The Distance Between Lost and Found (6 page)

“What do we do?” Rachel asks.

“We shouldn't keep walking after sunset,” Jonah says. “Too dangerous. Who knows where we'd end up. I'd say our best bet is to start back, and when the sun goes down we find a place to camp for the night.” He looks from Hallelujah to Rachel. “At this point, they know we're gone. So they're already looking for us. We might not even have to spend the whole night out here.”

“Right. And we have some food,” Hallelujah says. “Enough for tonight and tomorrow morning. I mean, we won't starve.” She heaves herself to her feet. “I think there was a clearing, not too far back. Just off the trail. Maybe we can sleep there.”

“Good, Hallie.” Jonah nods.

They backtrack about half an hour. Hallelujah wishes they could just keep backtracking, rewind the film. She wishes she'd been louder at the crossroads, pushed her opinion, made herself heard. But she isn't used to making people listen to her, or even wanting to, and if she's honest with herself, she wasn't 100 percent sure she was right. And then she would have been the one leading them astray, not Rachel.

Rachel, who pulled them away from the group in the first place. Rachel, who picked the wrong path. Rachel, who—

Hallelujah forces herself to stop. Blaming Rachel won't help. And anyway, everything will be okay. They'll spend the night out here, and in the morning they'll start walking again—the right way—and they'll be at the campgrounds by lunchtime. And surely there will be someone from their group waiting for them, or someone alerted by their group, like a park ranger. And they'll be taken back to the lodge to clean up and eat and get yelled at. And then they'll get sent home. Like they all wanted.

“You know what would be useful right about now?” Rachel raises her voice to a shout. “Cell phones!”

Jonah snorts. “No kidding. But reception's probably bad out here.”

“Still. We could've tried.” Rachel kicks at a clod of dirt on the trail. It goes skittering past Hallelujah's feet. “They should've let us be prepared for this.”

“Yeah, but we were supposed to stay with the group. . . .” Hallelujah fades off, seeing the clearing to her left. Down from the trail, a spot maybe six feet square with no trees, just soft grass. “Over there,” she says, and points.

“Nice.” Jonah heads down, long limbs crashing through the bushes. He looks around, nodding. “This'll do. I can make a fire over here”—he gestures to one corner of the clearing—“and we can put our bags up in that tree.”

“You can make a fire?” Hallelujah asks.

“Put our bags in the tree?” Rachel says at the same time.

“I was a Boy Scout,” Jonah says. “And we put our bags in the tree to keep our food away from bears.”

“Bears?” Rachel squeaks. “Seriously?”

Hallelujah wants to lay down more blame:
You were a Boy Scout, and you didn't know we were going the wrong way?
But she bites back the words and follows Jonah's trampled path to the clearing.

The sun is low. The air is cooler without the light to warm it. Hallelujah pulls on the extra layers she'd shed earlier in the day: long-sleeved shirt, jacket, another pair of socks. Rachel puts on her own jacket, shivering a little. Her bare legs look thin and pale in the twilight.

And then they sit, feeling the temperature drop and watching the sun slip away.

Jonah has his back to them. He's crouched over a pile of wood, striking at a piece of steel with an attached flint. Watching him, listening to stone hit metal, Hallelujah wonders if the flint is a relic from Jonah's Boy Scout days. Or if it's some new thing, if Jonah has gone all
Man vs. Wild
since they stopped talking. She doesn't ask him.

Just as the sun drops below the horizon completely, it happens. A spark. A spark that Jonah fans into flames. Small flames. Beautiful flames.

“There,” Jonah says, looking pleased.

They huddle around, as close as they dare to get without being
in
the fire. Jonah pulls on his jacket and rubs his hands up and down his shins and calves, trying to warm his skin. “You're the smart one,” he says to Hallelujah after a few seconds.

“Me? Why?”

Jonah gestures at Rachel's bare legs, and at his own worn cargo shorts. “You're gonna be a lot warmer than us. Since you wore jeans.”

“Oh. Right.” Hallelujah thinks back to that moment this morning when she thought about telling Rachel how chilly it was. When she changed her mind. One more thing to feel guilty about.

