My Top Secret Dares & Don'ts Page 4

  I look down at my grilled halibut with apricot sauce and flattened mashed potatoes. “No, I’m fine. The fish is good.” It’s true. “Guess I’m tired.”

  “I always have a hard time eating when I’m worn-out too,” she says.

  “Look at that sunset,” says Mom with a sigh.

  The sinking sun is kissing the tip of an arrowhead-shaped, snowcapped peak. It transforms the sky into an ombré canvas of deep orange, then magenta and lavender, and finally, sapphire. Wyatt is too busy playing a game on Mom’s phone to look up.

  “Grandpa Keith and I used to take the lift up Blackcomb to watch the sunset nearly every night in the summer,” says Grandma Lark. “The wind would be whipping and I’d be all bundled up in my thick sweater and there would be my husband in his Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals, like we were on a beach in the Caribbean.”

  Mom and I grin.

  “I’d be ready to come down, but he’d say, ‘Let’s wait another few minutes. We might see a green flash,’ so, naturally, I’d stay.”

  “Green flash?” Wyatt’s head pops up. “What’s that?”

  Grandma Lark leans forward as if about to reveal a secret. “As the sun sets, the very top edge will give off a bright green glow. It happens for only a second, and all the conditions have to be absolutely perfect for you to see it. The sky has to be clear—no clouds or pollution. Also, you have to be eye level with the horizon. A green flash is a rare phenomenon. You can spend your whole life watching sunsets and never see one.”

  “Have you ever seen one?” asks Wyatt.

  “No. Your Grandpa Keith used to tease me plenty about it, though. We’d be up on Blackcomb enjoying the sunset, and all of a sudden, he’d say, ‘There, Lark! A green flash! Did you see it?’ Of course, I hadn’t, and I doubt he had either, that rascal.”

  We chuckle.

  “Still,” she says, her gaze wandering out the window, “I like to think maybe he did see one before he left this Earth.”

  I watch as her moss-green eyes mist over.

  “Awww,” says my mother. She taps her heart but looks around uncomfortably.

  Wyatt goes back to his game.

  I want to say something to my grandmother to make her feel better, but I have no idea what. I’ve never had anybody I love die before. I’ve never even been around anybody who’s ever had a loved one die before. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I make it worse? She has lost her husband, and she is about to lose her business. The last thing I want to do is make her life any worse. If only I knew her better.

  “I could use more coffee,” says Mom. “Lark?”

  My grandmother says, “Sure,” and Mom waves to Madeline, the waitress.

  Grandma Lark’s tan hand is resting on the creamy linen arm of her chair next to me. She is still wearing her wedding ring—a polished silver band inlaid with triangles of lapis and turquoise. The dark blues and bright aquas, divided by silver geometric lines, remind me of these mountains. The ring fits in a little divot of her skin as if it has always been there.

  Slowly, ’cause I don’t want to scare her, I reach to cover my grandmother’s hand with my own. Her fingers are cool and still. In the rosy glow of the dining room, with newlyweds cuddling and people jabbering and the waitress refilling coffee cups, Grandma Lark’s eyes meet mine. They sparkle with gratitude. A feeling of relief spreads through me. I haven’t made things worse. Her lips are curling gently upward. So are mine.

  “Mom, come see this!”

  She leans out the doorway of the bathroom, a piece of floss dangling from her mouth. “What?”

  I am sitting on the floor between the sofa and the tree-trunk coffee table, with my laptop open. “I’m on one of the travel sites Breck showed me.” I start reading some of the comments to her. “ ‘The housekeeping staff wouldn’t give us fresh towels. My room smelled like stinky cheese.’ Oh, this is a good one. ‘I got sick on what passed for chili in their crummy dining room.’ ”

  Snapping off the bathroom light, she scurries over. “What in the world . . . ?”

  “They’re all bad—at least, the ones posted within the last six months. Before that, they’re all four- and five-star reviews.”

  Mom sits on the sofa and starts to read over my shoulder. With each review, her mouth drops farther. “How can people get away with this?”

  I shrug. “It’s the Internet.”

