One Was Lost

by Natalie D. Richards

  “I’m sorry,” she says, looking amused. “But I think I might be a little right.”

  My lip quirks into half a smile. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to admitting anything. Knowing what happened myself is enough. Maybe I went stupid for a while with Lucas—I know I lost my mind completely on Sophie’s back deck—but that’s not who I really am. That’s my mother.

  Everything swoony in me died the morning my mother curled her long, pretty hair just a little too carefully, the same morning she gave me a hug that lingered more than usual.

  “You are just like me,” she’d said. “I hope you’ll trust your heart too. No matter where it leads.”

  I should have known something was up, but I was fourteen years old, and my mother was north on the compass of my heart. Now, she is a cautionary tale. And I’m smart enough to listen.

  “So you were never actually dating though?” she asks.

  “I don’t really date.” I shrug. “Not seriously. It seems a little ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

  “Sometimes,” Emily says. “To some of us. But I’ve seen you at dances and out with groups. I guess I thought…”

  “Casual stuff,” I say. “I just don’t see a point in losing yourself in some person you’ll probably never see again after graduation.”

  “Did you lose yourself in Lucas?”

  “No.” But I could have. “So, what about you?” I smile wide, ready to deflect. “You have your eye on anyone?”

  “My family wouldn’t like that.” She says it like it’s not weird, so I nod and play along.

  A dragonfly whirs past on shimmering wings, hovering briefly over Mr. Walker’s tent. He’s still out cold, stretched flat beside his tent door. He hasn’t moved, which is odd.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say, nodding at him. “He should be getting better.”

  “Unless he was drugged again,” Emily says with a soft snort.

  I gasp. “Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  “If he woke up while we were gone, he might have had more to drink. Did we check his tent? Did he have any extra bottles?”

  Emily doesn’t answer, but she gets up. She slips easily over Mr. Walker’s body and into the tent. There’s a soft rustle, then a silence that starts too quickly and stretches too long. My ribs clamp down like someone’s tightened a screw.

  “I found something,” Emily says, but I already knew that.

  Emily’s steps are soft when she returns. I don’t need to ask what she’s found because she’s carrying it. Six gleaming plastic bottles that make my tongue scrape like a hunk of sandpaper across the roof of my mouth.

  Water. Big bottles too.

  Our eyes meet, and her hands shake when she sets them down. We need it badly. I’ve only peed once, before we started rummaging. It wasn’t much. And I’m not sweating anymore, even though it’s still hot.

  “That’s not all,” she says, ducking inside the tent to grab something. “His old bottle was empty,” she offers, then holds up the old bottle. It’s not empty now. There’s about half an inch of water in it, but it looks weird.

  “There’s something in that,” I say. “It looks cloudy.”

  “Yes,” Emily says. “But the other bottles seem fine. The plastic overwrap is still intact.”

  “Great. Except that we don’t know where they came from.”

  She doesn’t answer for a while because we do know. And if they drugged us once, why on earth would we think they won’t do it again? My eyes drag to the cloudy water in Mr. Walker’s bottle. They already have done it again.

  “I’m thirsty.” Emily’s voice is small and desperate.

  I nod, my tongue moving again inside my tacky mouth. “But we know who brought that water. It could be drugged. Or worse.” I force myself to say it because if I don’t say it—don’t think about it—I will tear off the cap and suck down that entire bottle. Looking at it makes the thought of it almost painful, cool and sweet on my mouth. I could drink two bottles. Maybe three. No, no, I can’t. There are five of us and only six bottles, so I have to—

  “There are six more bottles inside,” she says.

  I swallow and my throat clicks. “It could be drugged. It’s probably drugged.”

  “Maybe it’s not,” she says, sounding young. Emily always seems young, though I know that’s not fair. I barely knew her before we started sharing a tent, and it isn’t like we spent the first two days bonding out here.

