Pack Trip by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page A

sensibly. Not the part where someone took a reckless risk, endangering somebody else who tried to rescue her.”
    “I wasn’t in danger,” Lisa protested. “It’s perfectly safe there. The water is more than ten feet deep.”
    “True,” Christine countered. “But you didn’t know that at the time. You could have been swimming down into four feet of water covering dangerous sharp rocks.”
    “But at least Amy’s okay,” Lisa said.
    “Sure Amy’s okay,” Kate said. “Amy will always be okay, or else she won’t be, and it will be her own fault. It’s
Lisa
I’m worried about.”
    “She’s trouble, Lisa,” Christine said. “Amy is the kind of person who will always be getting herself, and anybody else she can bring along, into lots and lots of trouble.”
    “You don’t understand,” said Lisa. “She’s had a hard life. Her parents are divorced—”
    “Lots of parents are divorced,” Kate said. “That doesn’t give their children the right to risk their lives.”
    “Or anybody else’s,” Christine finished.
    Lisa propped herself up on her elbows and looked at her friends. “Amy isn’t the only person in that family,”she said. “There’s Seth, too. He’s got his hands full with Amy, and I really feel sorry for him. I just want to help.”
    “Helping isn’t going to help,” Kate said.
    Stevie pulled herself out of the water and spread her towel out next to the cluster of her friends. “What’s up?” she asked. “Am I missing a Saddle Club meeting?”
    “Sort of,” Kate told her. “The kind where we help other members, even when they don’t know they need help.”
    “Only in this case they’re trying to tell me
not
to help someone else, namely Amy.”
    “She can be pretty funny,” Stevie said, recalling some of her song lyrics.
    “Sure.
Sometimes
,” Kate said pointedly.
    “If you like sick jokes,” Christine added.
    “All she needs is a little help,” Lisa insisted.
    “What she needs is a
lot
of help,” Kate replied.
    Lisa knew that Kate meant well and that she was probably right about Amy, at least to some degree. But what Kate didn’t understand was that Lisa wasn’t helping Amy so much as she was helping Seth. Maybe Amy couldn’t be helped, but she was convinced that Seth could be. Moreover, she was convinced that she was the one who could do it.

“I THINK WE have about two hours before dark,” Eli said to the young riders after dinner that night. “Jeannie and I are going to relax here by the camp fire while you all go on a scavenger hunt. Two teams of four.” He looked at the group assembled in front of him and put Carole, Kate, Christine, and John on one team. Lisa, Stevie, Seth, and Amy were the second team. “Here are your lists.” He handed them to Christine and Seth. “The first team back with everything wins breakfast in bed, delivered by the other team. Everybody is due back here by dark. If neither team gets everything, then the team with the most items wins. Got it?”
    They nodded.
    “Then, go!”
    Carole, Kate, and John circled Christine so they could read the list.
    “Bird’s nest, piece of granite, animal tooth, pine cone …” Carole read.
    “I know just where to start,” John announced. “Come on, this way.”
    The team headed to the east, following John. As they left the campsite, Carole could already hear bickering from the other team. Amy was at the center of it. “Let
me
have the list,” she whined to Seth. Carole was glad Amy wasn’t on her team.
    “The hardest thing on this list is going to be the bird’s nest,” Kate said.
    “Oh, no, it’s not,” John said. “I saw one when Carole and I were watering the horses. It’s up in a pine tree not far from here.”
    John knew right where to go. He took them to a scraggly pine tree that bordered the field where the horses were pastured. “See, it’s up there,” he said, pointing.
    It was up, all right. It was about twenty feet up, and the lowest branches on the tree