Lost at Running Brook Trail (18 page)

They stooped at the entrance to the cave. Each time the lightning struck, they jumped back a little. The thunder didn’t sound as if it was close by. It rumbled long and low, but the lightning seemed just an arm’s length away, cracking open the belligerent sky.

“Here we are again being cornered by something.” Miriam watched the place change from darkness to light with every split of the sky by lightning. Sometimes it stayed a while and seemed to grow limbs that branched out across the sky’s entire expanse.

“The good thing is we can’t get hurt unless we step outside. All we have to do is stand where we are; stay put and wait it out.” Elaine wondered what she would be doing if she were home instead.

“I’ve never waited out so many things in one day,” Miriam said.

Susan held her hands over her ears. She didn’t mind the lightning. It made everything so bright and clear, if only for a couple of seconds. Standing at the cave’s mouth by the two stones, she could see the others’ faces light up with each flash of light. She couldn’t bear the sound of the thunder, though, and her hands over her ears did nothing to shut out the sound.

“I don’t like the sound.” Susan dropped her hands from her ears. It was futile to pretend she could block it out. “It’s intense.” She listened to its deep, heavy resonance.

The rumbling and the flashes of light continued to rage. The forked, zigzag lines of each strike seemed at times to reach the mouth of the cave. And on all these occasions Elaine repeatedly whispered, “We are wearing good shoes, we are wearing good shoes.” She said this to reassure herself and the others, even though she wasn’t sure if the half-inch rubber soles of their boots could protect them. But she was sure rubber was an electric insulator.

Eventually the thunder petered out and the lightning stopped, leaving only a slate of grey. The heavy wind and the light rain were gone, and all that was left was a dark stillness.

“We wait here. On the news they say wait at least thirty minutes because the lightning might come back.” Elaine watched the gloom turn to bright sunshine again. It was as if she had witnessed two different days.

“This is the bear all over again.” Miriam thought about how much she had waited since yesterday. Waiting on things to happen usually made her agitated because she always wanted results right away. But during several incidents she’d been forced to stay put and accept things. She’d been told that the cost of rushing ahead without thought and strategy could be more costly. But those were words said on the soccer pitch, in classes and at home. Miriam never thought she would ever be waiting for anything in the woods.

“Claws or lightning bolts, it’s more about what we decide to do.” They were safe from lightning as long as they stayed in the confines of the cave. If they stepped outside, there could be a terrible outcome.

“When you put it that way, Elaine, we’re our own deadly opponent,” said Miriam.

They stooped at the entrance of the cave to wait out the lightning. When they were tired of standing bent over, they crouched like animals prepared to spring from some hidden place.

“I think we can chance it now.” Elaine finally stood from her haunches and stretched.

They stepped cautiously into the sunlight. There wasn’t much evidence of rain, as the sun had dried up most of the moisture. They went back and sat on the rocks. It seemed like a place made just for the lost and the weary.

“No tin for hot water, no being rescued and we’re sitting on rocks.” Miriam drew her knees up to her chest and rested her sprained wrist on them. At least she could keep it high and hope it was adequately elevated.

“I got it!” Kimberly jumped off the rocks as if she’d been struck with a sudden brilliant discovery.

“What is it?” Miriam asked.

“I think I may have a tin in my bag.” Kimberly unzipped the bag and dug around in it. She brought out a round tin and opened it. She took out several sticks of lip gloss, a case of eye shadow, nail polish and other stuff for her face and dumped them in her bag. She triumphantly held up the empty tin. “We can use this!”

“You have a container full of stuff for your face, and we had to walk all that way to see the ghastly sight of rotting flesh and swarming insects. And of course this.” Miriam pointed to her sprained hand.

“I didn’t remember that I had it; it’s not as if we associate makeup containers with hot water.”

Miriam sighed and rested her head on her outstretched hand. “Why do you need so much stuff that you have to fill a container anyway?”

“I told you before, it’s just for appearances.”

“I get that,” Miriam said. “I get that.”

