Count Me In Read online

  COUNT ME IN

  SARA LEACH

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2011 Sara Leach

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Leach, Sara, 1971-

  Count me in [electronic resource] / Sara Leach.

  Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in PDF format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-405-1

  I. Title.

  PS8623.E253C69 2011A JC813'.6 C2011-903335-6

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011929245

  Summary: In order to survive on a hiking trip to a remote BC lake, Tabitha must face danger, adversity and her cousin Ashley’s hatred.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover images by Getty Images and Dreamstime.com

  Author photo by Bob Brett

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, STN. B PO Box 468

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  To Jane

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tabitha dropped her pack and collapsed onto the nearest boulder. As she wiped the sweat from her face, her cousins slipped off their hiking boots and ran, fully clothed, into the lake.

  “Last one in burns the toilet paper!” Cedar shouted as he dove into the water.

  Tabitha frowned. What did that mean? It was one more example of how her cousins were a club of two—a club to which she’d never belong.

  She pulled off her right boot and sock and examined a large red spot on her heel. Her toes were wrinkled from being squished in her boot during the long hike. Maybe a swim in the lake would be refreshing. If only the water didn’t look so cold.

  Lake Lovely Water, the goal of their grueling hike, stretched before her. She had to admit it did look, well, lovely. Five snow-spotted peaks were reflected in the turquoise water. The dark green trees on their lower flanks seemed to grow directly from the lake. Her eyes followed the ridgeline as she counted the smaller bumps between each peak. Five. Eight. Thirteen. Her kind of numbers. She’d learned about the Fibonacci string at a summer math camp and liked the idea that it went on forever, and that the numbers could be found in nature, like on sunflowers and tree branches. She closed her eyes and recited the first part of the string to herself: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. She relaxed a little with the familiar comfort of counting. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad.

  The only sign of civilization was the brightly painted yellow and red hut on the shore to her right. Aunt Tess was climbing the steps beside Max, Uncle Bruce’s golden retriever. Tabitha shook her head. Not her uncle’s dog, not anymore. It had been over a year, but she still sometimes forgot that he was dead.

  Ashley swooshed her arm through the water. “Are you coming in, or what?”

  Tabitha kicked off her other boot and pulled her knees to her chest. She didn’t like swimming in her clothes. They swished around her body like slippery eels. She didn’t like skinny-dipping either. Not that she had anything to hide. But Cedar was a boy, an older boy, even if he was her cousin.

  She slid a foot off the rock. “How cold is it?”

  “It’s great!” Cedar shouted. He flicked his ponytail, spraying drops through the air like a dog shaking. Everything he did was loud. Loud and big.

  Tabitha took a tentative step onto the rocks. They jabbed at her tender feet. As she reached the shore, cold gray mud oozed through her toes. She stopped.

  “Come on,” Cedar said. “If you wait too long, you’ll cool off.”

  Everything was easy for her cousins. They were strong and fast, like mountain lions. They had practically run up the trail. Tabitha felt awkward and slow— all elbows and knees, like a baby deer. Her mom told her that she needed time to grow into her body. Right. She’d probably be a skinny, clumsy eighty-year-old bumping down the hallways of an old-age home.

  Cedar and Ashley even had cool names. Cedar was named after the yellow cedar trees that grew all over the mountains; Ashley was named after the graceful mountain ash. Tabitha was named after her grandmother. Yippee.

  Tabitha brushed the dirt off her legs. Time to stop feeling sorry for herself. Not everything was easy for Ashley and Cedar. Their dad was dead, after all.

  “Come on!” Cedar called. “Aren’t you hot after the hike?”

  She was hot. And sweaty. And sticky. She’d been hiking all day. They had started from her cousins’ home in Squamish before the sun rose that morning, driving along a bumpy road to the Squamish River. The half-hour ride was quiet. Cedar appeared to be asleep, while Ashley stared out the window with a deep crease between her brows. Maybe everyone was tired, or maybe they were thinking about what lay ahead. Aunt Tess hardly said anything the entire ride. Every once in a while, she’d pat the bag beside her. Tabitha shuddered. It gave her the heebie-jeebies that they were riding in the same truck as Uncle Bruce’s ashes.

  When they had arrived at the river, Ashley and Cedar perked up, as though they could relax now that the real journey had begun. They sprang into action, unloading the canoe from the roof of the truck and laying the packs in the bottom of it.

  Aunt Tess, Ashley and Cedar had paddled across the river while Tabitha cowered in the middle of the canoe with Max and the backpacks, wishing there was another way to get to the trailhead. Blue water swirled around them. Tabitha was sure it would tip the canoe and drown them at any moment. Her cousins seemed unconcerned, splashing each other with their paddles and pointing to birds flying overhead. Tabitha didn’t care about eagles. She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around Max’s chubby body and cursed her parents for making her come on the trip. Did they think a near-death experience would solve her problems at school?

