“Where are those white-faced monkeys now?” Anna said. “They need to show us more water. And food. We missed breakfast, and I never miss breakfast! What can we eat here?”
“There’re probably all kinds of things, but I don’t know if it’s safe to eat what the monkeys are eating.”
We slid down a steep hill, trying to stay upright in the slippery leaves. When we paused at the bottom, I heard something.
“Sounds like water ahead!” We sprinted toward a bubbly stream, coursing over a bed of rocks.
“At last,” Anna said. She immediately knelt and cupped her hands into the water.
“Wait! We need to boil that first,” I said. “I don’t have my purification tablets. You could get really sick.”
Anna groaned. “It looks clean to me.”
“The parasites are tiny.” I held up my thumb and finger pressed together to show her how small.
“Really? Something the size of a spider turd is going to make me sick?” She splashed the back of her neck. “Well, how are we going to boil it?”
I shielded my eyes from the sun. We could see it now through the break in the canopy. “I have an idea.” I pulled the mini binoculars out from my shirt and studied them. “We can use one of the lenses like a magnifying glass and start a fire with the sun.”
While Anna gathered twigs and leaves, I unscrewed the lens.
“What are we going to use to boil the water in? The bag will burn.”
“Uh. I don’t know. Are there coconuts around? We could use a coconut shell.”
“No coconuts.”
I realized we also needed wood for the fire. “Do you think you could cut down one of those trees?” I said, pointing to a clump of them next to the water. “Let me think about what to use as a pot.”
I tilted the lens so that it captured the sun, and focused a beam of light into the leaf pile. Then I sat motionless and waited. Sweat trickled down my nose. Tiny legs marched across the back of my neck. Are those ants? Pretend they’re just ants. My arm ached.
Anna hacked at one of the narrow branches of the tree. “It’s hollow,” she said. “Oh, it’s got water in it!” She dropped to the ground, trying to catch the liquid leaking out. She finished cutting the branch and inspected the inside.
“It’s got sections.” She rolled it upside down. “I can hear more water sloshing around inside, like a coconut!”
“It’s a bamboo tree.” I didn’t want to move the beam of light, so I asked her to bring the section to me. “We can use this as a pot to hold over the flame! See? It’s like a bowl. Can you get the water out of the other section?”
Anna cut, but most of the water trickled out from her hacking. “It leaks when I hit it.” She tried getting her mouth underneath to catch it in time, but the water had drained. “We have to drink the creek water. I’m so thirsty.”
“Wait, I’ve almost made the fire.” I waved my hand in front of the beam of light. The beam felt hot, but nothing was happening. I adjusted the beam to make it smaller and was encouraged with a tiny bit of smoke. “It’s working!”
We stared at the pile. I expected it to burst into flame any minute the way I’d seen it happen on YouTube. But the smoke fizzled away.
“I think the leaves are too wet,” I said. “Can you find drier ones?”
“Where? Everything is wet. I’m just going to drink.” Anna dunked her face in and sucked up the water.
“Don’t!”
“Ahhhh!” She smacked her lips.
The slurping noises made me even thirstier. I didn’t know if the fire would ever work. I really wished I had my lighter from the kit. But it was harder than I thought to start a fire in a rainforest.
“This was supposed to work,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“You can’t plan for everything, Carter. No one knows everything.”
Her words made me uneasy. “That’s what I do,” I said. “I plan. I wrote a booklet at home for emergency protocols, and I make my parents hold fire drills. I have a ladder that I can hang out my bedroom window to escape. I keep a list of hurricane safety procedures in the house, how to turn off electricity and gas, that sort of thing. I boxed up a disaster supplies kit in the pantry—canned food, bottled water, battery-operated radio, flashlight, and protective clothing. I make a specific emergency kit for each place we travel. I have to know everything to feel safe.”