“Everything we do is a show,” Susan reminded them.

“You could just be yourself, you know. Nobody is going to notice the difference if you wear makeup or not. We’re fifteen going on sixteen. We have a lot of years to wear that stuff if we want to.”

“Miriam, maybe you wouldn’t notice. I don’t know, I tried going without any makeup once, and my heart raced because I wasn’t sure about how I looked. I had to go put some on.”

“So just being you is frightening?”

“That’s true for most of us. It’s not just me. Maybe I should just try to be a new person.”

“That’s not necessary. I don’t even know if that can work,” Miriam said. “We can only become better at being whoever we are. Maybe we just don’t know who we are.”

“‘The density is hard to conceive; oh why are we all so naïve?’”
Susan continued her poetic commentary. “What if we know who we are but just don’t want to be that person?”

“That’s an interesting question, but each of us has to know what we’re going to do. It’s another decision that we make, but it’s a big one. At least that’s what I’ve been told all my life, ever since I can remember. ‘Elaine, you need to know who you are, or you’ll be easily bent and led,’ and all that stuff. Like when we were ten and our parents would be telling us this, my brother and I would roll our eyes—behind their backs of course—but the older you get the clearer it becomes. Not necessarily crystal clear, but you get a nugget of clarity here and there, like when somebody at school pressures you to do something you know you shouldn’t do. Are you going to do it or not? What exactly is going to stop me from not doing this thing? It’s got to be knowing myself and being who I am.” Elaine got up and began scavenging for dried branches and twigs. “Let’s see if we can get a fire started.”

Kimberly trailed Elaine. “Even if your friends think you’re not cool?”

“Yeah, that’s when you know for sure, because you’re not trying to impress anybody. Believe me, being branded uncool in high school by the crowd is probably the coolest thing. We just don’t know it yet.”

“It’s hard to go against the crowd.” Kimberly snapped a dried branch into several pieces.

“Don’t go against anything. Just do your thing. If your thing happens to run opposite everybody else, so be it.” Elaine looked at the fallen branches she had collected. She felt like she had gone backward in time, in another world, where wood-gathering was a tradition. All four of them had become members of a civilization of the distant past. They had seen drawings of hunters and gatherers on the walls of the cave. Perhaps they too had become a part of the pictures on the wall, like a viewer unknowingly participating in an installation set up by a clever artist.

“I don’t get how you can be so sure of yourself. We’re the same age. It’s not like you’re any different from any of us out here.” Kimberly picked up another piece of wood and threw it down. “Bloody ants!”

“I’m not sure of anything. Look at where I am!” Elaine spread her arms, which held dried branches and twigs. “It’s just that if you’ve been drilled with something all your life, you can resist it all you want but some things tend to find their way in.”

“I suppose.” Kimberly wandered off and searched for more sticks, thinking about what they’d said. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to identify with all of those things. She didn’t want to have the reputation of being just another stereotypical pretty face with no other notable abilities. But her beauty had been drilled into her and that had found its way in, perhaps to the loss of other things. She was bright, which was why she’d been accepted to Anne Beaumont. But her self-image was a bit messed up.

“Some of the leaves and twigs are damp,” Susan said.

“Just choose the driest.” Elaine stopped looking for twigs and now chose stones to use to build a fire pit. With all they had been through, she didn’t want to make a fire that raged out of control. She chose level ground over bare soil and started to arrange the stones.

“Over the puke?” Kimberly made a face.

“It’s the most even spot there is, and besides, it’s completely covered. You couldn’t tell there was puke here if you didn’t know.”

They began to stack the twigs and leaves into a mound in the middle with the larger pieces of wood on the outside. Elaine struck the lighter close to the mound, but the leaves wouldn’t light. She took the rest of the tissue from her bag.

“Yesterday you had a full roll, today you’re almost down to the cardboard.” Miriam said.

“Everybody needed some. I couldn’t be selfish.” Elaine stuffed the tissue that she had taken off the roll into the pile of leaves and twigs. She struck the lighter again and the tissue caught fire. Then it started to spread to the leaves.

