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okay.” He sits on a rock at the side of the trail and pulls out his water bottle. I choose another rock. The snake stops rattling but stays where it is, a spiral in the middle of the trail.
I mentally rehearse everything I’ve learned in first aid about treating snakebite. Then, to distract myself, I get out my guidebook to fungi and look up a crimson-topped mushroom growing near us. “ Russula ,” I tell Nick. “‘The sickener.’ It’s poisonous.”
“Are you suggesting we feed it to the snake?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m sure he’ll open wide for us.”
I love that name, “the sickener.” It leaves no doubt what the mushroom does. What I find especially interesting are the entries for some of the other mushrooms that say, “Edibility unknown.” It’s hard to believe there are mushrooms nobody has ever tried yet.
Not that I’m planning to be the first.
“That snake’s not going anywhere,” Nick says. “Maybe I can get a long stick and move it.”
“No way.”
“Most times when they bite people, they don’t even inject venom.”
“Oh, brilliant, Nick. That’s very comforting. I can’t believe I thought about—” I choke myself off just in time. I’ve almost said I can’t believe I thought about kissing you. I’m so used to joking with Nick about whatever pops into my head that I don’t know when to shut up.
“Thought about what?” But he’s looking around for a stick and doesn’t notice that I don’t answer him.
I can see I need to take action here before we both end up stretched out lifeless on the ground, puncture marks in our legs. “All right, let’s try going around him. Up the cliff.”
“It’s not a cliff,” Nick says again. As if calling it something else will make the climb easier.
We scramble upward, using our hands as well as our feet. The rock scratches our fingers and blunts our nails. It’s impossible to keep my fingers and toes away from every cranny that could harbor one of our snake friend’s relatives, so I plow ahead, straining my ears for any hint of a rattle. Grit wedges itself under my nails. Step-by-step, we angle back toward the trail. The snake still rests in the middle of the path behind us, and that is where Nick and I leave it.
    “Do you think that snake was a sign?” I ask Nick.
“A sign of what?”
“That we shouldn’t climb this mountain.” In fact, it hasn’t
    been a day of good omens at all, first with Nick’s father and now the snake.
“You know what it’s a sign of, Maggie?”
“What?”
“That snakes live around here.”
    In junior high, when I was desperate for any measure of control, I searched for omens everywhere. If the first crocus of February opened, if the cafeteria had my favorite enchiladas for lunch, or if we got to run a mile in gym class instead of having to play team sports, it was good. Cold rain, the piano getting out of tune, and a hole in my favorite shoes were all bad signs.
    I stopped hunting for omens when I realized that none of them ever predicted how harsh Raleigh and company would be on any given day. A good day was when they ignored me. A bad day was when they came after me. But it was dictated by nothing I could see or control. Nothing I wore, said, ate, or did seemed to have the slightest effect. Only Raleigh’s whim.
    But every now and then, I still catch myself doing it, trying to predict good or bad luck.
    Clouds shroud the sun. The air on Eagle Mountain is heavy, moist, with a tinge of mildew. Mosquito clouds hover in a couple of soggy spots along the trail. We spot some red and golden leaves, but most of the forest is still green.
    “Ever wish you could live out here?” Nick says.
“Sometimes.” This was especially true in junior high, when I wanted to drop out of school and move into the forest. I imagined living on fish, squirrels, berries, and mushrooms. And even though I’ve always known on some level that it wouldn’t work (Who do I think I am—Davy Crockett? How would I catch and skin a