Lost at Running Brook Trail (3 page)

She paused and looked at them for emphasis. She wasn’t necessarily the most athletic person in physical appearance, but she was tough and fit. Her classes were brutal. “Now, some of you don’t think you can do this, but all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other like this.”

She stepped forward with her right foot and then put her left foot in front of it. “Some of you just don’t want to do this. It’s not your choice, and you feel like you’re being punished, but you’re already here, so there’s nothing else for you to do but walk.”

Her short-cropped, straight black hair hugged her face in a boyish bob. “Remember, if you see animals, any animal, do not approach them or try to feed them. They are not pet dogs in Toronto, so stay away. You’re east; any animal you may come upon is west – keep your distance.” She held her arms out wide. “East and west! Don’t let your curiosity get the better of you.”

She was practical too. “Make sure your shoes are comfortable. Make sure you have your water bottles, sun block, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Now let’s heat up some track!”

She said this as if she really expected them to be excited about hiking on the trails less travelled.

Mrs. Marks followed the guide, who was dressed fully in khakis reminiscent of a safari. Elaine, Susan, Kimberly and Miriam trudged along together in the pack with ten other girls who’d been sent on the Alberta trip for some infraction against the code of Anne Beaumont Private High. Even in this rugged terrain they had formed themselves into semi-cliques, preferring to stick to the girls they were most familiar with. Miriam marched along relentlessly, kicking stones and anything she could get her boots on. She didn’t mind being outdoors. It would be an adventure, something she could record in her diary. Kicking the same stone again, she wondered how something so innocuous could have landed her on this wild bunch list. Threats were serious these days, whether they were meant or not, even in an all-girls private high school.

“You’re going to tire yourself out if you keep expending energy on stones.” Elaine was beginning to feel the heat already, and she knew that soon sweat would be running down her face like a nervous cheat in an exam room.

“It helps me concentrate. It’s habit, anyway.”

Elaine knew Miriam played soccer, so maybe she had boundless energy to spare. Rumour had it that the reason Miriam was here had something to do with the game.

“Habits, eh? That’s probably what got us all here in the first place.” Elaine carried a small towel that she used to repeatedly wipe her face. “What was your habit?” Miriam asked.

“Hoarding library books past their due date; what about you?”

Miriam kicked the stone as hard as possible, sending it flying along the trail, almost hitting the boots of the guide. “I simply said I was going to kill Amanda Dean for knocking me down on the soccer pitch. I didn’t actually mean
kill
. I was just pissed off that she would deliberately stick her foot out, trip me maliciously and walk away.”

“How do you know it was malicious? She got a yellow card, didn’t she?” Susan piped up. She was walking behind, breathing a little too hard for the beginning of the walk. Susan had watched many games with her father and knew that fouls happened. Her father’s favourite team was AC Milan, and she would sit in the couch eating her potato chips, listening to him scream at the television, asking some forward how he had missed a particular chance to score.

Miriam stopped abruptly. “That wasn’t enough!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. The others at the front turned to look at what was happening. “What!” Miriam shouted again with her arms outstretched in a question mark.

Mrs. Marks turned to see what was happening and was met with blank stares of teenage boredom, nonchalance and a general look that said they didn’t know what was happening.

“Wow, you need to take a chill pill,” Kimberly interjected. She had one ear bud in and the other dangling along her chest, even though they’d all been told there were to be no iPods, cell phones or any other electronic device that would distract them from the joys of nature.

Miriam gave Kimberly an intimidating stare and ignored her comment. Kimberly stared back, daring Miriam to outstare her while bopping her head to whatever pop tart she was listening to. The intensity of the stare and the heat was strong.

“So you’re here, and Amanda isn’t.” The statement from Elaine broke the intensity and caused the stares to unlock.

“That’s life,” Miriam said, targeting another stone for her kicking pleasure.

Although the sun’s heat beat down, the air was crisp. The trail extended endlessly in front of them, winding in and out of greenery, hemmed in by snow-capped mountains that rose mightily above them. The peaks seemed to reach the doors of heaven.

