The Last One (2 page)

Finally, a glint under a bottom shelf. I ease to my hands and knees; the compass hanging from a string around my neck falls down and taps the floor. I tuck the compass between my shirt and sports bra, noticing as I do that the dot of sky-blue paint at its bottom edge has been rubbed nearly to nonexistence. I’m so tired I have to remind myself that this isn’t significant; all it means is that the intern assigned the job was given cheap paint. I lean down farther. Under the shelf is a jar of peanut butter. A small crack trickles from beneath the lid to disappear behind the label, just above the
O
in
ORGANIC
. I run my finger over the mark in the glass but can’t feel the break. Of course they left me peanut butter; I hate peanut butter. I slip the jar into my pack.

The shop’s standing coolers are empty, save for a few cans of beer, which I don’t take. I’d hoped for water. One of my Nalgenes is empty and the second sloshes at my side only a quarter full. Maybe some of the others got here before me; they remembered to boil
all
their water and didn’t lose days vomiting alone in the woods. Whoever left that footprint—Julio or Elliot or the geeky Asian kid whose name I can’t remember—got the quality goods, and this is what it means to be last: a cracked jar of peanut butter.

The only area of the shop I haven’t searched is behind the register. I know what’s waiting for me there. The smell I don’t admit smelling: spoiled meat and animal excrement, a hint of formaldehyde. The smell they want me to think is human death.

I pull my shirt over my nose and approach the cash register. Their prop is where I expect it to be, faceup on the floor behind the counter. They’ve dressed this one in a flannel shirt and cargo pants. Breathing through my shirt, I step behind the counter and over the prop. The motion disturbs a collection of flies that buzz up toward me. I feel their feet, their wings, their antennae twitching against my skin. My pulse quickens and my breath seeps upward, fogging the bottom edges of my glasses.

Just another Challenge. That’s all this is.

I see a bag of trail mix on the floor. I grab it and retreat, through the flies, over the prop. Out the cracked and crooked door, which mocks my exit with applause.

“Fuck you,” I whisper, hands on knees, eyes closed. They will have to censor this, but fuck them too. Cursing isn’t against the rules.

I feel the wind but can’t smell the woods. All I smell is the prop’s stench. The first one didn’t smell so bad, but it was fresh. This one and the one I found in the cabin, they’re supposed to seem older, I think. I blow my nose roughly into the breeze, but I know it will be hours before the odor leaves me. I can’t eat until it does, no matter how badly my body needs calories. I need to move on, to get some distance between me and here. Find water. I tell myself this, but it’s a different thought that’s sticking—the cabin and their second prop. The doll swathed in blue. This phase’s first true Challenge has become a gelatinous memory that stains my awareness, always.

Don’t think about it, I tell myself. The command is futile. For several more minutes I hear the doll’s cries in the wind. And then—
enough
—I unfurl and add the bag of trail mix to my black backpack. I shoulder the pack and clean my glasses with the hem of the microfiber long-sleeved tee I wear under my jacket.

Then I do what I’ve done nearly every day since Wallaby left: I walk and I watch for Clues.
Wallaby,
because none of the cameramen would tell us their names and his early-morning appearances reminded me of a camping trip I took in Australia years ago. My second day out, I woke in a national park by Jervis Bay to find a gray-brown swamp wallaby sitting in the grass, staring at me. No more than five feet between us. I’d slept with my contact lenses in; my eyes itched, but I could see the light stripe of fur across the wallaby’s cheek clearly. He was beautiful. The look I received in return for my awe felt appraising and imposing, but also entirely impersonal: a camera’s lens.

The analogy is imperfect, of course. The human Wallaby isn’t nearly as handsome as the marsupial, and a nearby camper waking up and shouting “Kangaroo!” wouldn’t send him hopping away. But Wallaby was always the first to arrive, the first to aim his camera at my face and not say good morning. And when they left us at the group camp it was he who reappeared just long enough to extract each desired confessional. Dependable as the sunrise until the third day of this Solo Challenge, when the sun rose without him, traversed the sky without him, set without him—and I thought,
It was bound to happen eventually.
The contract said we’d be on our own for long stretches, monitored remotely. I was prepared for this, looking forward to it, even—being watched and judged discreetly instead of overtly. Now I’d be thrilled to hear Wallaby come tromping through the woods.

