by Zoje Stage
The Blum sisters gazed at each other, tense and expectant. Imogen had been so certain that Tilda was ready, that their minutes alone had changed something. What would they do if she really refused?
11
Without being able to see her, Imogen and Beck had no way to gauge how Tilda was processing Beck’s idea. Did she think it was a good one? Or was she looking at the trail behind her, wishing they could go back?
“Okay. Let’s try that,” came the reply a moment later.
The Blum sisters grinned.
“You got this!” Imogen said, cheering her on from afar.
With the walking stick now on her left, Beck reversed directions and headed around the promontory.
Imogen sat on a rock, drank from a canteen. It was Beck’s turn and she would help Tilda: infuse her with the special thing Beck possessed—an ability to make people feel okay. That’s why she wanted to be a doctor. She did it with an invisible wand and sometimes no words. But with a certain look, a quirk of her lips, a person might suddenly feel better.
It seemed like only a minute later that Beck rejoined her, sloughing off Tilda’s trendy pack. And seconds after that, Tilda appeared—eyes like laser beams on the path ahead of her.
Tilda walked over to safer ground, gasping with her tongue out, relief graffitied across her face. “Holy crap.”
“Wasn’t so bad,” said Beck.
If Imogen hadn’t known better, she might have thought her sister was a hypnotist. “Not as bad as I thought,” Tilda said, under her spell.
“You did it!” Imogen rejoiced, throwing her arms in the air.
“I did it!” Tilda embraced her in a celebratory hug.
They wound south. For much of the day they’d had a distant wall of Muav limestone for company—with five hundred sheer, vertical feet of Redwall limestone atop it—and the scrubby bushes that dotted the Tonto Platform. After successfully navigating the Promontory of Catastrophic Possibilities, they’d fallen into a meditative rhythm. Walking. Thinking.
As they started the descent into Boucher, at the elevation of the Tapeats sandstone, things got steep and rocky again. It struck Imogen as funny—yesterday was only yesterday, but in the Canyon your legs and endurance acquired their own sort of expertise in a short amount of time. Ahead of her, she could almost see Tilda thinking the same thing. They’d survived going down the Hermit Trail, and inched around a monolith without stumbling. It wasn’t that everything became easy by comparison, but the body and mind developed new standards by which to evaluate the terrain.
Boucher “camp” appeared to be deserted. It didn’t have designated spots, but the whole area was broad and flat in comparison to other places in the Canyon. Beck seemed to know exactly where she wanted to go: she headed toward the creek.
“Is this it?” Tilda asked.
“Yup. Home for the next four nights,” said Beck.
“Nice.” Tilda looked around for a second, and then resumed following Beck.
Knowing they were only yards away from setting up camp, Imogen let the other two go on ahead.
“You coming?” Tilda asked, turning around.
“Yup, just gonna enjoy…a minute to myself.”
Tilda grinned, as if she understood, and walked on.
Back home, Imogen often found it exhausting to be among people for hours on end, even when she was enjoying herself. But that wasn’t necessarily true in the Canyon. She wondered why backpacking with friends felt as good as being alone.
Here, the presence of other people felt different; or maybe she was different. Civilization had gone awry, with its buildings and highways, its digitalization and consumption. Binge-watching TV. Humans had adapted to a meaningless structure of work and wealth that resulted in a fundamental loss of identity. Here, you could return to the natural order, enjoy the two-part state of doing-the-necessities-to-survive and sitting-around-doing-nothing, unburdened of existential angst.
Maybe she was overthinking it, but it felt different here nonetheless. Imogen inhaled. Searching for archaic memories, she let her breath permeate deep into her lungs, her soul. The colors were so rich she could smell them: flamingo rock, terra-cotta dirt, cornflower sky. The air carried a fragrance full of patterns—lizard skin, raven feather, vaporous cloud. Even the distant night had a scent, the musk of the coming hunt, the deep yearning to survive. Everything spoke softly. Everything remained: the gossip of fossils and the whispered bones of millennia. She heard the agave sigh, the succulence held in its bayonet leaves a private song. Everything sang in the sun.