“At least it's only for tonight,” Rachel says. She's pulled her knees up toward her chest and is trying to zip her jacket over her shins. The zipper doesn't quite reach, even with her knees right under her chin. “Just tonight,” she repeats.

“Yup.” Jonah pokes at the fire with a stick. Sparks float up. He rubs at his legs a few more times, and then starts popping his knuckles. Hallelujah watches his hands. He always pops his knuckles in this particular way. When he's thinking hard. Or nervous. He pops each finger, pinky to thumb, on his left hand, and then repeats the sequence on the right. Then he shakes his hands out like he's loosening the joints back up.

“Gross,” Rachel says, and Jonah looks up, startled, like he didn't realize what he was doing.

“Sorry,” he says. “So—should we eat? We should eat. Let's eat.”

They take inventory. Jonah has one more peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Hallelujah has an orange juice from breakfast and the twelve-pack of energy bars she brought for the week. Rachel has a banana, two energy bars, and a can of Diet Coke.

“Wish I didn't eat two sandwiches earlier,” Jonah mutters, staring at their small pile of supplies.

“Well, you did skip breakfast,” Hallelujah answers.

He blinks at her, like he's surprised she noticed, and Hallelujah feels her face grow hot. She's glad it's dark. She's even more glad Jonah doesn't say anything else.

They split the sandwich three ways and each have an energy bar. And though they're all still hungry, they agree to put the rest of the food away. Just in case. If they're lucky, they won't need it.

Jonah shows them how to rig their bags so they're tucked up in the nearest tree. Then they gather back around the fire. It's only eight thirty, but in the dark, in the cold, it feels later. With the woods looming on all sides, it's like the fire is the only thing keeping the trees and the darkness from swallowing them whole.

T
HEY SIT
. H
ALLELUJAH STARES INTO THE FIRE, WATCHING
Jonah's gently coaxed flames. And she looks at Jonah's and Rachel's faces. In the firelight and shadows, they look drawn. Gaunt. When Rachel catches Hallelujah looking, she smiles, and the effect is less reassuring than haunting. Hallelujah shivers.

“So what do we do now?” Rachel asks.

“Well, unless y'all want to tell ghost stories,” Jonah says, “we go to bed. The light'll wake us up in the morning. And the earlier we get up and start walking, the earlier we get home. Right?”

“Right,” Hallelujah echoes. It does sound right, but it also sounds hollow, like something you say to keep up the troops' morale. Not necessarily a bad thing. She tries a joke of her own: “So, who wants what side of the bed?”

Jonah lets out a “Heh” and Hallelujah feels a spark of pleasure: she made him laugh.

“Can I sleep in the middle?” Rachel asks. “I'm really cold. And I—I have to, um—” A deep breath. A quick murmur: “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Just like that, Hallelujah has to go too. Badly. They've gone in the woods before. Earlier today, in fact. But that was daylight.

“I'll go with you,” she tells Rachel. “And then you can stay with me while I—”

“Great.”

They move away from the fire, out of the clearing. Each step feels colder and more vulnerable. No way to judge what they're about to step on. Just big tree-shapes in the darkness ahead and the occasional shiny leaf catching the moonlight.

Behind them, Jonah starts singing. To himself, while he tends the fire. Or to them, to remind them they're not alone. His voice is reassuring. Human, in this wildness.

It's also beautiful. Low, deep, like an old-fashioned country singer. Rich in tone. Twangy, but not too much. He sounds like a mix of Clint Black and Conway Twitty—and thinking that makes Hallelujah smile a little, because Jonah's the reason she knows who those guys are in the first place.

Hearing him sing takes her right back to ninth-grade choir. The two of them sang a duet in the holiday concert that year. “O Holy Night.” It's one of her best memories.

Now he's singing “Rocky Top.” But not the twangy bluegrass version. Not the pumped-up University of Tennessee fight song version, either. He's singing it slow, drawing out the vowels. It sounds just right for tonight. Lonesome. Wistful.

“Hal? Is something wrong?” Rachel's voice. Worried.

“No, sorry. I was just . . . listening. To Jonah.”

“Oh. Can we . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

Rachel and Hallelujah pick their way to a point where the fire is a red glow through the trees behind them. They can still get back. Rachel ducks behind a tree, and Hallelujah turns her back and focuses on the sound of Jonah's voice and the owls calling to each other and the wind rustling the leaves. But she still hears the zipper and Rachel's soft exhale of relief and it causes her own bladder to twinge in response.