  Once they had reached the other side and secured the canoe, the really hard part started. After fifteen minutes of hiking straight up, sweat was pouring down Tabitha’s face. When she wiped it away, her hair stuck to her cheek. She wished she had short hair like Ashley, who looked as if she’d just hopped out of the shower. Or that she’d brought an elastic to hold her hair back, the way Cedar did. It didn’t seem fair that she and Cedar both had straight brown hair, but his looked shiny and thick, while hers hung limply around her face. Tabitha’s mom and Aunt Tess were sisters, but obviou
sly Cedar and Ashley had gotten all the good genes.

  The “trail” was a narrow path through thick forest. Sometimes they didn’t even follow a path but looked for pieces of fluorescent orange flagging tape hanging high in the tree branches. What if a bird ripped off a piece of tape to help make its nest, or someone tied the tape to the wrong trees? They could have been lost for days.

  Her aunt led the way at a stiff pace. After half an hour, Tabitha was dying for a break. No one even noticed her panting at the back.

  “Remember the time Dad carried the watermelon all the way up the trail and didn’t tell us?” Cedar said.

  Aunt Tess turned around and smiled. “He kept complaining about his heavy pack.”

  “No,” Ashley said. “He never complained. He just pulled out the watermelon when we got to the lake.”

  Cedar squinted at Ashley. “He did too complain. He whined the whole way up. What are you talking about?”

  Aunt Tess flashed a warning look at Cedar. “Maybe we remember it wrong.” She turned and marched up the hill even faster than before.

  Finally, after an hour, they stopped for a water break. As Tabitha sank to the ground and gulped from her water bottle, heat-seeking missiles began attacking her. She swatted them with her hands.

  “Aunt Tess, is there any mosquito repellent?” she asked.

  “No,” her aunt replied. “We don’t use it. Studies have linked it to cancer. It’s better to keep moving. And you’re old enough now to call me plain old Tess.”

  By the third stop, Tabitha’s water was almost gone. The creeks they’d passed were so dry only a trickle of mud ran down them. Even Tess, whom Tabitha had seen cut the mold off bread before using the rest for sandwiches, didn’t want to drink it. She’d had to hike into the bush to find fresh water. She had come back holding a full bottle of clear water.

  “I finally found a creek that was moving.” She had popped in an iodine tablet and shaken the bottle. “It’ll be ready in half an hour.”

  At least there was plenty to drink now that they were at Lovely Water. Tabitha swatted a mosquito. If she went in the lake, she’d get away from the bugs. She stepped in the water up to her knees and gasped. “It’s freezing!”

  “Duh!” Ashley said. “It’s a glacial lake. What did you expect?”

  Tabitha’s shoulders tensed. How was she supposed to know? Ashley and Cedar had been on millions of hikes together. This was her first. What was a glacial lake anyway? She wouldn’t dare admit to Ashley that she didn’t know.

  Cedar must have read her mind. He pointed to the snow on top of the mountains. “Those are glaciers. The snow stays there all summer long. But some of it melts and flows into the lake.”

  Ashley leaned into the water and grabbed a handful of the gray mud. “This stuff is silt. It’s the dirt that flows into the lake with the glacier. It’s really slimy, see?” She threw it at Tabitha.

  Tabitha jerked back, but the mud splattered across her shirt. “Hey!”

  Tears pricked her eyes. Ashley was thirteen, but sometimes she acted like a seven-year-old. Ashley always made a big deal about the fact that she was six months older than Tabitha. Now that she had boobs and Tabitha didn’t, she was ten times worse than she’d been before. Tabitha would not let Ashley see her cry. She set her shoulders and ran into the water, right up to her waist.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Her legs went numb. She turned to run back to shore, but Cedar grabbed her and dragged her into the water.

  “You’re wet now. You might as well go all the way in.”

  “Cut it out!” Tabitha kicked and squirmed, but Cedar was too strong.

  She struggled to get away from his grasp. “Let go!”

  Finally he did, and she dropped to the bottom of the lake. It was so cold that she gasped again and inhaled a mouthful of water. Pushing herself to the surface, she waded, choking and spluttering, to shore.

  She pushed silty hair out of her eyes. Why did they always have to be so mean?

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Cedar said. “I thought it’d be easier if you went in all at once.”

  “It wasn’t.” Tabitha threw on her boots, leaving them untied, and stormed off toward the hut.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As Tabitha approached the hut, Max bounded off the steps to greet her. He ran in circles around her legs, licking the water off her calves.

  “Stop! That tickles.” She laughed. So far, he was the best part of the trip. The whole way up the trail, he’d circled between her and the cousins, keeping her company and letting her know she was part of the group. She hugged him, not caring that his long blond hair stuck to her wet skin.