Imogen might have continued pondering these things, gazing around at the rocks and trees, larger than the cottonwoods had been at Hermit—might have even scribbled a few lines of poetry on her tiny notepad—but something caught her eye. A spark of unnatural color. Shiny lavender.
It was a few paces from her but its iridescence and angular edges drew her attention. Backpackers were pretty good about hauling all their garbage out and leaving the land as pristine as they’d found it. And in such an isolated place she hadn’t expected to find litter, especially within moments of arriving. Perhaps it was an oversight, a bit that had blown away?
She squatted down carefully, not wanting the weight of her pack to send her hurtling onto her face, and picked it up. A torn scrap, a corner. Silver on the inside like a candy bar wrapper. But no. It wasn’t from a candy bar.
Imogen recognized it. Tilda had brought enough to eat two per day.
The stolen protein bars?
A shiver scuttled up her arms even under the desert sun. She took in her surroundings more carefully. No signs of a tent or gear. It didn’t look like anyone had been here recently. But the proof in her hand said different. The scrap looked fresh, unblemished by exposure to dirt or sun.
Beck and her dad had talked about Boucher canyon many times. Imogen knew that somewhere nearby was a partially dug mine, gouged right into the billion-and-a-half-year-old Vishnu schist by Louis Boucher himself, back when he’d lived in the Canyon as a guide and prospector. Would someone stay in there? It seemed like a weird idea to her, to choose a cramped rock tunnel instead of enjoying this splendor. But people could be weird. Mr.—or was it Monsieur?—Boucher had also built himself a little rock shelter, like an igloo, though she hadn’t laid eyes on that yet either. The roof had long since caved in and Imogen didn’t consider it likely that anyone would camp there.
Her eyes scanned farther up the creek, past where Beck and Tilda had dropped their packs. There, the opposite bank was a steep wall, fifty or sixty feet high. Erosion had made pockets in the sandstone that resembled cave mouths, and one of them was wide enough and deep enough to camp in. From afar she couldn’t discern the shallow cave from other imperfections in the cliff face, but she knew Beck and their dad had found the hidden shelter on a rainy day. If a person was standing just within the archway Imogen thought they’d be visible, but she wasn’t sure.
So it was possible they weren’t alone. It was possible someone else had come out to Boucher—it wasn’t like they could reserve it for themselves. If it was the asshole, at least he wasn’t following them. But it was troubling if the person who’d helped himself to their food bag was here. And more troubling still if he was hiding.
Or maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe someone else—not necessarily a he—with a taste for expensive protein bars had passed through a day or two before, heading east or west—there was no way to know for sure. Or…her paranoia wasn’t ready to give in: What if the Canyon meant to test her, in more than physical ways?
In Esther’s Ghost, after her friends decided she was delusional, Esther had to unravel the mystery of her attack alone. She researched the history of the mansion-turned-apartments where she lived—and the robber baron who’d built it—suspicious that he might have never fully vacated the premises. But finding someone who had committed a crime became exponentially trickier when he lacked a corporeal form.
The skin of Imogen’s exposed forearms looked like a softer ve
rsion of the prickly pear at her feet. Now she was just spooking herself. It was a good story, but it was unlikely they were dealing with an invisible antagonist.
Imogen tucked the scrap into the pocket of her shorts and continued across the flatland toward the patch of earth Beck and Tilda had claimed as home. If she mentioned it to Beck, it would probably be best to leave out the latest theory, life imitating art and a phantom thief. She could already hear her sister telling her, not for the first time, that she watched “too much TV”—though Imogen spent just as much time with her growing library of scary books. Sometimes it helped to read stories that were scarier than the real world. At least in fiction the protagonist usually survived.
12
They set up camp much as they had the previous afternoon, only this time Tilda helped Imogen with the drop cloth and mattress pads that designated their bedroom. The kitchen remained Beck’s domain.
