Stranded (18 page)

But soon enough Oscar's face appeared in front of me, bruised and scraped, missing his glasses. I'd never been happier to see it. “Emma.” He crawled forward and collapsed into a shaking heap on my lap, clenching his left arm tight to his chest. “I think I broke my wrist.”

I was shaking too. “It's okay, it's okay,” I babbled, not able to tell whether I was going to laugh or cry. Maybe pass out. “We can fix that.” I ran my fingers through his hair and squeezed. “We can fix that.”

Isaac pulled his way up, grunting with effort, and crawled past us, a glazed look etched on his face. He rolled onto his back and stared blindly at the sky, gripping the clothes rope to his chest like it was a baby blanket, and after a long while he finally spoke, his voice muted in amazement. “A bra just saved my life.”

*  *  *

We hiked on until the shadows lengthened to thin strips. Isaac guessed we'd gone five or six miles, maybe seven, but we also hadn't found any water. When we found a small clearing in the trees, we decided to stop and make camp. Chloe constructed a makeshift hut woven together with flexible dogwood branches, and while it was enough to block the wind, it wasn't nearly as solid as our previous shelter.

It didn't think it would stop the wolves if they returned.

I went back to finishing my spears. Four done, but would that be enough? I grabbed another stick and stripped a thin slice of bark off the tip.

“Want some help, Dodd?” Isaac actually sounded sincere, maybe his way of apologizing. Or maybe his way of thanking me and Chloe for saving his life. Whatever it was, he certainly couldn't call us useless idiots. Idiots maybe. But definitely not useless.

“I'm almost done.” I didn't know how to talk to him, or look at him. Every time I did, I saw his face, twisted in simmering violence. All along, I had thought the danger we were in was the outside: storms, fire, thirst, hunger, animals. But what was worse when it came down to it? Being hungry or depending on a psychopath for survival? But was he really? He sounded a bit guilty, or maybe that was fake too, just another attempt to manipulate me. There was no way for me to trust him.

“Okay.” Isaac picked up a spear and poked it against his palm. “Wiener thinks his wrist is broken.”

“Yeah, probably.” I tossed the stick into the pile, wondering why he cared. “Or at least sprained badly. Chloe wrapped it and made a sling with the Ace bandage.” I glanced over at Oscar, who was sleeping (maybe) in the new shelter. He didn't act like he was in a lot of pain, but then again I had heard him gasp several times when Chloe was wrapping his wrist. It had to hurt like hell, even if it wasn't broken.

“But now she doesn't have anything for her ankle.” He sounded confused, as if he couldn't understand how someone would make a choice like that.

“I guess we'll improvise.” I pointed my knife at a cut-up piece of elastic fabric. “Women's lingerie can save your life, remember?” I didn't mention the fact that it was us (two girls) who actually did. But as it turned out, I didn't need to.

“Thanks,” Isaac said, low, and I knew this was as much as I was going to get. Strangely, it was enough.

I nodded, picked up another stick to whittle, not looking up until I heard him leave. A growing part of me understood that I wouldn't have saved his life. Not if he'd been alone. I did it because of Oscar. I would have watched Isaac fall; I was certain. Watched him fall and done nothing. Maybe I would have even pushed him. I bit my lip, so hot and flustered with the sudden knowledge that I had to stop whittling. I closed the blade and pressed the knife between my hands until they ached.

But the reality was Isaac hadn't let Oscar fall. Despite everything, he'd held on. So what, in the end, did that make him? Not a coward, but maybe not a hero, either. And I guess not a total psychopath. He was someone who would succeed where others would fail. He actually could save someone's life.

Something I had failed to do.

So what does that make me?

“Morning, sunshine.”

I scraped at my tongue with my toothbrush and grunted back.
He's still acting like nothing's wrong. Like he did nothing wrong. Unbelievable.

“I guess you're not a morning person, huh?” Isaac was eating one of the little brick food packets from Chloe's e-kit. I had eaten mine yesterday, as soon as Chloe handed me the packet, and it was hard to believe that Isaac had had enough restraint to wait until this morning. I could smell the peanut butter from here, and I wondered how much food he had left.
Probably nothing
.

