Surviving Summer Vacation Read online

  Billy pushed between us to stab at a red button beside a tiny TV on the dashboard. “What’s this?” he demanded.

  “It’s a closed-circuit television,” I said. I’d never seen one before, but that had to be what it was; the screen had lit up, and I could see Alison coming toward us from the rear. “Neat.”

  Alison disappeared from the screen and a minute later stuck her head in at the doorway. “Gosh, is this what we’re going to ­Yellowstone in?”

  “This is it,” Mrs. Rupe said. She still had the cigarette in her hand, though she’d forgotten to smoke it. About two inches of ash fell off it onto the blue carpet. “Dad and I will take the bedroom, you boys can open up the couch, Alison and Ariadne can have the bed that makes up in the dinette and Billy can have a sleeping bag on the floor.”

  “I want a sleeping bag,” Ariadne said.

  “Yes, we’ll all use sleeping bags. Only yours will be on a nice bed,” Mrs. Rupe said. “Oh, good, there’s an ice maker. And look at the size of the refrigerator and freezer!”

  “We can take lots of ice cream,” Harry said, swiveling in his seat. “Hey, there’s a Blu-ray player and a big TV, too! Can we rent some new movies?”

  We prowled through the enormous thing, exclaiming over the microwave and the stove and the cupboards and the bathroom with a shower and everything.

  “My grandpa has a camper, but it’s nothing like this,” I said. “I’ll bet even Mom would enjoy camping in this, Alison. She says she won’t go anywhere there’s no bathroom,” I explained to Harry. “She wants indoor plumbing and hot water.”

  “And no bugs,” Alison added.

  Billy shoved himself between Alison and his mother to examine the toilet. “There’s no way to flush it,” he said.

  “Try the lever there on the floor,” I suggested. “Step on it.”

  Billy put out a foot and stepped on it. Water gushed around inside the bowl, and his face lit up. “Hey, look! It works!”

  He just kept standing there, pushing on the lever, while the rest of us moved on to the bedroom at the back of the coach.

  It had a queen-size bed, a big closet with mirrored doors, and another TV, this time a little one mounted on the wall.

  “Hey, all right!” Harry approved. “We’ll get a supply of movies and watch them on the way!”

  “I wanna watch cartoons,” Ariadne said.

  “Star Trek,” Billy said from the bathroom where he was still watching the water swirl around in the toilet bowl.

  “Very nice,” Mrs. Rupe said. “All the comforts of home.” She took a drag on the ­cigarette, and scattered ashes across the bedspread before she turned to leave. “Now, everybody get your luggage, and I’ll round up the groceries and we’ll start loading up. There are great big storage compartments underneath for whatever we can’t get inside.”

  I’d felt kind of jealous when Buddy left for Texas, but when I told him about taking a trip in this thing, he was going to be absolutely green.

  Mom and Dad listened to everything Alison and I had to say about the rented motor home while we ate scalloped potatoes with ham. I took small helpings of the green beans and carrot salad because if I didn’t Dad would tell me to anyway.

  “Sounds pretty nice,” Dad admitted.

  Mom sighed. “Wouldn’t it be fun to take a trip like that? You kids are lucky to have made friends with the Rupes. You will remember your manners, I hope. Eat whatever they offer you.”

  “They’re going to offer us lots of good stuff,” I reassured them. “I saw what they were loading into the cupboards and the refrigerator.”

  “And do your share of the work,” Dad advised. “Pick up after yourselves. Don’t expect someone else to do it. Take your turns washing dishes—”

  “They’re taking tons of paper plates,” ­Alison interrupted.

  “And don’t interrupt when someone else is talking,” Dad continued, but he grinned. “Sounds like it’ll be fantastic.”

  “Honey,” Mom said, “do you think we could ever take a trip like this?”

  “I don’t know if I want to tackle driving something thirty-seven feet long,” Dad told her. “I think you almost need to be a truck driver to handle it. A smaller rig might work, though. Where would you want to go?”

  “Disneyland,” Alison and I said together.