  “That’s no excuse. Look, this one says his room faced a brick wall. Not one single room here faces a wall. And who the heck is SkiBum1432, anyway? It’s not fair. They don’t even have to give their real names.”

  “Wait till you get to PoodleGirl29—”

  “Arrrggggh!”

  She’s there. “ ‘Avoid Blackcomb Creek Lodge like the plague, unless you’re into diseases, in which case you’ll have plenty to choose from.’ Ohh!” She jumps to her feet and starts pacing the room. “This is deliberate sabotage. I’d better get ahold of Lark’s webmaster to get those awful reviews taken down.”

  “There’s usually nothing you can do unless the reviews contain personal attacks,” I say. “But something similar happened to Annabeth’s dad’s café, and he got his loyal customers to post a bunch of positive reviews and say the other reviews were lies—”

  “While we’re at it,” she says, picking up speed, “it might be a good idea to give the whole site a fresh look—you know, with new photos and text. I wonder how long it’s been since Lark updated it. I wonder if she even has a social media presence. It might be time to hire a marketing expert.”

  “Langley’s mom works for a public relations company,” I say. “I bet she could—”

  “I’d better touch base with the tourism bureau here to see what we can do to jump-start business.” Mom takes another lap. “It’s too late for the summer season, but they might able to give us a hand booking conventions and retreats for next winter . . .”

  I hold up my hand as she circles past. “Mom, what if we—”

  “Honey, please, I can’t think.”

  I let my hand drop.

  My mom opens her laptop on the desk. “The first thing I need to do is sit down with Lark and find out where things stand with the business.”

  “What can I do?” I ask.

  “You’ve done plenty by bringing all of this to my attention. Thanks, hon. Why don’t you go on to bed? It’s getting late.”

  “O-kay.” I turn off my computer.

  I wish my mother would let me help. She still thinks of me as a little kid, even though I’ll be thirteen in four months. I guess it’s hard for her to see me as anything other than someone who needs looking after, like Wyatt, because that’s what I have always been. My mom doesn’t think I am grown-up enough to handle adult problems. I’m not saying she’s wrong, but I’m not so sure she’s right. Either way, wouldn’t it be something to be treated as if I were old enough to understand, as if I could help? Because one day I will be, and maybe that day will come sooner than she thinks.

  I tuck my laptop under my arm. “Good night, Mom.”

  “Night, Little Bird.” Her fingers flying over the keyboard, she does not look up.

  5

  Dare to Admit It When Your Brother Is Right (Argh!)

  I still don’t see why you’re so down,” says Langley, sweeping back her thick ginger hair. She bends toward her computer screen. “I would be thrilled if I got to spend the whole summer at a fantabulous ski lodge in the mountains with no responsibilities. Instead, I am stuck here cleaning out the refrigerator and picking slugs out of the garden, which, if you ask me, should be considered child abuse. And all because of you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because the minute you left, my mom gave me a summer to-do list that is longer than my hair. Look at this. Just look at it!” She holds a piece of paper up to the screen. It’s too close for me to read it, but I pretend I can.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I still think being bored is worse than being busy. We’ve been in Whistler a week, and
the only thing my mom will let me do is babysit Wyatt. Yippee.”

  “If I get all my stuff done, Mom says I can go to the lake this afternoon.”

  “The lake?” My stomach pitches. Langley is going to Lake Wilderness. Without me. “Is Annabeth going too?” I ask, although I know the answer.

  “Yes, but it won’t be the same without you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I mean that in more ways than one. You know how Annabeth rows. We’ll be going in circles all day.”

  We giggle.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you I saw Aaron Hasenbuhler at the store,” she says.

  Langley has been crushing on Aaron since March. It was a secret crush. All of our crushes are secret. We aren’t brave enough to confess them to anyone but each other.

  “Did you talk to him?” I ask, knowing full well she didn’t. Neither of us has that much courage.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Nooooooo!” I almost topple off my bed, taking my laptop with me.

  “I said I was going to the lake today and he said he might see me there because he wanted to go fishing and I said I liked fish and then I started blubbering something about ‘but not tuna but that doesn’t matter because there are no tuna in Lake Wilderness’ and it got ugly from there. That boy is like cotton candy for the brain.”

