The Distance Between Lost and Found (5 page)

Rachel looks confused. And wary. “Why what?”

“Why are you helping me?” Hallelujah's voice is rising, but she can't control it. “We don't know each other, and even if you didn't get it last night, you have to get now that I'm not exactly popular. I can't help you get close to Luke. Not that you seem to need any help on that front. And I don't need your pity, either. So there's no reason for us to be friends. Okay?”

Rachel has gone still. For a second, Hallelujah thinks she's not going to say anything. But then she speaks. Her voice is soft, but it holds a lot of emotion, barely contained. “Wow, Hal. Message received.”

“Everything all right?” Rich appears between the two of them, looking concerned. “Do you need to talk about anything? That's why I'm here, Hallelujah. I'm here for you.”

She feels her anger drain away, like the water dripping from her ponytail. What's left is exhaustion. She's so, so tired. Of all of this. “No, sir,” she says. “I just got upset when I fell. That's all.”

Rich pats her awkwardly on the back. “Well, you're okay now.”

“Sure,” Hallelujah murmurs. She looks past him, wanting to say something to Rachel but not sure what to say or how to say it. Rachel is already walking away.

W
HEN
J
ESSE ANNOUNCES THAT IT'S TIME TO GET BACK ON
the trail, Hallelujah watches Rachel approach Brittany, Madison, and Kelsey. She can't hear what Rachel says, but she sees the Knoxville girls' wide, condescending grins in response. Hallelujah takes a step closer, suddenly anxious.

“So you have a fight with your girlfriend, and now you want to hang out with us again?” Madison drawls. She looks over Rachel's shoulder at Hallelujah.

Rachel follows Madison's gaze. “Hal? Don't worry. We're not friends.”

“Whatever you say.” Kelsey rolls her eyes.

“Anyway, have a good week!” Brittany says brightly. The three of them turn and start up the trail, leaving Rachel standing by herself.

Rachel's shoulders slump. Then she straightens up. After a moment, she walks back toward the creek.

“What's she doing?” Jonah is standing next to Hallelujah.

“I don't know.” Hallelujah tells herself she doesn't want to know. That she doesn't care. But she does. What just happened to Rachel is her fault. She's causing collateral damage just by being here. Never mind how she lashed out at the only person who has tried to be nice to her in ages.

Rachel stops at the bank. “I know you're still there,” she says without turning around. Her voice is soft, barely audible over the running water.

Hallelujah takes a few steps closer. “Where are you going?”

Now Rachel whirls around. “Not that you deserve an answer, but I'm going home. This trip sucks.” She looks past them, at the trail the group just took. Hallelujah turns and looks too. Everyone is gone. She can hear laughter, but she can't see anybody through the trees.

“You can't just go off by yourself,” Jonah says. “You'll get in trouble.”

“I'm counting on it,” Rachel answers. She stares them down, turns, and wades right into the creek, heading back the way they just came. “Like I said: I want to go home. If I have to get in trouble in order for them to send me home, so be it. At least I won't have to deal with you anymore. Any of you! You all deserve each other.”

“Okay,” Jonah says. “You want to go home. Fine. You still can't hike off alone.”

“She won't be alone. I'm going too.” Hallelujah is a little surprised to hear herself say those words. But she doesn't regret them. Being sent home
does
sound better than staying here. And she's used to being in trouble. It might as well be for something she actually did. She might as well go in with her eyes open.

She walks into the creek. Jonah follows. “Me too,” he says.

“You don't have to,” Rachel says, hands on hips. “I can find my way back.”

“We're coming.” The more Hallelujah says it, the more right it feels. She doesn't know why it feels so right, since the rational thing would be to drag Rachel back to the group, to follow the rules, to keep flying under the radar. But this is what she wants to do.

They reach the other side. They look at each other.

Hallelujah is the first to speak. “Well?”

“Well,” Jonah echoes. He's looking at Hallelujah like he's never seen her before. “Let's go.”

T
HEY WALK
. H
ALLELUJAH DOESN'T KNOW WHAT
R
ACHEL
and Jonah are thinking, but inside her head, she's arguing with herself. Second-guessing.