Anna stared at me. “Well, you didn’t plan on getting stung by a scorpion, and that turned out okay,” she said simply. “No matter how much you plan, you have to be prepared for the unexpected. My dad always says, ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.’ ” She took another drink. “Didn’t you say we should drink so we don’t get dehydrated from sweating? You better have some.”
The other side of fear? I’d have to think about that later. My head pounded. Maybe the danger of dehydration was worse than the danger of getting sick from drinking a parasite.
“At least it looks clean,” I said, dipping my hand.
I brought it to my mouth, but then gave up and copied what Anna was doing, sticking my face in and sucking. It was cool and delicious.
After we drank, I felt better, though I wished I hadn’t said all that to Anna. But my mind was clearer. I wanted to study the bamboo trees, but a commotion in the canopy distracted me.
“Monkeys are back.” Anna pointed above. “And they’re out of control.”
They were screeching and jumping up and down. They flung fruit and branches into a tree hanging over the clump of bamboo. Something there made my guts tighten.
A giant tan colored snake with dark stripes and an arrow-shaped head.
“Boa constrictor!” I yelled.
It lay patiently in a coil on the crook of a branch. Seed balls rained down on it. The snake did not look the least bit concerned.
“I was just there cutting a tree down!” Anna yelled. “That thing could’ve dropped on my head! It looks like it could swallow me whole.”
For the first time, she looked like she was going to cry. But she didn’t—she just got mad. “Bad snake! Get out of here!” She picked up a stone and hurled it at the boa constrictor.
Between the monkeys and the angry girl, the snake decided that wasn’t the best place for a nap. It slowly uncoiled and moved to the next branch. But when it moved, we could see the bulge of something inside it.
Chapter Nine
“Baby monkey?” I suggested. “Maybe that’s why the monkeys are so upset. We don’t have to worry—these snakes are harmless to us. But we should move.”
I pointed in the direction the stream was flowing. “You think this might lead to the ocean? That’s our best chance of finding people.”
We followed the stream. It grew wider, dropping over large rocks into several mini waterfalls. We clambered over the rocks, Anna’s machete clanking as she used her hands to steady herself.
The air smelled like flowers and rain. Bees buzzed next to me, and I was amazed to notice that I didn’t freak out, just waited for them to fly by. Out there, my smaller worries didn’t seem as scary anymore.
Anna paused and held up a hand for me to listen. We both stared up at the canopy. Then her shoulders slumped. “Thought I heard something.”
Her voice sounded small. The fierce Anna was shrinking the longer we were lost. “A rescue plane wouldn’t be able to see us, would it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think we’re going to make it out of here . . . alive?”
I reached for her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. We shared a look. In that moment, something passed between us that seemed to acknowledge we were in this together. It felt like we were giving each other strength.
Anna stood straighter. I felt braver. Determination replaced the terror on her face. She nodded, dunked her head under a waterfall, and continued to lead, water streaming down her back.
Once the terrain leveled off, the banks along the stream got muddy. Anna stopped, staring
at something at her feet. I peered around her at a very large print deeply imbedded in the mud.
Anna spread her hand and placed it over the print. “What has three toes and makes a track the size of two of my hands?”
“Um. Let’s keep moving.”
I scanned for crocodiles, but I was pretty sure they had big drag marks where their tails slid. Not square footprints. What could make a print like that?
The stream we were following met up with a river, but we slowed to a crawl trying to move along its bank. The trees there were short with roots that grew aboveground. Red crabs ran over the roots and scuttled away as we approached. We had to climb over and under the roots. It was more tiring than going through the thick vegetation.
“This is starting to get hard,” Anna said.
“Starting?” This was not working. What were we going to do? We were filthy and covered in mosquito bites. Our clothes were torn. I wanted to be safe at home. I wanted my parents to shake their heads at my latest emergency plan and tell me everything would be okay. I squeezed my eyes shut.