I pulled out my toothbrush and spat. “I'm a morning person as long as coffee is involved.”

“I prefer Mountain Dew. But this isn't bad.”

“I could go for a donut right now. Chocolate.”

“Ah, donuts.” Isaac crumpled his wrapper—the sound
made me drool a bit. What did I have left to eat? My packets of oatmeal. A toy-size box of cereal.
No, wait. I ate the cereal two days ago.
Maybe
I
should start looking for food. What grew out here besides berries and mushrooms?

A mosquito hummed in my ear. Barely morning but they were having their breakfast. Me.

“Do you think they'll come today?” I don't know why I asked—maybe just for something to say. I didn't think they were coming today. Whoever
they
were. Firefighters? Rangers? Police? Volunteers?

“Nope.” Isaac dug a hole in the dirt, stuck in the wrapper, and buried it, smoothing the ground into a gravelike mound.

“Maybe a plane tomorrow.”

“Doubt it.”

“Well, when then, you think? Three days? Five?”

Isaac glared at the trees. “How about never.”

“Why?”

He stood up and crossed his arms. He was combative as usual, but there was something else. His eyes glittered wet. “Because, Dodd. They're not coming.”

“I don't believe you.” But a growing part of me did, every single word.
They think we're dead. They think we died in the fire. They looked. They found the campsite.

“Doesn't matter if you believe me or not. The sooner you realize you're on your own, the better off you'll be.”

“But we're not on our own,” I argued. “They're looking for us. They haven't given up on us. There's been a plane.” My
mind leaped to my parents. What would they do? What could they do? Were they out there, looking for me? Would they give up? And how do you do that, even? How does a person let go? How does a person lose all their children? It would be like losing your future. Every dream and every wish you ever had. It was losing hope. How could you stand that? How could anyone?

But Isaac was already packing up his stuff. “Take it from one who knows, Dodd. They
can
give up on us. They already have.” He zipped his pack shut and glanced up through the treetops. Another blue-sky morning, but I did the math in my head. Chris said the storm was coming in—what? A week. And today was day nine, which meant . . .
shit
. The storm could hit at any moment. It was always there, in the back of our minds, running down like a doomsday clock. “Better wake them up, because we're leaving in five minutes. And it's gonna be a long walk.”

*  *  *

“How much longer?”

“Ten klicks.”

“Come again?”

Isaac sighed. “We still got a ways.”

“Ten klicks is ten kilometers,” I said, leaning up against a sapling without trying to look like I was. I had no intention of letting him think I was exhausted. “Ten kilometers is over six miles,” I added, trying not to sound like a total smart-ass.

I failed. Isaac smirked at me in delight. “Maybe you should join the army, Dodd.”

I uncapped my canteen and took a swig. “We need to get out of here first, I think.”

Isaac glanced back to the wispy trail we had made, waiting for Chloe and Oscar. “Which is why we need to keep going.” He tapped his own (empty) canteen against his fist. “The storm, remember? We'll be in deep shit if it turns into a blizzard up here.”

I desperately wanted to drain the last quarter of my canteen but somehow restrained myself. My tongue felt twice as thick as normal, and it hurt to swallow. “At least we'll have something to drink then.”

“We'll freeze to death first.” Isaac wiped the sweat from his forehead; he was wearing a thin T-shirt, and the backs of his arms were speckled with bright pink dots.

“That doesn't look good.” I pointed at them, and upon closer inspection they looked more like welts than mosquito bites. “You should probably use more bug spray.”

He dropped his arms, eyes suddenly wide. “What?”

“Bug bites,” I said slowly, realizing that I had seen that type of mark before. Even before I finished speaking, I knew they weren't bug bites. They looked like burn marks from a cigarette. My friend Shelly had burned herself once with a lit cigarette, laughing because she was drunk. And it had left a similar scar. And they were on the backs of his arm, in such a position that I knew he hadn't put them there himself.
Someone else had. My throat seemed to swell shut with this knowledge, and I had to turn my face away.

“Right, okay.” Isaac zipped open his pack and busied himself with finding a can.

