Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (best ereader for graphic novels TXT) 📕

tries willing Nick with her mind to just step out of his pants, leave them on the ground, and back away slowly. But Nick hasn’t seen the bear yet.

“Franky, get me some leaves!” he shouts.

“No, Franky, stay put,” Fiona says.

“Why?”

Fiona points. Franky freaks out. “A bear! A bear! Go away, bear! Go away, bear!” He’s waving his arms and jumping up and down, which is exactly what you’re supposed to do when you see a bear. Fiona forgot this important information from orientation.

“Good job, Franky!”

Now Andrew has joined in, and Nick has stepped out of his pants and is jumping up and down with a bare bum. They are all yelling and making themselves big, which, compared with a huge brown bear, doesn’t mean all that much.

“Okay, but back away, guys,” Fiona says. “Slowly. Back away slowly.”

At the last second she thinks to snag Nick’s pants with a long stick and toss them as far as she can in the bear’s direction. That should keep him (or her) busy.

“I don’t have any more pants,” Nick says, but he backs away like Fiona told him to.

“You can have a pair of mine,” says Andrew.

“Okay, yeah,” says Fiona, eyes on the bear. “You can wear Andrew’s.”

Suddenly the bear’s ears prick up and it turns to look over its shoulder. Fiona follows the bear’s gaze….

Oh shit!

Poppy is walking along the trail in her nightgown and slippers. What is she doing out of bed?

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Fiona grabs a metal pot and a spatula. She bangs wildly on the pot to get the bear’s attention.

“Come get these jeans!” she yells. “Yummy, yummy!”

Franky, Nick, and Andrew look at each other questioningly. Yummy?

Poppy hears the banging and stops. The bear freezes too, confused by all the noise; it just stands in the trail, halfway between Poppy and Fiona.

The rest of the camp hears the noise. Lillian runs over, banging a huge cowbell with a stick. Everyone is making as much noise as they can, until the bear looks so confused it heads off in the only direction where no humans are yelling and screaming.

Fiona drops the spatula and the pot, rushes to Poppy, and hugs her hard.

“What are you doing out of bed, Poppy?”

“I was looking for Finn.”

“I’m right here,” says a voice behind Fiona. “I’m sorry, Poppy. I’m here.”

He picks her up and holds her tight.

“I can’t find Elizabeth.”

Fiona is totally baffled. Isn’t Elizabeth scared of Finn?

“What’s going on?” Amy must have arrived with him.

“Poppy is from my hometown,” Finn says. “When her mom found out I was working here, she requested me as Poppy’s counselor.”

“But Elizabeth is scared of you,” Fiona blurts out.

“Her name is Poppy, Fiona,” Amy whispers. “And she doesn’t look scared.”

No time to fill her in.

Poppy is relaxed in Finn’s arms. She even giggles. “Fiona shook Elizabeth’s tail.”

Finn’s face grows serious. “Poppy?” he says. “Did you need to see Elizabeth? Is that why she was here?”

“She was only here for the day.”

“Poppy, why was Elizabeth scared of Finn?” Fiona asks.

“I’ll tell you why,” says Finn, not at all surprised by the question. “Because Elizabeth knows she’s not signed up for camp. Right, Poppy? I can see her with my special invisible mermaid headlamp. She knows I have to call Poppy’s mom if she shows up.”

Fiona just stares at him. Special invisible mermaid headlamp?

“Nobody is mad at you or Elizabeth,” Finn tells Poppy. “But I should still call your mom.”

“Elizabeth really wanted to swim in the lake and splash her tail around,” says Poppy. “She knows I don’t need her anymore, but sometimes she still needs me.”

Poppy rests her head against Finn’s shoulder and closes her eyes. “I want my mom anyway.”

Fiona is so relieved that she never told Amy her suspicions. So relieved that the camp director didn’t take her seriously. Best of all, nobody got eaten by a bear tonight.

Although, unbeknownst to any of them, down by the mud pits, a brown bear is ripping Nick’s other pair of soiled, forgotten pants into smithereens.

THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS

The summer the wildfire ripped through the forest and then licked dangerously at the houses on the edge of town was the summer Jenny learned that fire might actually be her friend.

She hadn’t really paid attention in school when they’d studied ecosystems and how wildfires were the age-old way that the earth took care of itself, since long before the arrival of humans. Her high school had added a new subject, ecology, taught by a very young graduate of the University of Colorado, who had stressed that lightning strikes were necessary: they ignited and burned old growth, thus making way for new growth. Circle of life. Birth, rebirth. The best way to fight fire was with fire. Blah, blah, blah. Why did they need to learn this?

Now, Jenny was surprised to realize that some of it had actually sunk in. During that fateful summer when the wildfire smoke had scorched their lungs every single day and practically the whole town had had to evacuate, Jenny had been consoled by one important thing she’d learned in that class: “Fire is essential for managing the forest. It keeps the ecosystem healthy without interference from man.”

In the margin of her notes, Jenny had written “or woman,” and punctuated it with a smiley face, figuring her young, hip teacher would appreciate the sentiment. Besides, she’d thought, she would never need to know this stuff in real life. The class had mainly been an exercise in equality and the evolution of language, or so she’d thought.

But now, as the woods near her house continued to burn and the winds took a nasty turn, the Forest Service announced a level three evacuation order, and everyone had to scramble to leave their homes, grabbing whatever valuables they could at the last second.

People had built way too close to the forest, and Mother Nature didn’t really give a damn about things like subdivisions or the skyrocketing price of insurance.