With this new obstacle, I felt myself trembling with the panic coming on. But then I considered what Anna had said about how I had to be prepared for the unexpected. And something about the other side of fear—I’d even been stung by a scorpion, and I was still there. If I could survive that, I could get past my fears.
“I wish we could just swim downriver,” Anna said.
Neither of us mentioned the gigantic tracks we’d seen in the mud. What animals could be lurking in the water?
While we stared at the river, an idea formed from something that had been bugging me since we saw the bamboo.
“Let’s find more of those hollow trees,” I said. “I think I know what we can do.”
“First, I need to drink,” Anna said.
But the river was muddy here, and even she hesitated.
“Let’s make a filter,” I said. “We don’t have any charcoal, do we?”
“I left my stash of charcoal at home. Sorry,” Anna said, giving me a flat look.
“Let’s try it anyway. I practiced at home for emergencies once by making a water filter from a bag.” I laid out the garbage bag on the ground and began lining the bottom with the fine silt from the riverbank.
“Look for gravel, or larger stones,” I said to Anna. “We need to layer sand, and then rocks, and then sand and rocks again like a birthday cake. Then when we pour water in the top, it filters through and comes out clean.”
Once the layers were packed in, I pointed at the bag. “Anna, will you make knots on each side so we can hang it?”
Using my teeth, I unraveled the eight feet of paracord I’d used to make my survival bracelet. Then I tied it in two loops around the knots Anna had made and hung the bag from a low branch. We scooped water from the river, and then dumped it into the top of the bag. Anna poked a small hole in the bottom with her machete. After a minute, we held our hands under the water that dribbled out.
“Is it cleaner?” asked Anna, peering into her hands. “I can’t tell.”
“It worked better at home,” I admitted. “Must need the charcoal.”
After we drank, we hiked back into the jungle and found more bamboo. Along with something else I finally recognized.
“That’s a termite nest!” I pointed excitedly. “We can eat them.” I grinned at her expression. She grimaced back.
“And a termite nest is supposed to be good insect repellent,” I said as I showed Anna how to hold a stick into the nest and wait for the termites to climb it. I bit them off my stick like I’d learned in Australia. They didn’t taste like anything.
Anna scrunched her face, watching me chew. “Never thought I’d be eating bugs.” Then she shrugged and copied me, biting them off her stick. “Well . . . they aren’t terrible. What did you say about using them for the mosquitos?”
“Supposedly you can burn the nest and the smoke keeps them away, but we don’t have any fire.” I picked at the hard, holey nest, and smelled the dust under my nail. It was woody, almost spicy. “We could try just rubbing it on our skin?” I suggested.
Anna hacked a chunk off the nest and created tiny termite chaos. We each crumbled a piece in our hands, some termites still clinging to it. I rubbed the crumbs and the termites all over the back of my neck and face. It did seem to keep the mosquitos off.
“This was a good idea, Carter. I wish I was as smart as you.”
She wished she was like me? I watched Anna rub dust over her face. She clapped her hands to get rid of the dust, and then punched me in the arm.
“Stop staring at me, nerd.” She smiled.
I wished I was fearless like her.
Chapter Ten
As Anna ate more termites, I explained my plan. She listened while she chewed. “But you’re sure it will float?”
“If we use the hollow bamboo trees, they’ll float. We’ll need to cut some of these skinny hanging vines to use as rope.” I’d used all my paracord on the water filter.
“If we use five or six trees, and then brace them with cross pieces, it might be wide enough to be stable and long enough for the two of us, like a canoe.”
Anna reached up and yanked a vine down. “How do you know all this stuff? You couldn’t have read all this before you came here.”
“My grandpa makes canoes and boats. I like to watch and help. Well, I don’t help. I’m . . .” I rubbed my face in embarrassment. “I’m afraid of the power tools.”
Anna knelt with the vine and started pulling it apart.
“I just like being in Grandpa’s shop,” I continued. “It always smells like sawdust and glue and the goopy stuff he puts in his hair. It makes me feel calm, I guess, to be with him. And I love painting the boats.” I glanced at Anna to see if she understood.