Susan didn’t know if she was seeing the same one trail or a thousand trails that seemed to run into one. She’d heard there were many and they would be doing five of them in five days. She marched along, trying to keep up with the others. She was already thinking of how good it will be to get back into the campground, eat something and get some sleep. There was no TV, so eating and sleeping would have to do. But that was hours away. Susan had eaten a huge breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup, but now she was hungry just thinking about food. It seemed she had an insatiable appetite. She unzipped her backpack partway while still on her back. She reached back and pushed her hand as far as it would go in the small space and felt around. Her hand came up with a chocolate bar, which she ravenously tore into.

“You’re just a bottomless pit, aren’t you?” Kimberly looked at Susan with slight disgust. Her hair seemed to be a golden halo in the mountain sun. Some of the strands flew in brilliant yellow highlights through her ever-combing fingers.

“Do I look like someone who can drink a glass of orange juice and eat a banana for breakfast?” Susan licked around her lips. Her tongue scuttled like a squirrel looking for nuts.

“No, you don’t,” Kimberly said almost to herself.

They walked on, holding up the back end of the line. Before them were some girls they had seen from time to time but were not too familiar with. Some were from grade eleven and still others were from grade twelve. So much for shaping up before gaining seniority and going out into the world. Some had reputations. Others had none or were simply obscure.

There was Margaret the “Mutilator.” Rumour had it she cut herself. High school girls could be cruel. No marks were ever identified, so how could they know? Still, they insisted on saying she had raised marks on her, slashed all across her hands and other parts of her body. Maybe it was a lie; maybe it was true. Who knew? It was out there.

Cassandra was the dunce. Not a pretty dunce, just plain dumb. God help her, people said. If she was pretty, there would be hope for her out there in a vain world, but to have the double jeopardy of being plain and stupid together was a road to nowhere. Rumour had it her parents were buying her
intelligence
from the school and paying for it dearly. Yet, where there’s money there’s hope. Her parents might be paying for a long time.

Then there was Shelly, otherwise known as “the vamp.” Pasty, black eyeliner, jet-black hair, which wasn’t her natural colour—once in a while brown showed at the roots—and black nail polish, which she wasn’t supposed to be wearing. No nail polish at Anne Beaumont Private High. If she was in a public school, she would be sporting a black trench coat. She was the outcast everybody sort of admired. Breaking the rules, she was like rock and roll in a bottle, contained by the confines of school. She was a dark mystery. Opaque in her ability to say a few words or nothing at all when everybody else was competing to babble.

“Oh my G—” Elaine began.

“Don’t say it, or I’ll have to say three hail Marys for you,” Susan panted.

The path had turned into a kaleidoscope of wild, beautiful flowers. They seemed to go on forever, forming a blaze of yellow, red and orange. It was amazing they could be walking on a trail sandwiched by shrubbery and then have entered into this haven of colours. Even in their very wildness lay a sense of perfection, of magnificence. Several ponds littered the ground, murky and dark, dead flowers floating on the top. Splendour and decay all at once. The hymns of birds caressed the air. They had heard birds along the trail before, but they seemed to congregate here, probably unable to resist the temptation of nectars and the vibrant embrace of sweet, wild flowers.

“Wish I had a camera,” Miriam said.

“It’s like a scene from a postcard,” Elaine said.

“Or a scene you would put on a postcard,” Miriam said, staring into one of the ponds trying to see the bottom without success.

Mrs. Marks stopped the group, most of her hair now standing in semi-damp spikes from perspiration. “Take this all in! This is the beauty of the outdoors, the magic of nature.” She was visibly excited. It was obvious, from her splayed-out, all-encompassing arms that symbolized the vastness of the outdoors to her ever-reddening face. Her cheeks were two Macintosh apples.

“What did she say?” Kimberly stood fidgeting with her earphones.

“If you took the buds out of your ears, maybe you would hear what’s going on around you.” Miriam had stopped staring into the pond and was now looking intently into the blue pools of Kimberly’s eyes.

“Was I talking to you?” Kimberly snapped. Her spit flew onto the grass between the wildflowers.

