Little Blog on the Prairie

by Cathleen Davitt Bell

  “So don’t say anything,” Caleb said. “No one needs to know.” I heard the slightest trace of his dad’s Southern accent in his voice.

  “They’re gonna know,” Nora sulked, but she had stopped looking at me and leaned back against the wall. “Five minutes,” she said. “Check your e-mail and get out of here.”

  Ka sat down at the computer and started to type. “Oh, my gosh,” she said after a few minutes had passed. “I have five hundred and sixty-two e-mails!”

  Just then there was a knock on the door, and Ka’s stepsister Katie poked her head in. “Ka?” she said. She saw Nora and Caleb. Then her eyes moved to the Diet Coke in Nora’s hand and she was like, “Oh…,” her voice filled with undisguised longing. Caleb immediately started to laugh again. Matt peeked his head in behind Katie’s.

  “You told them?” I said to Ka.

  “They must have followed me,” she said.

  “We did,” Katie answered. “You keep sneaking off and we wanted to know where.”

  Ka threw up her hands. “You’re spying on me now?” she said. “I don’t believe this. You guys need to get lives.”

  “We have lives,” Katie snapped. “We were trying to keep you from getting in trouble with your mom.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ka scoffed.

  “It’s true,” Matt said. “We’re sick of your sad, angry rebel act. Get over it.”

  “You get over it,” Ka said. “I’ll take care of myself.”

  “So what is this place anyhow?” Matt asked, taking in the computer, the iPods, Nora’s Diet Coke.

  Nora looked at Caleb and I almost felt sorry for her, there was such clear panic in her wide eyes. “I’m going to get in so much trouble,” she said.

  That’s when Erik Puchinski filed in behind Matt.

  Nora wailed, “Did you have to invite everyone?” She didn’t even seem angry now—she looked like she was going to cry. Before I could protest that I hadn’t invited anyone but Ka, Nora stood up. “Everybody out!” she said. “Show’s over. Yes, there’s a computer here. Big deal. But this building is off-limits. Employees only.”

  No one was listening.

  “Whose iPod is that?” Erik said.

  “Where can I get a DC?” Katie asked, tucking her blond hair behind her ears and standing on tiptoes to see over Matt’s head.

  “Out!” Nora said. But Matt had already opened the mini-fridge.

  “This is totally stocked!” he said.

  “Caleb, help!” Nora said.

  Caleb just smiled and shrugged. “Cat’s out of the bag,” he drawled.

  And then Caleb gave Nora a big smile, turned to a cabinet behind him, pulled out a box with everyone’s iPods in it, and said, “Okay, people, help yourselves.” He put an arm around Nora’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your folks are never going to find out.”

  I could see that she was too glad to have his arm around her to say anything. Not that it would have done any good.

  Within minutes, it was clear no one was going anywhere. Diet Coke was flowing. Music was playing out of the computer’s speakers. Katie was sitting on the desk next to the computer, swinging her legs so you could see past her boot lacings to her tights; Caleb was in the chair, playing videos of his favorite comedians on YouTube; Nora was draped across the back of his chair, watching them; and Ka, Matt, and I were on the floor, where Matt was dialing through Ka’s iPod.

  “Dude,” he said to Ka. “You must have been so mad when your mom made you put all Katie’s lame music on here.”

  “Your screamer garbage isn’t any better,” Ka said. “I hope I don’t have to put up with it next year.”

  “Next year?” he said. “I thought you said you were going to find a way to get out of moving to our house.”

  “I am,” Ka said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “So,” Matt tried again. “You don’t like screamer?”

  “I like screamer,” Ka said, and then, “Except when I don’t. Which is, like, oh, yeah—always.”

  He laughed. “You’re funny, Ka.”

  And I had a thought that I knew Ka would kill me if I ever voiced—she and Matt were starting to sound like actual siblings.

  Katie took a swig of her soda. “Sorry your mom made you take stall cleaning for the rest of the week,” she said to Ka. “I didn’t tell her it was you who took the cheese.”

