Nature Girl

by Jane Kelley

  I hug him so tight I’m practically strangling him. He wriggles out of my arms and jumps around. He wags his stubby tail so hard he almost falls over.

  “Were you lost and worried too?”

  He barks like he’s trying to tell me all about it. I pat him. His white fur is all dirty and full of burrs.

  “Look at you. You’re such a mess! But you found me, didn’t you? Yes you did, you good dog.”

  He looks so pleased with himself. I don’t have the heart to tell him that even though we’ve found each other, we’re still lost.

  “Hey, Arp. You think you can sniff your way back to the farmhouse?”

  Arp sits down, like he’s saying, “Hey! I just got here.”

  “It can’t be very far. We didn’t walk that long. Did we?”

  He pants so much his pink tongue dangles way out of his mouth.

  “We just have to go back the way we came.”

  But which way did we come from? I look around, trying to remember where I first ran into the field. But I can’t see a sign or even that path for mice. The field is totally surrounded by the Woods. Yes, the same old Woods. I told you they go on forever.

  Arp gazes up at me, like I’m supposed to know what to do.

  “What are you looking at me for? You’re the dog. You’re the one with the good sense of smell. How am I supposed to know which direction to go in?”

  Of course, Samster would know, just by the color of the moss on the tree bark. Or where the sun is in the sky. I check my watch to see what time it is. It seems like a whole lifetime went by since Ginia said what she said about Lucy.

  It’s one o’clock. ART time is over. My parents are on their way to Rutland. They don’t even know I’m lost.

  This is so depressing that I fall back onto the ground. But then I realize something. Nobody is at the farmhouse. When I get back there, I can finish off the Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream and watch TV. Maybe the sound still works even without the rabbit-ear antenna.

  The sun is sort of straight overhead. I squint at it through my fingers; I have enough problems without getting blind from looking directly at the sun. Finally it moves.

  I jump up and shout, “Okay, Arp! That’s west!”

  Arp looks at me like he’s saying, “What’s all the fuss?” So I explain it to him, since he never had science class. “The sun sets in the west. So the sun has to move that way.”

  I don’t tell him that the sun isn’t really moving; the Earth is. (That’s hard enough for people to understand.) I just point toward the right side of the field and say, “That’s west.”

  Unfortunately I still have no idea where the farmhouse is.

  We spent all that time studying maps in school. We learned how to mark off five blocks east, two blocks south, three more blocks east to get from the pretend playground to the pretend library. That method works really well in New York City because it’s a sensible, organized place with numbered streets in the right order. But the Woods aren’t measured out in little boxes. The Woods are even more out of control than Ginia.

  I start getting upset again.

  Arp barks.

  “Don’t blame me,” I tell him. “I KNEW that hiking in the Woods was a terrible idea. I KNEW that a bad thing was going to happen. But did anybody listen to me? No. And now I’m dying out here because my family didn’t care about me—they cared about a TREE. My very own family! You know, the ones that have the same blood as I do? Like, hello, people? In case you didn’t notice, I am a people too. And that means I have a brain and feelings, but plants don’t.”

  Just to prove that, I drop to my knees and pull up huge clumps of grass.

  “You see? Did they get mad or say ouch? No. You see? No feelings!”

  I throw the grass. Only it doesn’t go far away like I want it to. The grass just floats around and lands on my legs. That makes me mad. Like the plants are doing that on purpose to bug me. And if they are, that means they do have little minds. So I quickly brush off the grass.

  “Leave me alone!” I tell it.

  “Leave” reminds me of leaves. Like I made a pun. Now I feel even worse. You see, Lucy and I love puns. We spend hours making them. If Lucy were there, she would say, “Leaf you alone?”

  Then I would say, “Stop being corny.”

  And she would say, “Seed ya later.”

  On and on forever, laughing because it’s fun to be laughing. Who cares if the jokes are lame?

  But I haven’t laughed at all since I came to Vermont. Okay, maybe I laughed on the inside when I was torturing my family. But that doesn’t count. When you laugh by yourself, the laughter just ends. You need two people for an extravaganza of laughing. And not just any old person. Believe me, Ginia is NOT the type to bounce it back. So I haven’t had a great laugh since the last time I saw Lucy. Actually not even then, because Lucy didn’t laugh much in sixth grade.

