Short Story #39: Camping!

Prompt: Write a short story about camping. (Word Count: 258)

* * * * * “Mom, there’s no signal out here.” Janie held her phone beneath her mother’s nose, as if its lack of signal bars was more interesting than the ducks in the lake.

“Of course not, we’re campi—ooh, duckling!”

Janie stamped her foot. “How can I check Facebook?”

“You can’t, but you can put your face in a book. I brought Muir and Thoreau. And for fun I brought The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.”

“If I wanted to read a book, I’d’ve asked to be born into this family, which—”

“Which you didn’t,” her mother finished. “Head down that trail and see if there’s signal there. Take your whistle in case a bear attacks or you’re overcome by the scenery.”

Janie tromped away and her mother roughed out the lake and ducks on her sketchpad. Five minutes later whistleblasts in sets of three came from the direction Janie disappeared. Mom dropped her sketchpad, checked the knife on her belt, took off running.

Janie crouched by the trail’s edge, hovering over a struggling blue jay chick. She looked at her mother, pleadingly.

“Not funny when they miss the pigs’ forts.”

“Please, mom. What can we do?”

“Nothing, sweetie. If we leave it alone, it’s mama might be able to help it.”

“Can’t we be its mama?”

Mom shook her head. “We’d only delay the inevitable, and the bird would suffer for it.”

“Camping sucks,” Janie said.

“No, it’s the real world. But, you’re right, sometimes it definitely sucks.”

–30–