  She remembered the first time she’d met Max, eight years ago, when she was four. It had been love at first sight. He was six weeks old, a puffy yellow bundle that had tumbled into her lap when she visited her cousins while they were living in Vancouver. He licked her face and burrowed into her neck. She’d been begging her parents for a dog, but her dad was allergic to them. Instead, they’d taken her to see Uncle Bruce’s new puppy. For the next two months she’d visited her cousins as often as possible, until Tess was finished the courses she was taking at the university and they moved back to Squamish.

  Now Max was just as fluffy, but a whole lot bigger. He ran up the steps to the hut. Tabitha pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped into the dark interior. She stood and blinked for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the light.

  Her aunt was bustling around the hut, unpacking her backpack. She’d put on a fleece in the cool air of the hut and hung up her sunhat on a hook by the door. Her long gray hair hung in a ponytail down her back.

  “Fall in the lake?” Tess asked.

  If Tabitha told her what happened, Tess would say something to Ashley and Cedar, and they’d call her a snitch all weekend. “I went for a swim,” she said.

  Tess raised her eyebrows. “You’re dripping all over the floor. Better get those clothes off and hang them to dry in the sun. You’ll need them for our hike tomorrow.”

  Tabitha nodded. More hiking. She couldn’t wait.

  “Sleeping quarters are upstairs.” Her aunt pointed to a ladder. “You get first choice of bunks.”

  Hefting her pack onto her back, Tabitha climbed the ladder to the sleeping loft. According to Tess, they had packed light, since the hut was supplied with pots, pans, dishes and foamies for sleeping. But her pack hadn’t felt light on the miserable hike up the mountain, and it didn’t feel light now. If she’d had to carry anything else, she never would have made it.

  The sleeping loft had five bunks, plus room on the floor for more people to sleep. After stripping off her clothes and putting on fleece pants, a dry shirt and a sweater, she felt better. She grabbed a foamie from the floor and put it on a bottom bunk in the corner. Hopefully Ashley and Cedar would choose the bunks by the window, as far away from her as possible.

  Her cousins clomped into the hut below her. Tabitha swung down the ladder and moved aside for them to climb up.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked.

  Tess lit the campstove. “Curried chickpeas with carrots and millet.”

  Tabitha tried not to gag. “Great.”

  Tess dumped carrots into a pot and added some water. “I hope you’re hungry, because I’m making lots.”

  Tabitha was starving. But hungry enough to eat chickpeas and millet? Not that it looked like there was any choice.

  “How come you use the campstove when there’s a woodstove over there?” she asked.

  Her aunt stirred the pot. “The woodstove is good for keeping us warm and making tea, but this camp-stove is much faster for cooking food. Watch this for me while I get some wood, will you? You three need to warm up after your swim.”

  Tabitha nodded. She watched, hoping nothing would boil over or burn. She had no idea how to turn the stove down. Even if she did, there was no way she’d put her hands near the blue flame hissing out of it.

  A minute later, Tess reappeared a
t the door just as Cedar and Ashley came downstairs. She was hauling a canvas log carrier full of wood. “Tabitha, come give me a hand with this.”

  Tabitha ran over and grabbed the handles of the canvas. They slipped out of her hands and dropped to the floor. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it would be so heavy.”

  “Of course it’s heavy.” Cedar scooped the carrier up off the floor as Tabitha tried to stuff the fallen wood back in. “It’s full of wood.”

  She looked away. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.”

  Cedar swung the bag as if it were as light as a purse and dropped the wood into a basket beside the stove. “Should I light a fire?”

  “Yes, please,” said Tess.

  Cedar started laying the newspaper and small sticks into the woodstove. Tabitha backed toward the table and bumped into Ashley.

  “Hey, watch where you’re going,” Ashley said.

  “Sorry.” Tabitha looked around the room, feeling useless. “Anything else I can do, Tess?”

  “You could get out the bowls and cutlery.”

  She’d do anything to get out of the way of Cedar and Ashley. Their bodies felt too big for the cabin. There was no room for her. She edged past the table and opened a few cupboards until she found what she needed. Swinging around to bring them to the table, she banged her hip on the corner of the counter. She jumped back and collided with her aunt.

  Startled, Tabitha lurched forward to regain her balance and dropped her load of bowls. They clattered across the floor.

  Ashley and Cedar hovered over her as she scrambled to pick up the bowls. “Hope you didn’t break anything,” Ashley said. “Otherwise you’ll have to eat out of Max’s dish for the weekend.”

  Tabitha stayed on her knees after she’d picked up the bowls, fighting back the tears. Why did Ashley always have to pick on her? Finally she stood up. “Nothing broke. They’re made of some kind of plastic.”

  Tess took the bowls from her. “We’ve had dishes like this at home for years. When Ashley was a baby, she threw them on the floor all the time.”