  “Emily…”

  I don’t know what to tell her. We’re both staring at each other because we could drink this and end up like Mr. Walker. Or we could take our chances with whatever biological nightmare is cooking up in the river. Either way, water is a roll of the dice we can’t avoid much longer. I don’t need a medical degree to know we have to drink, and we have to do it soon.

  “Would the river be better?” she asks.

  I open my mouth and then hear something snap and crack in the woods. It’s a ways off. Could be nothing. My ears strain, catching bits of birdsong and the hush-hush of leaves rustling. And then another snap. Maybe a grunt.

  Emily lets out a shaky breath. Her knuckles go white on the water. Another crack, and we both flinch. I stand up.

  Someone’s coming.

  Chapter 8

  Rescuers? No, they’d call for us. We’d hear them. Besides, even if no one’s using the check-in function on the GPS, we only sent a message once or twice a day. We’re not late enough for anyone to be here yet.

  I flex my hands, look around as adrenaline tries to kick-start my limbs. We need to do something. Run.

  The footsteps are coming closer, and I catch sight of the Damaged on Emily’s arm. Whoever wrote that could be coming for us. Maybe the water is drugged and they are hoping we already drank it—that we’re passed out again right now.

  A flash of Ms. Brighton’s severed finger washes through my mind. We can’t be here. We’re like sitting ducks.

  I wrap my hand around Emily’s wrist and start walking, finger to my lips. She doesn’t need to be told twice to follow, slipping past Mr. Walker and to the edge of our campsite clearing. I still hear the footsteps. The grunts.

  My eyes drag over the trees. Better cover there, but we’ll be noisy as hell. Our chance is better on the path. We’ll head back toward the river.

  Back toward the finger?

  My limbs go heavy. More noise, stomping. It’s like a herd of elephants. They won’t hear us over their own racket. We step back into the trees, my finger at my lips to remind Emily to stay quiet. She’s better at this than me. Her steps whisper quiet as we edge into the trees.

  Whoever’s coming is close now.

  “Sera! Emily!” The shout is loud, coming from the woods on the other side of camp. I start moving faster backward, my heart tripping like my feet. “Hey! Sera!”

  I deflate. It’s Lucas. I turn back, shoulders dropping in relief. They hunch when he calls my name again with a grunt. Why isn’t Jude calling for us? Where is Jude?

  Emily’s already striding back for the camp before I say anything. We see Lucas as soon as we come closer. Jude’s there too, one arm slung over Lucas’s shoulder and head lolling.

  Lucas takes another step, and Jude’s feet drag-thump along, his knees bending too deeply. He’s only on his feet because Lucas is holding him up. He looks awful, hollow eyes and sunken cheeks. His skin has a strange ashy tinge. His lips are cracked and bleeding.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “No idea. He said his head hurt. A little later, he collapsed. He’s barely making any sense.”

  “Dehydration,” Emily says decisively. “He was vomiting, so he’s worse than us. We found water. I’ll get it.”

  “Emily, you can’t!” I turn to look between them. “Someone left that here. It’s not ours.”

  “Someone left it?�
�� Lucas asks. “Who?”

  “The same someone who we think drugged Mr. Walker again.”

  Lucas’s expression turns dark. Emily ignores my protests and retrieves the water. She’s back with it before I can form a new argument. A plastic crack pierces the quiet when she twists off the cap. My throat bobs at the fat drop of water that rolls down the side of the bottle. I know I had something to drink last night, but it’s probably dinnertime. Maybe later. Maybe it’s only been twelve or fourteen hours, but it feels like it’s been a week.

  “We can’t give him that,” Lucas says, but his gray eyes are tracking that bottle like a predator. “No way it’s safe.”

  “He’s sick. It’s only going to get worse,” Emily reasons.

  “Then we get some water from the river,” I say. “They make antibiotics for whatever’s floating around in that, right?”

  “Hell no,” Jude croaks.

  His eyes are half-open, and I feel a pang of worry. I’m thinking of his dads, especially Thomas, who’s always nice, even when people aren’t nice back. If he saw me handing Jude this water…

  I shake my head and turn for the path that leads to the river.