“My legs are tired from so much bending down.” Miriam moved away and found a small rock to sit on. One by one they all did the same until they sat in a circle around the swirling smoke. They bent over and blew on the spot in the middle of the fire, forcing the smoke to go this way and that. It wasn’t long before the flames appeared on the wood.

Kimberly held the aluminum can, and they poured water in it and set it on the fire. The can leaned lopsidedly on the dried wood, held up by the circle of rocks.

“It’s going to be really hot to hold.”

“Two long pieces of green stick to take it off and my sweater will do it.” Elaine watched the upward movements of the orange-red flames and imagined them blazing up high in the sky with the ability to touch the mountains.

“We could use some of this in the cave.” Kimberly’s eyes were drawn to the fire. There was some magnetism that pulled her into its heat and movement.

“I think our eyes adjusted well enough in there without any fire.” Susan heard her empty stomach growl. She had forgotten about it until now, when she saw the tin on the fire. She couldn’t remember ever going this long without eating. But instead of being ravenous, she actually felt happy, like she had jumped over some hurdle she never thought she could.

Elaine went off and came back with two long sticks, which she used to lift the tin off the fire. She used a sleeve of her sweater to lean the tin down on its side so that the hot water poured out into its cover. Elaine handed the cover to Susan.

“My stomach is so empty, I can actually feel the water going down the walls until it hits the bottom.” Susan passed the cover to Kimberly and used her spread-out fingers to fan herself. She felt beads of sweat on her forehead.

Kimberly brought the can to her mouth to drink. She made out a fluid shadow of herself in the water. She could get no solid handle on herself.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Stop admiring yourself and pass the can around.” Miriam held a hand out.

“I wasn’t admiring. I was just looking.”

“What did you see?” Miriam poured more water into the cover and drank.

“Nothing really, just some kind of silhouette that barely looks like me.”

Elaine took the can from Miriam and drank. The water was still hot, but not as hot as when it had just come off the fire. She looked into the tin and saw the reflection that Kimberly talked about. She had to hold the can really still to get an angle on her face. “It’s you; it’s just a different perspective.”

They heated more water on the fire and passed the can around again like a sacrament.

“I felt like I could come out here in these woods, hike the hell out of it and then go home. I would get a nice summer story out of it and that would be that.” Miriam raised her left arm to shoulder level and held it there for a while. “I play soccer. I run up and down for ninety minutes, and I could still run more after that.”

“So you felt invincible?” Elaine was sure that most of them felt that way, but when they found themselves lost, everything became a long, slow process, like water seeping through the rocks inside the cave.

“I still feel like I could run for ninety minutes, but there’s a reason why they give a break in between. We’re all breakable.” Miriam placed her hand back on her knees.

“It’s hard to imagine you breaking.” Kimberly ran her fingers over her face. The itching had eased significantly. “Not when you walk around pissed off all the time, breaking and stomping on stuff like you have the world on your shoulders.”

“So this is about your mirrors?”

“No, I think I’m fine without them. I just want to know why you’re so pissed off all the time.

The can went from hand to hand. Miriam looked into the blaze. She knew the answer to the question, but she didn’t know what would happen if she said it. But what could happen? It’s not as if it would hurt her any more than it did before.

“I never really got to say goodbye to my father. It makes me mad just thinking about it, and when I’m not outright angry about it, everything just simmers underneath the surface. I can just feel it.” Miriam instinctively started to flex her wrist but then stopped. She would have to gain some control.

“If things keep simmering, they burn. There’s no time like the present. Stop being so pissed off and go talk to him already.” Elaine threw another stick on the burning pit and watched it burn. They finished drinking. They had a bundle of unused wood lying beside them.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“If my father passed away and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, I would go to where he is now and say all the things I wanted to say. I’m sure your mother would take you to where he is, and if you’re willing to wait a few months until you’re sixteen, you can drive yourself there.”