  “I was thinking more of a week on the beach,” Mom said. “Lying in the sun, listening to the ocean, reading. Eating out.”

  “The whole purpose of having an RV with a complete kitchen,” Dad pointed out, “is so you can save money by doing your own cooking.”

  “This is my daydream,” Mom said, “and it has no cooking in it.”

  “We’ll do everything right,” Alison assured them, “so they’ll invite us again sometime. And maybe I’ll do so well with Ariadne and Billy that they’ll want me all summer as a baby-sitter. I have the impression that they drive Mrs. Rupe crazy, and if she has a choice, she’ll get a sitter so she can read instead of watching them.”

  I wondered if, when we came home from Yellowstone, I would still be able to make Harry think it was a treat to run the lawn mower.

  We had an early lunch on Friday so we could leave as soon as Mr. Rupe got home. He took off at two o’clock and was home by a quarter after. He was a tall man, the only one in his family with no red in his hair. In fact, he had so little hair, just a fringe above his ears and across the back, that it was hard to see just what color it was. He had freckles, though, like Harry’s, all over his arms and hands.

  He looked at all the stuff assembled on the lawn and rested his hands on his hips. “You really think this is going to all fit, Ada?” he asked his wife. “Surely we don’t need to take everything we own. We’re only going to be gone nine days, and they have Laundromats on the campgrounds. And it won’t hurt the kids to wear a pair of jeans several days in a row.”

  Mrs. Rupe was carrying a box of groceries, stuff she’d bought at the last minute. “If you think I’m going on vacation to spend my time in the Laundromat, you’re mistaken, Milton. With all that storage space, it will fit if you work at it, I’m sure.”

  Mr. Rupe worked at it. Twice he had almost everything in, then took it out and started over. Finally it all fit except for some bottled water in plastic jugs that had to sit inside on the floor near the dinette.

  “Never know what kind of water you’re going to get in strange places,” Mrs. Rupe said.

  A minute later, Billy tripped over one of the jugs and knocked it into the stairwell, where the cover popped off. The gallon of spring water flooded the steps.

  “Well, open the door, Harry, and let it run out,” his mother said, so Harry did.

  “Are we ready?” Mrs. Rupe asked as the last compartment door was locked and Mr. Rupe joined the rest of us inside. “What’s that?”

  “That” was someone frantically honking a horn behind us on the street. I put my face against the window to peer out. “It’s somebody in another motor home,” I said. “It looks just like this one.”

  “Idiots,” Mrs. Rupe said. “What are they doing, delivering us two motor homes?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Rupe got out, so we all did, too. Alison hung on to Ariadne, but Billy raced toward the other motor home and would have gone right into the street if Harry hadn’t grabbed him.

  A different guy from the first time got out and walked toward us, smiling. He was kind of heavy and he wore a pair of coveralls that said, ACME V RENTALS, SYD, on the pocket.

  “We don’t need another one,” Mrs. Rupe pointed out.

  Syd nodded. “I know. But we gave you the wrong one.”

  A frown was forming on Mr. Rupe’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  “A new employee didn’t know the difference and brought you the wrong coach. I need to trade that one for this one. The one he brought you by mistake had already been rented
to someone else.”

  The frown got deeper. “What sense does that make, if they’re just alike? They are, aren’t they?”

  “Almost, sir. The people who put a deposit on that one had specified they needed an ice maker, and the other one doesn’t have one.”

  “But we need the ice maker too,” Mrs. Rupe said, frowning the same as her husband. “We’re taking all these kids, and we’ll be drinking pop for nine days. Of course we want the one with the ice maker, Milton, and we got this one first. They probably aren’t traveling with five kids, and they can make ice in the freezer.”

  Syd started to lose his smile. “I’ve got the papers right here, ma’am. See? Here’s the license number of that coach, and the papers are made out in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hobard. So I have to trade motor homes.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Mrs. Rupe exclaimed. “Don’t let him get away with that, Milton!”

  Her husband gave her an annoyed look, but he was even more annoyed with the guy from the RV rentals place. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to pack all that stuff in this coach? If you think I’m going to unload it now and move it all over again into that coach, you’re out of your mind.”

