Behind the Gates (9 page)

I wake up just a little more and it hits me.

“Evelyn! Maddie!” I shout. “Get up!”

They scramble out of the tent and look around. Their faces are as confused and upset as mine must be.

We’re alone. The rest of the campsite has been cleared away.

I
can’t believe they left us!” Maddie cries. “They must have gotten up before dawn and gone.”

“But why?” Evelyn wonders out loud.

“Rosie,” Maddie says. “She somehow convinced the others to leave us behind.”

The moment Maddie says this, I know she’s right. She probably told them we were going to get into trouble for bringing the boys, so they should separate themselves from us. She could have said a lot of things: that we didn’t want to leave with them; that we had a different assignment and would catch up later. She might have said anything.

I’m so frustrated and disappointed I want to cry.

“Let’s not freak out,” Evelyn says. “They can’t have left too much earlier. It’s just getting light now. I have the compass, so we can find our way down. We might even get back to school before they do. I don’t know how they’ll manage without a compass.”

Evelyn rummages in her backpack. “I know it’s in here,” she murmurs. Her digging becomes more and more frantic.

“What’s the matter?” I ask her.

“The compass,” Evelyn says. “It’s gone. Rosie must have taken it with her.”

“So how do we get back?” Maddie asks.

“I don’t know,” Evelyn admits. “I have no idea.”

Fifteen minutes later we’ve packed up Maddie and Evelyn’s tent and we’re looking out into the woods, our backpacks over our shoulders, with absolutely no idea where to go.

I am so unbelievably angry at Rosie. How could she have done this to us? My stomach grumbles with fierce hunger. Not only am I starving but my muscles ache from sleeping on the ground last night. There was some
kind of rock under my shoulder that my sleeping bag couldn’t cushion me from.

I wish I was anywhere but here.

“When we were heading north, we were climbing up. So going down will be south,” Evelyn says. “I think it’s southeast, actually.”

“The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right?” I say, not sure I’m remembering correctly.

“That’s right, but we can’t see the sun under these pines,” Maddie points out.

“True,” I agree.

“Here goes nothing,” says Evelyn as she steps into the forest.

We follow her, not talking. I don’t know how we’ll ever make it back to CMS. It’s just trees and more trees. There’s nothing to follow, not even a path.

The idea of getting lost in the woods suddenly seems like a very real possibility, and it terrifies me. We have no food and one tent between the three of us. “Listen for the creek,” I suggest after a while. “Maybe we can figure our way from there. At least we’ll always have water.”

“Look! Look! Look!” Maddie cries excitedly, pointing.

Two people are walking in the woods ahead of us. Alonso and Ryan!

“Guys!” I shout, waving my arm in wide arcs. “Over here! It’s us!”

They wave back and hurry toward us. We crash through the bushes to meet up with them. “Have you been walking all night?” Evelyn asks.

“No,” Alonso says. “It got pitch-black. Even with this little flashlight we couldn’t see where we were going. So we just slept by a rock.”

“You don’t even have sleeping bags,” Maddie says.

“Tell me about it,” Ryan says, stretching his back. “And it was cold, too.”

“Do you still have the compass I gave you?” Evelyn asks.

Ryan and Alonso nod and show her. “We’re following it down now. Want to hike together?”

“Sure we do,” Maddie agrees. “We’re totally lost.”

“Where’s the rest of your group?” Ryan asks.

We begin to walk as we tell them how our group ditched us. “Did they do that because of us?” Ryan asks.

“I’m pretty sure, yeah,” I answer. “Rosie can’t stand the idea that we might get into trouble for taking your food. I think she’s nuts, though. You guys were lost. Should we have just walked away and left you stranded in the forest? I don’t think that would be the right thing to do, would it?”

“Totally not,” Ryan says.

“If Rosie gets there first, I wonder what she’ll say to Mrs. Brewster,” Evelyn worries. “What explanation will she give for us not being with the group?”

This has been worrying me, too. “Maybe she’ll wait for us before going into the cafeteria,” I suggest. Despite the way she acted last night, I just can’t believe that Rosie would completely betray us. Still, the evidence isn’t in her favor. After all, she’s left us to get lost in the woods.

Or has she?

“Hey, everybody,” I alert them. “Check this out.” I squat to observe an interesting pile of stones stacked at the base of a tree. A small brown feather is stuck between the top two stones.

“Is it a cairn?” Maddie asks as she bends to look at the pile.

