By L.E. Blair. Published 1990.
The seventh grade is going on a cross-country ski trip. Did
any of you go on school trips like all the YA kids did? I didn’t.
Anyway, they’re going to Eagle Mountain, and will stay in
cabins. Our four girls get to stay together. Yay. Bit the other half of the
cabin will be filled by Stacy the Great and her clones. Boo.
Allison gets a strange, funny feeling when she learns their
cabin in number fifty-three. And then again when she finds an eagle feather in
her locker. The night before the trip, her grandmother acts a little funny when
she hears Eagle Mountain, and when Allison asks her why, she tells her a story.
Back in the day, there was a Chippewa chief named Eagle
Feather, and he had a wife and baby son he loved very much. He had to go fight
in a big battle against settlers, and when he returned, his wife and son had
disappeared. He searched for them for fifty-three days, and then disappeared
himself. Legend has it he still haunts the woods, and it’s disturbing his
spirit to sleep there.
Then she and Allison’s mom teach her the lullaby his wife
was singing to the baby the last time he saw her.
On the way to Eagle Mountain, the bus the girls are on
breaks down, and they have to wait for a new one. Allison gets a bad feeling.
But the new bus comes, and they get there okay.
After lunch, Sabrina, Randy, and Allison learns how to
cross-country ski. Katie, of course, already knows how. Randy and Alison do all
right, but Sabrina is a hot mess.
The next day, there’s a scavenger hunt on skis. Each cabin
is split up into two groups. The girls think that’s cool, they’re already split
as it is. Everyone is told to stay on their cabin’s trail, and not to go off of
it. Stacy and her cronies get a faster start than Allison and the girls. But
it’s okay, Sabrina spots a shortcut trail on a map. This goes about as well as
can be expected. The trail ends up being an expert level trail, and they have
to deal with fallen trees, a stream, and skiing on the edge of a cliff. But
they eventually make it back only a little worse for the wear. And everyone
wants to hear about their adventure, and not Stacy’s group winning everything.
That night in the lodge it’s ghost story time, told by one
of the corny rangers. He tells the story of Flying Eagle. It’s kind of the same
story, just ya know, more racist. In this version, he’s a fierce warrior who
kept white man skulls. And he had strong magical powers, and is still alive
today, sometimes howling in the woods. It’s a ridiculous story, and Alison gets
mad, but she doesn’t say anything.
Greg, a new friend of Sabrina’s brother that she has a crush
on, calls the story a joke, and starts whooping and dancing around. Randy gets
pissed, and the guys are embarrassed. Sabrina’s crush starts to go away.
Later, the guys succeed in scaring all the girls by making
creepy noises and running around wearing their sleeping bags.
Once they’re all in bed, they hear a crying sound outside,
and figure it must be the boys again. Sabrina gets mad at her brother, and gets
up to go yell at him. But she finds the boys at the door, about to knock. They
heard the noise, too.
Allison says she’ll go find out what the noise is, and she’s
adamant about going out by herself. Her friends, for some reason, let her go
alone.
In the woods, it’s dark, windy, and creepy, and she can
still hear the howling. Then she sees a shape coming towards her, but it just
turns out to be the dog that lives there, Alfie. Allison succeeds in getting
the two of them lost. She decides to sit down on a stump and sing the lullaby.
Right away, the wind calms down. And then she sees a flashlight coming toward
her, and it’s her friends, Stacy and her clones, and the boys. She starts to go
to them, when an eagle feather brushes against her cheek.
Back in the cabin, Allison tells them all the real story of
Eagle Feather. They all, except for Greg, appreciate the story. Greg’s just an
ass. Sabrina’s crush is totally gone, and she stands up to him, and calls him a
jerk. It’s pretty awesome.
After the boys leave, Allison teaches all of the girls the
lullaby. The other girls wish they knew
the same sorts of things about their families, and it makes Allison proud.
o
Randy calls Stacy a bingo-head. I’ve never heard
that before. Is it cool NYC-speak?
o
I guess not, Katie uses it later.
o
The girls make fun of their teacher for having
and wearing a lot of plaid. Whatever. Plaid is the shit. Just wait a couple of
years when grunge comes in, girls.
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