  “But sir, it was a mistake on the part of a new employee—”

  “It was a mistake on somebody’s part, maybe,” Mr. Rupe said, “but it wasn’t my mistake, and I’m taking the coach I already have. Ada, get the kids back inside. We’re leaving.”

  “But sir—look, Mr. Rupe, it’s imperative that we exchange coaches—”

  “Not to me, it isn’t. If you have a new employee, someone with experience should be checking on him before a customer puts nine days’ worth of supplies into a rig. Get in, kids, we’re leaving. We’re late enough now.”

  So we got in, and Mr. Rupe closed the door in the guy’s face and took his seat up front.

  We were ready to roll. Mr. Rupe turned on the engine, and the big coach throbbed ­gently beneath us. Mrs. Rupe tightened her seat belt in the copilot’s seat up front, and all us kids sat on the couch or the easy chairs or on the floor. We didn’t have any seat belts.

  Harry leaned back with his hands behind his head. “This is the life,” he said.

  “Right, this is the life,” I echoed. I could see Syd still standing on the lawn, and he looked furious.

  Mr. Rupe shifted into reverse and began to back out into the street.

  There was a screeching of brakes and then a horn blew furiously. Harry and I turned to look out the window.

  “I think we almost backed into Mr. Gilligan’s pickup,” I said. Mr. Gilligan, who lives across the street, was red-faced and angry looking as he drove around the back end of the motor home.

  Mr. Rupe began to ease backward again, and his wife spoke sharply.

  “Watch it, you’re going to hit—well, it was only a little tree. Maybe it’ll grow back.”

  “This thing’s so long it’s hard to tell how wide I have to swing to get around anything,” Mr. Rupe said under his breath.

  “I have to go potty,” Ariadne said.

  “Can’t you at least wait until we’re out of the driveway?” her mother asked, but Alison said quickly, “I’ll take her, Mrs. Rupe.”

  My sister stood up and fell forward on her face in my lap. Alison is pretty graceful most of the time, and I was surprised.

  Billy, who had been sitting on the floor in front of her, looked up with a cherubic smile. “I can tie shoelaces,” he said.

  Sure enough, he’d tied Alison’s laces together in a double knot. I thought maybe his parents would tell him that wasn’t a good thing to do, but they didn’t pay any attention. Mrs. Rupe wasn’t paying attention and Mr. Rupe concentrated on steering the big motor home down our narrow street without hitting any of the parked cars on either side.

  “Be careful, Milton, you’re going to scrape the . . . well,” Mrs. Rupe said as we lurched over the curb going around a corner, “I guess this takes a little getting used to.”

  We were only a block from home, and I was beginning to get the idea that Mr. Rupe wasn’t such a good driver, at least not with a big rig like this. I looked at Alison, who had just come back from the bathroom, and decided she thought so too.

  I spoke under my breath to Harry. “Did your dad ever drive anything this size before?”

  “I don’t think so,” Harry said. “Don’t worry. He’ll get the hang of it.”

  “I’m hungry,” Billy announced about the time we went up the ramp onto the freeway. “Can I have a candy bar?”

  “You know where they are,” his mother said without turning around. “Milton, look out!”

  A car narrowly missed us as we merged into the traffic on I-5, and once more a horn blared. Mr. Rupe muttered under his breath again. “You’d think they could see a rig as big as this one and go around it,” he said.

  I don’t drive yet—you can’t even get a learner’s permit in Washington until you’re fifteen and a half—but I knew that a vehicle coming onto the freeway was supposed to blend in with the fast traffic already moving, not just drive in front of it.

  My mouth felt a little bit dry, so when Harry got up to get some Cokes out of the fridge, I had one, and so did Alison.

  “I want some too,” Ariadne said, and Billy piped up, “So do I.”

  “Not too much for Ariadne this time of day,” Mrs. Rupe said, “or she’ll wet the bed. Why don’t you get some paper cups down, Alison dear, and divide a can between them?”

