For Camp Christopher…

  I want to linger, a little longer, a little longer here with you.

  And as the years go by, I’ll think of you and sigh, my camping days at Christopher.

  Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.

  -Cheryl Strayed

  1 A TREE-MENDOUS MESS

  There was a colossal bang from above.

  A shake-the-room kind of bang.

  A sonic boom kind of bang.

  “What in the world was that?” I asked Grammy. The two of us were in her family room watching TV and knitting. We did it every night: our special Ruby and Grammy time. My parents owned a two-family house, and we lived on the top floor while Grammy lived below. It was the perfect setup because it meant unlimited time with her; all I had to do was walk down a flight of steps!

  “I think an elephant is bowling up there,” she said.

  “Or there’s a bunch of hippos jumping rope,” I joked.

  “Now, that would be something I’d like to see!” she said.

  “Whatever is going on, I’m glad I’m here and not up there. Dad versus the baby furniture will not end well.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Grammy said. “I’m not a betting woman, but if I were, my money would be on the furniture.”

  An item clattered onto the floor above us, and Dad yelled something we couldn’t make out.

  Grammy picked up her knitting and pointed at mine with one of her needles. “Just keep knitting,” she said, which was our mantra when anything around us was not exactly going as planned.

  Which didn’t happen often because agendas and lists were my jam. I even had scheduled time to work on my weekly schedule, because I made it a priority to ensure that life ran smoothly.

  That’s probably why I loved knitting. If you followed the pattern, whatever you made came out exactly as it should. Knitting was predictable. And nothing could relax me the way the click, click, click of the needles did.

  I settled back into the familiar rhythm of adding new stitches and focused on the TV. A man and woman had entered the kitchen of an enormous house, and the woman complained that it was too small.

  “Um, that kitchen is almost bigger than our entire house,” I said. “How in the world does she think that’s small?”

  “She hates it,” Grammy said. “She’s going to pick the first one.”

  “Do you think so? Her husband was into the house with the swimming pool.”

  The two of us went back and forth, commenting on the houses and making guesses about which one the couple would choose. This was our thing. Watching house-hunting shows while knitting. The perfect way to spend an evening!

  The couple had toured the houses and I had finished five rows on my scarf when another giant boom from above startled me.

  Dad yelled, and this time there was no mistaking his frustration.

  “Just keep knitting, keep knitting,” I said, and aggressively stabbed at my yarn with the needle.

  “How much more do you have to go?”

  “Almost done,” I said, and held my scarf up.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Grammy replied. “Your best one yet!”

  “You say that about all my scarves,” I said, and laughed.

  “It’s true! Each one gets better and better! Maybe after you finish this one, you’ll knit a blanket for the baby!”

  My good mood shifted at the mention of the baby.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said as I played with a red piece of yarn hanging off the scarf.

  The baby.

  Or more specifically, my new baby sibling.

  Of course I was excited about being a big sister, but the baby was all anyone talked about. New baby, baby, baby. All. The. Time. My family acted as if this were the first baby ever born in the history of the world. And the baby wasn’t even here yet. If my parents gave this much attention to it now, how much worse would things be when the baby was finally here?

  That was something I didn’t want to think about. Every time I did, my insides turned shaky, like I was on a boat that was rocking in the waves.

  “I’m not even sure this baby is going to get a crib to put a blanket in,” I said instead as a series of booms interrupted my thoughts.

  Grammy chuckled. “You might be right about that.”

  The two of us settled in to watch more TV, knit, and try to ignore the thumps above us.

  A new couple on the TV was about to reveal their house choice when Grammy yawned. And since yawns were super contagious between the two of us, it soon became a yawn fest!

  “We’re two sleepyheads,” Grammy said.

  “You’ve got that right.” I looked at the clock on the wall. “I’d better head upstairs. Although, I’m not sure how I’ll sleep with that racket.”

  I finished the row I’d been knitting and tucked everything into my bag. It was an old backpack of Mom’s that she’d passed on to me. It was big enough to hold my knitting, her old phone that I used to take pictures and write notes in, my journal, and whatever book I was reading. The perfect bag for a reporter/knitter/lover of words.

  “Be safe up there,” Grammy joked as she hugged me, her scent of roses and baby powder settling over me like a blanket.

  “I’ll try,” I said as I stepped into the hallway. I yawned again and made my way up the steps, giggling to myself. I really had a bad case of the yawns. My warm, comfy bed sounded wonderful, and I couldn’t wait to dive under the sheets and snuggle into a deep, wonderful sleep.

  I opened my front door to darkness, which was odd. Mom and Dad always left the light on for me when I was downstairs.

  “Ouch!” I yelled out as my knee bumped into something huge and solid. “What in the world?”

  I switched on the light just as Dad stuck his head out my bedroom door.

  “Hi, Bee,” he shouted down the hall, using his silly nickname for me. When I was little, he called me his Bumble Bee instead of Ruby. Somewhere along the way, it got shortened to Bee, which was pretty much all he called me now. “Sorry about the mess. Your mom and I got wrapped up in what we were doing and lost track of time.”

