by D. G. Driver
We’d been up and down hills all night, and my calves felt stretched tight from the strain. I also had shin splints, making each step excruciating. My arms still ached from the rowing of yesterday, but the pain in my legs had definitely taken over as the new area of concern. Officer Willoby and the dog led us up a particularly high rise. So steep that I had to hang on to the low branches of trees to keep from tumbling backward. I smiled inwardly, seeing Chris struggle with his balance too. I didn’t want him to fall, but I did like knowing it wasn’t any easier for him than it was for me.
When we broke through to the top of this hill, we were very high up. The trees were thin enough up here that we could see a lot of the surroundings. We got a great view of the lake, with all its twists and turns. Staring down on it now, my mind whirled. No wonder I had gotten so lost. The lake was massive and unending. Even from up here every part of the shore looked the same, lined with trees and rocks. There weren’t any houses or hotels, just trees and water as far as I could see.
The dog started barking and pulling at the leash.
“Look over there!” Chris said, pointing down the hill to my left. All of us followed the direction he was pointing and saw smoke rising from between the trees. I studied the curve of the shore down there. It looked like a perfect spot for fishing to me.
“It’s Alex!” the boy’s dad shouted. “I know it!”
“Looks that way,” Officer Willoby said. Letting the excited dog lead the way, the group started down the far side of the hill.
“The cabin has been there at least one hundred and fifty years,” Alex’s dad said as we descended at almost a running pace. If not for the steepness of the hill and the multitudes of trees that we would bash into, I think we would have been at a full dash. “My great-great-great-grandfather was a trapper back in the mid-1800s. He lived out here and caught game and fish to sell in town. He was friends with some of the American Indians that still lived on this land, although there weren’t many left after President Jackson chased them all away.”
He talked and talked about his family’s history as we got closer to the cabin. All his nervousness was gone. He was so eager to see his son that he couldn’t stop his thoughts from spilling forth. Everything he told me was fascinating. I didn’t know anything about Tennessee history, and I decided that while I was suffering through the next few days of being grounded at Grandma’s house when I got back—and probably a couple more weeks’ worth back home in California too—I’d have her get me some books about the area and read up on all this stuff.
The smell of the smoke from the campfire drifted our way, causing the dog to strain against his leash to get us all to go even faster. We all started calling out Alex’s name. To our dismay, we still didn’t get an answer from him.
“Maybe he’s asleep,” Chris suggested. “It is still really early in the morning.”
Officer Willoby nodded, but his voice didn’t sound so sure. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Come on,” I said, cheerily. “He has to be there. Who else would have started the fire?”
“That’s right!” Alex’s dad chimed in.
Our energy pumping, we increased our speed. Finally, we burst through the trees and saw the small cabin in front of us. It wasn’t much bigger than my tree house back home, except it was on the ground. It was built a lot sturdier than the tree house. Solid, round logs firmly locked in place, not just thin planks of wood held together with a few nails and screws. The wood was old and rough, like the old trapper had chopped the trees down and slapped them together into this structure without a thought of sanding them or making them uniform. No, this was a place just for function, not to be cozy or cute.
A very small flame was all that was left of the campfire a couple feet in front of the door. Getting closer to it, I saw that it had been fed mostly with twigs and leaves. Granted, I was no Boy Scout, but I lived near a beach and had been to enough bonfires to know that a fire had to be kept alive. That meant Alex had to be around here somewhere, and he had to be awake. The fire would have burned out if left on its own for too long.
Everyone called his name again.
“Alex, where are you?” his dad shouted. “Come on out here now.”
Still, Alex didn’t respond. The group around me hushed, everyone confused. That’s when it hit me. Alex was there, but he wasn’t answering on purpose. He didn’t want to be found by us for some reason. But why?
I looked at everyone and put a finger over my mouth to tell everyone to be quiet. Softly I said, “Alex? It’s Dannie. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The cabin didn’t have any windows, but I heard the door creak open a tiny bit. I thought I saw a shadow fill the tiny crack as though he were trying to peak out. Alex’s dad began to lurch forward, but Officer Willoby put out a hand to stop him. The dog whined, pulling on the leash.
“Alex,” I tried. “Can I come in there? I’ve got Chris with me too.”
A couple of long seconds passed as we waited to see what he would do. “Chris? What’s he doing here?” Then we waited again, and finally he said, “Just you, Danny. Okay? Nobody else.”
I threw a quick look at Chris. He shrugged and whispered, “It’s okay. I kind of picked on him a lot over the past year, and…” He mumbled the rest, but I’m pretty sure he was trying to say that the reason he wanted so badly to find Alex was to make up for all that meanness.
I stepped through the group and around Officer Willoby, the dog, and Alex’s dad. As I got to the door, Alex opened it just wide enough to let me in, keeping himself hidden from the rest of the people. The cabin was really dusty inside and bigger than it looked from the outside, about the size of our kitchen back home. It had a wood table with two chairs and an old cot against the back wall. There were a lot of hooks on the walls. Some were smooth, as though to hold jackets, hats, or belts. Others were sharp iron, for hanging game or skins to dry. Mercifully, there were no dead animals in the room, well, at least that I could see or smell. The cabin was dark. Having no windows, only the tiniest bit of the early morning sunlight could penetrate through the gaps between logs where the cabin had deteriorated over time. Alex didn’t have any candles or lamps to light the place up.