  “No,” Jude says, reading my mind. “Not drinking fish piss. Give me the bottle.”

  My brow furrows. “It could be drugged.”

  “Drugged is better than this.”

  “Could be poisoned,” Lucas adds. “This was probably left by the psycho who cut off Ms. Brighton’s finger.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  Jude makes a clumsy grab and bumps the bottle, sloshing water out and down to the ground. My tongue burns. Aches. It’s Emily who brings it to Jude’s lips. Emily who also pulls it back after a few swallows.

  “More,” he says.

  “Not yet. You’ll puke again.”

  She’s all quiet focus, feeding him half the bottle sip by sip. He sinks to the ground, and we watch him like he’s a lit fuse. He’s mostly sleepy, waking up to take drinks. Whining about his head. I feel a sting and smack at the mosquito on my leg as Emily cracks open a second bottle.

  Maybe it’s my imagination, but within a few minutes, Jude looks better. Not good by a long shot, but better. He’s eventually strong enough to hold the bottle and sit up against an oak. His curls are wild and his lips are still a mess, but his eyes don’t look as sunken when he opens them.

  “How do we know if it’s poison?” Lucas asks.

  No one answers, but Jude chuckles. “I guess you wait to see if I die.”

  He hasn’t died so far, but how long has it been? Ten minutes? An hour? No way to know, but I’m pretty sure I should wait a little longer. The problem is, I don’t know if I can. I dig my fingers into the dirt and feel like my mouth is turning itself inside out. All I can see is that bottle at Jude’s lips. All I can think about is ripping it out of his hands and pouring it down my own blistered throat.

  “Screw it,” Lucas says, caving with a quick swipe of one of the bottles near Emily’s lap.

  “Go slow,” she warns him, but she grabs her own bottle.

  I fumble for one too, cracking it open with clumsy fingers.

  “Slow,” she says again.

  I try. I really do. The first sip turns me into an animal. I’m sure I’ve never known thirst like this, never understood the way a few swallows of water can taste like the best thing I’ve ever had. My throat soaks it up like a desert. I’m sure it doesn’t even hit my belly, just soaks into all the parched places on the way down. Another swallow and another, and I will never think of water the same again. I will never take this for granted—

  It’s ripped from my hands, and I gasp. I’m winded. Queasy.

  Lucas’s face looms in front of me, worry creasing his brows. “Easy.”

  I reach to snag my bottle back, but it’s half-gone. My stomach rolls. Emily was right. I close my eyes and wait for the sloshing to settle.

  “OK,” I say, opening my eyes when Lucas doesn’t give my water back. He raises his brow, and I glare. “I’m fine.”

  I’m actually nauseated as all hell, but I snag the water back and take a sip to spite him. I go slower now, feeling my cramped joints go loose, that dull ache that’s spread through my head relenting.

  I don’t pass out midway through my second bottle. Neither does Lucas, who’s had two, or Jude, who is starting his third.

  No one talks about the fact that it’s getting darker. Maybe two hours of daylight left, and it will be night. The last night carried more than darkness on its shoulders, but we don’t talk about it. We just sit around Mr. Walker’s tent, stinking to high heaven and looking at each other like one of us is a rabid dog and we’re just waiting to see who lunges first.

  But if someone’s going to lunge, it isn’t going to be one of us. My eyes drag to the trees, where trunks, thick and thin, smooth and rough, rise up from the forest floor in lazy rows. Limbs twist toward the sun, reaching here and there overhead. I see things move out of the corner of my eye. Leaves. Squirrels.

  A killer maybe.

  A sudden, awful thought blooms: What if Madison and Hayley and Ms. Brighton aren’t dead? What if they are over there, alone and terrified but not able to make noise? Did someone leave them water too?

  My heart pinches. I think of my dad helping me drop off lemon chicken soup at the downtown church. We used to go as a family. I refuse to let my mother take that from us too, and Dad refuses to let me drive down there alone. The soup is easy, and the drive is short. It’s the rest of the experience that makes me flinch.

