"Kids got your ponchos?" Mom asked, looking up at the sky. There was still blue up there, but the clouds were thick-ening in the west. It very likely would rain, but probably not soon enough for Pete to have a satisfying whine about being soaked.
"I've got mine, Mom!" Trisha chirruped in her oh-boy-waterlesscookware voice.
Pete grunted something that might have been yes.
"Lunches?"
Affirmative from Trisha; another low grunt from Pete.
"Good, because I'm not sharing mine." She locked the Caravan, then led them across the dirt lot toward a sign marked TRAIL WEST, with an arrow beneath. There were maybe a dozen other cars in the lot, all but theirs with out-ofstate plates.
19. "Bug-spray?" Mom asked as they stepped onto the path leading to the trail. "Trish?"
"Got it!" she chirruped, not entirely positive she did but not wanting to stop with her back turned so that Mom could have a rummage. That would get Pete going again for sure. If they kept walking, though, he might see something which would interest him, or at least distract him. A raccoon.
Maybe a deer. A dinosaur would be good. Trisha giggled.
"What's funny?" Mom asked.
"Just me thinks," Trisha replied, and Quilla frowned - "me thinks" was a Larry McFarland-ism. Well let her frown, Trisha thought. Let her frown all she wants. I'm with her, and I don't complain about it like old grouchy there, but he's still my Dad and I still love him.
Trisha touched the brim of her signed cap, as if to prove it.
"Okay, kids, let's go," Quilla said. "And keep your eyes open."
"I hate this," Pete almost groaned - it was the first clearly articulated thing he'd said since they got out of the van, and Trisha thought: Please God, send something. A deer or a dinosaur or a UFO. Because if You don't, they're going right back at it.
God sent nothing but a few mosquito scouts that would no doubt soon be reporting back to the main army that fresh meat was on the move, and by the time they passed a sign reading NO. CONWAY STATION 5. 5 MI., the two of them were at it full-bore again, ignoring the woods, ignoring her, ignoring everything but each other. Yatata-yatata-yatata. It was, Trisha thought, like some sick kind of making out.
It was a shame, too, because they were missing stuff that was actually pretty neat. The sweet, resiny smell of the pines, for instance, and the way the clouds seemed so close - less like clouds than like draggles of whitish-gray smoke. She guessed you'd have to be an adult to call some-thing as boring as walking one of your hobbies, but this really wasn't bad. She didn't know if the entire Appalachian Trail was as well-maintained as this - probably not - but if it was, she guessed she could understand why people with nothing better to do decided to walk all umpty-thousand miles of it. Trisha thought it was like walking on a broad, winding avenue through the woods. It wasn't paved, of course, and it ran steadily uphill, but it was easy enough walking. There was even a little hut with a pump inside it and a sign which read: WATER TESTS OK FOR DRINKING.
PLEASE FILL PRIMER JUG FOR NEXT PERSON.
She had a bottle of water in her pack - a big one with a squeeze-top - but suddenly all Trisha wanted in the world was to prime the pump in the little hut and get a drink, cold and fresh, from its rusty lip. She would drink and pretend she was Bilbo Baggins, on his way to the Misty Mountains.
"Mom?" she asked from behind them. "Could we stop long enough to - "
"Making friends is a job, Peter," her mother was saying.
She didn't look back at Trisha. "You can't just stand around and wait for kids to come to you."
"Mom? Pete? Could we please stop for just a - "
"You don't understand," he said heatedly. "You don't have a clue. I don't know how things were when you were in junior high, but they're a lot different now."
"Pete? Mom? Mommy? There's a pump - " Actually there was a pump; that was now the grammatically correct way to put it, because the pump was behind them, and get-ting farther behind all the time.
"I don't accept that," Mom said briskly, all business, and Trisha thought: No wonder she drives him crazy. Then, resent-fully: They don't even know I'm here. The Invisible Girl, that's me. I might as well have stayed home. A mosquito whined in her ear and she slapped at it irritably.
They came to a fork in the trail. The main branch - not quite as wide as an avenue now, but still not bad - went off to the left, marked by a sign reading NO. CONWAY 5. 2. The other branch, smaller and mostly overgrown, read KEZAR NOTCH 10.