6 AN UN-BEAR-ABLE INCIDENT

“Ruby,” a voice whispered late that night.

I opened my eyes, but it was too dark to see anything.

“Ruby,” the voice whispered again, closer to me.

Was it a ghost?

Would a ghost know my name?

Probably not, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

I stayed still so it looked like I was asleep.

This is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream, I repeated in my head.

I had almost convinced myself it was, when the ghost grabbed my foot.

“Augh!” I yelled, but a hand clamped over my mouth.

“Shhh, Ruby. It’s me. Myka.”

I opened one of my eyes. “Myka?”

“Yeah, silly. What did you think I was, a ghost?” She laughed to herself, and I decided not to tell her that that was exactly what I’d thought she was. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know…. Late? Super late, but I really have to go.”

“You can’t go by yourself?” I asked, because my sleeping bag was so warm and comfy, and now that I knew Myka wasn’t a ghost, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and drift back into a dream.

“Um, would you?”

Yeah, nope. She had a point.

“Please,” she said. “Remember, your dad said we had to use the buddy system this weekend. No matter what.”

She had me there. We had promised Dad. I sighed and crawled out of my sleeping bag.

“Let me get my shoes on,” I said.

I grabbed the flashlight next to my sleeping bag, and the two of us slipped out of the tent, careful not to wake up Lauren and Emelyn.

The air was chilly but smelled fresh and full of pine.

We walked for to the outhouse in silence, listening to the sounds of the night bugs. It was neat to be up so late. There was something special about being the only ones awake.

We were almost back to the tents when I glanced upward. I gasped.

“What is it?” Myka asked.

I pointed, not wanting to break the magic that swirled around me.

“It’s beautiful!” Myka said as she tilted her head to the sky.

Above us millions of stars sparkled.

“It’s like someone took fairy lights and hung them all over,” Myka said, which was the perfect description.

“This is why people camp,” I whispered. “You’d never see anything like this at home.”

“It would be impossible to count them all,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”

I slowly turned in a circle. Wispy clouds moved across the sky. It was quiet.

So quiet.

As if the entire world were asleep.

The calm of everything around me was exactly what I had been looking for when I’d suggested we get away.

My body had relaxed into a total state of peace. I was hypnotized by the stars, the fresh air, and the rustling of the night.

Wait. Rustling?

My body stiffened as I heard it again.

A rustling in the woods.

A loud rustling in the woods.

A rustling that was made by something that was not worried about keeping quiet as it plowed through the trees, leaves and sticks crunching under it.

Something that might possibly be a bear.

“Um, Myka, did you hear that?” I whispered to her.

“Hear what?” she asked.

“Shh!” I told her, my finger to my lips. “Don’t say a word. This is important. Quite possibly life-and-death important.”

But it was too late. Whatever it was barreled out of the trees and went straight to the picnic table. Soon there was a snorting noise and the sound of paper crinkling.

“The graham crackers!” I said as realization dawned. We must have left some of them out. An invitation for a bear to come to our campsite and have a midnight snack.

I thought about Dad’s rule, and panic set in.

We were going to get eaten by a bear, and it was my fault!

“Don’t move,” I told her. “I’m pretty sure that’s a bear.”

“A bear?” Myka asked, her eyes wide. “What should we do?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said.

What do you even do when there’s a bear? I wondered. Run? Play dead? In all my careful planning, that was something I’d never imagined. I wasn’t prepared, and now we might end up as bear food. I had no clue, and I really didn’t want to find out. I wished I’d asked Dad more about the bears when he had mentioned them.

“What if it goes after everyone in the tents?” Myka asked.

“Don’t say that,” I said, because it was something I hadn’t thought about, and now it was added to my list of fears. My endless list of fears at the moment.

Myka gripped my upper arm so hard that it hurt. I removed her fingers and held her hand instead.

There was a rustling from the bushes near us.

“The bear has a friend!” Myka said.

“We’re under attack!” I shouted, my voice thick with fear.

The bushes shook, and I braced myself for the bear’s BFF to jump out and eat us both.

“If this is the end,” I told Myka, “you’ve been the best of friends to me, and I love you.”

“Right back at you,” she said.

“Hello? Bee? Myka? Everything okay?” a voice called out in the dark.

“Oh no! My dad! The bears are going to eat him!”

“What do we do?” Myka asked. “We need to stop him!”

But there wasn’t any time. The only thing we could do was warn him.

“Dad! Stop! There are bears!” I yelled at the same time that Myka shined her flashlight on the table.

Two pairs of eyes were reflected in the light. Eyes hidden behind black masks.

“Raccoons!” Myka yelled, and burst out laughing. “It’s not a bear! It’s raccoons!”

The animals froze for a moment before they scurried off the table, taking our graham crackers with them.

“Nooooooo!” I wailed as they carried the graham crackers off into the darkness. “Not our s’mores supplies!”

“Girls, I thought I told you to clean everything up when you were done,” Dad said in a stern voice.

“I thought we did,” I said. “I must have missed some.”

“Always double-check everywhere to make sure you put it all back into the SUV,” Dad said, and I nodded. “Animals can get the tops off things, but they can’t unlock cars. Lesson learned. At least it wasn’t a bear.”

I went over to the table and swept the graham cracker crumbs into my hand.

“What are you doing? The raccoons ate everything,” Myka said.

“Cleaning up the crumbs,” I told her. “We need to get rid of this. You never know when they might come back because they want s’more.”

Myka and Dad groaned, but it was good to laugh after thinking we were going to be bear food.

The two of them joined me and helped clear off the table. Our all-you-can-eat buffet was now closed for business.