Running now, but the effort of holding her arm against her chest is more than she thought it would be, and it bounces horribly with each step, shooting spasms of pain through her elbow, her shoulder, her neck.
And suddenly she’s throwing up. Only halfway to the trees, still exposed, bent over, resting her right arm on a boulder and emptying what little there was in her stomach: the lake water, bits of undigested granola bar, white-yellow bile. Santi pats her gently on the back while she pukes again. Her arm feels like it’s on fire now, but at least the stabbing pain is gone.
After one last dry heave, she wipes her mouth on her shoulder and stands—just a little unsteady—and forces a smile. “Like I said, don’t drink too much water too fast.”
Santi glances quickly up at the ridge and then back to her. “Do you need more time?”
“I can make it.”
She’s more careful now—slower. Santi does a terrible job of masking his impatience, but they’re able to make the trees in ten minutes without her puking again.
As soon as the ridge is out of sight, she collapses to the ground and leans against the trunk of a huge pine. Santi drops the backpack next to her and offers the full water bottle.
“I’m good,” she says after the tiniest of sips.
“It’s your arm, isn’t it?”
“I’ll be fine.”
He pulls out the kitchen knife and points it at her. “Wait here. I’m not interested in ‘fine.’”
Now that they’re hidden, now that the immediate threat is over, Amelia’s fingers begin to tremble. She closes her eyes and forces herself to breathe. In and out. Slowly. Repeat. How strange, to have to remind herself to do something she’s done all her life without thinking.
If only Victor hadn’t guzzled her tequila. How nice a little bit would feel right now. She chuckles.
“Yeah, this is hilarious.”
She opens her eyes to see Santi smiling down at her, offering his hand. She has no idea how long he was gone.
“Can you stand?”
One more deep breath, and she lets him help her up. Under his arm are two branches, each about a foot long and as wide as a quarter. Freshly stripped of bark, they bleed sap from both ends. He steps to her left side so that she doesn’t have to extend the arm.
His fingertips tap the redness on her skin. “Looks like the swelling has gone down, at least.”
“Freezing mountain lake will do that.”
She holds the branches while he digs through the backpack, coming out with Jerry’s long underwear and sweatpants. He uses the knife to split the sweats into two pieces, setting one of the legs to the side and cutting inch-thick strips from the other. Amelia can’t help but marvel at the difference between the Santi in front of her now and the one from the first three days.
“You didn’t need my help with your blisters, did you?”
Santi freezes, knife in midair, and a mischievous smile spreads across his face. “Flirting has never been a strength of mine.”
“Yeah, tending to the open wounds on your feet was actually very sexy.”
“I’ll have to remember that. You know, for when we get out of here.” He winks and then lays four strips of sweatpant over the top of the backpack. Next, he wraps one of his branches evenly with the pant leg he didn’t slice to ribbons and uses the long underwear to wrap the other branch.
“Aww,” she says, “I was going to wear those.”
“Hold this right here,” he says, carefully positioning the sweatpants-padded branch behind her forearm. She holds it in place while he covers the front of her arm with the other branch. The sweatpant ribbons are so long that by the time he’s wrapped all four around the splint, it looks like Amelia has a fabric cast from her elbow to her hand.
“Is that too tight?” he says, pinching her fingertips one by one. “Can you feel this?”
“I don’t even know what to say, Santi. That’s incredible.”
“My dad and I used to go up into the mountains. Just the two of us at first, camping for weeks at a time, even when I was little, and then Marisol would tag along. That’s what I remember most: him up there, sipping coffee in the morning, sitting by the fire, wearing a bandana over his head like a pirate. So happy. ‘Who needs church, Santiago,’ he’d say on Sundays, ‘when God’s already in the mountains.’ ”
Santi turns away and picks up the water bottle. “Probably shouldn’t have stopped at the lake, I guess, but at least we’re clean now.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” she says.
