ONE

It's after midnight when I hear his car in the driveway and I stumble out of bed.
      "Ow!"
      "Oh! Sorry!" I say, forgetting my best friend is asleep in the trundle bed next to me.
      She sits up, rubbing an elbow. "Your dad?"
      I press my face against the window and see the Jeep, illuminated in the spotlights above our garage. Green and red, a snorkel attached to the hood, nets and snake traps strapped to the top, and a bungee cord holding a container of gas to the bumper. "He's home." I try to whisper, because it's best if Mom doesn't know yet since--officially--he was supposed to be home in time for my sixth-grade graduation earlier that night. But when you're dealing with time zones and monster alligators and life and death, can you really be expected to keep appointments?
      "Your mom's going to kill him. I'm out of here," Harper says, sliding into her flip-flops.
      I swear I see movement in one of the cages tied to the roof rack. Snake? Mongoose? Kitten? Harper wedges in next to me at the window.
      "Put your bag down," I say. "Mom will never let you leave."
      The door to the Jeep pops open and Dad steps onto the driveway. It's like a thousand-pound weight is lifted off my back. He's home. He's safe. But then my idiot brother, Jake, slides out of the back door of the car, his arm in a sling, limping across the driveway. Harper gasps, but honestly, is it really a surprise that Jake comes back injured every time?
      "Alison?" Mom calls from her bedroom.
      "It's Dad," I say, bolting out of my room and down the stairs.
      Before I can even get to the kitchen, Harper skidding after me, the door to the garage bursts open and there stand Dad and Jake, mud-streaked and sunburned. Dad lifts me up and tosses me in the air like I'm two instead of twelve. "Ali-Gator!" he says, nearly squeezing the organs out of me.
      "Can we not say that word?" Jake moans. His khaki sling looks like it was made out of an old pair of cargo shorts.
      "Hi, Jake," Harper says in her girly voice she usually saves for Brad Garrison. It's disgusting. Dad's been letting Jake go on shoots for his show, Survivor Guy, ever since he graduated high school last year, and now Harper thinks he's some kind of celebrity. I keep reminding her he's the same kid who crashed his car into the garage a few months ago.
      Dad shakes his head. "You'll be fine, Jake. It was only a baby. FACT!" he says and points a finger at him. "They almost never carry diseases."
      "Where have you been?" I ask. "I thought you were in Saskatchewan."
      Jake shifts his arm in the sling, cringing. "Louisiana bayou."
      "You missed graduation," Harper pipes in, putting an arm around my shoulder.
      I push her away. How could she say that? My dad just came all the way from the bayou, where Jake practically lost his arm to an alligator. What better reason than 'I saved my own son from the vicious jaws of a man-eating reptile?' Excuse accepted, in my book.
      "Production went over, Ali." Dad drops his three-hundred-pound backpack in the kitchen, pots and spoons and fishing nets clattering to the floor. "Where's your mom?"
      I point upstairs and Harper starts to head toward the door. "Will you knock it off?" I say. "She'll be happy to see he's okay." But I know she's probably fuming. It's like she doesn't even get that Survivor Guys have a commitment to the wilderness. And sometimes that means sacrifice.
      Dad climbs the stairs, his hiking boots leaving crumbs of dirt on the carpet. "Michelle?"
      We stand in silence for a moment, Jake picking at his sling.
      "You could have called, you know." I cross my arms. "We were worried."
      Jake rolls his eyes. "Sure, next time I'm wrangling mosquitoes the size of bats and losing half my arm to an alligator, I'll whip out my phone and give you a call." He snorts and so does Harper. Traitor. How could she think Jake is anything but seriously disgusting? I know for a fact he never changes his socks.
      "Can we go back to bed now?" Harper asks, yawning. "It's like one in the morning."
      I yawn too, my body suddenly heavy with exhaustion.
      "I got most-improved player at the archery banquet," I say to Jake as we all head up the stairs.
      "What? No you didn't," Harper says.
