Stranded (14 page)

Oscar's eyes were bright and shiny behind his glasses when he finally looked at me. “How long is long?”

“They know we're out here,” I said. “They won't give up. I know.”

“Do you?” Oscar sank down into the sand and crossed his legs, elbows on his knees.

I sat next to him. “Do you think they found the campsite?”

“I hope so. Then they'll know.”

I was quiet for a minute, letting a horrible idea take shape, an idea I'd forced away until now. Rescuers finding the obliterated campsite, then the bodies. Broken trees, everything in charred lumps. Would they even be able to identify them now? Chris? Wes? Jeremy? “What if they think we're already dead? All of us.”

“Don't say that.” Oscar looked ill.

“Sorry.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged myself. “I can't help it.”

“I know.” He exhaled. “Just don't say that to them.”

“Why not? I'm sure they're thinking the same thing.”

“They can think it. Just don't say it. Saying it makes it real.” Oscar looked back at the water, the heavenly blue color tarnishing to silver before our eyes. “We can't panic. We need to stick together.”

Apparently he thought Chloe would flip out, and Isaac would leave us. Both were definite possibilities, and I didn't want to deal with either of them. If anyone was going to make it out of here alive, it would be Isaac. He would do whatever it took. That fact made me shiver.

“Okay,” I said. “Don't panic. And then what?”

“And then we just keep doing what we're doing. Technically
we aren't even missing. They have search-and-rescue squads up here. They have rangers.”

I scooped up a handful of dark sand. “We need to get Chloe's ankle better.”

“Yeah, we do,” Oscar said. “But that kind of thing takes time.”

“You know if they don't come for us . . .” I stopped and corrected myself. “If they don't find us, we'll need to leave.” The sand trickled through my loose fist slowly in a steady stream, like an hourglass timer. “At least try to find a trail or a campsite or a ranger station. Something.”

“I know.”

“We can't stay here,” I remembered Chris's words when he told us about the coming storm.
Better to be safe than sorry
. “There could be a snowstorm in a few days. We need to move.”

*  *  *

“How's the foot?”

Chloe wriggled her toes, then carefully rolled her ankle in a clockwise circle. “Much better.” She smiled, relieved. “So much better.”

Isaac had decided smoking the fish would take too long, so now he was boiling the pieces in the pot. I had heard of fish boils, and though I preferred mine fried, I'd take whatever I could get.

“You should probably wash that bandage while you're at it,” he said. “It smells like ass.”

“Well, I guess you would know,” Chloe said. “You're the expert in that area. You probably have a PhD.”

Isaac grinned back at her wickedly. “Yeah. They call me Dr. Ass because I get so much of it.”

“Hoo!” Chloe screamed. “Is that right? I thought it was because you're so full of shit.”

Oscar covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking up and down.

Isaac pointed his stick at him. “What are you laughing at, Wiener?”

“Nothing.”

Isaac shoved the stick back into the pot and speared a white piece of flesh. “You should never laugh at people who cook your food.”

“I'll remember that, Dr. Ass.”

“I mean it, Wiener.”

“All right. Let's go to the beach, Chloe.” Knowing what I did, I really didn't want Isaac to get mad again. Chloe wasn't the type to back down. Oscar was the mediator, but I didn't know exactly what type I was. Maybe the change-the-subject type. “We won't be gone long,” I said.

Isaac waved his stick in lazy circles at me. He looked like he was planning something, and it probably wasn't something good. “Just be back in time for dinner, kids.”

I was overcome with the urge to warn her about Isaac, but I waited until Chloe and I got all the way down to the beach. What would I say, exactly? That he gave me the
creeps? That was obvious. Or should I tell her what had happened? The thought made me hot and suddenly nauseated. What would she say? Or, more importantly, what would she do? Tell Oscar? Confront Isaac? I wasn't sure I wanted to find out, and even though I knew we were out of earshot, I whispered when I spoke. “Maybe you shouldn't push him like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” I said. “Like
that
.”

“Mmm.” Chloe pursed her lips and looked at me sideways. “Not my fault I have better insults.”