“Yeah.” He puts the sling back over her head and helps her nestle the elbow into place. “Me too.”
With her arm properly splinted and tied against her body, Amelia feels infinitely more secure. “Thanks for this.”
“I should have done it earlier.” Santi pulls out the saltines and the sandwich baggie of powdered milk from the backpack. “Quick snack, before we go?”
“Not even that hungry,” she says, grabbing three crackers. “I had half a granola bar a few hours ago.”
They each munch a handful of powdered milk—it tastes like a combination of chalk, butter, and crushed aspirin—and take a few sips from the bottle.
“You think this water’s going to make us sick?” Amelia says. “There’s a lot of wildlife out here. Elk, deer, mountain lions.”
“That’s the last of my worries,” Santi says. “Although if I’m going to get sick and die out here, at least it’s with you.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or depressed.”
“I’m serious. I can’t imagine doing this with any of the others. Victor? Rico? Celeste?”
“Celeste wasn’t so bad,” Amelia says. “She was just in over her head. Just like the rest of us.”
Santi nods to himself before standing and packing the water bottle. “We should get moving.”
***
The next morning, weak from hunger and rationing the remains of the lake water, they’re still eighteen miles from the nearest service road. And even if they get that far, it’s another twelve road miles to the edge of the wilderness area.
The topo lines indicate that they’ve crossed below the 10,000-foot threshold, but all that extra oxygen doesn’t make breathing any easier. At least the terrain has changed. The slope’s become more gradual, grassier, with the occasional aspen cluster shimmering among the firs and pines. They’ve seen more wildlife too. Rabbits and big, furry marmots, and the occasional mule deer.
Dinner the night before was a scoop of powdered milk and the pack of dehydrated beef stew, both eaten dry to conserve what little water they had. The beef stew in particular was nearly impossible to get down. Crunchy, and saltier than she could have imagined. It was as if all the sodium instantly sucked up whatever moisture she had left in her mouth.
Breakfast is a packet of oatmeal for each of them, which means they’re down to a half a bag of powdered milk and a half-sleeve of saltines. While Santi eats his oatmeal dry, Amelia tears off the top of her packet and pours a little water inside, hoping the oats will absorb at least some of it. After ten minutes, however, she gives up and just empties it into her mouth.
Santi looks at her expectantly.
“Better hot,” she says. “If you can believe it.”
“Too bad we don’t have a pot.”
“Or water.”
“Or matches.”
“Victor would see the fire anyw—”
“Shh,” Santi says, holding his hand out like a traffic cop. He whispers without moving his mouth. “Don’t move.”
Amelia’s stomach drops. Based on the scat they’ve seen throughout the trip, she knows there are mountain lions around. Bears, too, even though they haven’t seen any tracks or scat.
Very slowly, Santi leans down and picks up a rock the size of a baseball.
No, no, no. If there’s a predator behind her, the last thing they want to do is piss it off. Amelia can feel her pulse in the swollen flesh of her arm. Throbbing. She tries to make
eye contact with Santi, but he is too focused on whatever he’s looking at.
“Santi, no—”
With a burst of movement, Santi steps forward and hurls the rock as hard as he can. She hears it clatter against other rocks, and her instinct is to shut her eyes and brace for an attack. When no attack comes, she turns around in time to see a rabbit scurrying away up the hill.
“Damn.” He rubs his shoulder. “I think I threw my arm out.”
Amelia jumps to her feet and punches him in the chest. “You scared me to death! I thought there was a mountain lion behind us.”
“If there’s ever a mountain lion behind us, I won’t have to tell you,” Santi laughs. “You’ll be able to see by the puddle in my pants.”
“How far did you miss by?” she says, willing her heart back under control.
“Too far. I wasn’t even—”
“Shhh.”
Santi laughs. “Okay, maybe I was a little dramati—”
“No, listen,” she says, cocking her ear to the sky. A buzzing. Faint, but it’s there. “Do you hear that?”
