Behind the Gates (7 page)

“Oh, all right,” Maddie reluctantly agrees. Running at a jog, we catch up with the back of the line.

“Quit poking along back there,” Rosie orders from the front. “Keep up.”

Maddie tips her head toward me and speaks softly. “Why do you like her, Louisa?”

Slowing down, I create a little space between us and the next-nearest person in the line so we won’t be overheard. “You should get to know Rosie better,” I suggest. “I didn’t like her at first, either. She’s better one-on-one than she is in a group.”

“If you say so,” Maddie allows, but I know she doesn’t believe me.

A
s we head deeper and deeper into the forest, it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate through the thick pines. The trees grow more closely together and the trail we’re on becomes overgrown with bushes and thorny brambles. The overhead thickness of the pines doesn’t allow in much sunlight and the forest quickly seems shadowy, even though I know it can’t even be noon yet.

“Break!” Rosie calls when we near a narrow, quickly flowing creek.

“Can we drink from the creek?” asks a girl named Carole Osterly, who I know is from Anne Abadi’s suite.

“Better not,” Rosie says. “If that lake is really polluted, then the streams feeding it might also be bad.”

“That lake isn’t polluted and neither is this stream,” Evelyn objects. “Look how clear it is, and it’s running fast.”

Her furrowed brow shows that Rosie doesn’t appreciate being challenged. “Suit yourself. But I don’t want to know about it when you’re sick tonight. Don’t even wake me up. My advice is to sip from your water bottles if you’re thirsty.”

No one drinks from the creek.

About an hour later, Maddie and three other girls sit on some boulders we’re passing to rest.

“No sitting!” Rosie barks at them. “Don’t you remember anything from outdoor skills class? Your muscles will cramp and it will be harder to continue. If you have to rest, lean against a tree. It will cool you down and keep your muscles stretched.”

Rolling her eyes, Maddie rises and puts her back against the wide trunk of a pine. “Great, now my shirt is full of pine sap,” she complains.

I also lean against a tree and, actually, I don’t mind it. I’m enjoying the moss that cushions my shoulder and
cheek as I lean into the trunk of a towering pine. It’s cooling and soft.

Rosie moves into an area of dappled sunlight that’s found its way through the canopy of pine needles above. She uses that light to study her map. “We need to go due west now,” Rosie tells Evelyn. “By the way, nice job navigating so far.”

“Thanks,” Evelyn says, and she begins another slow turn, her focus on the needle of the compass in her hand.

I catch Maddie’s eyes and nod significantly, as if to say,
See, Rosie can be nice.

Maddie shrugs and I read her skeptical expression.
So she was a little nice; so what?

We walk through the forest again for what feels like a very long time. Without even being able to see the sun, it’s hard to tell exactly how long.

At a certain point, our path becomes so steep that it’s hard for us to breathe. Everyone, even Rosie, is panting hard when we ascend to a rocky break in the forest. “We’re above the tree line,” Rosie announces.

The shadowy gloom gives way to bright sunshine and a crystal-blue sky as we scramble over rocks, leaving the pines behind. The sun is directly overhead in the sky by the time Evelyn says, “Eagles Aerie should be right up there.”

Squinting against the bright light, I see a flat, rocky, open space. It seems to be the very top of a mountain.

That final ascent to Eagles Aerie is brutally steep, with small stones that slide out from under our sneakers as we make our way to the summit. I slip once and skin my knee on a rock. Despite my aching muscles, I start to feel excited — we’re so close now! And yet so far away from anything else. I’ve never seen this much wilderness in my life, and now I’m completely surrounded by it, with only myself and the other girls to rely on.

It’s exhilarating.

Rosie reaches the top first and begins searching around for something. “Help me find the instructions Mrs. Brewster said would be here,” she tells us.

We begin turning over rocks and looking around the
base of boulders. I check the roots of one of the scrubby, wind-stripped trees that grow all around.

“Here it is!” Carole cries. She digs into a pile of stones and produces a small red notebook.

Evelyn watches over Carole’s shoulder as she opens the book. Evelyn’s lips press together in distress and she gazes up at the rest of us unhappily “It’s just an empty notebook,” she announces, confused.