I struggled to see him clearly. He looked terrible. His shaggy hair was wild, and his face and hands filthy. I know I didn’t look much better. Probably worse.
“Jeez, Dannie,” Alex said. “What happened to you?” He sat down and patted the ground in front of him for me to sit too.
“I could ask the same,” I said back. Then I told him my adventures after he’d left me. Well, most of it. I left one minor detail out for the time being.
Alex, like the other guys, seemed bothered about the rowboat sinking. “Do you really think the ghost is gone?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Yeah, I do. And I think that’s a good thing for him.”
After a moment he reluctantly agreed. “Me too.”
“So…” I said, trying to get back to the reason we were sitting in this cold, bleak room. “I think it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“To tell me your story. You’ve got a lot of people looking for you, and they’re not going to wait much longer to bust in here.”
“Don’t let my dad in here,” he said urgently. “I wish he would just go away.”
“He’s worried about you,” I told him. “You didn’t show up at the camp, and you didn’t come home. No one knew where you were.”
“And whose fault was that?” he barked at me. “Everything would have been fine if not for you! No one would be looking for me. Dad would be at home asleep right now. My mom’s probably having a heart attack.”
I stood up, aghast that he was angry at me. “What are you talking about? I only tried to help.”
“Well, I didn’t need it,” he said, standing up as well.
“What do you mean? You were lost.”
“I wasn’t lost!” he yelled. “I knew where I was… After a while.”
�
��I don’t understand,” I confessed.
Alex leaned against the wall and then sank all the way to the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. I plopped down in front of him and sat cross-legged. There were a couple pebbles on the floor, and I picked them up and rolled them between my fingers while I waited for him to spill his story.
“When I left you yesterday I was a little freaked out. I didn’t know where we were, and you were in that haunted boat. I was afraid to see if the boat was going to lead us to the island, ’cause I really didn’t want to believe in the ghost, you know. So, I went on ahead, figuring I’d catch up with the guys. I missed them somehow, and then I got confused about where I was. I rowed around for a long time, back and forth along the shoreline looking for the fishing cove. I didn’t know what to do. If I showed up without you on the island, would the guys make fun of me? If I got there as late as I was going to, would they make fun of me for that? And worse, if you beat me to the island, you know they’d make fun of me for that. No matter what, I was doomed to be their joke for the whole night.
“After a while, I decided to stop looking. And I couldn’t go home, because my dad would be ashamed of me. He was our Scout master. He couldn’t be the one to have a son who failed to find the island for the annual campout. That would be so embarrassing for him, and I didn’t want to do that to him.
“So, I figured I’d just go stay at Grandpa’s cabin overnight. The guys would think that I gave up and went home. And if you never showed up, which I didn’t think you would, they’d think we stuck together. That’s what I’d tell them anyway. My dad would think I was at the campout all night and wouldn’t know otherwise.”
Alex sneered at me. “Well, that’s what I thought, anyway. Today, sometime this afternoon, I was going to head back a little bit after the rest of the gang would’ve left the island. I’d get home, and my dad would never know I spent the night here.” He paused and let out a huge sigh. “But that plan, didn’t work, did it, Danny?”
Alex stared at his feet stretched out in front of him. His dad called from outside.
“Alex! Are you coming out? What’s going on in there?”
“What am I going to tell him?” Alex said.
“The truth, I guess,” I answered plainly. “I have to do the same thing with my grandma. I told a buttload of lies yesterday, and I know I’ve got like a year’s worth of apologies to do.” I bit my lip and dropped my shoulders. “I have to start with you, too. I have to confess something that the other guys know now.”
“What?”
“I’m not a boy. My name’s Danielle. Everybody calls me Dannie for short. I should have said something before now.”
“Oh.”
I waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t I asked, “Is that it? You’re not mad or anything?”
“No,” Alex said. “It didn’t make sense to me that you were a boy.”
“Why? Because I’m so girly?”
He laughed, a genuine guffaw. “No, stupid. You are about the least feminine girl I’ve ever seen.” He stopped laughing and explained. “I have asthma. My mom has gotten my medicine from your grandfather’s pharmacy all my life. When he was there, he used to talk about his family in California. Yeah, he said your name was Dannie, but he always made it sound like you were a girl by the way he talked.”
“Like when he was telling about the tree house he built me and stuff like that? It’s not like I threw princess tea parties when he came to visit.”
Alex shook his head. “No, he never mentioned anything about princesses.” He continued to tell me his story. “My mom does some interior design, and he would say to her that if you ever came to visit, he might want to redecorate his son’s room to make it nice for you. He mentioned it every time we came by, but he never called to have her come take care of it. Why would he change the way the room looked if you were a boy? He’d only do that to make it more girl friendly.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah. So, I was kind of surprised when you turned out to be a boy, more surprised at that then you telling me you’re a girl now.” He paused. “I bet Chris was mad.”