The two of them freeze in place, listening, and sure enough, the buzz becomes louder. Something mechanical, inorganic, which is probably why her brain registered the sound so early. Coming closer.
“We need a mirror,” she says. “Get the knife!”
Awareness flashes across Santi’s face, and he runs to the backpack. Then the buzz is upon them—a small airplane with a single propeller, appearing over the ridge from the west. Santi pulls the knife from the side of the backpack and tries to angle it toward the sun, but the trees are too thick, so he starts uphill, toward the small clearing they passed the night before.
The plane isn’t directly overhead, but it’s close. She guesses that they have maybe twenty or thirty more seconds before it’s out of view again. The hope is unbearable. Hope that the knife is shiny enough. Hope that Santi can get a good reflection.
Hope makes her feel helpless. Alone in the shade, her arm throbbing, while someone else does something to try to get them out of here. But hope is all she has left.
So she has to hope.
And wait.
She waits as the plane flies overhead. Waits as it continues on without changing course. As the buzzing fades into the distance. Now she waits alone in the shade for Santi to return, and when he does, the disappointment on his face scares the hope out of her.
He sits on the rock across from her, laying the knife in his lap, and shakes his head. “We’re going to die out here.”
“Stop saying that. They’ll come.” She tries to color her voice with optimism she doesn’t feel. “That was just one plane, okay? Without the mudslide, we’d only be getting off the trail today, so we’re technically not even missing at this point.”
“You really think someone will come looking?”
“Of course,” she says, maybe a little too quickly. “Hey, we’re not dead yet. We just have to stay alive until then. What if we tried to trap a rabbit?”
“With what? We already ate the stew. And I don’t know what kind of berries we can eat, much less the kind that will bait a rabbit.”
“What about the rhyme your dad taught you?”
“White and yellow, kill a fellow,” Santi says. “Purple and blue, good for you. Red ones are probably okay if they’re not growing in clusters. That last part didn’t even rhyme, so I don’t know how useful it is.”
Amelia notices a young aspen tree in the cluster behind Santi. About ten feet tall, with a trunk about two inches thick where it reaches the ground. The tree’s absolute straightness is what catches her eye, the way it grows perpendicular to the ground, no curve to it at all.
“Let me see the knife,” she says.
The handle is wooden: two separate pieces affixed somehow—glue, maybe—on either side of a single shaft of metal. If they can cut down the tree and strip its branches, they might be able to split one end and slide the knife handle inside.
When she suggests it, he shakes his head. “A spear would take too long. We should get moving again.”
“We stick with the plan,” she says, pleasantly surprised at the conviction in her voice. “We follow the map and try to get out. But we have no food, Santi. If we come across an animal on the way—another rabbit, maybe, or even a deer—maybe you can get close enough with the spear.”
The knife isn’t serrated, so sawing the tree is out of the question, but Santi cuts little wedges into the trunk, going around in a circle like a beaver, until they’re able to bend it down and slice through the remaining wood. After he cuts the top of the tree and trims off the remaining branches, they’re left with a straight shaft about seven feet long.
Splitting the thick end proves to be the most difficult step, and the most dangerous. Amelia holds it vertical while Santi forces the knife down; if it slips, her arm is a ribbon. But eventually he’s able to get a fissure started. He wedges the blade inside, torques it from side to side to open more space, then repeats the process until the fissure is the length of the knife handle.
After Santi harvests two more ribbons from the leftover leg of Jerry’s sweatpants, they’re done with the knife. Amelia lays it on top of a nearby boulder, and Santi picks up a rock the size of a football.
“You’re sure about this?” He pauses with the rock above his head. “If it doesn’t work, we’ve just ruined our only tool.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have the energy for hand-to-hand combat with a marmot,” she says. “Just be careful the blade doesn’t bounce up and stab you.”