  “I don’t care what you do,” Ka said, but I wondered. Didn’t she?

  I felt too good to wonder for long about Ka, or about anything. Even Nora looked like she was having a good time.

  Week 4 – Wednesday

  8:47 am

  I’m exhausted. I drank so much soda last night that I lay in bed staring up at the rafters. It must have been until at least three o’clock.

  I didn’t go back to the electricity shack until a week later, when I needed to charge the phone. Ka had said she would meet me there after she finished her chores. I was nervous, but also excited, hoping I’d find Caleb again. Only this time, alone.

  Unfortunately, when I got to the shack, it was just Nora and me.

  I said “Hey” to her like I was going to be civil but not try to act like I was friends with her or anything. I was surprised she even let me in, so before she could tell me to go, I plugged in the phone so it could charge.

  Nora looked up from the computer. “That’s your own cell phone, right? You don’t use your parents’?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This is a phone, but also a camera, and you can play music but I don’t have any downloaded yet. You can go online on it.”

  “I already know that,” she said. She was supersnippy about it too.

  “Okay,” I said. I thought the conversation would end there, but she kept going.

  “I’ve been watching all the gadgets my mom collects from the people who come here changing over the years. They all have keyboards on them now.”

  “I guess that’s right,” I said. I showed her how you could type on mine.

  “I always check what people put in those bags my mom collects,” she went on. “When I don’t know what they are, I look them up online. So if you’re thinking I’m some bumpkin who doesn’t know anything about the world you live in, you’re wrong.”

  “Okay,” I said, hoping that silence would do all the work of pointing out that I hadn’t said she was a bumpkin. (I would never use the word “bumpkin.” There is something so, well, bumpkin-y about it.)

  Ka rushed in a few minutes later, and before long Caleb, Erik, Matt, Katie, and even Gavin—I guess news that Ka and I were braving the shack again had spread. “What is he doing here?” Nora complained when Gavin showed his face. “I told you guys, no one else can know.”

  “Sorry,” Erik said, ducking his head. “We were supposed to go fishing, so I had to tell him where I was going instead.”

  “Okay, fine,” Nora grumbled. “Have a Diet Coke.”

  Caleb came and sat next to me on the floor in front of the minifridge.

  “I liked what your mom said at that meeting a while back, about women voting and stuff,” he said.

  “Really?” I asked. “She’s not much of a women’s libber at home or anything.”

  “I’ve been raised on it,” he said. “But I think this place will bring that out of you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s not really fair that Gavin and I both do all the outdoor work, but whenever it’s time for an inside chore, it’s always, ‘Gen, can you wash the dishes,’ ‘Gen, can you whip up some butter?’ “

  “You know how to make butter?” he said.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “I wish you would teach my mom.”

  I laughed. “I mean, I love her and everything,” Caleb went on. “But she is about to organize a feminist uprising, she’s so sick of the kitchen, and still she won’t admit she’s no good at it. And the sad part is, she’d be good at organizing a feminist uprising. At her job, she’s always holding everyone’s feet to the fire making sure the women
lawyers aren’t getting shafted.”

  “She really can’t cook at all?” I said.

  Caleb shook his head. “The only thing she made that’s been any good are pancakes. Once. But she didn’t know how much batter to make, so we each only got one.”

  I laughed some more and then suddenly I was feeling nervous. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Ashley always knows what to do around boys, but I get tongue-tied.

  If I didn’t come up with a thought, a question—anything—he was going to talk to someone else. I looked at the walls, the windows, the carpet for inspiration. There was nothing.

  Until I saw the computer. And I don’t know what I was thinking except that I had to say something to Caleb to make him understand that I did indeed want to talk to him. So I blurted out, “Hey, want to see the blog my friend Kristin is making about my time here at Camp Frontier?”

  “Blogs are cool,” he said. “Especially funny ones. Is yours funny?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking back to all the texts. What had I written? Then I remembered one in particular and laughed.

