Count Me In Read Free Page A

mouth one after another. If she did that, she’d throw up.
    Cedar was still chewing his brownies when Tess put on her boots and walked out of the hut. She came back a few minutes later carrying a metal bucket. Ashley and Cedar groaned.
    â€œCouldn’t you let us finish dessert first?” Cedar asked.
    â€œYou’ve had enough brownies.” Tess set the pail on the floor with a clang. “I was using the facilities and noticed that the toilet-paper bucket was full. Time to burn it.”
    The brownie turned over in Tabitha’s stomach. “Can’t it go in the outhouse?”
    Tess shook her head. “Because we’re at such a high altitude and the area is so environmentally sensitive, we’re not supposed to throw toilet paper in the outhouse. We burn it instead. The last people to use the hut didn’t do their job, so we’ll have to do it for them.”
    Cedar grinned. “Looks like it’s Tabitha’s turn to do it. She was the last one in the lake today.”
    Tabitha’s jaw dropped. Cedar was as bad as Ashley. How could she have thought he was nice?
    â€œYou can all do it together,” Tess said. “I’ll do the dishes.”
    Cedar and Ashley glared at their mom. Tabitha almost laughed—they looked so much alike—until they turned their glare on her.
    â€œGet going,” Tess said.
    Ashley and Cedar grabbed two kindling pieces each from beside the woodstove and used them to pick up the toilet paper and feed it into the fire.
    Tabitha did the same. It was the grossest thing she’d ever done. Why did anyone choose to go hiking? First you tortured yourself climbing straight up a mountain, then you took an ice bath, ate disgusting food and finished it off by watching someone’s poo burn.
    Ashley leaned nearer to Tabitha. “I wish you’d never come on this trip,” she said.
    Tabitha jerked back. The toilet paper fell off her sticks and onto the floor.
    â€œAsh,” Cedar warned.
    â€œI’m serious,” Ashley said. “This used to be a trip for the four of us, and now here you are instead of Dad. He’d never have let you on this trip. You’re too weak to hike with us.”
    Tabitha threw the toilet paper into the fire. The injustice of what Ashley had said turned her insides into burning coals. “I didn’t want to be here in the first place,” she said. “My parents made me come. I wish I could go home—away from here and away from you.”
    Ashley raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”
    Tabitha didn’t bother replying. She brushed past Ashley and climbed the ladder to the loft.

CHAPTER THREE
    Tabitha pulled on her pajamas while the rest of the family clomped around downstairs. Usually she peed before going to bed, but that would mean going back down through the hut again and going outside in her pj’s. She decided to wait until morning to brush her teeth too. She rummaged through her pack for her headlamp, tucked it beside her and crawled into her sleeping bag.
    As she’d done all summer, she put herself to sleep by reciting the Fibonacci string to herself. She had it memorized to 1597, but she still liked adding the numbers together in her head. 1+1=2. 1+2=3.
    2+3=5. 3+5=8. Since she was little, she’d fallen asleep by counting, but the Fibonacci string was way more interesting than counting by twos. Ashley’s and Cedar’s voices drifted upstairs and broke her concentration.
    â€œDid you hear about Jason’s trip to Cerise Creek last year?” Ashley said.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe was walking to the outhouse, and he heard something in the bushes. Guess what it was?”
    â€œA bear?
    â€œNo, a snake!”
    â€œBig deal,” Cedar said.
    â€œIt was a rattler.”
    â€œWhatever,” Cedar said.
    Tabitha shivered in her sleeping bag. Could there be snakes way up at Lake Lovely Water? She hated snakes. 5+8=13.