when it comes to good presents. So I figured I’d give him a little help.”
At the mention of her dad I started thinking I should get back to camp. A breeze caused a rash of goose bumps to raise up on my forearm, and I realized the temperature had dropped. Dusk was coming on fast.
“Hey, Amy, I think I better get going,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I need to get back to my campsite before it gets dark. I want to make sure I can still find it, you know?”
“Do you want me to walk you back?”
“No!” I must have said it a little too eagerly, or maybe even yelled it, because she looked kind of taken aback. “I mean, that’s a really nice offer. And I had a great time today. Really. But…I think I better walk back by myself.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, um,…it’s…just part of this dare that I have with a friend back home. He challenged me to camp all by myself for a night in the woods. Doesn’t think I can do it. If you were there, even for a few minutes, it might sort of be cheating, you know?”
I think it worked, because she smiled at me again. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of talking to girls. Even if I had to fib to keep her away from Campsite Area 51.
“So you’re camping out here all by yourself?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. That’s pretty brave,” she said. I smiled. I couldn’t help it. No one had ever called me brave before. “Especially with all the bears around here,” she added.
“Bears?” I scanned the forest furtively, as if a giant grizzly was about to attack. My face must have looked as terrified as I felt, because she laughed.
“Nah, I’m just playing. I’ve never seen a bear out here.” She sat on a rock and pulled a sweatshirt over her head. “If you get lonely up there, you can come find my campsite. It’s just up the trail. I’m a pretty good fire builder, and I stole a big bag of marshmallows from the Scout supplies.” She took hold of my hand again. “That wouldn’t be cheating on your dare, would it?”
“Nah. That sounds good,” I said. I knew I wouldn’t be able to visit her, but it was nice that she asked me.
“Just make sure my dad doesn’t see you.”
“Good idea. See ya.” I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. I walked to my wagon and pulled it up the hill toward the campsite. For some reason, it seemed a lot lighter.
But probably just because I’d dumped out all the river stones.
I couldn’t believe how much darker it was in the middle of the trees than in the clearing by the water, where I could still see the sky. I tripped over tree roots a couple of times and fell facedown on the forest floor, and when I stood up there were leaves and twigs stuck in my hair and hanging down into my eyes.
The sky stayed light until almost ten o’clock in town. It was only nine now, but so dark in the forest, I nearly ran right into the tent before I figured out where I was. When my eyes finally adjusted to the lack of light, I saw there was no need to worry about the aliens. Around the edges of the campsite were three enormous piles of wood. No, these were towers of wood, each one easily over twenty feet tall and as wide at the base as the floor of my bedroom. Man, they were fast; I could only have been gone for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. (Okay, so maybe it was longer and I kind of lost track of time with Amy. But whatever—I was back and they were still here and that’s all that mattered.)
At the bottom of each firewood tower was an alien, sprawled out on the ground and breathing heavily. I guess there was a limit to their extraterrestrial supply of energy after all. They slowly lifted their heads off the ground for a moment to look at me, but then plopped back down on the forest floor.
“We tried to keep working,” one of them wheezed. “But there are no more stick things around here.” I believed it. From what I could see of the surrounding forest floor, it looked like it had been gone over with a vacuum cleaner.
One alien managed to push himself into a sitting position, his palm fronds drooping down over his face. “Do you think we got enough sticks for the fire?”
I craned my neck, but the tops of the towers were lost in the deepening blackness. “Yeah, I think that will be fine, guys. Good work.” I rummaged through the supplies in the wagon, squinting to find a flashlight. When I finally grabbed one and switched it on, the tiny lightbulb flared briefly…then flickered and died.
I tried hitting it a few times with the palm of my hand.
I wonder if that has ever worked. “Great,” I muttered. “No light. How am I supposed to build a fire in total darkness?”
I shoved my hands into the duffel bag, blindly scrounging for a second flashlight I knew wasn’t there, when suddenly the entire campsite was lit up by a greenish glow. Sometimes, in movies, the camera shows what it looks like when some military guy is looking through night-vision goggles. You know it’s supposed to be dark, but you can still see everything, and it all looks kind of green. It was like that. Only brighter, maybe.
