Surviving Summer Vacation (3 page)

A car narrowly missed us as we merged into the traffic on I-5, and once more a horn blared. Mr. Rupe muttered under his breath again. “You'd think they could see a rig as big as this one and go around it,” he said.

I don't drive yet—you can't even get a learner's permit in Washington until you're fifteen and a half—but I knew that a vehicle coming onto the freeway was supposed to blend in with the fast traffic already moving, not just drive in front of it.

My mouth felt a little bit dry, so when Harry got up to get some Cokes out of the fridge, I had one, and so did Alison.

“I want some too,” Ariadne said, and Billy piped up, “So do I.”

“Not too much for Ariadne this time of day,” Mrs. Rupe said, “or she'll wet the bed. Why don't you get some paper cups down, Alison dear, and divide a can between them?”

Just as she got up to do that, we swerved around a truck, and it nearly threw Alison off her feet. She grabbed for the back of a chair and clipped her hip on the corner of the table. She showed me the bruise it left later, a dark purple spot.

She didn't say anything, though, just got the cups and divided a can of pop between the kids. Ariadne looked into hers. “Ice,” she said.

“Ice,” Billy echoed, holding up his cup.

Alison added ice to both cups. She had no more than sat down when Billy placed his cup on the floor. A moment later, he forgot it was there and knocked it over with his knee, where it poured ice and pop all over my feet.

“Oh, it spilled,” Billy said.

Mrs. Rupe looked around. “Alison, dear, there are plenty of paper towels. Clean it up, will you?”

I bent over and began to pick up pieces of ice,
putting them back into the empty cup, while my sister got the towels to sop up the mess. It left a dark, wet spot on the blue carpet.

“Man, this is the way to travel,” Harry said. “While you're up, Alison, why don't you get us out a package of those barbecue-flavor potato chips?”

Alison hesitated for a moment, expecting Harry's mother to object, but she didn't, so ­Alison handed over one of the bags of chips. Harry popped it open and passed them around.

So we roared down the freeway, off on our adventure with all the luxuries anyone could ask for. If my feet hadn't felt so soggy and sticky, and Mr. Rupe's driving hadn't made me kind of nervous—though he did better on the straightaway, where all he had to do was steer forward—I would have figured this was going to be one of the all-time great vacations.

Chapter 3

It was a really great campground where we stayed the first night.

There was a heated swimming pool, and a wading pool for the little kids. Alison could even watch them from the bigger pool, so she could swim too. “Help me, though, Lewis,” she said. “I don't think I can trust either one of them. I remember how Mom used to put life jackets on us. I wish Billy and Ariadne had some.”

They loved the water, though neither of them could swim. After Billy came racing toward the bigger pool and jumped in and we had to fish him out, I thought it might be a good idea to teach him some of the basics. I had an uneasy feeling Alison was going to need more help than I'd figured. We showed them how to
hold their breaths and put their faces under the water, so they wouldn't be afraid if they fell in accidentally and we weren't there to rescue them, and how to dog-paddle.

It was nearly dark when we came out of the pool, and there were lights on throughout the park. Mr. and Mrs. Rupe had set up lawn chairs beside the motor home. She was smoking, and he was barbecuing hamburgers on a grill. She had put out a bunch of chips and dip and an ice chest of pop, and there was a carton of deli potato salad.

“What's for dessert?” Harry asked as we were finishing off our third burgers. “Ice cream? With chocolate syrup?”

“Get it yourself,” Mrs. Rupe said.

I wondered if Mom would relax her nutritional standards on a trip like this. She likes lots of salads and vegetables, and we don't usually get ice cream more than once a week or so. Her idea of dessert is more likely to be a dish of applesauce or fresh berries.

“Pretty good, huh?” Alison asked, grinning over the enormous bowl of rocky road ice cream she had balanced on her knees.

“Not bad,” I admitted, grinning back. “It's going to be a great trip.”

It wasn't quite so great when we made up the beds. The couch was supposed to sleep two, but the two needed to be smaller than Harry and I were. I was squashed against the wall. We each had a sleeping bag, but they took up too much space if we used them individually, so we spread his on the bottom and mine on the top for a cover. The trouble was that they couldn't be zipped together because they didn't match, so our feet kept sticking out. When you get up in the mountains, it's cold at night, even in the summer. And the top sleeping bag had a tendency to slide off into the aisle every so often. I'd wake up cold and drag it back. Once Harry rolled off the edge and ended up stuck between the couch and the chairs on the other side of the coach. Motor homes aren't very wide.

Alison had done the same thing with her sleeping bag and Ariadne's. It was on the seats of the dinette, though—the table lifted off the top and became part of the bottom—so her feet didn't stick out because they were against the
back of the seat. And Ariadne was smaller than Harry.

Billy's sleeping bag was on the floor between the dinette and the kitchen sink.

