by A N Sandra
“I’m not sure if she’s a wacky cheerleader gone mad or a preschool teacher on steroids,” Helena commented.
“Or both,” Peter answered.
“The last four miles nearly killed me,” Helena said when Miss Jan announced that they had, according to her pedometer, hiked twenty-five miles.
“We should only have to do it one more time,” Peter said. His shoulders sagged a bit.
“You’re sorry this is coming to an end!” Helena laughed out loud, as tired as she was. It turned out that laughing hurt because her back and ribs were so sore.
“When it comes to an end we have to face our new reality,” Peter said.
“I think our new reality is already here.” Helena said. “Look around.”
“It seems like as long as we keep moving this might be a dream.”
“You wouldn’t want to do it forever.”
“Forever is a long time, but the adventure has been better than real life.” Peter looked thoughtful. “It’s been better than our real life.
“I miss books, and Maria, and my big soft bed,” Helena said. Crisp sheets had been a source of comfort from the Texas heat. Maria’s gentle ways had steadied her in uncertain times. Books had taken Helena’s mind off her daily problems. They were the things that anchored her. “Also, I really miss cheese. Brie, extra sharp cheddar, the kind in the black package from Oregon—”
“I don’t miss homework,” Peter interrupted.
“We don’t know what’s coming. It might turn out that you would rather do homework.”
Peter laughed, but Helena knew better.
Tonight, we don’t stop until we reach our final destination!” Miss Jan reminded all of them as they finished packing their bags.
Helena wanted a hug from her father desperately. He had always been the one person who could make her troubles seem small. The person who could kiss hurts away, the person who ordered her world.
Now that she understood why he had been so unavailable for the last few months, it was easier to forgive him for the hurt feelings that had been building up. Helena was ready to move on. She wanted to see her father enough to press on in spite of her swollen feet and sore back. It didn’t hurt that there was probably better food at their destination than they had had the last few days. A better bed of any kind would be worth the extra long hike.
“Let’s go!” Helena cheered. She waved the large walking stick she had been using to hike with in the air.
Peter followed Miss Jan, almost stepping on her heels. The day was crisp even though it was overcast. By ten a.m. the morning haze had burned off and the sun was pleasant. Miss Jan stopped everyone for a short break at a beautiful overlook. The farther up they climbed, the shorter the various pine trees became, but the valley below was colored a lush green from the bright trees below. A small lake shimmered blue in the distance.
“This is the most color I have even seen in one landscape,” Helena said. “There’s no way a picture could capture this moment.”
“When can we have a snack?” Ray wanted to know.
“No snack. We’ll have lunch in eight more miles,” Miss Jan told him.
Eight more miles didn’t seem that long at first, but it was mostly uphill, with tree roots and large rocks obscuring the path frequently. Eight miles took almost two hours. Helena wasn’t even hungry by the time Miss Jan handed her a disgusting power bar for lunch.
“Eat it anyway,” Miss Jan told her, discerning the look of disinterest Helena gave the bar. “You need the calories for energy.”
“I’ll try,” Helena promised. She ate a large bite, chewed and swallowed, almost gagging from the chalky taste. Miss Jan turned away and Helena ate one more bite before she handed Peter the rest.
“Thanks!” Peter wolfed it down with enthusiasm.
“That stuff tastes like chalk,” Helena complained.
“It’s food,” Peter told her. “I’m hungry enough to eat chalk right now.”
“Remember when you used to tell Maria you wanted different food for a meal?” Helena asked him.
“That was so long ago,” Peter said with his mouth full.
“That wasn’t two weeks ago,” Helena said. “I wonder if Maria is cooking for someone else now?”
The timer went off for her tamales and Maria got up to go check them. She noticed she was taking smaller steps every day. It was probably a good thing she wasn’t working for the Harris family any more, she admitted to herself. She and her husband would miss the money when her severance pay ran out, but it was most likely time to relax a little.
“Hello?”
Maria could hear someone calling from the front door. The tamales were done, and she set them on the counter to cool slightly before she packaged them and took them to her older son’s house as she had planned.
“Maria Gonzalez?” a poorly dressed man at the door inquired.
“What do you want?” Maria asked him when she opened the screen door to see him better.
“To come in,” the man said. He was short and bald and wearing polyester pants. He looked like a bad dream.
“You are not coming in,” Maria said shortly. She shut the door on him and turned to go back to her tamales. Suddenly his arm was around her waist and she realized that he was in the house with her.
“Jorge!!” she called. “Jorge!!”
“He isn’t here,” the man said quietly. “Jorge and I talked a while ago and he wasn’t helpful. I am going to ask you some questions and I hope you can answer me.”
Maria twisted her head to look at him uncomprehendingly. Jorge was in the backyard, drinking a Corona and listening to music. She’d seen him twenty minutes ago. The man had a strong grip around her, pinning her arms to her sides. He did not even seem to be straining.
“Where is the Harris family?” the man asked.
Maria tried to say she didn’t know, but she couldn’t breathe. She tried to shrug but couldn’t move that much.
“I really need to know any ideas that you might have about where the Harris family might be,” the man said in a soft, sad voice. “Please.”