  Just as she got up to do that, we swerved around a truck, and it nearly threw Alison off her feet. She grabbed for the back of a chair and clipped her hip on the corner of the table. She showed me the bruise it left later, a dark purple spot.

  She didn’t say anything, though, just got the cups and divided a can of pop between the kids. Ariadne looked into hers. “Ice,” she said.

  “Ice,” Billy echoed, holding up his cup.

  Alison added ice to both cups. She had no more than sat down when Billy placed his cup on the floor. A moment later, he forgot it was there and knocked it over with his knee, where it poured ice and pop all over my feet.

  “Oh, it spilled,” Billy said.

  Mrs. Rupe looked around. “Alison, dear, there are plenty of paper towels. Clean it up, will you?”

  I bent over and began to pick up pieces of ice, putting them back into the empty cup, while my sister got the towels to sop up the mess. It left a dark, wet spot on the blue carpet.

  “Man, this is the way to travel,” Harry said. “While you’re up, Alison, why don’t you get us out a package of those barbecue-flavor potato chips?”

  Alison hesitated for a moment, expecting Harry’s mother to object, but she didn’t, so ­Alison handed over one of the bags of chips. Harry popped it open and passed them around.

  So we roared down the freeway, off on our adventure with all the luxuries anyone could ask for. If my feet hadn’t felt so soggy and sticky, and Mr. Rupe’s driving hadn’t made me kind of nervous—though he did better on the straightaway, where all he had to do was steer forward—I would have figured this was going to be one of the all-time great vacations.

  Chapter 3

  It was a really great campground where we stayed the first night.

  There was a heated swimming pool, and a wading pool for the little kids. Alison could even watch them from the bigger pool, so she could swim too. “Help me, though, Lewis,” she said. “I don’t think I can trust either one of them. I remember how Mom used to put life jackets on us. I wish Billy and Ariadne had some.”

  They loved the water, though neither of them could swim. After Billy came racing toward the bigger pool and jumped in and we had to fish him out, I thought it might be a good idea to teach him some of the basics. I had an uneasy feeling Alison was going to need more help than I’d figured. We showed them how to hold their breaths and put thei
r faces under the water, so they wouldn’t be afraid if they fell in accidentally and we weren’t there to rescue them, and how to dog-paddle.

  It was nearly dark when we came out of the pool, and there were lights on throughout the park. Mr. and Mrs. Rupe had set up lawn chairs beside the motor home. She was smoking, and he was barbecuing hamburgers on a grill. She had put out a bunch of chips and dip and an ice chest of pop, and there was a carton of deli potato salad.

  “What’s for dessert?” Harry asked as we were finishing off our third burgers. “Ice cream? With chocolate syrup?”

  “Get it yourself,” Mrs. Rupe said.

  I wondered if Mom would relax her nutritional standards on a trip like this. She likes lots of salads and vegetables, and we don’t usually get ice cream more than once a week or so. Her idea of dessert is more likely to be a dish of applesauce or fresh berries.

  “Pretty good, huh?” Alison asked, grinning over the enormous bowl of rocky road ice cream she had balanced on her knees.

  “Not bad,” I admitted, grinning back. “It’s going to be a great trip.”

  It wasn’t quite so great when we made up the beds. The couch was supposed to sleep two, but the two needed to be smaller than Harry and I were. I was squashed against the wall. We each had a sleeping bag, but they took up too much space if we used them individually, so we spread his on the bottom and mine on the top for a cover. The trouble was that they couldn’t be zipped together because they didn’t match, so our feet kept sticking out. When you get up in the mountains, it’s cold at night, even in the summer. And the top sleeping bag had a tendency to slide off into the aisle every so often. I’d wake up cold and drag it back. Once Harry rolled off the edge and ended up stuck between the couch and the chairs on the other side of the coach. Motor homes aren’t very wide.

  Alison had done the same thing with her sleeping bag and Ariadne’s. It was on the seats of the dinette, though—the table lifted off the top and became part of the bottom—so her feet didn’t stick out because they were against the back of the seat. And Ariadne was smaller than Harry.

  Billy’s sleeping bag was on the floor between the dinette and the kitchen sink.