I’m so tired of being alone.

The late-summer afternoon trickles by. The sounds around me are layers: the shuffle of my footsteps, the drumroll of a nearby woodpecker, the rustle of wind teasing leaves. Sporadically, another bird joins in, its call a sweet-sounding
chip chip chip chippy chip.
The woodpecker was easy, but I don’t know this second bird. I distract myself from my thirst by imagining the kind of bird that would belong to that call. Tiny, I think. Brightly colored. I imagine a bird that doesn’t exist: smaller than my fist, bright yellow wings, blue head and tail, a pattern of smoldering embers on its belly. This would be the male, of course. The female would be dull brown, as is so often the way of birds.

The ember bird’s song sounds one final time, distantly, and then the ensemble is weaker for its absence. My thirst returns, so strong. I can feel the pinch of dehydration behind my temples. I grasp my nearly empty Nalgene, feel its lightness and the fabric of the crusty blue bandana tied around its lid loop. I know my body can last several days without water, but I can’t bear the dryness of my mouth. I take a careful sip, then run my tongue over my lips to catch lingering moisture. I taste blood. I raise my hand; the base of my thumb comes back smeared with red. Seeing this, I feel the crack in my chapped upper lip. I don’t know how long it’s been there.

Water is my priority. I’ve been walking for hours, I think. My shadow is much longer now than when I left the shop. I’ve passed a few houses, but no more stores and nothing marked with blue. I can still smell the prop.

As I walk I try to step on my shadow knees. It’s impossible but also a distraction. Such a distraction that I don’t notice the mailbox until I’ve nearly passed it. It’s shaped like a trout, the house number fashioned with wooden scales of all colors. Beside the mailbox is the mouth of a long driveway, which twists away through white oaks and the occasional birch tree. I can’t see the house that must exist at the driveway’s end.

I don’t want to go. I haven’t entered a house since a handful of sky-blue balloons led me to a cabin that was blue inside, so much blue. Dusky light and a teddy bear, watching.

I can’t do it.

You need water. They won’t use the same trick twice.

I start up the driveway. Each step comes heavy and my foot keeps catching. My shadow is at my right, scaling and leaping from wooded trunks as I pass, as nimble as I am awkward.

Soon I see a monstrous Tudor in dire need of a new coat of its off-white paint. The house slumps into an overgrown lawn, the kind of building that as a child I would have play-believed was haunted. A red SUV is parked outside, blocking my view of the front door. After so long on my feet the SUV seems an otherworldly entity. They said no driving and it’s not blue, but it’s here and maybe that means something. I walk slowly toward the SUV, and by extension the house. Maybe they’ve placed a case of water in the back of the vehicle. Then I won’t have to go inside. The SUV is splattered with dried mud, the splashed pattern insisting on the substance’s former liquidity. Even dry, it’s not dirt but mud. It looks like an inkblot test, but I can’t see any images.

Chip chip chip,
I hear.
Chippy chip.

My ember bird is back. I cock my head to judge the bird’s direction and in doing so notice another sound: the gentle burble of running water. Relief engulfs me; I don’t have to go inside. The mailbox was meant only to lead me to the stream. I should have heard it on my own, but I’m so tired, so thirsty. I needed the bird to bring my focus back from sight to sound. I turn around and follow the sound of flowing water. The bird calls again and I mouth
Thank you.
My split lip stings.

As I backtrack to find the brook, I think of my mother. She too would think I was meant to find the mailbox, but to her the guiding hand wouldn’t be a producer’s. I imagine her sitting in her living room, enfolded in a haze of cigarette smoke. I imagine her watching, interpreting my every success as affirmation and my every disappointment as a lesson. Co-opting my experiences as her own, as she has always done. Because I wouldn’t exist without her, and for her that’s always been enough.

I think too of my father, next door at the bakery, charming tourists with free samples and country wit while he tries to forget his tobacco-scented wife of thirty-one years. I wonder if he too watches me.

Then I see the brook, a measly, exquisite thing just east of the driveway. My attention snaps to and my insides rock with relief. I long to cup my hands and bring the cold wet to my lips. Instead, I finish the warm liquid in my Nalgene—half a cup, maybe. I probably should have drunk it earlier; people have died of dehydration while conserving water. But that’s in hotter climates, the kinds of places where the sun strips a person’s skin. Not here.