“They never told me—”
“This talk will take some time,” the man said. Even though Maria thrashed about as much as she could he carried her with ease further into the house.
Random thoughts flashed through Maria’s head as she was forced to prove that she had no ideas at all about where the Harris family might be. She thought of the day her oldest son, Charles, had been born, the day she had sent her son Julio into the Army, the day she had hugged Helena goodbye. Then she didn’t think anymore.
I want to eat something hot and tasty more than life itself,” Helena told Peter as they trudged uphill, one foot at a time.
“A big bacon burger, really juicy,” Peter fantasized.
“I would do anything for one cup of Maria’s white chicken chili with sweet cornbread—”
“Stop, everyone!” Miss Jan called out.
“We must be almost there!” Helena smiled as relief flooded through her veins.
When Tawna and Ray finally caught up to everyone else, Miss Jan spoke.
“I can’t believe I planned everything so carefully and we made it this far before it happened, but we made a wrong turn this afternoon.”
Helena felt her heart drop.
“About an hour ago I misread the trail back at those really jagged rocks. We need to move back down this hill as fast as we can so that we have enough light to find the right way to go. I’m so sorry, we need to move now.” She looked hard at Ray and Tawna. “You need to keep up.”
“This is just—” Tawna began to complain, but Miss Jan was already headed down the trail. Peter and Helena didn’t wait a second to follow and Lourdes was hot on their heels.
“This really does suck, but I’m not going to complain in front of Tawna,” Helena said.
“I’m kind of surprised this is the first time this has happened,” Peter said. “Nothing is marked, and the path goes here and the
re.”
“She has a super-duper GPS.” Helena commented. “And I think she worries a lot. I hear her mumbling to herself in her sleep.”
“Nah, that’s things she wants to say to Tawna when she’s awake, but she keeps her mouth shut. They come out at night when she can’t help it.”
“Over this hill. I’m sure of it,” Miss Jan told Lourdes, Helena and Peter in a small huddle. It was almost nine-thirty p.m. according to Miss Jan’s watch. They had started hiking at ten after seven that morning. They were completely out of food and it was growing quite chilly.
“That is a huge hill,” Helena said. The hill was actually higher than she could imagine scaling in the fading light. She was tired, she was hungry, and she wanted her father to hug her and make her feel better about the life she had lost, so she was willing to be a little crazy. “But let’s just do it.”
Some noises in the background caused all of them to pause a moment.
“Mom?” Lourdes called.
“Coming!” Tawna called from a distance.
“The path is wide open,” Miss Jan told them. “I’ll hang back and wait for Tawna and Ray and you three go ahead.”
As tired as they were, Peter perked up at the idea of leading the pack. Helena smiled weakly at his enthusiasm.
“Let’s go!” Peter called.
Lourdes and Helena enjoyed a rare moment of camaraderie as they traded amused smiles before following him.
The hill was long, so it was completely dark before they got to the top. Miss Jan made them slow down to let Tawna and Ray catch up once, about halfway up, and then Peter took off with Lourdes and Helena close behind. Helena felt a new surge of adrenaline as she realized they were close to the top of the hill.
Just maybe this whole experience, from the moment they got on the yacht in Cancun until now, was a joke. Maybe they would be met at the fire with plane tickets home. Helena wasn’t sure if she would be disappointed or not. The adventure had taken a lot of focus and was exciting. If her mother was there, it wasn’t a joke. Her mother would never leave her lab for long enough to go to Alaska without excellent reasons.
“Hey,” Peter called to Helena and Lourdes. “I can see their fire from here.”
Peter stood at the crest of the hill, clearly visible in moonlight. The two of them raced to catch him. There was a small fire and tiny figures were moving about below.
“There’s nothing there, really, just tents,” Lourdes sounded sad.
“Miss Jan said we’re going to build our own village. It’ll take a little time. I think that’s a building frame of some kind over there,” Peter pointed to what might or might not be the skeleton of a building. “They’ve got a fire, and they are expecting us, so they probably have hot food waiting!”
The idea of hot food lovingly prepared by her father pushed Helena down the mountain. It was slow going because the path had lots of small rocks and tree roots, but she picked herself up every time she tripped. Soon there was grass on either side of the path and she realized she was on mostly level ground. The fire was not far ahead.
“Peter?” she heard her father exclaim.
Looking ahead, Helena saw Peter wrapped in her father’s embrace. She stumbled forward and found herself being hugged by her father too. He kissed the top of her head several times and she breathed in his scent. His shirt was not a silk designer suit shirt like he normally wore, but a flannel shirt that smelled of campfire smoke and hard work. It was too dark to see how he looked, he didn’t feel the same and he didn’t smell the same, but he was her father and she was glad to be in his arms.
“Where’s Tawna?” her father asked as he pulled away from her to look at her face.
Helena felt her throat tighten and her stomach clench. He might as well have poured ice water over their warm greeting.
“Who cares?” she said forcefully. “Helping Ray feel sorry for himself, just like always.”
She looked away from her father. Across the campfire was Miss Jan’s husband, Todd Wilson, a tall dark haired young man who was certainly Duane Wilson, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him, and her mother, Christina Harris.