“Well, who were you talking to? And spitting in public is not only disgusting, it’s unladylike.”

The other girls were standing around, digging their heels into the ground and talking. Some were listening to banned iPods, and when Mrs. Marks turned around, the earphones would be yanked out and quickly put back in when she turned away again.

“You’re one to give a lecture. Like you’re so ladylike. Thank God I don’t have to listen to any more of you.” Kimberly stuck both earphones in and turned away from Miriam.

“I could squeeze her self-loving little neck.” Miriam squeezed her fingers together in mock strangulation.

Elaine turned to Miriam. “I wouldn’t continue to make statements like that when it was one that got you here in the first place. They might send you back next year for not learning anything. My mother said there should be a lesson here somewhere.”

“So are you learning anything?” Miriam asked.

“I just got here. Plus I expect my mother to say something like that. It’s the kind of thing she says. Everything is supposed to be a lesson, even if you don’t get it. It’s always crystal clear to her and very vague to us kids.”

Kimberly was oblivious to everything around her. All her attention seemed to be on the music. Her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was enjoying the music that much, or perhaps she just wanted to close Miriam and everybody else out.

“She thinks she’s so hot,” Miriam said.

“Somebody has to think so,” Elaine replied, thinking of all the cliques at school who hung out in groups of threes and fours to profile and make fun of everybody else. Elaine didn’t give them a second thought. Her mother always told her that those sorts of groups were for people who were unsure of themselves. So they used outward appearances, made fun of others and generally made a nuisance of themselves to feel better. Empty happiness in other people’s sadness.

“That’s a good one.” Miriam laughed.

Susan stooped down on her haunches. Resting her legs, she used a stick to draw circles in the damp earth. “I’m hungry,” she said.

Mrs. Marks called out to them that it was time to move on.

Susan sighed deeply and heavily. “So soon?” she mumbled to no one in particular.

Kimberly moved along when she saw the group was going.

Susan was at the very back, and with each step they took her feet dragged along the ground and created a sound like something was being pulled. Elaine turned to look at Susan’s feet, which were leaving a sort of brushed-out trail in the moist earth. Elaine thought about her mother again and what Marjory Johnson would say if she caught her daughter dragging her feet.

“Elaine, someone who drags her feet is clearly nonchalant and taking nothing seriously. Lift your feet, otherwise it makes no sense having them,” she would say. Now the sound of Susan’s feet dragging annoyed Elaine. But Elaine’s mother had also taught her social graces, which meant that she had to be tactful in what she said. She waited for Susan to catch up to her. When the bigger girl finally hauled herself along, her body dragging as if there was some pressure pulling it back, Elaine placed a hand on Susan’s shoulder.

“It’s easier to walk if you lift your feet a little higher.” She made a lifting motion with her right leg.

“Maybe for you. You’re lighter, faster and have the body of an athlete.”

“I’m talking about method, not who’s light or heavy. It would really help.”

“Well, this is hard.” Susan breathed hard. “Why did we have to come here anyway?”

“As opposed to where?” Elaine asked.

“Toronto, Ontario, somewhere in our province?” Susan asked rhetorically.

“I would love that too, but I get the feeling they wanted us to go away from home. They want to shock us or something. I don’t know how they think trees and mountains will do that, but it’s their brilliant idea to pluck us out of Toronto and drop us here in this foreign land. But let’s not drift from the point; if you don’t lift your legs, you’re going to be even more tired.” Elaine didn’t have any proof that what she said was true, but it made sense. It must be better to get your legs off the ground than to keep them there. Otherwise, walking would be pointless.

They had left the moist ground and were now walking on tufts of grass scattered on a drier, harder earth. Trudging along, they maintained their various clusters.

“Stop!” Kimberly suddenly commanded the other three, hopping and dropping back past Susan.

“There’s something wrong with one of my feet,” she said.

“And why should we care about that?” Miriam asked but stopped nonetheless.

Kimberly quickly found a large rock to sit on and started undoing the laces of her right boot while making agonizing sounds as if her foot was on fire. Susan, Miriam and Elaine walked back and stood over Kimberly to see what was wrong.