Read Online Nature Girl by Jane Kelley - Free Book Online Page A

she’s thinking up a fun plan for us. But I messed up her hair.That’s why I never gave her the picture. It didn’t matter anyway. After Alison got cancer, Lucy cut her hair so short, she looked like a boy.
    I wonder how her hair is now. It seems like such a long time since I saw her.
    I fold the paper up again. It makes me sad, so I start to put it away. And then I see Lucy has written another message on the back.

    I’m crying now. Lucy is so smart. She saw into the future and knew what I would need to keep me going. I wipe my eyes and keep reading.

    Well, okay, so maybe she just wrote down a list of songs the chorus was going to sing. But maybe she knew. Maybe she knows.
    I take out a pencil and fix the drawing. I make her hair a little bit longer. Then I make her smile a little bit bigger. I draw Arp and me right beside her, like we just arrived and she’s really glad to see us. I make acartoon bubble so she can say, “I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE!” I make another bubble so Arp can say, “WOOF!” Then I make one last bubble so I can say, “WE MADE IT!”

    I look at the picture for a long time. Even as the darkness settles in around us so that I can hardly see anything except the white piece of paper.
    It’s time for bed.
    I carefully fold up the drawing and put it in my backpack. Then I put my backpack on the platform so it canbe a pillow. Arp jumps up to give it one last sniff. Then he sighs and plops down in the middle of my bed.
    “Arp! Where am I supposed to sleep?”
    He doesn’t make any suggestions.
    I curl myself around him so he doesn’t have to move. I put my head on my backpack. And do you know what I see when I look over at the post that holds up the roof in the opposite corner?
    A clear plastic grocery store bag dangles by its handles from a nail just a little below the ceiling. And even though it’s seriously getting dark now, through the bag I can just barely make out the letters O R E O S.
    Oh, Oreos, dear Double Stuf Oreos. The dark chocolate cookie, the creamy white double fluff. Oh, Oreos, dear Double Stuf Oreos, now I’m truly saved.
    I’m so tired, I don’t get them right away. I fall asleep with them floating up there above me like a beautiful dream.

6
Thank Goodness for Oreos!
    Do you think I sleep peacefully the rest of the night?
    Boy, are you wrong.
    Lots of things keep waking me up. In the first place, I’m not lying on a thick mattress that’s covered with a soft purple flannel sheet. In fact, I’m lying on the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of that. An anti-bed. There’s nothing harder than wood and nothing scratchier than pine needles. Even the rain poncho that seemed like such a good idea before is sticky and useless. So you can forget all about being comfortable.
    Still, I’m so totally exhausted from all my hiking that I shouldn’t care that I’m on an anti-bed. But every time I shut my eyes, I hear a whiny buzzing sound that means a million mosquitoes are coming to attack. I know you think, How can that be? She put on lots of insect repellent. That’s right, I did. Only maybe next time I hike theAppalachian Trail, Mom won’t try to be so environmentally correct and will give me some spray that actually kills.
    After the mosquitoes move on because there isn’t any blood left in me to suck, Arp starts having doggy dreams. The rabbits are just in his head, but his little legs are running for real.
    Just as I’m about to push him off the anti-bed, I hear this
whooo-whooo
sound. I think it’s probably an owl, since going
whooo-whooo
is what owls are famous for. However, I don’t want to take any chances. Believe me, in the dark Woods, I feel a whole lot better keeping my arm around my Loyal Dog, even if he hasn’t had much practice fighting wild animals.
    So I don’t sleep. That’s kind of a problem, because as you know, the worst thing about not sleeping isn’t being tired. The worst thing is the worrying.
    I’m not worrying about starvation. Those yummy Double Stuf