She sat back on her heels and picked her teeth. “It might work.”
“Do you think you can get us six of those?” I pointed to a batch of bamboo trees with long, straight stems. They were narrow enough to cut down, about the width of a flagpole.
Anna jumped up, looking excited by the plan. By the time I had the vine strands weaved together to make cord, she had the first tree down.
“How are you so strong?” I asked, wishing I could cut down a tree. Watching her made me feel even more hopeless.
She shrugged. “I like sports. I’ve been playing basketball since I was seven. And I was the only girl on the wrestling team. I had to learn to defend myself. Also I licked the monkey statue, remember?” She winked at me. “I know it was made up, but I thought it would be fun.” Her face clouded. She bent to hack at the next tree as if she wasn’t afraid of anything.
I thought of all the things I’d been afraid of happening since I was old enough to worry. Of all the times I’d imagined something like the situation we were in now. I’d been so scared of all the things that could go wrong. Well, everything did go wrong, and I was still alive, even after getting stung by a scorpion. Maybe I’d gotten strong from licking the monkey too.
After we dragged the trees down to the riverbank, I lined up the bamboo pieces and studied them. They had to fit tightly together. When I tried flipping one around, I tripped and ended up rolling over and then under most of the logs. I landed in the mud, half in the water. Anna hid her grin.
I picked up the vine to tie the cross pieces. Each log should be individually tied. As I thought about how it would work, I imagined all the ways I could screw it up. What if I didn’t tie them right and our raft broke apart? We’d be dumped into the river with crocodiles and large animals with three toes.
My fingers felt awkward, and my knots got all tangled. The rope didn’t work right. Nothing stayed together properly. It looked so easy watching Grandpa.
“Can I try?” Anna held her hand out for the vine.
“Loop that end over.” I pointed to the vine. “Good. Then hitch this close and pry it so it’s tight. No . . . the other way—yeah!”
I instructed as Anna tied. Once the c
rossbeams were secured for support, our raft almost looked like a seaworthy vessel that Grandpa might make. “Now we need a couple poles to push with,” I said. “Long ones.”
I glanced up at the sun. It was late afternoon already. I couldn’t believe how fast the day had gone. Remembering how quickly it got dark the night before, I knew we needed to hurry.
We launched the raft by rolling it through the mud until it floated. I danced on shore for a few steps, trying to find the courage to get on. Anna jumped onboard and did a cautious test bounce. The raft wobbled, but stayed afloat.
“We’re awesome!” she yelled, and held her hand out to high-five.
I carefully stepped on, holding my pole. My legs felt shaky and my heart thumped, but I did it. We sat cross-legged near the center and stabilized. Grandpa would be proud.
I was relieved how much easier it was to travel on the river. The shoreline drifted past. We poled to keep the raft from spinning, but mostly the current kept us moving. Soon the shoreline passed a little faster. The raft bobbed harder. We came to a bend in the river, and then really picked up speed. My breath came out in a gasp.
We ran through a stretch of jumbled, swirly water. The side of my pants got soaked from a splash. The raft bounced crazily, and Anna almost toppled off. I grabbed her, and we held on. The machete slid off and sank out of view before either of us could save it. My hand clutched hers.
I glanced nervously around at the jungle speeding by. That was when I saw the rapids in front of us. Anna and I locked eyes.
“Hang on,” I screamed.
Chapter Eleven
We crashed through the rapids, barely missing a large rock sticking out. The raft tipped like a bucking horse, but we dodged to the other side. Water sprayed over us as the raft smashed back down. We balanced in the center of the raft, drenched to our eyeballs, clutching the sides of the bamboo.
With the logs jostling, the movement worked the knots in the vines loose. One of the logs broke away. I reached for it, but it slipped out of the lashing and was gone before I could grab it.
Lost! Page 3