Uno

 

THE CAMPGROUND IN Washington was nothing like the KOA campground in Astoria. That one had been like an amusement park compared to this place. Here, there was no “Year-Round Heated Pool!,” no “Giant Bounce Pillow!,” no mini golf, no campwide sing-alongs or marshmallow roasts or snack bar or wifi or anything. Here there were just trees.

That expression about not being able to see the forest for the trees made perfect sense here. Odette felt that the trees crowded out the light, sky—everything.

And there was something wrong with the Coach’s waste line, which meant they couldn’t use the toilet or shower until they got to Seattle, where they could buy a replacement part.

“It won’t be so bad,” Dad said. “We’re camped close to the bathhouse. And the showers take quarters!”

She didn’t see how that was a good thing.

Rex thought it was cool, though. “It’s like a game,” he said, “to see if you can get your whole body washed and rinsed before the water runs out.”

“You can take two quarters, you know,” Odette said.

“Where’s the challenge in that?”

One thing the trees did not keep out was rain. Almost immediately after they’d leveled the Coach and hooked up the electricity, it began to pour.

Dad rushed back inside and slammed the door behind him.

“Well, let’s hope I plugged everything in right,” he said. “It’d be a shame to turn the Coach into a giant toaster, and us into the toast.”

Everyone laughed at that, except Odette. What was wrong with these people? There was nothing funny about accidental electrocution. There was nothing funny about being stuck in this stupid storm, the rain pelting the metal roof of the Coach in a cacophony of misery.

Rex let Paul out of the bathroom so he could wander around for a while. Georgie watched from Odette’s lap as the ferret found a few crumbs in the kitchenette and then disappeared.

“Who wants to play Uno?” Mom asked.

Uno had to be the dumbest game invented. Ever.

“I’ll play, I guess,” Odette said. What else was she going to do? They all squeezed around the tiny table, Mom and Rex sliding into the bench on one side and Dad and Odette on the other. Mom shuffled the cards and passed them around. Three times cards slid off the end of the table. It just wasn’t big enough. The third time, Odette didn’t retrieve the card and pretended not to notice when Georgie snatched it and took it to the back of the Coach to shred it. It was a good card, too. A Draw Four Wild.

Rex was like an Uno savant. He won, as he almost always did. The Coach felt steamy with all their bodies pressed together around the table. The walls around them seemed to shrink toward one another, and Odette’s throat constricted too.

“I’ve gotta get out of here,” she said, getting up and shrugging into her raincoat.

“Take the dog,” her mom called after her.

Outside, even though it was raining crazy hard, at least she could breathe. Georgie, pulling on the harness, seemed amped up by the rain. Her ears flattened against her head, her eyes narrowed into slits. Odette didn’t care where they went, so she just let Georgie lead the way.

The dog scrunched up into her poop squat under an enormous pine tree, and when she was done, Odette just kicked some wet pine needles over it. Georgie sniffed the pile in that gross way dogs do. Then, even though she was dreading going back inside, Odette couldn’t think of anything else to do but head back toward the Coach.

“Detters!” Mom appeared on the path, her hair flattened by the rain. She wasn’t wearing her raincoat. “Honey, have you seen Paul?”

“What?”

“Paul,” Mom said, sounding desperate. “He got out.”

“You didn’t close the door,” Rex wailed. He didn’t even have on shoes. “You let him escape.”

“I shut the door,” Odette argued, but with a sick feeling in her stomach that maybe she didn’t. She couldn’t remember hearing it latch.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said. “We just need to find Paul.”

“Paul! Paul!” Dad shone a flashlight at the base of a tree just next to the Coach. “Come on, Paul.”

They spread out, eyes on the ground, the rain coming down in unrelenting sheets. Odette blinked the raindrops from her eyes, scanning the earth around her for any sign of movement, for a flash of Paul’s white weasel body. Nothing. Just pine needles and rain all around.

Georgie seemed to get that they were looking for something. Her ears perked up into alert and her nose snarfed along. At first Odette envisioned Georgie revealing herself as a hero dog, upturning a pile of pine needles to uncover Paul. But no. Georgie snuffled around aimlessly.

They searched until they were soaked through; they searched until it was dark. They searched until, at last, Dad scooped up Rex’s unwilling, crying body and carried him back to the Coach.

“Paul’s probably just hunkered down somewhere waiting out the storm,” Dad said. He stripped Rex down to his dinosaur-patterned boxer shorts in the kitchenette and rubbed him all over with a towel. Rex’s fingers were blue. His nose was running.

“He’s all alone out there,” Rex wailed. “He thinks I’ve abandoned him!”

“No, no,” soothed Mom. She stood and dripped, petting Rex’s hair. “Paul could never think that,” she said. “Paul knows how much you love him.”

It was awful. And it was all Odette’s fault.

Mom found Rex’s favorite pajamas, and Dad fixed him a mug of hot chocolate, and Odette did her best to stay out of the way, drying off Georgie and stripping out of her heavy wet clothes in the tiny little bathroom. She threw her wet things into the shower and then took Georgie up to bed. Her stomach rumbled in hungry disappointment, but she just wanted to disappear.

When she got under the covers, she felt something down by her feet. Warm, and fuzzy, and alive. “Paul!” she said. She fished under the blankets and came out with a bleary-eyed sleepy ferret. “It’s Paul!”

“Thank god,” Dad said, and Mom cheered, and Rex clambered up the ladder to snatch the ferret from Odette’s hands.

“You bad boy,” he crooned, snuggling Paul close and kissing him again and again before taking him back down. “I didn’t know you could climb a ladder!”

Absolutely ridiculous. “I can’t believe you guys didn’t look for him,” Odette said. She was furious.

“Detters, honey, of course we looked for him! Just not up there.”

Honestly, Mom could be so oblivious. “I don’t get it,” Odette said. “Why do you guys immediately have to jump all the way to crazy? You should look everywhere before making us all trudge around in the rain. Don’t you know how to do anything?”

They all looked up at her, even Paul with his beady little red eyes. At last Dad said, “Honey, this isn’t really about the ferret, is it?”

She would cry if she spoke. Either that, or she would scream. Again, the walls seemed to grow closer, the air to thicken. Without a word, Odette pulled the covers up over her head.