  Now that I think about it, our last great laugh was way back in September before anybody ever even heard of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Lucy and I were planning our Halloween costumes. We always planned months ahead, because you have to if you want a truly phenomenal costume. Lucy wanted us to be Inside-out People and wear our clothes inside out. But that seemed a little boring. So I said we should have our hearts and lungs and stomachs all outside our skin. Then Lucy said to be really and truly inside out, we’d have to show what was IN our hearts and lungs and stomachs. “And our colons!” I said. That started one of the biggest laughs of all time.

  Those costumes would have been so cool, we probably would have gotten our pictures in the Daily News. Only they never happened. Alison wanted to help us, like she has every year since Lucy and I were butterflies in kindergarten. But Alison was so tired all during October. Some days she couldn’t even get out of bed. I told Lucy that my mom could do it. Alison should just rest and get better. (That was when we all thought she had the flu.) But my mom—who ought to have been clever with her fingers, since she calls herself an artist—said our idea was too complicated for her to make. By then it was too late to be brilliant. Lucy was a gypsy and I was a clown. Our outfits didn’t match at all. So nobody knew we were together. When we were walking to the neighborhood parade, we ran into Patricia Palombo. She was a gypsy too. But she didn’t get mad and call Lucy a copycat. She said, “Ooh, Lucy! We can be from the same tribe!” Then she made Lucy walk with her and I had to follow along behind.

  Patricia Palombo is such an idiot. Gypsies don’t have tribes. Gypsies have, well, I don’t know what, only I know they DON’T have tribes.

  I lie down in the field again. The sun is burning me. The dried grass is poking me. The bugs are crawling on me. I’m kind of feeling sorry for myself. Kind of? Okay. I’m TOTALLY feeling sorry for myself.

  Then I hear a voice. It isn’t Arp. It isn’t my fairy godmother. It’s that good old yucky you-can’t-do-it voice.

  “You SHOULD feel sorry for yourself. You’re the most PATHETIC person ever made. You should have a permanent L on your forehead. You can’t do anything except doodle. You’re bad at sports. You don’t get good grades. Your hair is frizzy. Your clothes are ugly. You look fat in them.”

  The yucky voice goes on and on. The list of stuff I’m bad at is endless.

  I put my hands over my ears. That doesn’t help. I’m lost and abandoned. Even after someone finds me, Ginia will never let me forget the day I was too dumb to find my way out of the Woods.

  “But that’s not fair. It’s all Ginia’s fault.” I jump up and yell, “Come on, Arp! What are you doing lying there feeling sorry for yourself? If we get going, Ginia will never know we were lost.”

  I put on my backpack and stomp across the field. He runs after me. I kind of think I’m heading back the way I came. But to be honest, I don’t really know. All those trees look alike.

  This time I’m glad to get out of the sun. At least it’s cool in the shade. The crawling bugs and buzzing flies are gone. Even the yucky voice is quiet. Of course, there are other kinds of ins
ects. Mostly whining mosquitoes, but they only bother me when I stop walking.

  Pretty soon, I find a path that is like a trail for rabbits instead of mice. We follow it for a while, until it runs into another path that looks like it’s really going somewhere, so we walk on it. Unfortunately that path ends, so we have to go back to what I think is the other path, only I’m not exactly sure. Arp sniffs like he recognizes it, but it turns out he’s just looking for a place to pee. When I try to look ahead, all I can see are green leaves.

  “How am I supposed to see where I’m going with all these stupid trees in the way?”

  The yucky voice says, “The trees aren’t stupid, you are.” But then I hear some real live humans talking.

  “Did you hear that, Arp? It’s the rescue party. HELLO!” I shout.

  Then I remember that I don’t want Ginia to know how lost I was, so I just casually—but quickly—run through the Woods toward the voices.

  At the top of a hill, there’s a path. It’s like a four-lane superhighway compared to that little winding thing I was on. The tree closest to me is marked with a rectangular splotch of blue paint. There’s another mark on another tree halfway down the hill. I don’t know what the splotches mean; I just know that people made them. And that means civilization.