No one was in a chatty mood, which suited Imogen’s unease; she didn’t like the thoughts that were going through her head. As a writer, sometimes she didn’t trust her imagination. In the writer’s world, everything had to lead to conflict and tension and problems, and she didn’t want problems here. She wanted relaxing days, and the chance to keep reconnecting with nature and herself. But she couldn’t stop imagining in the silence that they were all spinning fears.
Maybe it would help to get her discovery off her chest.
“Want to fill the canteens?” Imogen asked Tilda, hoping to orchestrate a moment alone with Beck. Her sister could be counted on for a low-key reaction; she was less sure how Tilda would respond.
“I can get it,” Beck said, unzipping the side pockets of her pack where she carried her portion of the canteens.
“I thought Tilda might like it,” Imogen said casually, retrieving her own canteens. “It looks like it’s easy here, and she hasn’t done it yet.”
Boucher Creek was barely forty feet from their campsite, but Imogen was counting on the constant gurgle of the shallow water to mask their voices.
“I’m game—gimme those bottles!” They handed her a half dozen containers of various shapes and sizes, which Tilda hooked on her fingers. “Should I take the iodine tablets?”
“You can do them when you come back,” Beck said.
“Okay!” No worse for the day’s three-and-a-half-hour hike, Tilda bounded off on her mission.
Imogen watched her, waiting for her to reach the creek. Beck was on the ground, applying fresh smears of sunscreen on her nose and cheeks, the backs of her hands, when Imogen squatted beside her.
“I found this.” She held out the torn wrapper, and pointed back where they’d come from with her chin. “There.”
Beck turned the scrap over and over; her face gave away nothing. “Okay?”
Was she being deliberately obtuse?
“Doesn’t it look like one of Tilda’s?” Why hadn’t Beck recognized it right away?
“Maybe. I don’t think there’s that much difference in…wrappers.” Now Beck looked at Imogen, as she might a bug under a magnifying glass. “You think this was Tilda’s, and whoever stole it is here?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Imogen looked out, around. A lizard scuttled away in the red dirt. A soft breeze awakened the tree leaves. Far above them contrails from a jet they could barely see left the white signature of its passing. Little else moved. “I mean, maybe they came out here, they could’ve.”
“Low on food? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe we should show it to Tilda—she might recognize it.” Imogen had anticipated that Beck might not look at the clue and leap to her feet with worry. But she hadn’t anticipated her sister’s complete denial.
“Aren’t you jumping the gun a little? We don’t know if this was Tilda’s. We don’t know if this was left by someone who hiked in or out of Boucher today, yesterday, or two days ago. It looks fairly new. But it could be anyone’s, from days ago.”
Imogen felt like she was being chastised; good thing she hadn’t mentioned her more paranoid theory. So you don’t think the Canyon’s playing a little round of Find the Ghost? She nodded. She was just starting to make progress, proving her competency, and she didn’t want her sister to start doubting her. Beck could be counted on for a nonemotional response—wasn’t that why Imogen had wanted to show her the scrap? To put herself at ease?
“Just being careful,” Imogen mumbled.
“It’ll be easier to keep the food bag closer here. More trees. We’re fine, Imogen, it’s not gonna happen again.”
Imogen should’ve felt relieved, but the magnifying glass had been held under the sun too long and she was the bug beneath it, burning. Her sister might trust her with basic backpacking duties, but, like her character Esther, Imogen was afraid she didn’t come across as someone truly sound of mind. While they returned to organizing their camp, Imogen privately brooded. They’d had few reasons over the years to fear humans while camping. But it had happened once before, and Beck had been uneasy then too.
Before Beck moved west for her residency they’d done some occasional car camping, sometimes with Beck’s girlfriend or their dad, sometimes just the two of them. They preferred to go just off-season—mid-September—when the weather was still good, but people were back to school or work. That was how they’d had all of the Blueberry Patch campground, at Finger Lakes National Forest, to themselves. Well, almost. One spot had been occupied by a man who appeared to be living out of his covered pickup truck.