She's doing something she shouldn't be—this is like last night's sneaking out, multiplied exponentially. It won't end well. It can't. But she feels a weight lifted.

Rachel let Hallelujah come with her. After Hallelujah yelled at her and pushed her away. And sure, maybe they'll go their separate ways after today. Maybe they'll never talk again. But maybe, just maybe, this is the start of something new.

Jonah chose to follow them. He could've gone with the group, back to Luke, back to his life, away from Hallelujah. Again. But he didn't. He's here.

She's not alone, despite Luke's best efforts. Despite her own.

She feels hope well up. She isn't sure what to do with it. Hope is scary. Expecting the worst is easier.

And then, Rachel speaks. “I came to this thing by myself, and I hate coming to things like this by myself. But I honestly thought I might make some friends.” She doesn't stop moving, doesn't turn around. “That's why I started talking to you. Plus, you looked like maybe you could use someone to talk to. But you—”

Hallelujah braces herself. It could be anything. She's boring. She's lame. She's ugly. She's too angry. She's too sad. She's too quiet. She tries too hard and she doesn't try hard enough. She only cares about herself and she doesn't deserve friends.

“You don't make it easy,” Rachel finishes quietly.

Hallelujah takes in a sharp breath. Of all the things Rachel could have said. It's her fight with Sarah all over again.

It was Thanksgiving, only a month after Luke happened. Hallelujah had sent yet another email to Sarah in Georgia about what was going on. Her side of the story. How unfair it was. The latest awful thing she'd heard about herself at school. How much she missed Sarah, wished she was there. And Sarah had come online and messaged her directly:
I don't want to be mean . . . but you have to stop complaining and
do
something. Make Dani listen
, Sarah typed.
Make Jonah talk to you. Make Luke shut up. Stand up for yourself
. A pause, during which Hallelujah had gaped at the screen, hands frozen. Then:
You're my friend, but I don't know how much more whining I can take. I'm sorry
.

White-hot anger. That's what Hallelujah remembers. Sarah didn't understand anything. She wasn't there. She was always too busy to talk. She didn't get how much Hallelujah was hurting. And everything Hallelujah had been holding inside came out.

She'd called Sarah selfish. And shallow. Said she obviously didn't care about their friendship. Said she wouldn't bother her with her problems anymore. Sarah could move on with her life, like she clearly wanted, leaving Hallelujah behind.

After another pause, Sarah wrote,
Nothing is ever easy with you. You make things so hard
. And she signed off. That was the last time they spoke. Five months ago. Each waiting, Hallelujah assumes, for the other to apologize first.

Now, to Rachel, she says what she should've said to Sarah: “I'm sorry.”

Rachel doesn't answer, but she nods. It's not much, but it's more than Hallelujah feels like she deserves.

Half an hour down the trail, they stop to eat lunch. Identical PB&Js with apples—two of each for Jonah—handed out by the chaperones after breakfast. Washed down with gulps of cool water. Hallelujah feels the lump of peanut butter and bread settle in her stomach. She sits back, enjoying the sun on her face and listening to the wind in the trees and the birds calling.

“Well,” Jonah says after a while. “We should probably get going.”

“Yeah. Guess so.” Rachel stands, grabs her backpack, and starts walking. Hallelujah and Jonah follow.

They reach the crossroads from earlier. Rachel strides right through, but something makes Hallelujah pause. “Didn't we come from that way?” She points down the trail to their right.

Jonah looks thoughtful. “I wasn't really paying attention,” he says. “Maybe?”

“No, we definitely went straight through here.” Rachel reads the sign. “Hannah Mountain Trail. We were on that from the beginning. I'm sure of it.”

Hallelujah studies both trails. Trees. Dirt. Leaves. They look the same.

“You're sure?” she asks Rachel.

“Yes.” Rachel nods. “And if I'm wrong, we can always go back, right?”

“Yeah. Retrace our steps.” Jonah still seems uncertain, but like he's being pulled in Rachel's direction.

So Hallelujah gives in. It's not like she remembers this morning perfectly, anyway. “Fine. Okay. Let's go.”