  “The important thing is you did it. You were brave enough to talk to him.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” She clasps her hands. “Aaron looks exactly like Caden Christopher, don’t you think?”

  “C . . . Caden Christopher?”

  Is she serious? Aaron Hasenbuhler looks nothing like the most popular teenage singer in America. Caden is tall and has wavy blond hair. Aaron is short and has a brown crew cut. Caden has a dimpled jaw. Aaron has a pimpled jaw. Caden has ice-blue eyes. It’s a little hard to tell what color Aaron’s eyes are. His eyes are sort of hidden beneath two bushy eyebrows that are few hairs short of meeting in the middle. Still, Aaron is a nice guy, and Langley likes him, so why not?

  “Uh . . . sure,” I say. “They’re practically twins.” I shiver as Rose and Veranda’s smug faces pop into my head.

  “Did you hear his new release?” Langley is asking.

  “Aaron’s?” I tease.

  “No!”

  Of course I’ve heard it. He’s my favorite singer too. “ ‘Hangin’ by a Thread’ is crazy good,” I say.

  “ ‘Still hanging by a thread from your heart.’ ” Langley sings the first line.

  I chime in with the second line, “ ‘You kept me on a string from the start.’ ”

  We’ve always liked singing together. We’ve sung a duet in every school talent show since the fifth grade. For a moment, singing with her like this, it doesn’t feel like we are 215 miles—I mean, 345 kilometers—apart.

  “He wrote that song. He writes all his own songs,” says Langley, and I believe her, because she knows everything there is to know about him. Sure, I like Caden Christopher, but I’m not obsessed—not the way Langley is. She knows weird facts about him, like his shoe size (10) and what he eats for breakfast (scrambled eggs). “He’s coming this summer, you know,” says Langley.

  I choke. “To Seattle? Caden Christopher is coming to Seattle?”

  “Yep. He’s doing a whole West Coast tour of the US and Canada. My dad is going to try to get tickets for Annabeth and me. Want him to get one for you, too?”

  I want to shout, Yes, get me a ticket too! but what if we’re still stuck here? “Better not,” I say. “I don’t know when we’ll be home.”

  “Let me know if things change. I’d better go. I want to get a run in this morning before I have to vacuum the entire house.” She gags. “Have you been running?”

  We are both on the cross-country team at school. We are supposed to be running over the summer to stay in shape.

  “I’ve done a couple of short runs on the street, but that’s it.” I roll my eyes. “Mom says I can’t go on the trails by myself.” I do miss it. I love to run. It clears my head and helps me think. Running makes me feel strong. Alive. Worthy.

  “Maybe you can find someone to run with you, like a cute boy or something.”

  “Right,” I say sarcastically, while trying to erase Breck’s face from my mind. “Have fun at the lake,” I say. “Call me if you need rescuing.”

  With a wave that makes her fingers go blurry, my best friend is gone.

  “So, what’s it going to be?” I ask Wyatt.

  I am babysitting my brother. Again. Mom and Grandma Lark are meeting with the webmaster or somebody, but nobody is telling me anything about what is happening with the lodge. I am too young to be trusted. It’s frustrating.

  “I don’t know.” Wyatt groans, his body oozing over the arm of the chair.

  “I promised Mom no TV or video games.” I fan out the brochures on the tree-trunk coffee table. “It’s your last day before you start Day Camp at Lost Lake tomorrow, so it’s up to you. Choose one. It’ll be fun.”

  Wyatt lets out a poor me sigh. To him, any day without TV or video games is not fun. He stares blankly at the flyers.

  “Dinah says there’s an arts-and-crafts fair in the village,” I say.

  “Nah.”

  “How about putt-putt golf?”

  “Nah.”

  “What about this one?” I tap the flyer from the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre. “I bet they have some great aboriginal masks and canoes, maybe even some weapons.”

  “Maybe,” he says, barely glancing at the pamphlet.

  “Come on, Wyatt, pick something.”

  “Let me see that one on the end.”