“Yeah, but I think we should be nicer.” I shuddered again, remembering the pressure of his knee between my legs as he pinned me against the tree like a bug.

“What for?”

“What do you think would have happened to us if Isaac hadn't caught that fish?”

“You probably would have.”

I thought about that. “I didn't remember to grab the rod and reel and tackle. Isaac did.”

“Yeah, right before he ran off and left us.”

I remembered what she had said when we found her that night.
He left me. He left me.
“What happened out there?” I asked, louder than I intended.

“I don't know.” Chloe shook her head, either not wanting to tell me or really unsure. “I just know he's a jerk.”

He's more than that,
I thought grimly. “Come on,” I said,
wringing the bandage dry. My hands were so cold they hurt.

I gave Chloe back the bandage, my hands throbbing, and shook them to get the blood flowing.
And this is the warmest the water is probably going to get
.
What are we going to do when the weather turns?

So far all the days had been extremely warm, warmer than average, but the image of snow covering us as we slept popped into my head. We had no tents, only sleeping bags. “We need to make a shelter.”

“Huh?”

“You know, like a hut or something. In case it rains again.” What I didn't say was
in case we are out here for a while.

“A hut?” Chloe pulled on her tank top, then her waffle-weave thermal shirt, and topped it off with a navy blue hoodie. We'd all taken to dressing in layers. I could have used a ski hat, mittens, and a scarf. Maybe one of those balaclava things. During the day it was fine, but the nights were cool, almost chilly.

“Yeah.” I chose my words carefully. “This morning when I woke up, I could see my breath.”

Chloe nodded. “I actually read a wilderness-survival handbook after I signed up for this. They said most people get into trouble because of two things: exposure and dehydration.”

“Well, we got the hydration part okay. What else did it say?”

“Oh my God!” Chloe yelled.

“What's wrong?”

“Not what's wrong! What's right! I can't believe I forgot!”

“Huh?” I had no idea what she was talking about. There didn't seem to be anything right.

But Chloe was already crutching back toward the trees, hobbling along like a drunken peg-leg pirate. “C'mon! I'll show you!”

*  *  *

“This! This is what I forgot about!” Chloe tugged a small black zipper almost hidden on the underside of her pack. When it opened, another layer extended like an accordion, expanding to reveal a second compartment. “I can't believe I forgot.” She pulled out an orange nylon bag, just like the one Chris had put our cell phones in. “It's a survival kit.”

“What?” Isaac jumped up, almost knocking over the pot. “You forgot? How could you forget something like that?”

“I got this backpack at the last minute. I was going to use my old one, but it wasn't big enough.”

“Huh?”

“What's in it?” Oscar asked, his face brightening with hope. It was a nice thing to see.

“I don't even know.” Chloe opened the kit. “My uncle Jimmy gave it to me. He was in the army. He's the one who loaned me his pack. He just said, ‘There's even an e-kit on the bottom.' At the time I didn't know what he was talking about.”

“An e-kit?” I wondered out loud.

“Uh-huh,” Chloe snorted. “I guess it stands for ‘emergency.' ” If she was embarrassed, she didn't show it.

“Your uncle was in the army?” Isaac's question was almost a whisper.

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “In Iraq. First Gulf War. He's retired now, though.”

“My dad was too,” Isaac replied, staring at his hands. “Medically retired.”

“Open it up.”
Please let there be food.

Inside, the contents were displayed in their separate compartments. A plastic whistle. A waterproof matchbox with wood matches. A small mirror. A small first aid kit. An insect head net. A plastic water bag. Four food packets. A miniature LED flashlight. A tiny tube of sunscreen. A bundle of wire. Iodine tablets. A thin foil blanket. A candle. A compass.

Oscar grabbed the compass, delighted. He held it out straight armed and turned in a circle, watching the dial to find north. He stared. He turned. He looked at it and shook it. “This is broken.” He shook it once more to make sure.

“Let me see.” Isaac flipped the compass around in his hand and frowned. “Must have gotten crushed or something.”