“It’s a rock trail marker, all right,” Ryan says. “That feather tells us it’s not a natural formation.”

Nodding, I smile, knowing Rosie left it for us. She might have intended to leave us on our own, but regretted it once they got going and it was too late to turn back. Or maybe she intended to mark the trail all along. She just wanted to get back at us for the Alonso and Ryan thing.

“I wonder how far apart these are set,” Alonso considers. He checks Evelyn’s compass and waves us on.

My stomach rumbles. We’ve shared the last two sandwiches that were left over from the night before. It wasn’t really enough, but it was better than nothing. Ryan hears the sound and turns to me. “We each had our last bag of chips this morning,” he says. “Sorry; nothing’s left.”

“Keep an eye out for berries, I guess,” Maddie says.

“I love berries,” Ryan says. “I love them on top of a great apple cobbler,” he adds.

“Don’t talk like that,” Evelyn pleads. “I don’t want to think about food.”

We’ve been walking only about ten minutes when we reach the next cairn.

“Good,” says Alonso. “We’re going the right way. Everybody watch for signs that other people have walked through here. You know, footprints, broken branches, stuff like that.”

Looking down, I see a mark in the dirt. “Sneaker print,” I announce.

“Cool,” says Evelyn, “let’s keep going.”

We hurry on until we can see the CMS buildings through the trees. They’re still in the distance, but they’re there. I’m flooded with relief at the sight of them.

“Almost home,” Ryan says.

“If you want to call CMS home,” Maddie says sourly.

“Right now it’s home enough to me,” Ryan replies.

I’m happy he says it so I don’t have to. I agree absolutely. I’m so happy to see it.

“We have to get around the lake, but you guys can just go straight ahead,” Alonso says. “I even see another cairn right down there.”

We look and see it, too. Our way back is all laid out.

Alonso hands Evelyn her compass back. She reaches for it but then hesitates. “Can you find your way back without it?” she asks.

“Yeah, this path is easy,” Ryan states confidently. “We come this way all the time.”

“You do?” I ask. “I thought it was forbidden.”

“It is, but so what?” Ryan says with a laugh.

“Why do you risk it?” I ask.

“Just to look around, see what’s going on over here,” Ryan says. “It’s mostly the fun of sneaking out and getting back in without being caught.”

Evelyn takes the compass from Alonso. “We’d better get back,” she says. “We might be able to catch up with our group if we hurry.”

“Good luck,” Ryan says as he and Alonso walk away.

We wave and head toward the next cairn. “Is anyone else besides me nervous about what might happen when we go back?” Maddie asks.

“No. Nothing’s going to happen,” I say, sounding confident and upbeat. But I’m totally lying. I’m as nervous as she is. Maybe even more.

We arrive at the door to the cafeteria just as Rosie is coming out. “Oh, look who showed up,” she says nastily, looking at Evelyn, Maddie, and me with distaste.

“Did you accomplish your special mission?” Carole Osterly asks as she walks out behind Rosie.

Studying her, I try to decide if she’s being sarcastic, but quickly realize she’s asking this question in all innocence. She truly thinks we were on some kind of mission.

“What special mission?” Maddie asks.

“The one where you were supposed to follow trail markers down,” Carole says. She turns to Rosie. “Isn’t that what you told us?” she checks.

“Yeah. I guess they made it because they’re here,” Rosie replies with no warmth at all. “Score one for our team.”

Now I’m really confused. Was this really a test or did Rosie leave us behind out of spite? Evelyn and Maddie are just as bewildered. I can tell from their expressions.

“I guess we did,” I say to Carole. “Who laid the cairns?”

“Rosie,” Carole answers.

“You made better time than I thought you would,” Rosie says.

We had a little help from compass-carrying friends,
I think, but don’t say it. Let her believe we managed on our own.

“We have the rest of Sunday free,” Carole tells us as she heads down the path. “I can’t wait to get into the shower. Then I’m going to sleep right through to tomorrow morning.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Evelyn agrees.

Rosie sees her friend Mary and walks toward her without even a wave to us. Maddie hisses an insult under her breath, but Rosie doesn’t seem to hear it. “I can’t stand her,” she says, more loudly this time.

Rosie never comes up to the suite as the three of us unpack and clean up. After showering, Evelyn disappears
into her room. Maddie has already fallen asleep in our room, waiting for Evelyn to come out of the shower. She’s on her top bunk, still wrapped in her bathrobe.

I figure it’s better to let her sleep.