  By the third mark, at the foot of the hill, I see a woman and a man hiking up toward me. They’re both wearing backpacks. I used to think my sixth-grade backpack was big and heavy when it was full of homework, but these packs are so huge that junk actually sticks up above these people’s heads. The woman is wearing a floppy sun hat and carrying a long walking stick. I can’t see the man very well because he’s behind her. The path is wide enough to walk side by side. But they don’t. They’re arguing.

  “Stop saying that,” the woman says.

  “Don’t tell me what to do. Besides, it’s true,” the man says.

  They don’t sound at all like a rescue party. I pick up Arp and hug him so he won’t be too disappointed. Then I think the people might be able to help us anyway, so we wait for them to get closer.

  “You don’t have to go on and on about it,” the woman says.

  “I thought you’d be glad to know you’ve hiked one thousand five hundred eighty-seven miles of the Appalachian Trail,” the man says.

  “How could I possibly be glad when I still have five hundred ninety-one miles to go?”

  You’ve probably never heard of the Appalachian Trail, unless you have parents like mine. One day, after ART time, Mom and Dad were going to take Ginia and me to walk on it a little. “Then you can say you’ve hiked on the Appalachian Trail,” Mom said. I was all confused because I thought the mountains in Vermont were called the Green Mountains. Then Dad explained that the Green Mountains are part of the Appalachian Mountains and the Trail goes through the mountains all the way from Georgia to Maine. I still didn’t see why Mom was so excited about walking on it. Anyway, it rained that day, so we went to visit Calvin Coolidge’s house instead. You probably never heard of him either, but he was a Vermont guy back in the twentieth century who got to be president when the real president died.

  Halfway up the hill, the man sits on a nice big rock and takes off his pack.

  The woman stops too, but she doesn’t sit or take off her pack. “What are you doing? We had lunch already.”

  “It’s time for a snack.”

  After the man searches through his pack for a while, the woman says with a little smirk, “I took out your Double Stuf Oreos.”

  The man gets all red in the face. “What? How could you do that to me?”

  “Cookies are empty, useless calories. You didn’t even get the peanut butter kind.”

  “I don’t like Nutter Butters. Besides, they were in MY pack!”

  “They take up space so we can’t divide the rest of the food evenly.”

  “I don’t care; I need them. Where did you put them? You couldn’t have thrown them away.”

  He’s right. There aren’t any trash cans in the Woods.

  “I left them at the shelter where we slept last night,” the woman says.

  “Then I’m going back to get them,” the man says.

  “Five miles? We’ll lose the entire day.”

  “I need something sweet to keep me going.”

  “You can go back if you want to. But I’m not doing those miles again. We’ve got six more to do today.” The woman continues up the hill.

  The man sighs and then grunts as he lifts his pack up onto his shoulders.

  “I wish you had joined that other group at Mount Greylock,” he says.

  Mount Greylock? I can’t believe it! Mount Greylock is the mountain you can see from Mrs. T.’s window with the stone tower and the souvenir store on top. That’s probably where the man bought the Double Stuf Oreos.

  But had these people climbed it? Had they walked here from there?

  Now the woman is about ten feet from where I’m standing. So I ask her. “Excuse me. Did you really walk here all the way from Mount Greylock?”

  “Of course. It’s only thirty miles away,” the woman says.

  “Thirty-two miles,” the man says.

  “Mount Greylock, Massachusetts?” I say.

  “Is there another one?” the woman says.

  “If you had left me there, I’d still have my Double Stuf Oreos,” the man says.

  “I hope I don’t have to hear about those Double Stuf Oreos for the next five hundred ninety miles!” the woman says.

  “Five hundred ninety-one miles,” the man says.

  “Will you shut up?” the woman says.

  “Why did you want to hike the Appalachian Trail in the first place?”

  “It’s a test. If I can hike the Appalachian Trail with you, I can do anything.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think?”

  They’re still arguing as they disappear around a bend. The trees make a tunnel of green that goes all the way to Maine. But I look in the other direction, through the tunnel of green that leads to Mount Greylock and Lucy.

  “Can you believe those people really walked all the way from Georgia? Georgia is practically at the other end of the United States. Compared to Georgia, Massachusetts is right next door.”

  I put Arp down and pat his head.

  “If those old people could walk all the way from Georgia, we can certainly walk thirty miles to Mount Greylock. Then we could see Lucy!”

