“You all might as well help too,” called Abby, half turning around. “Like Maggie said, maybe we’re supposed to do this together.”
I glanced back. Matt, Mark, and my mom looked confused. Kelly looked excited. Samson was asleep.
“We can do the singing part,” announced Kelly, pushing away the blankets of her cocoon. “I like to sing. Okay, one, two, three . . . da-da, da-da-da, da, DA. . . .”
And Abby and I danced. It took a few tries to get in sync, but we got there in the end. One by one the others joined in on the da-da-ing, and soon Kelly was conducting with Creepy Frog, Mark was drumming with his wrench, and the bed of the truck was bouncing with our kicks and lunges.
I had a sudden vision of how weird all this would look to someone out there in the mists. A hodgepodge family of kids, teens, and grown-ups, camped out in a pickup truck, putting on a song-and-dance routine for a dinosaur-size moose in the middle of the freezing arctic night.
“Cantaloupes,” I murmured to myself, squeezing Abby closer for the swaying bit. “We are a total bunch of cantaloupes.” I grinned. I wasn’t cold at all anymore.
Halfway through the fourth round the moose began to nod its huge nose up and down in time with our dancing.
“It’s working!” panted Abby, and we danced even harder.
As the fifth round ended the moose let out a loud snort, reared up high, its hairy belly stretching over our heads, and brought its hooves back to earth with a crash. More rocks shattered. Abby and I froze midlunge, and the others stopped singing.
The moose snorted again, almost daintily in the silence, then turned and trotted a few steps into the mist. It stopped and looked back, just visible in the reflection from the headlights, waiting.
“Well, that’s pretty clear,” said Abby, wiping her forehead on her sleeve. “Follow that moose!”
Kelly cheered. Matt and Mark whooped. Samson woke up and yawned.
Abby seized me and pulled me into a massive hug. She smelled like wool sweaters and cocoa and my best friend in the whole world. “Cantaloupe, cantaloupe,” I said, grinning into her hair.
“Moose, moose, moose,” she whispered back. “Thank you.”
“Well done, Maggie and Abby!” called my mom, starting the engine with a roar as Abby and I flopped back in our seats. “Well done, everybody!”
The tires spun to life against the rocks and we were off, sliding through the fog with the moose trotting along between the headlights and everyone patting Abby and me on the back for being so brave. Everything was fun again, and the cold and damp and hunger were all just part of the adventure. Samson stretched out beside Uncle Joe—who had somehow slept through the whole entire thing—and purred even louder than the engine.
All at once the moose picked up speed and broke into a run, disappearing in the clouds ahead. My mom stepped on the gas to follow, and as we zoomed forward, the mist around us thinned, faded, then vanished completely, and we were through. The dream was over, we were out of the valley, and spread out before us in the distance lay the roads and buildings and spangled lights of town.
Twenty-Three
Everything was quiet and still in the local hospital’s pastel waiting room, and my head jerked up for the hundredth time as I fought to stay awake. Abby and Kelly were already asleep, curled up together on one of the couches with Samson hidden in a bundle of blankets between them. Matt and Mark slumped in their chairs, watching the silent TV on the wall and passing yawns back and forth. There was no one else around. Even the receptionist at the desk had gone for the night, and apart from Abby’s snores it was perfectly still.
I was just giving in to the heavy pull behind my eyes when my mom arrived. I shook Abby and Kelly awake, and they sat up, yawning, crinkling the pile of wrappers from our Rescue Mission Snack Committee raid on the hospital vending machines.
“All right,” my mom said, dropping into a chair. “Joe’s going to be fine. It was a clean break, so no worries about long-term damage to his leg, and he’s got a mild concussion, but they say that’ll be fine too.” She looked around at us, bleary-eyed and rumpled. “You’re all real heroes.”
“Did they ask who we were?” said Abby.
“Yes. I said we were tourists on a family trip.”
“And they believed that?” I eyed my mom’s purple scrubs and the oversize coats and sweaters the rest of us were wrapped in. We didn’t exactly look like tourists.
“I think so,” said my mom. “I told them we needed to do laundry and were down to our emergency backup outfits. Maybe they bought it, I don’t know. Most doctors are used to seeing unusual things.”
“This is the quietest hospital I’ve ever been in,” said Kelly.
“I know—it’s weird, isn’t it?” said my mom. “But it’s also the biggest one for miles. ‘For half the size of Texas’ one of the doctors told me, whatever that means. It’s downright tiny compared to what I’m used to, but if they make Joe better, then it’s the best hospital in the world.”
“Did you tell them about the moose?” I asked. Before everyone quieted down we’d been debating whether our rescuer had been an actual ghost moose or just a friendly real one. Mark said it was probably a real one, since we’d been able to hear it walking on the rocks, and I’d had to admit I could smell it. But Abby kept pointing out how it had been there one minute and gone the next as soon as we reached town, and no one could come up with an answer for that.
My mom nodded. “I mentioned it, but the nurses insisted they don’t have moose up here this time of year.”
“Ha! See?” said Abby, waving Creepy Frog