T
HEY HIKE IN SILENCE FOR A WHILE
. A
ND DESPITE HER
jeans still being damp from sitting in and wading through the creek, and despite her backpack straps digging into her shoulders, Hallelujah gets a second wind. She feels like she could keep hiking forever.

There are no other people in sight. It's quiet. Until Rachel starts singing in time to her footsteps, an off-key rendition of “I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.” Out of everything she could have chosen. Jonah snorts and shoots his eyes back toward Hallelujah like,
Are you hearing this?
But he's smiling, and the fact that he shared that smile and that glance with Hallelujah makes her smile too.

Just like that, the tension is gone. They are a fizzled-out cartoon bomb, a balloon popped with a pin, helium-headed. They are going to get in so much trouble when they get back to the campgrounds, and not one of them cares.

Rachel keeps singing. She knows all the words. When she stops for breath, Jonah says, “Coconuts are tropical. This is a temperate zone!” in a terrible British accent. Rachel bursts out laughing. She stops and holds her knees, chest heaving. When she turns around to look at them, eyes streaming, Jonah says, amused, “It wasn't that funny.”

That sets Rachel off all over again. She sits on the ground and laughs and laughs, and when Hallelujah admits, “I don't get it,” Rachel laughs even harder.

“Monty Python,” Jonah says.

Hallelujah shrugs. “Okay?”

“Old British comedy guys? From, like, the seventies?
The Quest for the Holy Grail
? Coconuts?” Jonah claps his hands together a few times, galloping in place like he's riding an imaginary horse.

Hallelujah stares. Rachel wheezes.

Jonah stops, looking embarrassed. “I could've sworn we watched that one last year.” When Hallelujah shakes her head, he says, “Oh. Well, we should.” He looks away like he hasn't just essentially invited Hallelujah over to his house for movie night. Like that isn't an extremely big deal after six months of radio silence.

Rachel's laughs have turned to hiccups. She gasps, “You guys aren't . . . so bad.”

The scene feels surreal, with Rachel sitting in the dirt in the middle of the trail and Jonah leaning back against a tree and the afternoon sunlight coming in at strange angles. If another hiker were to come along, if someone were to take a picture of this moment, they'd probably assume: friends. Since childhood. Easy together.

But since no one appears with a camera to document it, the moment passes.

Jonah says, “We should be close now. We've been hiking long enough.”

“Good,” Hallelujah says. “Let's get this over with.” The rest of the hike. Whatever punishment awaits them at the lodge. And after. She's ready to face it. At the same time, she doesn't mean that she wants this day to end. Not entirely.

She helps Rachel to her feet. Their eyes meet, and Rachel nods, and Hallelujah knows she is forgiven. She doesn't know why, but an olive branch has been offered. She's grateful for it.

They walk. Up small hills and down others, along straight trail and winding curves, over roots and through soft dirt and under low-hanging tree boughs.

The light changes.

As the light changes, so does the mood. Their silence goes from comfortable to tense, charged. Their breath comes in puffs. Their feet hit the ground, heavy.

Hallelujah thinks, but does not say,
We should be there. We should have been there an hour ago
. She's afraid to say it. Afraid saying it will make it real.

They walk faster, the sun slipping away from them. There's a sense of urgency now. They all feel it. They all create it.

No one will say it.

Not until they reach the top of a ridge and look out over a valley and see the sun dropping closer to the mountaintops. Jonah squints into the light, drops his pack off his back and says, simply, “We screwed up.”

Rachel nods, looking miserable. “No kidding. I'm sorry.” Small words, but Hallelujah is glad to hear them from the person who insisted they take this trail.

Hallelujah sits down, suddenly exhausted. She slides her backpack off her back, rolling her shoulders to work out the kinks. She's got two sweat-stripes where the straps sat. “How long do you think we have before the sun sets?” she asks, trying to sound less anxious than she feels.

Jonah looks at his watch, worry creasing his face. “I don't think we'll make it back before dark. Either of you two bring a flashlight? All I have is this.” He flashes the blue light on his watch screen.

Hallelujah shakes her head. Rachel shakes her head. They were supposed to be back in the vans by now.