  Arp whaps my leg with his tail. He doesn’t really care. He’s only happy because I sound happy. And I am. Thinking about Lucy makes me feel a whole lot better. It’s going to be so great to see her—whenever that is. She’ll laugh when I tell her how Ginia almost made me believe that Lucy didn’t want to visit me. She’ll call Ginia a big liar. Then Lucy will swear she never told anyone that she didn’t want to watch me lie around and mope.

  “But we aren’t lying around moping right now, are we? We’re on the Appalachian Trail.”

  I stomp my foot down on the dirt for emphasis. Then I walk a few steps in a really goofy way. “See? I’m hiking it.”

  It’s too bad Lucy isn’t here to laugh. Arp barks, but he doesn’t really get the joke.

  “Maybe we should hike to Mount Greylock. That would show them.”

  Just so you know, I’m only kidding around. Here’s a good clue for you: I AM TALKING TO A DOG.

  This dog isn’t a Loyal Dog that you can have a real discussion with. Loyal Dogs are big and brown. Their wise eyes look at you like you’re the most wonderful person in the world and whatever you say is pure genius. If you have a Loyal Dog, then you can walk thirty miles to Mount Greylock. But Arp is no Loyal Dog. He’s little and fluffy and dirty white. And (I’m kind of embarrassed to mention this) he has a ponytail sticking up on the top of his head. That’s because his fur flops in his eyes. Mom wanted to cut it but Dad was afraid Arp would look like a sissy dog. (Hello, Dad? Arp IS a sissy dog.) So no haircuts. But Mom felt sorry for Arp in the hot summer. So
she took one of Ginia’s scrunchies and made a little ponytail on his forehead.

  “Come here, Arp.” I pull off the scrunchie. I’m going to use my finger like a gun to shoot it off into the Woods. But instead I use it to pull my hair back. Usually I don’t wear ponytails because they make my hair stick out in a funny way, but it feels much cooler to have the hair off the back of my neck.

  “There.” After I muss up the fur on his forehead, he looks a whole lot more like a dog you can trust.

  “I’m sure we can easily hike to Mount Greylock or maybe even Georgia because you and I are such terrific hikers.”

  Arp is supposed to say something like “Yeah right.” Only he doesn’t seem to know I’m kidding. He wags his tail and barks at me. Then he starts down the hill.

  “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

  I stand there with my mouth hanging open until he turns to look back at me. He cocks his head to one side like he’s saying, “Are you coming or not?” Then he trots along the Appalachian Trail toward Mount Greylock.

  What can I do? I run after him. It’s bad enough being the second girl in the family and always following behind Ginia and even Lucy sometimes. But I absolutely refuse to walk behind a little dog whose tail sticks up so you can see his butthole.

  When I catch up to him, I say, “Okay. We’ll hike to Mount Greylock. But remember, I’m the leader.”

  5

  The Shelter

  That’s how Arp and I start hiking the Appalachian Trail.

  Since the Trail is much wider than the paths we were on, no bushes scratch me. No branches poke me. The trees make a roof above my head that feels kind of protective, if you know what I mean. Like they aren’t going to let anything bad happen to Arp or me. So we just walk along. When I see a nice straight branch about four feet long on the ground next to the Trail, I pick it up. I don’t really need a walking stick, but carrying it makes me feel like a professional.

  This hiking is so easy; I can’t understand why people make such a fuss about it. Walking in New York City is much harder. If you want a real challenge, you should try Times Square—especially on matinee day. Whenever Mrs. T. takes Lucy and me to see a Broadway show, we have to fight our way through the mobs and dodge around the people selling hot dogs and drawings of your name in flowered letters. Big crowds always gather around street performers. I can see why you might be interested in the Naked Cowboy. But why do tourists stand around and stare at the people who aren’t doing anything except pretending to be statues? When the crowds get too big, we have to leave the sidewalk and walk right on Forty-second Street. The streets are crazy with cabs honking horns and bicycle messengers riding in the wrong direction and long white limos that never have a famous person in them, just someone from New Jersey. If you stop for one second to look in the window of the Hello Kitty store, a wave of people carries away your friends. Then you have to run to catch up, and hope you don’t get whacked by briefcases or burnt by the cigarettes people hold since they can’t smoke inside any buildings.