  “How do you put up with this?” I look at the women who watch us too closely as we pass, smiles tight enough to tell me they’re more interested in where he was born than who he is. “You have to see how those women look at you, like you’re dangerous. I’m sick of it.”

  “I see very well. Well enough to see my daughter feeding hungry people.”

  “Dad.” I form the word with my lips, and my throat feels thick. Dark eyes, brown skin, the lilt of his accent that turns my name into a song—did I ever say anything that mattered to him? Did I thank him for staying? After my mom left, he could have gone home to Beirut. Did he want to?

  “My parents would freak if they saw me like this,” Jude says, so I must have said it out loud, picked at his worries too.

  I don’t know what he calls them. Are they both Dad? Maybe I ask that out loud too because he swirls the water in his bottle and nods. “Tom is Dad. Brady is Pop.”

  Pop. The word makes me smile, but I’m not sure Jude would appreciate that, so I hide it behind my hand. “My dad’s a worrier,” I say. “Probably because it’s just me.”

  “Divorced?” Emily asks softly.

  I laugh, but it’s not funny. “Very.”

  When Mom left us for Charlie, Dad got a set of divorce papers and I got pneumonia. He didn’t talk about it, and I was too sick to push. Instead, he brought me endless bowls of oversalted soup and cups of undersweetened tea. A week later, I climbed out of bed and brushed the worst of the tangles out of my waist-length hair.

  He asked me if I knew how much I looked like my mother. And then I asked him if I could cut my hair.

  “What are you staring at?” Jude asks.

  I shake my head, jarred back to our ugly reality. “Sorry. Thinking of when I had pneumonia when I was younger.”

  “I don’t have pneumonia,” he snaps.

  “I know that. I just—”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Unless asshole is a disease,” Emily mutters, but I smile, hoping to disarm him.

  It doesn’t work.

  “What is your problem with me?” he asks me. “You think it’s charming I have two dads? Does it make you feel more evolved to know me?”

  “Um, am I missing something?” I ask, stunned at the sudden outburst.

  “She didn’t do
anything to you,” Emily tells him.

  “I can see the look on her face!” Jude says. “It’s patronizing.”

  My cheeks go hot. “I wasn’t patronizing you! I was missing my dad!”

  “Stop being a tool sack,” Lucas tells him. “Believe it or not, we mere mortals do think about other things.”

  Jude crosses his arms and scoots back against the tree. The sun is closer to the top of the branches now. I frown, and Lucas follows my line of vision.

  “It’s getting dark,” I say, thinking of last night’s events and all those stupid stories. Ghosts running men off cliffs. Dead girl parts being dragged off, eaten, by bears. “What should we do?”

  “We keep watch in shifts,” Jude says. “If whoever this guy is comes back, we should be ready to run.”

  Lucas shakes his head. “Screw that. I say we run now. We take the water and one of the tents—”

  “Take them where?” I scoff. “I doubt any of us are up for a hiking trip. Jude was half-dead an hour ago. And what, we just leave Mr. Walker to fend for himself?”

  “At night?” Emily looks scandalized at the idea.

  Lucas cocks his head. “Would you rather snuggle up beside him and maybe wake up with nine fingers?”

  “I’m starting to think leaving won’t help,” Jude says. “Especially if it’s too dark to see.”

  I feel my brow quirk. “Why the change of heart?”

  His eyes lock onto mine. “I had some time to think about it. Look at our wrists. This isn’t random. Whoever did this isn’t going to just wander off and hope we stay put—they’re watching us. How else would they have known to leave the water while we were away from the camp?”

  “For God’s sake, Jude,” Lucas says. “Do you want us to just sit here and wait for the lunatic to show up again? We have no idea who this is.”

  That’s it. I stand up, a little edgy. “I agree. And two hours ago, you were all set to follow Lucas into the great beyond. Now you’re acting like we might as well stay put and not even bother trying? Tell me again why we should all be sure you aren’t the guy behind this.”