  “What?” he said.

  I couldn’t think of any way to make what I was laughing about sound less embarrassing, so I just said it. “One of my first posts was about peeing on my stockings.”

  He laughed too. “Seriously? Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to check this out.”

  I typed in the URL Kristin had given me, and was shocked to see a real live Web page load, with a polka-dot background and all the dates. The idea that Kristin had created a blog, that my words were out there somewhere—it had never felt real. But then, there was my face, grinning from the top left corner of the page.

  “Is that you?” Caleb said.

  It was a picture I hadn’t seen before. But yeah, it was me. I could tell from what I was wearing that it must have been taken at our last soccer game of the year—the game that had clinched our undefeated season. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail and this huge smile splayed across my face. I was wearing a bandanna and my arms were around the shoulders of people I couldn’t see because Kristin had cropped them out. I looked so… clean. And… modern. And… normal. “Yes, that’s me,” I said.

  “You look so buff,” he said. “Are you some kind of jock?”

  “I play sports,” I started.

  “Soccer, right? Aren’t you missing camp by being here?”

  “Yeah,” I affirmed. “Soccer.”

  “You should talk to Matt,” he said. “He’s huge into soccer.” I blushed. I didn’t want to talk to Matt. I wanted to keep talking to Caleb.

  “May I?” Caleb said. He took the mouse in his hand and started scrolling down through the entries. He chuckled a little as he read, but then he stopped reading and just started to scroll.

  “Gen,” he said. “Did you know you’re getting a lot of comments?”

  “Really?” I said, leaning over to see.

  “Yeah. Like, here, you have sixty-three comments. That’s pretty huge for a single post.”

  “Really?” I said again. “Kristin said people in her computer class were forwarding it to their friends. She keeps going on and on about the comments. I think the commenting was part of the assignment.”

  “How many people were in the class, though?” Caleb asked. “Look, you’ve got eighty-four comments here. That’s no assignment.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “You should get your friend to look up the counter and see how many hits this is getting a day. I think a lot of people are reading it.”

  “Really? Can I see what they say?”

  Caleb clicked on “view comments” but then, just as I was about to start reading the first one, the computer monitor died, the lights went off, and the noise in the room came to an abrupt end. All I could hear was Nora’s hoarse stage whisper: “My dad, my dad, he’s coming!”

  18

  Everybody absolutely panicked. It was hard to see anything in the suddenly dark room, but I could just make out Gavin running into a corner and Katie trying to climb behind the fridge. Matt crouched beneath the window like a cat ready to spring. I froze in the chair until Caleb took both my hands and pulled me down under the desk with him. In the moonlight coming through the windows I could see his grin. Nora quietly locked the door and leaned against it moments before Ron jiggled the handle, trying to get it to turn.

  For a second, I don’t think any of us even breathed.

  The handle rattled again and Ron shook the whole door as if he could break through the latch.

  Then we heard his voice. “Who’s in here!” He tried the door again. “Betsy?”

  The next time he tried the door it felt as if he was going to be able to break it down for sure. There was a collective rustling of bodies as we tried to make ourselves smaller, bracing for the moment when the door would swing open with a bang, the lights would snap on, and Ron would find us squeezed into corners and under tables and behind minifridges that were much too small. Large segments of our bodies were showing—whole arms, tops of heads, a shoe, a skirt. The idea that we could hide in such a small space was a joke. We might as well have stayed right where we were and just covered our own eyes.

  “Betsy!” Ron said. We heard him mutter to himself, “I swear the light was on.”

  It was all I could do not to let out a squeak.

  Katie did, actually, squeal, but Matt clamped a hand over her mouth and I don’t think anyone who wasn’t in the room could have heard.

  In the dark, Caleb squeezed my hand, which he was still holding. I squeezed his right back, and even knowing we were about to get busted, I felt a jolt of excitement. This was the second time he’d held my hand, the second time he’d picked me to hide with. Did hand-holding mean something different to him than it did to the rest of the world? He wouldn’t hold my hand if he didn’t actually like me, would he?