Rosie takes the book from Carole and fans through the pages. Then she closes it and opens it again, this time to the first page. “‘Each team member must sign in. Then seek further instructions,’” she reads. Rosie looks up at us with a worried expression. “Did anyone bring a pen?”

Each girl looks to the one nearest her with questioning eyes. “I did,” Evelyn says with a note of reluctance as she takes a pen from the pocket of her shorts. I’m sure her little notebook is in her shorts pocket, too. Evelyn would never go on a trip like this without being able to take notes. She probably didn’t want everyone to know this, though.

Taking the pen from Evelyn, Rosie offers it to the others. “Everyone sign in or you won’t get credit for reaching the top,” she says. “While you’re waiting to sign, look around for anything with instructions written on it.”

“Can we eat lunch up here?” asks a girl with short hair named Erica Felstein. “They packed food for us, didn’t they?”

Rosie opens the nylon bag she’s been carrying. Taking out what looks like a butter sandwich, she digs deeper. She takes out a large metal canteen and twelve paper cups. “That’s it,” she reports unhappily.

“Are you joking?” Anne Abadi cries.

Rosie shakes her head and empties out the bag on a flat rock. “Twelve butter sandwiches and a canteen of water.”

“After all this hiking and climbing they give us bread and water!?” Maddie shouts indignantly. “I don’t believe this place. It’s inhuman!”

But it’s better than nothing. Still standing, we devour our thin sandwiches and drink the water in long, thirsty
swallows. “Sip; don’t gulp!” Rosie reminds us. In outdoor skills we learned that gulping water could cause stomach cramps after a strenuous climb.

After lunch we do another group exploration, searching for something that will instruct us on what we are supposed to do next. I find a rock with words written on it in black marker:
white birch leaf.

“That’s it,” says Rosie. “That’s the kind of leaf we have to find.” Taking the rock, she smiles at me, and suddenly I feel like a worthy and valuable member of the team. “Everyone hunt in this area where Louisa and I are standing,” she instructs the group. “Search for rocks with words on them.” She holds up my rock. “They look like this.”

It seems I’ve found the right spot. As soon as the group gets to work, we uncover a treasure trove of printed stones, some large, some small. When we’re done, we toss our rocks into a pile. “Now what?” asks Rae Gonzalez, from Erica Felstein’s suite.

Rosie squats in front of the stones and turns different ones in her hands, examining them.

“Maybe if we put them together right, they’ll make a message,” Maddie suggests.

Rosie nods thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right,” she agrees.

We instinctively break into groups of two and begin lining the rocks up in various configurations. It becomes like a giant game.

“Can we borrow the word
to
from you?”

“We almost have a sentence. Anyone got the word
tree?”

“We have an extra rock with the word
water
written on it. Could anyone use it?”

The group works together with total cooperation. Mrs. Brewster and the staff had created the perfect team-building activity. At the end of an hour this is what we have:

No one seems to know how to figure that last part out — anything that tells time was handed over on our first day, whether it was a phone, a notepad, or a watch.

Shielding her eyes, Rosie gazes at the sun. “Judging from the position of the sun, it’s almost one o’clock in the afternoon,” she figures.

“Evelyn, would you write this message down in your notebook so we don’t forget anything?” Rosie requests.

“Okay,” Evelyn agrees, but from the reluctant tone in her voice I can tell she doesn’t like her secret notebook being mentioned so openly. Just the same, she takes the book out and writes down the message written in rocks on the ground.

After she’s done, Evelyn and Rosie put their heads together — Rosie with the map, Evelyn with the compass — and they figure the best route due south. I don’t know how we’re ever going to find one boulder in a forest
full of them. And what does
find the face
mean? When I ask that question, everyone looks to Rosie for the answer.

“No idea,” Rosie admits. “I’m just hoping this face, whatever it is, will find us.”

Fortunately, it does.

We hike back down into the dense forest once more. Descending isn’t quite as difficult as going up, but it uses different muscles and I find my calves getting sore. It seems we’re walking for a long time.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask, coming alongside Evelyn, who’s checking her compass every few minutes.

“Of course I’m not sure,” Evelyn answers.

I begin to think finding this boulder and this face is hopeless.

“I see it!” Maddie is the first to observe. “Right there.” She points to a large, almost triangular boulder.

I laugh when I see that a sort of face is traced out in moss on the wide, flat northern surface of the boulder. It reminds me of the crater-formed face of the Man in the Moon.