On my way to the shower, I stop by one of our tall windows and peer out through the bars. Rosie is playing soccer on the lawn with the same group of athletes she’s been friends with from the beginning.

Seeing her there — and knowing that she’s purposely avoiding being in our room — makes me feel emotions I can’t really identify. What is it exactly that I’m feeling?

I’m angry at her, for sure. Even if she didn’t intend to leave us lost in the woods, she was happy enough to let us believe we were lost. What was her point? Was it that if we didn’t obey her, she’d take strong revenge, that she’d make us pay for it? What kind of friend does that?

At the same time, though, I’m sad to lose what little ground I’d gained with Rosie in the last two weeks. I was really getting to like her. In some ways, being around her was so easy — I could just be myself. I didn’t have to worry about CMS, like I do with Evelyn. And I didn’t
have to be strong or defensive, like I always feel with Maddie lately.

Evelyn comes out of her room still wrapped in her white terry robe. “I leaned against the wall in the shower and almost fell asleep standing up,” she says.

“Rosie’s playing soccer with her friends down there,” I report, nodding toward the window.

“She’s nuts,” Evelyn says with a dismissive wave toward the window. “I’m setting my alarm for dinnertime and I’m sleeping until then.”

“Good idea,” I say as I head in to take my shower. “Wake me and Maddie up when it rings.”

“Will do,” Evelyn agrees with a yawn.

The shower spray is so wonderful on my achy back and shoulders. Just like Evelyn, I find my eyes sliding shut before I rally and shake myself awake again. Drying off, I wrap myself in a towel and trudge back to my bedroom, where I pull on my nightshirt and collapse into bed. There are no dreams of crystal balls now. Just the dark, infinite tunnel of bottomless, exhausted sleep.

• • •

When I open my eyes, the light coming through the bedroom window is muted, dusky. I glance to my dresser, where the digital readout on my battery-powered clock tells me that I have ten minutes to get to the cafeteria for supper.

Instantly, I am up and shaking Maddie, who’s snoring on her top bunk. “We’re going to miss dinner,” I say as her eyelids flutter open.

In a second she is fully awake. “Oh, no, we’re not,” she insists, throwing off her blanket. “I’m not going to bed hungry two nights in a row.”

I’ve never seen her dress so fast. “Hurry,” she urges me as I tie my sneaker laces.

Before leaving the dorm, I go across to Evelyn’s bedroom to check that she hasn’t overslept. I knock loudly, but I get no answer.

“I asked Evelyn to wake us,” I complain. “I guess she went ahead.”

“She must have forgotten,” Maddie says.

“I suppose so,” I agree, trying not to be too annoyed. Everyone makes mistakes, I remind myself.

When we reach the cafeteria, Maddie and I get our food and sit down together. Rosie is with her sporty friends and doesn’t even glance at us.

“Rosie’s not sitting with us anymore,” I note as I lift a forkful of rigatoni with tomato sauce to my lips.

“Who cares?” says Maddie, who is completely involved in her macaroni and cheese.

“Do you see Evelyn?” I ask, scanning the cafeteria for her.

“Nuh-uh,” Maddie answers. She puts down her fork and cranes her neck around to see all the tables. “Strange,” she says.

“It is,” I agree. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.” As we eat, I keep watching for Evelyn, but she never appears.

Emmanuelle approaches our table. “Madeleine Ballinger?” she checks, looking at Maddie. Maddie doesn’t have as many classes with Emmanuelle as I do.

I nudge Maddie’s leg under the table.

“Yes, that’s me,” Maddie says.

“And Louisa, Mrs. Brewster would like to see the two of you in her office after you’re finished eating.”

A knot forms in the pit of my stomach. “Do you know why?” I ask with an unexpected scratchiness in my voice. I suddenly feel sure Rosie has turned us in for our supposed misbehavior on the overnight.

Emmanuelle doesn’t answer my question. “Just finish your meals and go to the office,” she says.

Under the table, Maddie grabs my wrist nervously. I’m sure she’s had the same thought about Rosie.

“We’ll be right there,” I manage to tell Emmanuelle, although I’m so full of anxiety that I have to choke out the words.

“Yes, right away,” Maddie adds as she gets up and goes to return her tray. We weren’t really done eating, but we’re definitely not hungry anymore.

What if Mrs. Brewster decides to send us home? I would hate that so much. Of course, Maddie wouldn’t mind. She might even be glad. Evelyn might be happy about it, too.