The crack of pine needles behind me let me know Chloe and Oscar had caught up. Oscar walked through the small hole in the brush, then held the branches back for Chloe, who was moving very slowly, stepping somewhat gingerly on her bad foot. And although her limp was barely noticeable, I knew if she overdid it, we'd be right back where we started. But this time, I highly doubted Oscar would be able to carry her.

“How you doing?” I asked.

“Okay.” Chloe smiled weakly. “Just thirsty.”

Oscar shrugged, looking past me without answering. The whole morning had been like that, and I wasn't very good at tolerating the silent treatment. I knew he was pissed, at Isaac mainly, but also at me, and I knew I should tell him what Isaac had done. What he really had done.

But then what would happen? I couldn't take the risk of another fight between them, but I also knew I had to fix it. Somehow. “We'll go until we find some water,” I said, ignoring the look Isaac gave me. “And then we'll rest.” I adjusted my pack, tightening up the strap against my stomach, hoping the pressure would dull the ache inside.

“Lead on, Kemosabe,” Isaac said. “Since, unlike some of us, you're not so directionally challenged.”

I couldn't tell if that was an insult or a compliment but figured the best thing to do was ignore it completely.
Just walk
, I thought.
Just keep moving. If we keep going, eventually we'll hit something; eventually we'll find Lake Superior. We have to.

We walked for what seemed like hours in silence. No planes. No helicopters. No chain saws. Only the sound of shrieking birds in the trees and, finally, the soothing trickle of a shallow creek, something we had stumbled on (literally) when Chloe spied a dark ravine from a hilly rise. We scrambled down the hill quick as we dared, found a narrow animal trail through the trees, which led to a pebbly creek bed that fed into a tiny pond. The pond itself was scuzzy, coated with algae and weedy plants, but it was water, and it was where we would camp for the night.

Since there was no food left (and nothing found on the hike), that meant a meal of oatmeal.
The Last Supper
. We combined all our packets into the pot with boiling water, then added more water to thin it out to a souplike consistency. Banana-strawberry-blueberry-peach gruel. Oscar found a stick the exact size and shape of a wooden spoon, and we almost burned our mouths because it tasted so good.

But it didn't go far. It was just the right amount of food to make us want more. A lot more, but there was nothing left. Completely gone. I still felt okay (despite a near-constant headache), but my stomach had definitely shrunk. My skin seemed looser, like a partially deflated balloon. If I pinched the skin on my hand, it didn't snap and flatten back immediately. It stayed in a white crease, like an old person. Or maybe that was a sign of dehydration. Probably both. But still, I wasn't suffering as much as everyone else. Isaac looked like he'd shrunk a few inches, and both Chloe and Oscar had shaded hollows under their eyes. Then again, I hadn't looked in a mirror in a week. Maybe I looked worse.

When we finished taking turns scraping the bottom of the pot, we sat quietly, listening to the fire.

“So, no fish in that pond, huh?” Chloe's question was innocent enough, but it could only be interpreted as an accusation.

Isaac scraped a bit of oatmeal from the pot and set it down. “Nope.”

“How about the snares?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, maybe tomorrow.” Chloe poked her stick in the fire, trying to sound optimistic.

“Yeah,” Isaac said darkly. “Maybe tomorrow.”

A depression like smoke descended around us.

“Do we need more bait?” I asked.

“Are you volunteering, Dodd?”

“I guess,” I said. “Yes. I'm volunteering.”

“Well, good luck with that. I found three night crawlers, a fat grub, and some ugly beetle,” he said. “And I only caught a box turtle, but it slipped off the hook before I could reel him in.” He sniffed and rolled his eyes, as if daring me to do better.

“Oh.” I stubbed my stick at the fire, careful to keep my eyes down, knowing all through the course of dinner I had become increasingly aware of Oscar's glances. His hand held the stick-spoon longer when he passed it to me. His eyes kept landing on mine, full of only one question. He even sat closer, angling himself toward me. I did nothing.

The fire climbed and fell, and finally I yawned and excused myself. There was nothing more to eat, so I grabbed the empty cook pot.