  Ron tried the door one more time, and then said, “Hmmph.” We heard the crunching of leaves and sticks as he started to walk away.

  Just then there was a crash about two inches from my head. Matt had lost his balance and accidentally knocked the keyboard off the desk. Nora leaped across the room, and grabbed the keyboard where it had fallen, as if by putting her hands on it she could somehow reverse time and prevent it from falling in the first place. The receding crunch of footsteps outside stopped, then started up again, this time heading quickly back our way.

  Nora was frantically pointing at the window, and I thought she was trying to tell us to crawl out of it, but a) that would have been noisy, and b) I didn’t think we could fit. I understood better what she meant when I saw Ron’s face pressed up against the glass.

  Nora had ducked down right beneath the window. I could see Matt flattened against the wall. For a full minute, we waited. I held myself perfectly still under the table with Caleb. If Ron had had a flashlight and pointed it into the room, we would have been dead meat.

  But he didn’t. And in another moment his face was gone from the window and we could hear his footsteps retreating once again.

  “I think we’re safe,” Matt whispered after a minute had passed.

  “Safe?” Nora repeated. “He’s going to be back here with a key in five minutes!” She was talking in a very low voice, but urgently. You could tell that if she hadn’t been worried about Ron’s overhearing us, she would have been shouting.

  “So let’s get out of here,” Matt said.

  “What about the mess?” I said.

  “She’s right,” Nora said, as if she were seeing for the first time the half-drunk bottles of Diet Coke, the iPods tangled up in earbud cords, the random assortment of lip glosses and the sticks of deodorant missing their caps. “But we don’t have time.”

  “Just hurry, everyone,” Matt said.

  We all set to work, putting the furniture back where it had been, stashing the electronics in burlap sacks, putting caps on bottles and creams and tossing them into the bags they had come from.

  “What abo
ut the Diet Coke?” Ka said, holding up a half-drunk bottle. “We can’t put it back in the fridge half empty, can we?”

  “Um…,” Nora said.

  “We could pour it out outside—,” Matt suggested.

  “No,” Nora said. “He’ll smell it.”

  “He tracks the smell of Diet Coke?” Caleb asked. I think he was the only one who thought any of this was remotely funny.

  “We have to drink it,” Nora concluded. She lifted a bottle to her mouth and started to chug, but there is only so much Diet Coke you can pour down your throat without the risk of throwing it all up again. So soon the bottles were being passed around between all of us. We stood in a tight circle, as deliberate and serious as jewel thieves, forcing ourselves to finish what by then burned our throats as if we were drinking gasoline.

  When the last drop was consumed, Katie let out an enormous belch and we filed out of the shack one by one, fast-walking through the clearing, each finding a different spot to hide in the woods. It reminded me of the night we’d played kick the can and I’d felt like I was in some kind of a slasher movie, running through the woods, being chased, being afraid. No one said “good-bye” or “phew” or “I guess that wasn’t so bad after all.” And it wasn’t until Gavin and I were halfway home, whispering “Bear. Bear. Here bear. Hey bear,” that I felt inside my dress pocket and realized that my phone was still back at the shack, plugged into its charger, which was plugged into the power strip, which was plugged into the wall. I’d left the phone on the floor, under the table, lights flashing, sunset morphing into sailboat picture over and over as it filled up with electric juice.

  I turned around and ran back just in time to see Ron closing the door behind him and turning the lights on. The phone was on the floor. There was a decent chance Ron wouldn’t see it. I waited, thinking he might be quick, but it was cold and damp outside, and after about twenty minutes I went home, muttering, “Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.”

  As soon as I finished milking Jezebel the next morning, I raced to the shack again. Checking first in the window to make sure no one was inside, I threw open the door, saw that the phone was missing, looked everywhere for it, came up empty, and ran back home in time for breakfast, muttering, “Double shoot, double shoot, double shoot.”