“Furious.”
“Why is he here?” Alex asked, his nerves starting to take over again.
“That’s between you and him,” I said. “But we should get out there. They’re all waiting for us, and everyone’s so tired.”
“My dad’s going to be so pissed at me.” His voice cracked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think he’s glad you’re alive. He was really frantic when I first saw him this morning.”
“Really?” This seemed to surprise him. “My dad is always the guy who knows how to do everything. I’ve never seen him riled by anything.”
“Riled,” I laughed. “There’s a country word.”
Alex crawled forward and punched me in the sore shoulder. “Yeah, you should talk, dude.” He emphasized the ‘dude’ as surfer-like as he could muster.
“Dudette!” I said with an equal amount of ridiculousness.
We both laughed.
I looked around at the empty cabin while I rubbed my shoulder. “Have you eaten anything? Your dad said you could hunt and stuff, but you didn’t have any weapons.”
“Oh, I do know how to hunt,” Alex said. “I’m pretty good at it, but I don’t know how to kill an animal without my shotgun. I’m starving.”
“Me too,” I said, “and thirsty.”
“I’m so dehydrated, I stopped peeing sometime yesterday afternoon.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve peed since I left my grandma’s house.” We both laughed again.
From outside, we heard Chris. “What’s so funny in there? Come on out, y’all!”
I looked at Alex. “You ready? Let’s go get some food.”
“You’re on,” Alex said.
We helped each other stand up and went out the door together. The group out there cheered as we stepped into the sunlight. I squinted at the bright sky after being in that dark cabin. Alex’s dad rushed toward us and grabbed up his son in his arms for the tightest hug I’ve ever seen.
“Dad!” Alex whined. “I’m okay, Dad. You can let go.” After a minute his dad finally released him and stepped back. He kept his hands on Alex’s shoulders and looked him over carefully. “I kind of just want to get home,” Alex told him. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” his dad said. “Absolutely, let’s go.”
Chris came up to me like he might slap me on the back or give me a high five, but then he ran his hand across his head awkwardly as if he didn’t know what to do with it. I offered my hand, and he shook it. “Good going, Dannie. You’re not so lame after all.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I noticed that he held my hand a moment longer than a usual handshake before dropping his hand to his side again.
He turned to Alex. “Good to see you, twerp,” he said. “We all missed you at the campout.”
“You did not,” Alex said. He winked at me and added, “Another liar.” I had to laugh.
“Okay,” Chris agreed humbly. “We didn’t miss you so much as we noticed that you weren’t there. Everyone from camp came to help find you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said. “All of them. Lamont, Jasper, and Brian stayed back yonder because their flashlights went out.”
“Where’s my kayak?” he asked.
“It’s safe. It’s on Bill and Roger’s houseboat,” I told him. “I don’t know their last names, but I think one of them is a coach at the high school.”
Alex’s dad nodded, understanding. “I’ll get it back. Don’t worry.”
Officer Willoby addressed us then. “I think we should all start heading back to town now. If we go up this way, it’ll be the most direct path to the road, and we’ll have some cars waiting for us.”
We followed him and the rest of the searchers up the hill. It was still a pretty long walk ahead of us,
but it was a lot easier to suffer through when we knew the end was in sight. Chris filled the time telling us about some of the games they played at the campout before all the drama started. It sounded like the campout really would have been a fun time.
After the twentieth time Alex moaned, “Man, I wish I’d been there” in response to Chris’s stories, I made a suggestion.
“I think next year, you and Chris, or you and your dad, should go out in your kayaks a few times before the campout to know the route.”
Alex’s dad smiled. “That is a very good idea. How about you come with us?”
“So many reasons. I don’t live here, and I seriously doubt my grandma will ever let me come back.”
He wriggled his nose in a funny way. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“I would.” I cocked my head. “And then there’s that other thing. You know, the rule about boys only.”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said, frowning like it was just too bad.
Chris shrugged and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe we could rethink that rule a little bit.”
Wait! Who was this guy?
“What?” Chris asked me. Apparently, my wonderment at his change of tune was all over my face.
Alex’s dad put his arm around his son and squeezed as he said, “Yes. There could be an exception made.”
The sun was firmly up in the sky by the time we reached the road. Several police cars were waiting for us, and the drivers all had some thermoses full of hot chocolate. Nothing ever tasted as good in my life as that warm cup of watered-down cocoa. I swallowed it and felt its heat go down my throat and fill my empty belly. It almost hurt because my stomach was so grumbly, but the warmth radiated through my blood immediately and made me feel so much better. Officer Willoby asked me to ride in the car with him. He was going to take me back to my grandma’s house right away.
He opened the back door for me, and I stopped just before ducking inside. I waved at Chris and Alex who were getting in different cars up ahead. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” I said.
“Sure you will,” Chris said in response. “We’ll come over and visit.”
“Really?”