Chloe unfolded the tinfoil sheet. “This is a body sheet, I think. It can keep us warm.”

“It's only big enough for one person,” I pointed out.

“We can take turns using it,” Oscar said. “Or just save it for whoever needs it most.”

“Or we can all zip our bags together and cuddle.” Isaac
gave me a quick look before he handed me the compass.

It had indeed been crushed. The red needle never wavered, no matter what I did. “Actually, I was thinking we should build a shelter.”

“You were thinking again, huh, Dodd?” Isaac slid the bundle of wire into one of his zippered pants pockets. “Don't strain yourself.”

“What's that wire for, anyway?” Oscar asked, giving Isaac a hard stare. He hadn't missed the look Isaac had given me. Oscar was too smart not to notice, and I wondered briefly if he knew what Isaac had done on the beach with the towel.
He doesn't know what Isaac did to me. What would happen if he knew?

“Snares.”

“Snares?”

“That's what I said.” Isaac palmed the matches as well. “Don't you know what a snare is, Wiener?”

“It's a trap.”

“
Sí. Tú es muy correcto
.”

Is that supposed to be Spanish?

“So you know how to make one?”

“What do you think?”

“I think no,” Oscar replied and crossed his arms.

Isaac laughed. “You're right; I don't. But then again, that never stopped me before.” He turned on his heel, heading toward a thick grove of jack pine. He unraveled the wire as he walked, leaving us to enjoy our newfound presents. “Have fun building your log cabin.”

After Isaac left with the snare wire, we started on a shelter with the entrance facing the beach, but an hour later it still didn't look like much, more like a fort a bunch of little kids would make, if that bunch of kids were all slightly drunk.

We stacked aspen limbs on top of each other to make a wall positioned to face the woods. Oscar and I did the same on each side, using sharp rocks to dig a foot-deep trench in the sand to support the wall, which eventually got about four feet high.

“Now the roof?” Oscar wiped the sweat from his neck.

“Give me a minute.” I sat down, exhausted. My palms were burning and itchy with sap.

“Maybe you could lay the thin leafy branches over the top,” Chloe said, taking a break from her whistle blowing. Oscar had told her to stop. She'd been blowing it every five minutes, and now my head was ringing like I'd been kicked. “Those pine ones are nice and wide.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands together, trying to remove the oily resin. “But we don't have a hatchet to cut the branches. Too bad there wasn't one in the emergency pack.” I remembered Oscar's book.
Brian survived with just a hatchet
. I shook my head.
If Brian had been real, he would've ended up dead.

Oscar gave me a look, and at first I couldn't figure out what it meant, but then I realized I'd been talking out loud. Like a crazy person.

It was almost dark when we finished, but Isaac still had not come back.

Chloe alternated between watching the woods and watching the fire. The whistle hung low around her neck, and she played with it absently. She peered inside the shelter's entrance. “So are we all going to fit?”

“It's wide enough if we all sleep in a row,” I answered, “but who's gonna sleep next to Isaac?”

“I'll pass.” Chloe screwed her face up like she'd caught a whiff of something rotten.

Even Oscar wrinkled his nose, considering the possibility, then looked at me.

What would Isaac do if I were curled up next to him? “Not me!” I yelled. “No way, no how, no thanks.”

“Maybe we should draw straws.”

“Or pick a number.”

“That's stupid.”

“I pick eight.” Isaac stepped into the circle on the opposite side. “Eight's my lucky number.”

The bright glow of the fire made the woods behind us invisible, and a person could sneak up on you that way. It's like someone looking into a house with all the lights on inside at night. They can see you, but you can't see them, watching from out in the dark.

How long has he been standing there?

Long enough.

“We built a shelter,” Oscar explained.

“I see that.” Isaac curled up the remaining wire into a tight circle around his wrist, and I guessed by his face that he hadn't caught anything. “It looks more like a pigpen.” He stuffed the coil of wire back into his pocket. “Then again, a pen has four sides, so I don't know what the hell that mess is supposed to be.”