  “A mess?” I asked as I swept my hand around the room, which was filled with boxes, packing paper, tape, tools, and various baby-related items. “I’m not sure I’d call this a mess. More like a colossal hurricane of destruction.”

  “It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” he asked sheepishly.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m exhausted,” I said. “I’m planning to go to sleep.”

  Dad glanced toward my room. It was quick, but I caught it.

  “Is that okay?” I asked, and looked at him suspiciously.

  He ran his hand through his hair and stalled. A telltale sign that something was up.

  “How about a late-night snack first?” he asked.

  “I’m really tired,” I told him. “Sleep is all I want right now.”

  “Okay, well, about your room—” he started, but I didn’t let him finish.

  I pushed past him to the open door.

  I wished I hadn’t.

  Our family room was nothing compared to the shape my room was in. Correction. The room I would soon share with my new brother or sister.

  “What did you do in here?” I took in the empty boxes, packaging material, tools, pieces of paper, and the pieces of a crib and changing station. Mom sat in the middle of it, exhausted. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she let out a breath so big that it blew her bangs up into the air.

  “Honey, I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll clear this out. It turns out, putting together a crib and changing station is a bit harder than we thought.”

  “I’ll say,” I said as I thought about how nice and neat I kept my room. Everything had a place and everything stayed in that place.

  “I guess when the instructions tell you to go step-by-step, it’s for a reason. It’s not a good idea to go rogue and try to figure it out yourself,” Dad said.

  “I could have told you that,” I said.

  “I tried to,” Mom pointed out.

  “It’s under control,” Dad said. “I’ll clean everything up quickly.”

  But there was nothing quick about what was all over my bedroom floor.

  “Can it wait until the morning? Since my bed is free, I’d rather go to sleep.”

  “Sure, Bee,” Dad said. “I promise that by the time you get home from school tomorrow, these boxes and tools will all be gone.”

  I gave Dad a weak smile and thought about how this wasn’t about the chaos on the floor. The truth was that my room would never be the same. They might be able to clean up the mess, but they couldn’t clean up the amount of attention a baby needed and how my new little brother or sister would soon take over a space that had always been just for me.

  2 AN UNBE-LEAF-ABLE IDEA

  Breaking news.

  The next morning wasn’t any better.

  It was worse.

  My bedroom door flew open and Dad burst in.

  “Rise and shine!” he said in a voice that was a million times more energized than how I felt. “Wakey, wakey!”

  I groaned and threw my pillow at him.

  “Why are you in here so early?”

  “Early?” Dad asked. “Bee, it’s late. You’re going to miss the bus if you don’t get moving.”

  “Wait, what?” I sat up and rubbed my eyes. My alarm clock sat on the dresser, the screen dark. As in, it wasn’t even on. “What happened to my clock?”

  Dad gave me a guilty look as it dawned on him. “Shoot, I unplugged it last night. We needed to charge the drill. I guess I forgot to plug it back in.”

  “Dad!” I said, and groaned again. “What time is it?”

  He checked his phone. “Seven ten.”

  “Seven ten!” I repeated in a panic. “I can’t believe you let me sleep this late! I’m not even going to have time for a shower or breakfast. Can you drive me?”

  “Sorry, Bee, not today. Your mom has an early-morning doctor’s appointment,” he said. The uneven feeling inside me came back. Dad was always okay with driving me to school, especially when there was time to stop at the doughnut shop a few blocks away. At least he used to be.

  “Don’t look so worried. You’ll be fine. You’ve got fifteen minutes until the bus comes. Get dressed, brush your teeth, and I’ll toast a bagel that you can eat on the road.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” I muttered.

  “Embrace the chaos,” Dad said. “And look on the bright side. Once the baby comes, none of us will need an alarm clock.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I grumbled. The idea of a crying baby waking me up had no bright side to it.

  After Dad left my room, I forced myself out of bed. If this had been a regular school morning, I’d have woken to the alarm on my radio and spent time writing in my journal before I got out of bed. Then I’d have taken a quick shower and joined Grammy for breakfast, where we started the day knitting one row on our current WIP, which was knitter-speak for “Work in Progress.” I had a whole morning routine to ease into my day, but today there was no easing. Instead I was thrown headfirst into it.

  “Up and at ’em,” I mumbled, because there’d be no rising and shining today. I swung my legs over the edge of my bed and stood up.

  “Ow!” I yelled as my bare foot landed on something sharp and pointy. I jumped back in pain, only to bump into a bunch of cardboard boxes. My arms flailed around like windmills for a moment before I lost my balance and went crashing to the floor.

  “You have to be kidding me,” I said, and rubbed my sore foot.

  I carefully made my way across my bedroom, avoiding any of the stuff my parents had left on the floor.

  Things weren’t any better in the hallway. More boxes sat against the wall, so I had to dodge my way around them. An obstacle course in my own house.

  “How much stuff does a baby even need?” I asked out loud. “Doesn’t a baby just eat, sleep, and poop?”