“Ouch,” I heard Alison say when we had finally turned off the light. “She kicks.”

At least Harry didn't kick.

I woke up about dawn to find Alison standing at the foot of the couch, straddling Billy's feet. I knew she wasn't up that time of day for nothing.

“What's the matter?” I asked groggily.

“Ariadne must have had too much to drink after all,” she said. “She wet the bed. And me. These are the only pajamas I brought.”

Harry didn't wet the bed, either. It made me feel guilty to be the lucky one. “Why don't you just put on the clothes you were going to wear in the morning,” I suggested. “Are there clean clothes to put on Ariadne?”

“Yes. I've already changed her, but the sleeping bag on the bottom has a wet spot.”

“I saw Mrs. Rupe put a stack of towels in the cabinet in the bathroom. Fold one of them to put over the wet spot so you won't feel it, why don't you.”

“I'm glad it was
her
sleeping bag, not mine,” Alison muttered as she went to get a towel.

I hadn't gone back to sleep yet—Harry flopped over on his stomach and stuck his elbow in my ear just as I started to doze off—when I heard somebody walking around outside.

We were in a campground with about a hundred other rigs, so I knew there were other people close by. But it was early, and I wondered why anybody was so close to our motor home when the nearest trailer was at least thirty feet away.

I rose and looked out the open window beside me. I could just barely make out a figure in the dim light because the guy was wearing a white shirt. He was sort of sneaking along, right beside our coach.

I tried to remember if Mr. Rupe had left anything outside that somebody might try to steal, but I didn't think so. He'd packed away the folding chairs and all that stuff so we'd be ready to leave right after breakfast.

The guy stopped suddenly, as if he were listening, and for a minute my heart raced, because he seemed to be looking right at me
through the window, though I knew he couldn't possibly see me. There was no light inside at all.

Then he moved again, and seconds later I heard him hit the supporting bar of the awning Mr. Rupe
had
forgotten to retract. It caught him right in the middle of the forehead, and I heard him grunt, and then he swore under his breath.

Across the coach, from the bed on the dinette, Alison said, “What was that?”

The guy outside dropped like a stone. I couldn't see him anymore, but by pushing my face against the screen I caught a glimpse of his shirt as he scuttled away and finally stood up when he got into the nearest trees. Then he disappeared, and I couldn't see where he went.

“Lewis?”

“Some guy who was lost,” I guessed. “He whacked his head on the awning support. Swore when it hurt.”

“Oh. It does hurt. I did it too the first time I walked around that side of the coach. Let's go to sleep, Lewis.”

“Okay,” I muttered, and poked Harry so
he'd roll over and get his arm out of my way so I could lie down again.

When we got up, Mrs. Rupe didn't seem surprised that Ariadne had wet the bed. “I was afraid she was drinking too much,” she said. “When we get to camp tonight, we'll wash everything. Even the sleeping bag's washable.”

At home we usually have cereal and fruit for breakfast, except on Sunday mornings when Dad often makes pancakes or waffles. Mrs. Rupe had brought frozen waffles that we heated in the toaster, and nobody told me not to use so much syrup. Harry and I ate six apiece; they weren't very big.

We had to fold up the couch and stash all the sleeping bags and pillows back in the underneath compartment. That morning we got back on the freeway without running over anything or having anyone honk at us. I hoped that meant Mr. Rupe was getting the hang of driving the big rig.

Harry loaded a movie in the Blu-ray machine, and we watched a movie on the small TV in the back, all of us kids sprawled on the bed. Ariadne and Billy were intrigued by the
way the toilet flushed, so they kept having to go potty. Alison usually went with Ariadne, so she missed parts of the movie, but it was one she'd seen before, so it didn't matter too much.

Every little while Harry would make a foray into the kitchen for refreshments. It wasn't easy to walk around when the coach was moving. If the driver slammed on the brakes or swerved out to pass, you got thrown around if you weren't hanging on well enough.

Billy didn't want to watch the movie, so he climbed off the bed and looked for other entertainment. I guess the rest of us weren't paying too much attention to him, because the next time Alison got up to get something to drink, she discovered he'd emptied all the drawers in the nightstands. Mr. and Mrs. Rupe's underwear was scattered all over the floor.

Alison scolded him a little, and when he refused to pick any of it up, she did it herself, folding it neatly before putting it back in the drawers. She nudged me when she folded the last pair of shorts.

I checked them out. “Cute,” I said, as she
put them in the drawer. Little red hearts all over them.

“Maybe besides swimming we need to teach them to mind better,” Alison said, after looking toward Harry to make sure he was absorbed in the movie. “Like they should pick up the messes they make.”

“What do you mean,
we?”
I asked.

My sister gave me a look. “You're not going to desert me, are you, Lewis? I'm not sure I can keep track of these two all by myself.”