“Does this help?” said Zardolph. I turned, and he was glowing all over. Well, I guess not all over, but those green and yellow blotches that covered his body were shining pretty intensely. Zardolph stood up and spread his arms and legs out, and the campsite got even brighter.
“Wow. How do you do that?” I asked.
“Easy. I just do it,” he said. “I was wondering why you weren’t doing it when you said you needed light. Earthlings are weird.”
I smiled. It had been a long day, but at least I had gotten to see Amy again, and the three aliens under my supervision were all accounted for, relatively safe, and undetected by the citizens of Earth. “Yeah, I guess we are kind of weird,” I said. I felt pretty tired all of a sudden. Digging a pit and getting a fire going didn’t sound too appealing. I looked over to where the other two aliens were sprawled out on the forest floor. “Are your brothers asleep?” I asked.
“Yes. Traveling kind of wears them out.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No. We ate the bars named Hershey from your box. Delicious.”
Great. Cold tofu dogs for my dinner. “Can you help me get these two into the tent? I think we’ll call it a night.”
A couple of hours later the aliens were sleeping soundly, while I stared at the ceiling of the tent. I checked the glowing readout on my watch. 11:17. Sometimes I can’t shut my brain off at night, and it’s hard to get to sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to think about nothing, but my mind kept offering things to think about anyway. It shouldn’t have surprised me that most of those things had to do with Amy.
I remembered everything I had said to her. Only now, in the calm of the tent and with lots of time to think, I came up with way cooler things I could have said. I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and erase my doofus mistakes. Who knows? I guess if someone could invent an intergalactic transporter, then maybe someone could come up with a time machine.
I tried to imagine what Amy was doing at that moment. Was she asleep, or sitting up by the campfire? Maybe she’d snuck up on the Scouts’ tents and was listening to them tell ghost stories. I tried to picture her reaction if I were to show up at her campsite. Surprised? Happy, maybe? It’s hard to tell with girls. Most of the stuff I think about them ends up being wrong. But I couldn’t shake the feeling she might be a little bit happy if I showed up over there. Just for a few minutes. A quick hello, then come right back.
I craned my neck and looked over at the aliens. Still sleeping. I stretched out my arm and shook one of them. The green and yellow splotches flared up brightly for a second, then faded. He slept right through it.
I got on all fours, unzipped the entryway as quietly as I could, then crawled out of the tent. I didn’t feel nervous about leaving the aliens this time. They were clearly exhausted from all of their running around the entire day. I could easily pop over for a minute and then come right back. The aliens would never even know I was gone.
Walking through the forest without a flash
light wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. The moon was bright now, and small clearings in the canopy of branches overhead let a little light through. The moonlight turned the pine needles silver, and I wasn’t too worried about running into a tree or a thorny blackberry bramble. I realized that I must really like Amy if I was out here with all of those wild animals that called the forest home; I just prayed they would stay in their nice warm beds tonight.
I walked toward the sound of rushing water, and when I reached the river I followed it downstream. Pretty soon I saw the flicker of a campfire through the trees.
I crept up until I could see the campsite. I was worried about running across Tate and the Scouts first, but their site must have been farther down the trail. There was Amy, sitting on a log by the campfire, strumming a guitar and singing. I edged closer until I was behind a tree right next to her clearing. I recognized the tune of her song from the radio, but I don’t listen to country stations that much, so I didn’t know the words or who sang it or anything. She was strumming for most of the song, but when she got to the chorus—something about dancing—she did this quick fingerpicking thing where she plucked out individual notes. She was really, really good.
It was nice just to stand there and watch her. The forest behind Amy was black, and the fire lit her up against it, like a spotlight on a stage.
When she finished her song, I applauded and stepped out from behind the tree. She looked scared for a second, and I was afraid that maybe she was mad that I had come over, but then she smiled.
Aliens on Vacation Page 13
