It could have been the weird shadows that lantern light throws but the moment Billy looked up I knew he was worried about something besides more tourists. I was used to Dad worrying. He'd been worried about something since Mom disappeared, and once she died it's like his worry metastasized and now he worried about everything — and I worried about the holes it made in him, all the gnawing worry. If I lost any more family there wouldn't be any left. As I looked at Billy I wondered what I was missing. Like that the world's total Draco australiensis numbers were still falling and there had been only a few hundred left when they died out in the wild. Like that even with the zoo Smokehill was barely surviving. I knew both of these things. But dragons are so hard to count maybe they were wrong about there being fewer of them. Maybe they were just getting even harder to count. And Smokehill had always barely survived, from Old Pete on. But Dad's a worrier. Billy isn't.
"What's wrong?" I said.
Billy shook his head. He was a good grown-up, but he was still a grown-up, and grown-ups rarely talk about grown-up trouble to kids. Eric took the question "What's wrong?" from a kid as a personal attack, even when it was something like a zoo-food shipment not arriving when it should and it was perfectly reasonable to be worried. I'd often wished Dad would talk about missing Mom to me more. Not only because then I could talk to him back. We could barely mention her at all.
At least Billy didn't lie to me. "Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing I can do anything about either. That's what's wrong." He shook his head again and then looked at me, visibly changing the subject. "What's up?"
I thought again of how I'd've felt if this'd happened three years ago. It was almost hard to get the words out. "Dad says I can do my first solo. Hike into the park and stay overnight." I felt as if I needed to apologize for interrupting him for such a lame reason. It could have waited. "Dan told me I could find you here."
Billy nodded. My solo wasn't news to him — Dad would have discussed it with him first. Even though I knew this was logical and responsible and necessary and all that it made me feel about four instead of almost fifteen. I wasn't really tying my shoes by myself. Dad and Billy were both watching me. I wished Snark was there. Snark was my responsibility. And furthermore he didn't seem to mind. That's being a dog, I guess, not minding being totally dependent on someone who may talk over your head to someone else about you and not let you in on it till everything's already been decided.
"I'm going to Northcamp, day after tomorrow," said Billy. "If you want to come with me you can hike on from Northcamp alone and meet me back there the next day."
Northcamp was one of the permanent camps, and it was five days' hike from the Institute, after the first day in a jeep as far as the jeep track went. I didn't get that far in very often — never in the last almost-three years. This was a really nice offer. "Great," I said, trying to mean it and almost succeeding. "Thanks."
Billy gave me a look that suggested that he knew what I was thinking, and it made me wonder if he felt about his troubles — whatever they were — not so much different from how I felt about mine. Maybe we both needed a dog.
But by the time we were ready to leave, I was up for it, maybe as much as I'd've been if I was only twelve and Mom was there to wave me off: Dad didn't — waving wasn't his style — besides, he was at his desk, like he was always at his desk. I don't mean that as bad as it sounds — we'd had breakfast together and he cross-examined me about what I was going to do in the park by myself and what to do if anything happened. We both knew that if I didn't know it all already he wouldn't be letting me go, but it was a ritual, like waving.
The answer to most of those if-anything-happens questions was "call Billy on the two-way, and stay put," so it wasn't like it was as grisly as Dad's cross-examinations when they were on stuff like algebra and Latin. I suck at languages but Latin's the worst. Maybe "call Billy and stay put" should have made me feel more like a kid too, but it didn't. That's how everybody goes into the park, with a two-way, and someone — a Ranger — always there to listen on the other end. Even Billy didn't go anywhere without someone to check in with. Anyway Dad gave me a hug on the way to his desk and told me to come see him the minute I got back, which should be about two weeks from now. Of course Billy would make me call Dad every day while we were gone, but that was okay too.
Our jeeps were as beat-up and held together with string as everything else at the Institute but the best Land Rover in the world wouldn't get far in Smokehill. Katie drove us in with Martha, deeply envious, in the backseat with me (Eleanor didn't come: one of her few weaknesses is getting carsick, although riding in the back of a Smokehill jeep is more like walloped-by-tornado sick) and late afternoon they let us off by the Lightning Tree, which is one of our landmarks, and a lot of walking trails going all over the park start there. Another way to look at it is that it's maybe one of the (few) good things about never having any money — we couldn't afford to put in any more road even if we wanted to.
"Good luck," Martha said quietly. Martha was born polite, it's like she knew she was going to have Eleanor as a little sister in less than six years and needed to get practicing being nice immediately. Martha is two and a half years younger than me so she was maybe close to her first solo, if she wanted to. I knew she was envying me right now. Maybe it was just the idea of getting away from Eleanor for two weeks.
Billy and I did about six more miles before we camped for the night, and that's good going, believe me. I slept like a log, and woke up as stiff as one too, from sleeping on the ground. I didn't do it enough. Billy's older than Dad, but he didn't creak out of his sleeping bag. I did.
Four days later I felt about four years older when we made it in Northcamp and I got to sleep in a bed again. The grim little bunk beds at all our permanent camps aren't very welcoming, but they look pretty good after five nights on the ground. So does the hot water after you get the generator going. Northcamp smelled funny the way any building does that's been shut up for too long — a little dusty, a little moldy, a little mousy — but we cranked open the windows and got a fire going in the woodstove (and the mice living in the kindling box were not happy, speaking of mousy) and it was pretty nice.
I admit I had a few butterflies in my stomach the next morning — in spite of Billy's cornmeal pancakes, which I swear must be the best in the world — but five days' camping with Billy had reminded me that I still knew how to do everything I needed to know how to do, and I was ready to go by sunup and I went. I wanted to cover some ground. I wanted to make as much of a thing of my first solo as possible, so they'd let me do it again. Which meant I had to make the right kind of thing of my first solo or they'd never let me do anything again. I wanted to come out here for weeks and study dragons. I wanted to come out here for weeks and find some dragons to study.
I had my radio and a compass (and a squirtgun and a flare), the weather was perfect, and I'd been drilled since I was tiny to recognize Rangers' marks. And while Northcamp was a long way into the park by my standards, the area was well used and well designated by the Rangers. There was no way I could get lost if I even half kept my head. There were no grizzlies around here, and you only had to think about wolves later on in bad winters. It was, in the old Institute joke, a walk in the park.