“Well, okay. You teach them some manners, and I'll teach them to swim,” I compromised. “Where's Billy now?”

Alison ducked her head around the corner to look. “Come out of there, Billy. You can't keep flushing the toilet.”

“But I want to,” Billy responded.

“But you can't,” Alison said firmly, and hauled him back into the bedroom by his shirt.

“I'll tell Ma you're being mean to me,” Billy threatened mutinously, his lower lip jutting out.

“Not if you want us to take you swimming when we get to the next camp,” I said, leaning
my face down close to his. “You want me to give you another swimming lesson tonight?”

He thought it over. “Before supper?”

“If there's time. I don't know when we'll get there.”

“Okay,” Billy said. Suddenly he reached up and grabbed my glasses. “What is this thing?”

I yelped and grabbed them back. “My glasses. I need them to see with, and if you take them off that way, it hurts, okay? I need them on again.”

“I want them,” Billy said, unwilling to let go.

“You can't have them. Without them I'm too nearsighted to see very far,” I told him, prying his fingers off the bow.

“Let him look through them, Lewis,” Alison suggested. “Then it will satisfy his curiosity.”

So I put them on his little nose and held them in place. He stared at me through them. “You have hairs on your face.”

“Hairs? You mean my eyebrows? Everybody has eyebrows. Even you do. See?” I put out a finger and traced his.

He rolled his eyes, trying to see upward. “Show him in the mirror, Lewis,” Alison said,
so I slid off the bed and took him into the bathroom. There was a full-length mirror in there, and Billy leaned up close to it. First he looked through my glasses, then when I took them off he practically put his nose on the glass and felt his eyebrows.

“Hairs,” he said.

“Yeah. Now come on,” I said as I settled my glasses into place, “let's go back and watch the rest of the movie.”

“I'm hungry,” Ariadne said when we returned to the bedroom.

“I'll ask your mother what you can have,” Alison said.

“Candy,” Ariadne told her.

“I'm not sure about that. It'll be lunchtime soon,” Alison warned her, but after she consulted with Mrs. Rupe, she shrugged. “She says they can have anything they want, even candy bars. I brought one for each of the rest of us, too. For all I know, maybe this is lunch.”

It wasn't, though. We pulled into a rest stop. Mrs. Rupe said, “Everybody fix your own sandwiches. Alison, dear, you'll fix Billy's and Ariadne's, won't you?”

Outside, a horn tooted. Mr. Rupe had pulled crossways in about five parking spaces, and someone who wanted to use one of them was glaring in our direction.

“What's wrong with him?” Mr. Rupe said. “Can't he see it takes this much space to park a rig this size?”

Harry had his face pressed against a window. “Uh, Dad, I think RVs are supposed to park on the other side, where the trucks are. They have longer parking spaces, and you don't have to back up to pull out of them.”

“Oh. Well, I'll do that next time. Is that what that sign means, with the pictures of cars and trucks on it? You'd think they'd put some words, so you could tell what they meant. Ada, make me a couple of pastrami sandwiches, will you? I'm going to get out and stretch my legs for a minute.”

It was a jam-up in the kitchen, so Harry and I got out to walk around too. A lot of ­people had stopped to use the restrooms and the picnic tables. Several people gave us dirty looks, and it was sort of embarrassing. Two cars went on through the rest area without finding a
place to park, because we were taking up so much space.

A light blue Crown Victoria had taken the last parking slot, right alongside us. There were two people in it, but I didn't pay any attention to them except to wonder why they stopped. They weren't eating, and they didn't get out to use the restrooms.

When we got back in the coach, everybody else was wolfing down sandwiches. We fixed ours, and put plenty of ice in our pop, and Harry opened another bag of chips. I wondered what my mom would think about splitting a big bag every time we wanted a snack. Nobody ever seemed to think Harry was overdoing it. For the first time in my life, I was getting all the snacks I wanted, so I wasn't complaining.

After we gathered up all the trash and carried it out to the garbage can, we were ready to go again.

“Everyone sitting down? Okay, here we go,” Mr. Rupe said. “Oh, for heaven's sake, that car is in my way. I'll have to back up to get out. Harry, look and see if I can go straight back without hitting anything.”

We checked, and he could, but he didn't back up quite far enough. When he went to pull forward, he came within about an inch of touching the Crown Victoria. I got a glimpse of the driver's horrified face as we skimmed by without actually scraping any of his paint.
Sheesh!
I hoped we'd park on the truck side next time, so he didn't have to go into reverse.

Ariadne wanted to watch cartoons, so Harry and I stayed up front. We were going
down
the mountain now, into eastern Washington, and instead of all kinds of green trees and little waterfalls everywhere, we got into dryer country. Apple and cherry orchards, mostly, and when we saw a big sign,
FRESH CHERRIES,
Mrs. Rupe insisted we stop and get some.