I abandoned the kitchen and went up on the roof.
It was hot. The sun was beating down hard on the shingles. I wrapped my arms around my knees, tightened my jaw, took a deep, slow breath, and made a firm decision to stop feeling sad. Choices had been made, lines had been drawn, and there was no point wasting time thinking about it. I was going to sit there, rally, and be fine.
I tried thinking about nice things like Matt’s arms, Samson’s purr, and peach ice cream, then realized I was staring straight at the same pine tree I’d stared at every day when I was waiting for Abby to come home.
“Ugh!” I said to the tree, the roof, and the whole tangled, broken summer in general. Abby was everywhere around here, and the bright sun was making my eyes water. I needed the opposite of all this.
I climbed off the roof and tromped to Alaska.
There was a note on the floor outside Fort Orpheus. It was addressed to me. I opened it, wondering exactly when my life had become a nonstop parade of cards and notes and letters.
Dear Maggie,
If you’re reading this, it means you’re in my cabin and I’m not, which probably means you’re mad at me. I know I promised to stay off my foot, but my ankle felt 99% back to normal this morning, and I just couldn’t miss doing my field recordings two days in a row. Sorry!
Love, Uncle Joe
I rolled my eyes and went to the window. The sky was as heavy and gray as a humpback’s belly again, and there was Uncle Joe, stretched out on his back beside his boat with his listening equipment set up around him.
Well, at least he hadn’t tried to go out on the water. I decided to let him get on with it. I was feeling way too jangly to be good company right then, anyway.
Not that I was being very good company for myself. I was totally restless. I stalked around the cabin, opening cupboards, kicking random bits of furniture, and fiddling with the equipment piled on the desk. A switch hooked up to an old speaker was too tempting not to flick, and as it clicked on a strange, watery, gloop-glooping noise filled the room. I frowned, then realized it must be the underwater microphones out in the bay, the same ones Uncle Joe was listening to. The noise felt thick in the air, heavy and heaving through the crackly old equipment. I listened, staring into space. It was seriously hypnotic.
I shook myself, switched off the machine, and looked around for something better to distract me.
And there was Fort Orpheus, filling the room. I glared at it, and an interesting new idea crept into my brain: What if I just tore it down? What if I yanked off the sheet, scattered the pillows, and drowned the postcard token out in the bay? What would happen then?
I’d be stuck, that’s what would happen. I’d be trapped in Alaska with Uncle Joe, and right then that didn’t sound bad at all. We could hang out together for the rest of the summer, just the two of us, and I could learn about whales and help Uncle Joe with his research. We would make double-strength cocoa every night after dinner and have huge bonfires on the beach, and when Orpheus showed up we would publish our findings and the two of us would become famous.
And as for Abby? She could keep Camp Pillow Fort, keep NAFAFA and the links and all the rest of it. She could clean up that alley and take my spot on the Council and go around in fancy silver sunglasses, making her own banner and linking in all her Camp Cantaloupe friends and bossing around every west coast kid unlucky enough to discover a magical pillow fort from then on.
Uncle Joe and I would be famous and happy and better off without her.
Only, of course, that’s not how things would really go. If I did get trapped in Alaska, then Uncle Joe would have to tell my mom I was there, and she would have to buy an expensive ticket to get me home. And Orpheus would probably turn up while Uncle Joe was driving me to the airport, then disappear forever. And Kelly would probably take a turn for the worse while my mom was coming to pick me up. And Abby would never forgive me and would convince her dad to move and I’d never see her again, and no one would ever speak to me in middle school, and . . .
I blinked, pulling myself out of the tragedy running in my head. Whoa. I was doing exactly what Abby had said. And if she’d been right about that . . .
Okay, fine, I was doing the thing, but that was just me being me, right? It’s not like I was acting on it. I was just planning what I’d do if it did happen. Getting prepared. Trying it on for size.
My stomach gave a rumble, and I turned my back on the fort and went to root around in the kitchen. It was all too much to deal with right then. At least making lunch would keep me busy for a bit.
There wasn’t much to see in the cupboards, just canned soup, plain crackers, and some mismatched dishes. The fridge was worse, with only a carton of coffee creamer, half a jar of applesauce, and a lonely bottle of mustard wobbling all by itself in the door.
“Hey there,” I said, waving at the mustard. “I know how you feel.”
My heart twinged as I eyed the uninspiring collection of food. Poor Uncle Joe. Imagine coming in out of the cold and facing this. He’d been really nice about Abby and me hanging
