Surviving Summer Vacation (2 page)

“She's twelve, did you say?”

“Almost. Same as me.”

“Hmm.” Mrs. Rupe seemed to find that interesting. She gave me a big smile. “How'd you boys like some chopped walnuts on your ice cream?”

Boy, she sure bought lots of good stuff to
eat, I thought. I wished my mom wasn't quite so health conscious. The Rupes even had white bread and Twinkies.

“I think I'll run over and speak to Mrs. Dodge for a moment. Your mother
is
home, isn't she, Lewis?”

“Sure. She's working on the computer,” I told her. I knew Mom wouldn't like being interrupted, nor Mrs. Rupe smoking in our house, but just once couldn't be too bad.

So when I got home, Alison met me at the door, all excited. “Lewis, guess what! I'm going to Yellowstone, too!”

“No kidding,” I said. “That's great. How come?”

“Mrs. Rupe talked to Mom and said it sure would be wonderful if I went along to help with the little kids. And Mom said she didn't see why not, so now I have to pack!”

“Are you getting paid to baby-sit?” I asked.

“She didn't say anything about paying me. But I'll get to see Yellowstone and do everything the rest of you are doing. I wonder if my yellow shorts are clean?”

She dashed off to start filling up her ­suitcase.

I was glad she was going too. We're pretty good friends, and she's usually good for a loan. I couldn't wait to get started.

“We leave when Dad gets off work on ­Friday,” Harry told me that evening. “This is going to be fun!”

“Yeah,” I agreed enthusiastically.

Talk about famous last words.

Chapter 2

On Thursday afternoon the guy from the rental place delivered the motor home to the Rupe house.

Harry and I were in my backyard, eating cherries off our tree and seeing who could spit the pits the farthest. “There it is!” Harry shouted, and we scrambled down out of the tree and raced for his driveway.

The driver was handing over the keys to Mrs. Rupe. “You have any experience driving a big rig like this, ma'am?” he asked her.

Mrs. Rupe flicked the ashes off her ­cigarette, and they almost landed on ­Ariadne's head. She didn't seem to notice. “Oh no,” she said. “My husband will do all the driving. He can drive anything.”

“Okay. All the papers are in order. Your
husband already signed them. I just need your signature here too. Have a good trip,” the driver said.

He went out to the car that was waiting for him, and we all swarmed over the motor home.

It was the biggest one I'd ever seen. On the outside it was cream colored with light blue trim. On the inside it had blue carpeting and upholstery, and it sure was fancy.

“Wow!” Harry said, plumping down in the driver's seat. “I bet they don't have any more gauges and stuff than this in a 707.”

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!”