Page 16

NIGHTTIME ON THE prairie is filled with the quiet din of insects and the breeze whispering through the grass. Back in California, it was never this quiet. Not with all the freeways constantly packed with cars and the skies full of aircraft. Plus, it hardly ever got this dark unless we were experiencing rolling blackouts, common during the hottest part of the year. Even then, it always seemed like there was a glow coming from somewhere that kept the sky from going truly black.

But out here, the sky is as dark as India ink and splattered with more stars than I could ever imagine. Even the light from the dying campfire, which sends dancing shadows over the tent walls, can’t dampen the starlight. I take it all in—the cool night air sinking into my pores, the soft chirp of the crickets, the scent of burned wood, the winking constellations—and allow myself a minute of stolen magic. No one needs to know that I don’t completely hate it.

I’m exhausted but I don’t think sleep’s in the cards for me tonight. It never is when I have to spend the night in a strange place and in a strange bed. It doesn’t even have to be strange, either. It just has to be not-my-room and not-my-bed for insomnia to plague me.

11:45 p.m. Someone in the wagon behind us is snoring.

12:28 a.m. The crickets are really chirping now.

12:31 a.m. How many crickets live in the Great Plains?

12:37 a.m. It sounds like millions, and they’re all saying “Go to sleep, go to sleep.” I can’t believe I’m being taunted by insects with wing fiddles.

12:39 a.m. How many different insect species live in the Great Plains?

I glance at my watch again. 12:48 a.m. Great.

“Riles, wake up,” Caleb whispers, shaking my arm with almost enough exuberance to tear it from its socket.

Groggy, I force my eyes open. I can’t believe I actually fell asleep. Or that Caleb had the audacity to wake me up. “What time is it?” I mumble, hating that it’s morning already.

“Dunno,” he whispers. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I ask, glancing at my watch to find that it’s only 4:47 a.m. Ugh.

We’re both quiet for a moment, but all I hear is the never-ending cricket symphony and our shallow breaths.

My eyes flutter closed and I’m just about asleep again when Caleb tugs on my arm. “That. Did you hear that?”

“No, I didn’t.” I toss his hand off. “Go back to sleep.”

“There it is again,” he hisses.

I’m just about to roll over and pull the edge of the sleeping bag over my head when I hear it too: a soft sniffing, snorting sound. It almost sounds like a quiet pig.

Are there prairie pigs in the Midwest? I suppose they’d be feral hogs, which have a reputation for being really mean. There are a few feral hog populations in Southern California that have been known to terrorize residents. I know I wouldn’t want to meet one in a back alley at midnight, let alone on the Great Plains at not-quite 5:00 a.m.

“I think it’s a bear,” Caleb hisses.

“It’s not a bear.”

“How do you know?”

“It doesn’t sound big enough to be a bear.”

“Maybe it’s a little bear.”

“It’s not a bear,” I repeat.

“What are we supposed to do?” he asks, his voice warbling with panic.

As far as I know, we don’t have any food in the tent, so I doubt we’re in any real danger. Still…my brain can’t process complex thoughts in its half-slumbering state. “Go back to sleep,” I mumble, hoping I can cling to the threads of sleep I had managed to snag earlier.

Caleb’s quiet. Maybe he’s taken my advice?

“Riles.”

Maybe not.