      "Well, I almost did," I reply. "Coach said I was the runner-up most-improved while you were in the bathroom."
      "Aren't you the only person on the team?" Jake laughs at his own joke.
      I flick him in the back of the neck. "Harper's on the team too." But to be honest, the team was pretty pathetic. We spent most of our time slurping down the blueberry-vanilla smoothies our coach brought from his side job at the smoothie stand downtown. My mouth waters.
      Dad appears at the top of the stairs, stretching. "Well, that's it for me tonight. Time to hit the hay."
      He passes us on his way down, stopping to squeeze Jake's alligator-bite arm. "Ow!"
      "FACT," Dad says. "That means it's healing."
      Harper and I glance at each other because we're pretty sure that's not a fact. But Dad's tired and probably half delirious from the long drive. He kisses me on the forehead and flashes a thumbs-up to Harper. "See you kids tomorrow." I watch him leave through the front door.
      "Where's he going?" Harper asks.
      "Probably left something in the Jeep," I say.
      Jake looks at me. "He's going to a hotel."
      "What? Why?" Harper says, struggling to catch up with us on the stairs.
      "He hasn't lived here for like three months," Jake says. "That's what happens when parents--"
      "Is that a tick on your leg?" I say, then barrel past him and into my room, Harper trailing me.
      I turn off the light and dig myself under the covers.
      "I thought we told each other everything," Harper says in the darkness.
      I peek out of my blanket and see she's sitting up on her bed in the tiny bit of moonlight coming through the window. Behind her, my shelves are overflowing with books on survival: How to Fight off a Bear,The Essential Guide to Poisonous Plants,How to Treat a Jellyfish Sting on a Deserted Island, and a thousand more. I sleep with the most important one under my pillow: A Survivalist's Guide. Written by my own grandpa, General Frederick D. Kensington.
      "You were the first person I told when Peaches died," Harper continues.
      I groan, kicking my covers off. "It's just temporary. A short separation." The word burns my throat. "Barely worth mentioning."
      "I even told you about my wart." She lies back down, out of sight.
      "There's nothing to tell, Harper. Really." I roll over and hang off the edge of the bed. "It's just since my dad's show got picked up by a TV network, it's doing really well. So, he's barely home."
      She pulls her blankets up and turns away from me.
      "He has his own bear spray brand, you know. Survive-A-Bear."
      Silence.
      "Comes in pink."
      "It's all about honesty, Alison," Harper says, still facing away from me. "Dr. Tom says if you can't be honest with yourself, then you can't be honest with anyone else."
      Dr. Tom is the head of our Healthy Is Happy! afterschool club, which we'd almost been kicked out of twice for smuggling root beer barrels onto the activity bus. Apparently they're made out of pure evil and will rot your teeth and the rest of your insides before you can even cry for help.
      "Dr. Tom wears socks with his sandals. I thought we weren't taking him seriously," I reply.
      Harper burrows deeper into her bed with an angry flick of her blankets.
      My stomach grumbles and I wish I had a root beer barrel right now, because actually they're not evil, but pure sugar goodness. Perfect for getting out the sour taste I suddenly have in my mouth.
      "Well, good night," I say. Harper doesn't answer.
      I throw myself back onto my pillow, my head hitting something hard. I reach underneath and pull out my survival book and something new that hadn't been there before. It's a beat-up box, taped together and layered in dirt. When I was really little, Dad used to leave coins and feathers and beads under my pillow when he got back in the middle of the night from his trips, so I know it's from him.
      A plume of dust settles on my bed as I try to open the box. I brush the dirt from my sheets, pulling the tape apart more carefully. This could be anything: dried-up flowers; seeds; fabric; a living, breathing animal. Dad's not the best gift-giver, but like my mom always says, it's the thought that counts.
      I open the box all the way, and take out the trinket nestled inside. It's a mudded-up compass. I pick off the dried mosquito stuck to its face and turn it over. There's a message scratched into the back, and it says FOREVER MY SURVIVOR GIRL. HAPPY GRADUATION.
      I knew he didn't forget.