Santi shrugs. “Good point.” A smile creases his face for the first time in hours. “Good point. Get it? ’Cause it’s a knife?”
“I’m laughing on the inside.”
He slams the rock down. One of the handle’s sides snaps off, pinwheeling out to the left of Amelia’s head. The other side of the handle is intact but shows a slight crack along the edge. Two more strikes and they’re left with a single scratched piece of metal.
Santi pries the end of the aspen shaft apart and holds it open while Amelia wedges the knife handle inside. Next, Santi tears a narrow strip of duct tape from the water bottle and wraps it around the handle to keep the knife in place. Sitting cross-legged on the ground with the business end of the spear in his lap, he coils the strips of sweatpants around the wood as tightly as he can.
As he’s tying the first strip, he winces and puts one hand to his waist. “My stomach doesn’t feel so good.”
“I know. I never really understood the meaning of ‘hunger pangs’ before now.”
“That’s not it,” he says, looking up at her with concern. “I think it might be the water.”
“Do not get sick. That’s the last thing we need right now.”
“Easy for you to say,” he says, shaking off the discomfort. He ties the second strip and adds another layer of duct tape for good measure.
He hands the end product to Amelia, and she holds it like a staff, with the tip of the blade two feet above her head. She can only imagine what she must look like now: her arm in a splint, scratches and scabs on her face, leaning on a homemade spear. “You know nobody is going to believe this, don’t you?”
“I don’t even believe it.” Santi rolls over onto his hands before slowly pushing himself to his feet. “I should have chosen to go back to juvie instead.”
Yeah, Amelia thinks. This isn’t what she signed up for either.
42
Bayou Banks Country Club belonged in a documentary about the lost glory of the South. The guardhouse, the fountain, the rows of blooming azaleas, the plantation-inspired architecture of the main building. White pillars, an enormous American flag beside an even more enormous Texas flag. Her mom was a member now, a privilege open to her after the promotion to Vice President of Pacific Exploration. Her mom the member—her dad loved that. Loved being the spouse in the club directory, his name in parentheses after his wife’s.
Amelia parked in the shade of an oak tree
and wandered through the open pool area to the club’s side door, feeling like as much of an imposter as she had every other time she’d been there. They weren’t really a country club family now, were they? Had that happened?
They were close, the four of them—now only three, with her sister away at college—because they’d had to be. Socially, they’d never been much in demand; in many of the countries where they’d lived, people were even more skeptical of a stay-at-home dad than they were of a woman as the primary breadwinner. That didn’t stop her folks from trying. Every time they’d moved, they embraced the local customs, and this was no different. Oil executives in Texas joined country clubs.
So here Amelia was. Mid-April, and it was already so hot. After three years in Houston, she still hadn’t gotten used to the daily sauna. The back of her neck was soaked by the time a blast of air conditioning greeted her inside the doorway, just about freezing the sweat solid.
Ever since the membership had gone through, her mom had made an effort to spend time in the ladies’ locker room, which—even though it technically contained lockers—was more like a women-only sanctuary. Plush white carpet with a checkerboard design, a marble countertop along the back wall with two towering vats of cucumber-infused water, and flowers everywhere. So many flowers.
Her mom was at a small table with three other women, playing mahjong. Even though the women didn’t discuss quite as much business as the men did in their locker room—which, according to Amelia’s father, sported four poker tables and a full bar staffed with two bartenders—it was still important to be seen.
Amelia stopped in the doorway and watched; it was like a zoo exhibit. The rare and exotic species of country club women, all white jeans and sundresses.
Ivory tiles like squat dominoes were spread face down in the center of the table, with each of the four women collecting tiles into some combination or other. Amelia’s mom held one of the tiles and tapped it gently on the table in front of her, deciding what to play.
“You’re clicking your tiles,” one of the women said, shooting Amelia’s mom a big smile and the unfriendliest friendly look Amelia had ever seen.
On the Free Page 19