“That’s okay, Annabelle,” Leslie said to me, her back to the wobbling Jenga tower. “I like riding with you on the—”
The newspapers fell before Leslie could say “bus.”
Crash.
Thud.
A hundred dusty, mildewy newspapers landed in Leslie’s bowl of Cheerios and sent her spoon flying.
Fhwump.
More newspapers clobbered her on the back of the neck.
“Mwaaahhh.” Leslie made a sound like a startled goat.
“What the—what’s going on?” Dad looked up from his toast and, ironically enough, from the newspaper he was reading. He was just in time to see his youngest nearly decapitated. Death by periodical. What a way to go.
Thunk. The last newspaper fell.
I put down my spoon and glared at Dad, who had gotten up to pat Leslie’s back and ask if she was okay. The beautiful brownish-purple milk in my cereal bowl would go to waste now. I wasn’t about to drink it, even if it was chocolate flavored. Not with all the dust and newspaper bits floating around the room.
“What do you think is going on?” I said. “Chad knocked over Mom’s newspapers when he slammed the door.”
Dad didn’t answer. He just sat back down and took a bite of toast. Dust and all. “This is awful,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he meant the dirty toast or the newspapers falling on Leslie. Dad chewed, swallowed, and shook his head before setting his toast back on his plate. “That boy. I do hope he’s careful on the road. He can be so reckless.”
You’re the reckless one, I wanted to shout. You’re the one who let Mom turn our kitchen into a death trap. And the kitchen isn’t even the worst room in the house. It makes me want to scream.
Instead, I sneezed.
I sneezed three more times as I carried my bowl from the table to the kitchen sink and rinsed it out. We’ll probably all die from inhaling newspaper dust full of some horrible airborne disease. Like hantavirus. If the piles of junk don’t crush us to death first.
I guess I should have asked Leslie if she was all right, but I was too annoyed with Dad to say anything in front of him. He almost never puts his foot down with Mom.
I was still sneezing when Mom, summoned no doubt by the crash-thud-thunk of her collapsing newspapers, waddled into the room. She wore one of her colorful muumuus. Lime green with big orange flowers. You can always gauge Mom’s mood by which muumuu she has on. Beware the pastels.
“What happened?” Her voice cut through the sound of the running water. I turned to watch Mom fly into the kitchen. It may not look like it, but Mom can really move when she wants to. “No! No, no, no,” she said, rushing to Leslie’s side. But instead of wrapping Leslie in her arms, she started gathering her newspapers.
“Which pile fell?” she demanded.
Grandma Jo inspired me to become a teacher. She is also the first person who told me that I should write a book. In a way, the last fifteen years of my life are all her fault. I am deeply grateful.
My family is a constant source of support. I especially appreciate the unending encouragement from my mom and also from my sister, who has read more versions of this story than should have ever been inflicted on any living creature. My nieces, Daphne and Julia, have been two of my biggest cheerleaders, and I appreciate their enthusiasm.
Thoughtful feedback from The Charglings has helped me tremendously. Thank you, Keith, Laura, Glynka, and Karen, for your invaluable insights.
I sincerely appreciate the faculty, students, and staff at James Madison Preparatory School. I am particularly grateful to Deb for always believing in me as a writer. I owe a debt of gratitude to the 2018–2019 Lambert Homeroom for their input. I am equally indebted to my 2019–2020 seventh-grade classes, whose excitement for this story inspired and motivated me.
Certain elements of this book were far beyond my area of expertise, and I am so grateful to Dad and Bill for giving me advice on all things ham radio and also to Jamie for helping me make an implausible weather event feel possible.
For nearly twenty years of friendship and encouragement even when writing was just a pipedream, I am grateful to Megan, Laura, Annah Kate, Molly, Abbi, and Kim.
The wonderful community from the Vermont College of Fine Arts has shaped my writer’s journey. In particular, I would like to thank the faculty and students from the 2018 Bath Spa Residency, where I worked on a version of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Shae, who is a willing sounding board for my writing ideas.
Linda Camacho is an amazing agent. I feel so lucky to be working with her and the entire team at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency.
Last of all, a huge thank-you to everyone at Scholastic who helped to transform this story and to create such an exciting book design. Most especially, thank you to my editor, Emily Seife, who saw this novel’s potential. Without her vision and passion, Distress Signal would never have been written.
Mary E. Lambert grew up going on ham radio campouts with her family in the mountains of Arizona. While she was never lost and stranded in the wilderness as a result of these trips, she did often think that school, especially fifth and sixth grade, felt like a fight for survival. Today, Mary lives in Tempe, Arizona, where she teaches middle and high school classes at a local charter school. She has often helped chaperone the junior-class camping trip and has assisted in fending off skunks and squirrels, but to date there have been no bear encounters. In 2014, Mary earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her first novel, Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes, was published in 2017.
Copyright © 2020 by Mary E. Lambert
Map throughout © Alex Gontar/Shutterstock
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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lambert, Mary E., 1984– author.
Title: Distress signal / Mary E. Lambert.
Description: First edition. | New York: Scholastic Press, 2020. |Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Lavender and the rest of the sixth graders are on a camping trip to the Chiricahua wilderness, but the trip seems cursed from the start, and when a flash flood splits the group up Lavender finds herself lost, together with her former best friend Marisol, mean-girl Rachelle, and a boy John who has been behaving like a surly jerk since the start—they have only one pack of supplies and only the most basic wilderness knowledge, but if they are to survive they need to put their differences aside and work as a team or all that will be left of them are their sun-bleached bones.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020010995 (print) | LCCN 2020010996 (ebook) | ISBN 9781338607444 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781338607451 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: School field trips—Juvenile fiction. | Camping—Juvenile fiction. | Desert survival—Juvenile fiction. | Wilderness survival—Juvenile fiction. | Floods—Juvenile fiction. |Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | Chiricahua National Monument (Ariz.)—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: School field trips—Fiction. | Camping—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | Floods—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Chiricahua National Monument (Ariz.)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L25 Di 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.L25 (ebook) | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010995
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010996
First edition, October 2020
Jacket art © 2020 Mike Heath | Magnus Creative<
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Jacket design by Keirsten Geise
e-ISBN 978-1-338-60745-1
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