He didn’t do anything—didn’t come and say hello (as some men did when they saw two young women on their own), didn’t get drunk and sing to the moon or hang dead squirrel carcasses from the trees. Beck had wondered aloud how someone could live in a national forest, and she’d kept an eye on the other camp. That first night Imogen felt real fear, sleeping in the tiny backpacking tent beside her sister like two corpses in a coffin. She might have felt safer without the tent, able to see if anyone approached their camp, but it had been a chilly night and overcast enough that rain was a concern. Her writer’s imagination had gone wild, picturing a giant hunting knife slicing through the thin fabric roof of their tent, stabbing Beck in the chest while Imogen, blind and panicked, scrambled to fight back or get out. In real life, I would’ve curled into a ball and played dead.
Maybe the man had simply been homeless and hadn’t deserved to be the cause of their fear. Yet Imogen was glad they’d be sleeping in the open at Boucher. If someone approached them in the dead of night, tripping over rocks and scrub, she was certain it would awaken her. And she’d sleep with her Swiss Army knife in her fist, just in case.
They ate a hot lunch of Cup Noodles. Afterward they gathered all their food into the bag, and Beck hung it just a few yards away from their kitchen, on the branch of a cooperative tree. They stripped down to T-shirts and shorts and what the Blum sisters affectionately referred to as camp shoes, which were just a lightweight pair of old shoes brought to wear around flat terrain. By comparison to her boots, Imogen’s Skechers felt like slippers. They kept a sleeve of Fig Newtons and a canteen with them and went off to explore.
Tilda let her camera dangle from her wrist, snapping a few shots as they meandered. She had Imogen and Beck pose at noteworthy locations: in front of the creek; at the entrance to the unfinished mine; from within the half-collapsed rock igloo. In person, each place looked even less habitable, though Imogen thought she saw something slip away into the shadows at the back of the mine. It was probably a rattlesnake, so she kept the sighting to herself. Sometimes they swapped and Imogen took pictures of Tilda.
They passed the afternoon this way. Ambling. Sitting in the shade, their legs outstretched on the feathery dirt. Sometimes they talked, relaxed tidbits of conversation. But many of their questions drifted away, unimportant and forgotten.
As the sky wrapped itself in an amethyst cloak, they ate supper. Washed up. Put the food bag back in its tree. Earlier they’d found a corner sheltered by two rocks and claimed it as their l
atrine, digging a shallow trench with their plastic trowel. But Tilda still wanted someone to go with her and Stand Guard. On their last trip before bedtime, Imogen kept her flashlight angled at her feet, waiting to escort Tilda back to camp.
Tilda chatted about something as she squatted, her wad of toilet paper at the ready, but Imogen wasn’t listening. High up in the rocky bank on the other side of the creek she saw a flash of light. Though she hadn’t smoked since her freshman year of college—when they’d all agreed to cut the worst of their bad habits (at least the consumable ones)—she was certain about what she’d seen.
A match, igniting. The flare of a cigarette on its first inhale. Then darkness.
Someone was up there.
If she could see that, he could see her. Them. Imogen switched off the flashlight.
“Hey! I can’t see.”
“Your eyes will adjust. It’s a beautiful night.” Above them hung a bulbous moon.
Tilda grabbed Imogen’s elbow as she stumbled on the way back to camp. “Can’t we use the flashlight?”
“We don’t need it.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tilda huffed, annoyed.
Imogen really didn’t want to agitate Tilda, especially as their truce was so recent and fragile, but she wasn’t sure what to do about her suspicion that they were being watched.
“Why is it okay for Beck to use her flashlight”—indeed, Beck had her light on as she zipped up her pack and slid into her sleeping bag—“but we’re supposed to walk in the dark? Sometimes your rules seem a little random.”
“Yeah, why are you walking in the dark?” Beck asked. She illuminated Tilda’s bed as Tilda slipped off her camp shoes and tucked herself in. Imogen managed in the shadows on Beck’s other side.
When Beck finally flicked off her light, Imogen rolled over in her sleeping bag and whispered, “Did you see it?”
“See what? What are you talking about?”