  I brushed my teeth, splashed water onto my face, and ran a comb through my hair before pulling it into a ponytail. I could practically hear an invisible clock in my head ticking down the minutes until the bus came.

  I rushed back to my room to change and bumped into one of the boxes along the way.

  “Augh!” I yelled, and slammed the door to make my point. However, the joke was on me. My parents had lined up the pieces of the crib against the wall, and as the door closed, they clattered down into a big pile covering what little space had been left on my bedroom floor.

  “I give up!” I shouted.

  Somehow I made it to the bus in time, but that wasn’t nearly enough to help my bad mood. My friends could tell something was up the second I stormed into our classroom and dumped my unorganized mess of stuff onto the floor.

  “Whoa, Ruby, you do not look like you had a good morning,” Lauren said, eyeing my wrinkled outfit and messy hair.

  “Is everything okay?” Myka asked.

  “Yeah, what’s going on?” Emelyn added.

  “Everything,” I said in a super-dramatic way. “Especially the new baby.”

  “I thought you were excited to be a big sister,” Myka said.

  “I was. Emphasis on the word ‘was.’ The baby isn’t even here yet and it’s taking over our entire house. We have so much stuff. I’m afraid I’m going to be buried alive. And it’s driving me up the wall.”

  “I know what that’s like,” Myka said in solidarity. “Whenever my brothers and I get home in the evening, our mudroom is full of our backpacks, shoes, sports gear, instruments, and a million other random things that make it impossible to walk in there.”

  “At least you have a mudroom and your own room,” I said. “My parents told me the other day that since we don’t have a third bedroom, I have to share my room with the baby. Someone I haven’t even met. A complete stranger! Is that even allowed? What if we don’t get along?”

  My mind whirled with the possibilities of what could go wrong once the baby invaded my room. My thoughts then moved on to the baby invading my life and my relationship with my parents. Everything was changing so fast; I wasn’t sure I could keep up.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I told my friends. “It seems as if things are going from bad to worse, and I have no idea how to stop it.”

  “This sounds like a problem for our club,” Myka said.

  “Can the Invincible Girls help?” I asked.

  “Can we help?” Myka said as if that were the most outrageous question in the world.

  “Helping is what we do!” Emelyn added.

  “I know, but our club’s mission is to help change the world. Does it work when we’re only focused on one person?” I asked.

  “Of course it does,” Emelyn said. “One less problem for one person means one more piece of happiness in the world. Imagine if we could do that for everyone!”

  “Yep,” Myka agreed. “Just like when I play soccer. When my team helps one of us become a better kicker or faster runner, it helps all of us play better.”

  “Makes complete sense,” I said, and gave them a thumbs-up. “It’s totally okay to focus on one person in our quest to change the world.”

  “Yep, and that person is you!” Myka said. “So what is the true problem?”

  My friends leaned toward me, ready to spring into action, which made my bad mood evaporate. There was nothing greater than having people on your side.

  “Let’s get planning!” I declared as I pulled out my notebook. The one I scheduled and listed and plotted in. I opened to a new page, wrote the word “PROBLEM” at the top, and then hesitated.

  Should I tell them the truth? I wondered. That I worried my parents might get so busy with the baby, they’d forget about me? This might have been something I’d been thinking about a lot, but those words were scary to say out loud. I held my pen over the page, unsure of what to do.

  “Remember, we’re here to help,” Emelyn said gently, and the other two nodded in agreement.

  “Okay,” I said. I lowered the pen tip to the paper and wrote, My parents are forgetting me.

  I dropped my pen like it was on fire. Somehow, writing it down had made it a million times more real.

  “Forgetting you?” Lauren asked. “What do you mean?”

  “The baby,” I said. “It’s changing everything. I swear I could stay at one of your houses for a week and they wouldn’t even notice.”

  “They have too much on their minds, trying to get everything ready,” Emelyn reasoned.

  “Exactly,” I replied. “They have so much on their minds that those thoughts have pushed aside anything else. Including me. We haven’t spent time together in forever, and I miss them.”

  “I get what you’re saying.” Myka chewed on her bottom lip and studied me. She nodded slowly. “When your mom drove us to the library last week, all she talked about was baby stuff.”

  “Yes!” I said. “And that was even after we told her about our science project. If a super-awesome science project can’t get their attention, what can?”

  “I promise we aren’t going to forget you,” Lauren said, and draped her arm around my shoulders.

  “Nope, never!” Myka agreed, and their pledge of eternal friendship helped.

  “You couldn’t if you tried,” I joked, and then sighed. “I just wish my parents would take a break from the baby stuff.”

  “What if you took a trip somewhere? You know, to get away from it all, have some family time, and relax?” Myka suggested.

  “Ohhhh! Like Disney! Or a tropical island!” Lauren said excitedly. “And I could come too!”

  “Pretty sure my mom isn’t going to want to fly somewhere. Not when she’s so close to having the baby.”

  “What about a hotel with a pool for a night or two?” Emelyn suggested. “My cousins do that once in a while.”

 

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