“Dad, what’s for dinner?” Peter asked, ignoring the fact that his mother was looking at him, waiting to greet him. “We’re starved.”
“We were so busy today that we just ate power bars,” Mr. Harris said. “You didn’t eat dinner?”
“No, we only had food for eight days, today is the eighth day. Tawna took food without asking and wasted a bunch of it.” Helena was livid. The first words out of her father’s mouth were concern for Tawna, and there was no hot food waiting. She felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She stepped away from her father.
“Helena!” Christina Harris stepped up to greet her. She held out her arms for a hug and Helena gave her an annoyed look and shook her head in a quick “no” gesture. Even though she knew she looked like a sullen child she stepped close to the fire and folded her arms.
Her mother’s lovely thin face had a worried look and a small smile. Christina Harris always wore her dark brown hair in a knot at the back of her neck, and thick glasses. She did now, also, but gone was the lab coat that was sometimes replaced by a Prada suit when she needed to have a business meeting. She had been an intense, sexy scientist. Now she wore a flannel shirt with a down vest over it and a pair of work pants. The woodsy outdoor clothes worked for her, but she looked as different from the person she used to be as her ex-husband did.
Peter gave their mother a small hug and went to stand by the fire next to Helena, who was too upset to talk to him.
Suddenly Mr. Todd and his son Duane erupted in joyful laughter as they hugged Miss Jan fiercely.
“I love you so much,” Mr. Todd was saying over and over.
“That is a real greeting,” Helena said to herself. “Dad should be taking notes.”
But her father was hugging Tawna and Lourdes. This is my new life, she told herself, looking around. The middle of nowhere, with Dad focused on his new family.
It was too dark to see much, but they were clearly at the edge of a large meadow with the steep rocky hill they had just come down on one side and two gently sloping lightly wooded hills butting up next to it. The forest encroached on the remaining side of the spacious, slightly square meadow.
“Enjoy your scrumptious dinner,” Peter said, handing her a power bar.
“I’m so tired of these,” Helena choked out. She knew her despair over having to eat a power bar was disproportionate to the whole situation, but it was somehow the final straw that caused deep pain.
“They taste better than sand,” Peter told her. “I ate some sand once and it was worse.”
“Good to know.” Helena was sure he was lying to make her feel better.
“These are pretty high quality. Miss Jan was telling me that they are the most nutritious, most easy to digest power bars there are.”
“I hope we don’t have to eat them until we stop hiding.”
“Yeah, I really miss Maria’s cooking,” Peter sighed.
“I really miss Maria.” Helena answered. She hoped Peter couldn’t see the tears sliding down her face in the dark. “I hope she’s okay.”
CHAPTER 8
June 18th, Manhattan, NY
Sadie went running every morning before she ate breakfast. Exercise, voice training, acting practice. Her normal world might have been removed from her, but she kept up a regimen of everything that self-discipline demanded so that her career wasn’t slipping further away from her during this hiatus imposed on her by Molly Hollister.
Molly Hollister had placed several “security guards” in Hollister Manor that were really just spies and one of them followed Sadie out the gate as she went out for her morning run in purple and yellow spandex. Every morning a different spy tried, and every morning Sadie gave them the slip. The other contestants were well monitored by Molly’s spies, but Sadie’s extraordinary beauty meant that she had been avoiding stalkers
since junior high.
Karrie, Sadie’s mother, a lovely redhead herself, had taught her beautiful daughters and her handsome son that beauty is a mixed blessing. Being very lovely opens a multitude of doors, but most of them lead to destruction. “Being beautiful doesn’t make life easier. It’s a different set of problems. And believe me, no one cares about the problems that come with being beautiful. You have to solve them on your own.” Jealous girlfriends of boys Sadie had no interest in had been trying to sabotage her since her figure filled out. Weirdos of all ages wanted to be with Sadie, as though her beauty would validate them if she would consent to be theirs. There were jobs she didn’t get because men knew their wives wouldn’t want them to be around her.
KellyAnne, Sadie’s older sister, was her best friend. Although KellyAnne was currently studying marine biology in Mexico and not available at all. Other than KellyAnne, Sadie only had close acquaintances, not close friends until recently. Maddy’s willingness to take Molly Hollister’s table so that Sadie could keep her job a few weeks ago had been the first time another woman had done something selfless for her. At that moment Sadie had opened to Maddy and Tilly in a way she never had before. They had gone from being drinking buddies to real friends with a deep level of trust. Having a common enemy had solidified their trust. Tilly had fixed Sadie’s crotch so that she didn’t look ridiculous on national television. The whole ordeal of the reality show had come with the silver lining that Sadie now had real friends for the first time in her life.
After losing today’s spy completely, Sadie used the phone Tilly handed her three weeks ago on their limo ride home from the first episode of One Tough Customer.
“All right, come out, come out wherever you are!” Sadie said into the phone.
Doctor Justin Morris ran out of a nearby coffee shop and the two of them headed into the park for their morning run. They easily fell into the same rhythm, almost as if they were meant to run together, before coming to another coffee shop where they ducked in to eat breakfast together.