A few more painful seconds and then footsteps behind her. Rachel taps her on the shoulder. “Stall's open,” she says softly.

Hallelujah finds her own tree and wriggles her jeans down, leaning back for balance.

Jonah has reached the verse about strangers never making it back from Rocky Top. Given where they are right now, Hallelujah kind of wishes he'd skipped that part.

She finishes and pulls her pants back on. She finds Rachel and they walk carefully back to the clearing.

Jonah has added more wood to the fire. It's burning a little brighter now. He's also cleared a wider berth between the fire and the trees. Something Hallelujah hadn't even thought of: not setting the mountain on fire. She's grateful.

“My turn,” Jonah says, and strides off into the woods.

“Want one of us to come along?” Rachel calls out to his back.

“Nah. Easier for me than for you.” He picks up “Rocky Top” where he left off.

They listen to him walk away.

“How does he know all the words?” Rachel wonders.

“How do you know all the words to ‘I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts'?”

“If I told you, I'd have to kill you.” Rachel sits by the fire, wrapping her arms around her knees. After a few minutes, she speaks up again. “You're next. Sing.”

Anxiety grips Hallelujah's chest, squeezing. “I don't sing,” she says.

“C'mon, it doesn't matter if you're bad. It's not like this is a concert hall—”

“She's not bad.” Jonah's back. “She has a great voice.”

Rachel swings around to look from Jonah to Hallelujah. “Really? Now you
have
to—”

“No.”

“But—”

“I don't sing,” Hallelujah repeats, turning away.

Jonah joins them by the fire. The silence stretches out. Except it's not really silent, not with the birds and wind and fire and how loud Hallelujah's heart is beating. And then Jonah clears his throat. “You used to sing,” he says. “You were great.”

Hallelujah ignores the compliment. She looks into the fire. She feels the last of the day's happiness fading away, already a memory.

“Why'd you quit?” Jonah asks. “Was it 'cause of Luke?”

Hallelujah inhales deeply. She feels the familiar spark of anger in her gut. “Yes,” she says. “It was because of Luke. And you. And everyone else. So thanks for that.” Jonah's face drops. She can see that she's hit a nerve. Well, he hurt her first. The way he took Luke's side, shutting her out. The loss of his friendship, when she needed a friend most. The loss of their voices harmonizing, when she needed music most. How she just hurt him can't begin to compare to all of that.

She stretches out on the hard ground. The grass tickles the back of her neck, under her ponytail. It's the least-comfortable bed ever. But it's all they've got. Rachel lies down next to her. Close, but not touching. It's almost weirder than if they were actually curled up together.

Jonah stays over by the fire. “I'll stay up and keep an eye on this for a while,” he says. “You two get some sleep.”

Hallelujah closes her eyes. The night sounds and the fire crackling seem even louder with her eyes shut. She's not sure how she'll ever fall asleep. Plus, her body hurts from so much hiking. She tries to will her tense, sore muscles to relax. She feels Rachel shifting beside her, probably doing the same thing. Their arms brush, coats making a swishing noise. They both pull away, back to not-touching. Then all is quiet.

She remembers rehearsals. Wrong notes turning to right ones, dissonance becoming harmony. She remembers “O Holy Night” sounding so perfect, in the end, her voice wrapping itself around Jonah's like they were created just for this. She remembers his smile at her from across their shared mic
.

She remembers getting asked to reprise her duet with Jonah a year later. Just after everything happened with Luke. But then Mr. Boyden took her aside. Told her that Jonah had backed out. He'd said he was too busy for extra rehearsals, but she knew: it was because of her. She saw it in Jonah's face, in the way he avoided her eyes. She saw it in everyone else's faces too. She was a bullet he'd just dodged
.

She remembers standing up for the solo she was given instead—her last performance before she quit choir. She remembers opening her mouth, nothing coming out. She'd cleared her throat, tried again. Her voice emerged, but all wrong: small and shaky and sharp. With everyone looking at her, with the rumors still swirling, she felt exposed. She felt small and shaky and sharp. Vulnerable, but made of angles and thorns
.