After drinking I follow the brook downstream, so I’ll spot any troubling debris, dead animals or the like. I don’t want to get sick again. I shuffle along for about ten minutes, putting more and more distance between myself and the house. Soon I find a clearing with a huge fallen tree at its edge, about twenty feet from the water, and I release myself to habit, clearing a circle of ground and collecting wood. What I gather, I sort into four piles. The leftmost contains anything thinner than a pencil, the rightmost anything thicker than my wrist. When I have enough to last a few hours, I pick up some dried curls of birch bark, shred them into tinder, and place them on a solid piece of bark.

I unclip a carabiner from a belt loop on my left hip. My fire starter slides along the silver metal and into my hand, which is sunburnt and crusted with dirt. The fire starter looks a bit like a key and a USB drive threaded together onto an orange cord; that’s what I thought when it fell into my possession through a combination of skill and chance after the first Challenge. This was back on Day One, when I could always spot the camera and it was all exciting, even the boring parts.

After a few quick strikes, the tinder begins to smoke. Gently, I scoop it into my hand and blow, eliciting first more smoke and finally tiny flames. I quickly clip the fire starter back onto my belt loop, then, using both hands, place the tinder in the center of my clearing. As I add more tinder the flames grow and smoke saturates my nostrils. I feed the flames the smallest branches, then larger. Within minutes the fire is full, strong, though it probably doesn’t look very impressive on camera. The flames are only about a foot high, but that is all I need—not a signal fire, just heat.

I pull my stainless-steel cup from my pack. It’s dented and slightly charred, but still solid. After filling it with water, I place it close to the fire. While I wait for the water to heat I force myself to eat a fingerful of peanut butter. After not eating for so long, I’d have thought even my least favorite food would be ambrosial, but it’s disgusting, thick and salty, and it sticks to the roof of my mouth. I prod the gummy mass with my dry tongue, thinking I must look as ridiculous as a dog. I should have pretended an allergy on the application; then they would have needed to leave me something else. Or maybe I wouldn’t have been selected at all. My brain is too tight to consider the implications of not being chosen, where I would be right now.

Finally, the water boils. I give any microbes a few minutes to die, then use my ragged jacket sleeve as a potholder and pull the cup from the flame. Once the bubbles die down, I pour the boiled water into one of my Nalgenes, filling it about a third of the way.

The second batch heats more quickly. Into the Nalgene the water goes, and after a third round of boiling the bottle is full. I tighten its cap, then jam it into the muddy bottom of the stream, so that the cold water flows over the plastic almost to the rim. The blue bandana drifts with the current. By the time I’ve filled the second bottle, the first is nearly cold. I fill the cup and place it to boil yet again, then drink four ounces from the cooled bottle, washing peanut-butter residue down my throat. I wait a few minutes, drink four more ounces. In these short, spaced bursts I finish the bottle. The cup is boiling again and I can feel the membranes of my brain rehydrating. My headache retreats. All this work is probably unnecessary; the stream is clear and quick. Odds are the water’s safe, but I took that bet once before and lost.

As I pour the latest batch of water into my bottle, I realize that I haven’t built my shelter yet, and the sky is clouded as though for rain. Fading light tells me I don’t have long. I push myself to my feet, wincing against the tightness in my hips. I collect five heavy branches from the woods and brace these against the leeward side of the fallen tree, longest to shortest, creating a triangular frame just wide enough to slip into. I pull a black garbage bag from my pack—a parting gift from Tyler, unexpected but appreciated—and spread it over the frame. As I scoop up armfuls of dead leaves and pile them atop the plastic bag, I think of the priorities of survival.

The rules of three. A bad attitude can kill you in three seconds; asphyxiation can kill you in three minutes; exposure in three hours; dehydration in three days; and starvation in three weeks—or is it three months? Regardless, starvation is the least of my concerns. As weak as I feel, it hasn’t been that long since I ate. Six or seven days at most, and that’s generous. As for exposure, even if it rains tonight it won’t be cold enough to kill me. Even without a shelter, I’d be wet and miserable but probably not in danger.