“This is the spot. We’ll make camp here,” Rosie says.

We quickly see that someone from CMS has been here ahead of us. A large blue tarp covers a big black chest. Inside the chest are three .22-caliber rifles, the kind we’ve been practicing with, and three quivers loaded with arrows. There are also six two-person tents that are still collapsed and some pots and a pan for cooking.

Suddenly Erica Felstein gasps. “How come there’s no food in there?” she asks Rosie.

Rosie surveys the rest of the area. “I guess we have to get it ourselves,” she replies.

Erica throws her head back in despair. “I’m so tired and hungry! I can’t find my own dinner! This is horrible!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Rosie scolds her. “They gave us rifles and arrows. Obviously they expect us to catch our own meal.”

“I wouldn’t be able to catch anything even if I wanted to — and I
don’t
want to,” Erica insists. I’m annoyed by her whining, since it’s already been a really long and tiring day. But on the other hand, I know exactly how she feels.

“Maybe we can find some berries and stuff,” I suggest. “Remember, we learned about it.”

Everyone nods enthusiastically when I say this. It seems no one feels good about shooting an animal for dinner.

We spend the next few hours hunting for some of the things on our list. We find the moss right away from the rock. One of the other girls in Anne’s dorm is even able to identify it.

I slap a mosquito on my arm. “Here’s our bug,” I announce, dangling it by its wing.

Finding a white birch leaf among all these pines seems like it’s going to be impossible until Maddie, Evelyn, and I come upon a gorgeous stand of birches. “Score!” Maddie cheers as she snaps off a leaf.

When we return to our campsite, six of the girls are busy setting up the two-person pup tents. Rosie and Anne have made a great fire. It crackles invitingly and the pleasant smell of burning pine permeates the campsite.

Maddie holds up the birch leaf for the group to see. “Excellent!” Rosie praises us as she takes a packet of
tissues from her back pocket and lays the leaf between two sheets.

“Did you … uh … catch anything for supper?” I ask Rosie. I have such mixed feelings. Part of me hopes she hasn’t. How gross to have to eat some cute little rabbit or a skinned squirrel! But another part of me — kind of a big part — would really like something to eat. I haven’t had meat that wasn’t made out of soy in a really long time.

“No. I tried,” Rosie says. “The only animal I even saw was a squirrel running through the branches, and he was too fast for me. No one else would even attempt it, so I sent a crew out to see what they could forage.”

It’s evening now, and the dark pine needles overhead make it seem later than it probably really is. Four of our group return with the nylon bag. They take out a bunch of dandelion leaves, some wild blueberries, a good amount of dirty scallions, and some very small, underripe blackberries. “That’s all you could find?” Rosie asks, displeased.

“We looked at some mushrooms but we weren’t sure if they were good to eat or not,” says a girl named Stacey.

“Well, it’s better not to take a chance with mushrooms,” Rosie agrees. She turns to Evelyn, Maddie, and me. “We could boil this into some kind of weak soup, I suppose. Do you think you guys can find water?”

“Sure,” I say. “I heard the sound of running water back there when we were getting the birch leaf. We could probably follow the sound.”

“Unless you think it’s too
polluted,”
Evelyn says pointedly to Rosie, unable to resist getting in a little dig.

“If we boil it, the water will probably be okay,” Rosie replies.

So I pick up the largest of the pots and we set off in the dying light to find water. I try to remember what way we’ve come but it’s harder than I would have thought. Everything looks pretty much the same.

“Do you know where we are?” Evelyn asks me. “Where did we see the creek?”

“I think it’s a little farther this way,” I say.

It’s very quiet in the forest. The fallen pine needles have made a soft and fragrant carpet under our sneakers. Occasionally an animal snaps a small branch or a bird
flits through the trees. We stop and I try to hear the sound of running water, but I can’t.

Suddenly I’m aware of dark figures moving among the trees. Evelyn and Maddie notice them, too. We freeze, scared. Are there bears out here?

Whatever it is, there are two of them.

Should we run or just stay still?

A beam of vivid light suddenly cuts through the dusky gray. I see that Evelyn has a tiny flashlight built into her pen. In its light we can clearly see who these mysterious figures are. We are now face-to-face with two strangers.