  Wouldn’t you know he’d lock onto the one I was trying to hide? He is gazing right, but I slide out the flyer on the left. “The Whistler Museum. Good choice—”

  “Not that one, Kes. The one on the other side. Is that a bear?”

  I pull out the green flyer from Kodiak Clem’s Bear Tours. As soon as he sees the headline, his bones magically return. Wyatt grabs the pamphlet and starts to read. “ ‘More than fifty black bears freely roam the Whistler-Blackcomb area.’ Wow! Fifty bears. Did you know there were that many?”

  I shake my head. Vigorously.

  He keeps reading. “ ‘Let one of our experienced guides show you the best viewing places for discovering these giants of the forest. From the comfort of a stylish Land Rover, your two-hour excur . . . excur . . .’ ”

  “Excursion. It means trip.”

  “ ‘Your two-hour excursion includes snacks, water, and some of the most scenic views around.’ Let’s do this, Kes. Let’s go see some bears.”

  “I don’t know, Wyatt. Look, it says on the back there’s no guarantee you’ll see any bears. We could drive all over the place for nothing. Besides, I bet they’re probably already booked up today.”

  “Call. Find out. This is what I want to do.”

  I call. I find out. They aren’t booked up. We are on the noon tour. Great.

  Since we have some time to kill, we decide to take the trail down to the village. It’s a sunny day, except for a few cottony clouds scooting across the sky. About halfway down the hill, we leave the sidewalk and follow the footpath shortcut through the woods. A few hundred yards later, we reach a marked fork in the trail. The top arrow on the sign reads LOST LAKE and points to the right, while the arrow below it points left and says WHISTLER VILLAGE. We turn left and go about a quarter mile before the trail ends on the sidewalk of Blackcomb Way near the aboriginal center. Wyatt and I cross the street, then go over the wooden footbridge above Fitzsimmons Creek. I keep to the center of the bridge. I count the lines on my knuckle as I walk, the way Breck taught me. It works. It’s enough to distract me so I don’t think about the bridge collapsing into the rushing river below. The path leads to some steps, which take us between a couple of hotels and into the main village. I love strolling the redbrick pedestrian-only streets, past the outdoor cafés and gift shops. Hotels and condos take up the second and thir
d stories of the buildings, with the bigger hotels rising up around the village.

  “Let’s get a cone at Cows,” says Wyatt.

  We’ve only been in town for a week, but the ice cream store with the big black-and-white fiberglass cow statue out front is already our favorite place to go. Wyatt gets a waffle cone with birthday cake ice cream. It has confetti sprinkles and even smells like cake. Back home, I usually get strawberry cheesecake, but this time I try the Gooey Mooey: vanilla ice cream with toffee, chocolate chunks, and with a thick, swirling ribbon of caramel. It’s delish—superrich, creamy, and true to its name, very gooey!

  We eat our ice cream and slowly walk the Village Stroll—well, I eat and Wyatt inhales! He’s done before we even make it a few blocks to the giant metal rings from the 2010 Winter Olympics. I snap a photo of my brother leaning on an outer ring before we circle back around the outer edge of the village. While Wyatt drools over a BMX bike in the window of a bicycle shop, I finish my cone. I go to toss my napkin and paper into a recycle bin, but have to spend a minute figuring out how to put my hand into the handle to pop up the heavy, metal lid. A label on the hunter-green bin says it’s bear-proof. Yikes. Do bears really come into the village?

  I check my phone. It’s twelve minutes after eleven. “Wyatt, we’d better go. We still have to get lunch before the bear tour—”

  “Kes!” Wyatt is pointing across the square. “There’s the gondola Grandma told us about that goes to the top of Whistler Mountain. We could go this afternoon when we get back from the bears. Wanna?”

  “You want to go on . . . that?” Clinging by metal claws to a thin wire, the gondola cars glide up and down the mountainside. They look like giant ice cubes suspended one hundred feet off the ground.

  “I can’t wait to go,” says Wyatt.

  “I can,” I say under my breath.

  “Grandma says there’s another gondola at the top that takes you from Whistler over to Blackcomb Peak.”

  “Seriously? Across the valley?”

  “It’s called the Peak 2 Peak. How cool is that? Some of the cars have glass floors!”