by Erin Teagan
A flash of lightning puts all three of us on high alert and I think of the storm from last night. Wild. Violent. Is that how everything is in this swamp?
“Just a summer storm,” Adam reassures Isabel. “That’s all.”
The rain starts slowly and at first we ignore it, Adam and I singing songs to Isabel to distract her, and it’s working, especially when we do “Wheels on the Bus,” the Dismal Swamp edition. Adam is so good with her, making her laugh, getting her to sing with us. I wish that his dad had waited for him on the helicopter. Stopped it from leaving until we were safe aboard. I wish that his dad hadn’t left him four years ago.
We’re in the middle of “the alligators in the swamp go CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP” when we realize this storm isn’t just passing over. Thunder echoes, shaking the earth, the sky pulsing with lightning. And with each flash we get a better glimpse of the devastation, and it’s like we’re on some other planet where the ground is dust and the trees are skinny scorched toothpicks.
Adam stops singing. “We can’t stay here.” He stands up, looking at the sky, even though it’s impossible to know the difference between a storm cloud and a smoke cloud.
“Where do we go?” I say, because he’s right. We’re basically sitting in a giant pool. One lightning strike and we could all be electrocuted.
Thirty-One
We step delicately onto the shore, pulling the canoe behind us up onto the bank, our clothes dripping. “Ow!” Isabel yells when I lift her out of the boat and put her on the ground. She drops Adam’s shirt. I grab it. The ground is still smoldering in places, even with the rain coming down, and I step carefully around the hot spots. The wind sends sparks into the sky. “My foot hurts. Owwww.”
“Where?” Adam asks over the noise of the storm. “Can you walk?” He tries to inspect her foot.
“Ow! Don’t touch it!”
She must have injured herself when she was stuck in the camper.
There’s a crack of lightning so close I feel the tingle of electricity in my body.
Adam scoops Isabel up. “Hang tight. We need to find shelter now,” he says, cradling her like a baby.
I step over a downed tree, scared I’ll see a scorched animal. Or worse. We stand together for a minute, looking, thinking. The rain picks up fast and hard.
“No,” Adam says, seeing me eyeing the camper debris. “Too much metal. Probably still hot from the fire too.”
There’s nothing left of the dining tent or the circle of crew trailers or the prop tent. The cottage is gutted, the roof caved in, and the screened-in porch is gone. The entire set is deserted. Annihilated. I notice that, oddly, some of the trees look barely touched, except for missing leaves and blackened bark, almost like the fire moved too fast to eat them whole. When I look up, I see that some of the tallest trees even still have their green canopies.
“I might know of a shelter,” I say. “I mean, if it’s still there and . . . if I can find it.” I feel around in my pocket and pull out my compass, shaking the water off it, rubbing it with my hand. For a second I don’t think it will work, and I’m surprised that there’s no water inside of it. But the needle holds steady, pointing north.
Adam shifts Isabel higher on his chest. “Know how to use it?”
I’m not sure of anything except that Camp Dig is east of the branchless tree, which may not even be there anymore. And even if it is, without all the brush and leafy branches all around, what if I don’t recognize it? We won’t have any of the normal landmarks or a golf cart to get us halfway there. And maybe the woods aren’t even safe yet. What if the fire starts up again with all this wind? But the sky is ominous, black and dangerous. I know one thing for sure, we’re not safe out here in the open, right next to a giant lake, in a massive electrical storm.
The rain drums against my body, the wind giving me chills.
“Let’s go,” I say, and this time I’m not going to play it safe, because what do we have to lose?
With no other real choices, we step into the smoking woods.
Soot. Ash. Blackened trees. The once lush green and brown landscape is gray. Colorless. Lifeless.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Adam says when I hold the compass out. Isabel is quiet.
“Stop asking me that,” I snap, taking the lead. “Just follow me.”
Most of the underbrush is gone. Skeletons of ash collapse as we walk through. The trees that are still standing are marked with burns, and smoke has settled between them like fog.
“Watch for signs the fire’s gone underground to the peat of the swamp,” Adam says. “It’ll look like a lot of smoke and crawling flames. Very dangerous.”
We walk, Adam moving Isabel to his back, his arms probably numb from carrying her. We try to ignore the desolate forest. We try to ignore the rain pelting us in the face and the wind blowing soot into our eyes. At least there are no yellow flies to worry about anymore. In fact, not counting a burned snake we tripped over when we first started out, there are no animals at all. It’s like we’re the only living things in the entire Great Dismal Swamp.
The storm whips through without mercy. We’re deafened by the rain and the wind and the thunder. I think I hear a helicopter, but then I look up and only see the cloudy black skies. There won’t be a helicopter until the storm passes.
I walk fast, retracing my steps as best I can to where my branchless tree should stand. When we come to what looks like an area that used to be a clearing, I pause. Could this have been the place? My stomach twists. The trees are now nothing more than steaming stumps. What if we get to Camp Dig and find our shelter had the same fate?
A crack of lightning makes Isabel scream, the wind swirling ash into our faces.
“Ali,” Adam says.
“Okay. Let’s keep going.” I trust my gut and follow the compass east. I ignore Adam’s nervous chatter about peat fires and broken bones and dangerous rescue missions. I ignore the swamp water squishing in my shoes and between my toes.
“Over there!” I call.
Camp Dig is far off to the left, not exactly on our path, but with the forest so gutted, what’s left of it is easily spotted. The thunderstorm is nearly on top of us now, the trees swaying, creaking. The rain is torrential. We run, splashing through swamp puddles, tripping over blackened roots.
The camp looks as ravaged as our set. Some of their metal tools survived the wildfire, scattered across the ground. The lines protecting their precious dig are dust. Tents have been consumed. I pick up a small shovel and it’s still warm.
“Wow,” Adam says. The bones of a sun shelter remain, the plastic parts melted and disfigured. A pot sits on a stump, ready to make the next meal, like nothing happened. Isabel looks up, but the rain is coming down too hard and she curls into Adam’s back. I wish she wasn’t so quiet and I wonder if we should have been more careful getting her unstuck from the camper.
“This way,” I shout.
We stumble to the big tree that Ronnie showed me. The one with the giant roots sticking out of the ground, hoisting it up to make the perfect shelter for someone who needs it. I’m relieved it’s still here. Blackened and leafless, but still standing. I pull on one of the woody roots. It’s solid. And I know a tree that’s probably a hundred years old like this one has survived a storm or two before. Maybe even a few forest fires.
“You want to seek shelter in a tree during a lightning storm?” Adam says, stepping back, wiping rain from his eyes.
“I’m cold!” Isabel hugs him tighter.
I look up. It may be the thickest one around, but it’s definitely not the tallest. There’s a cluster of trees towering over it. “Safer than a lake or an open field.”
I pull Isabel off Adam’s back and we crawl under together.
“Ow!” She pauses over her foot, sucking in a breath.
“Go slow,” I tell her. “Be careful.”
“It’s dark, Ali!” she says, reaching for me, trying to get out.
“I’m right here.” But the dar
kness makes me catch my breath too. My little glow-in-the-dark watch says it’s not even seven, but the clouds of smoke have blotted any signs of daylight out of the forest. I grope the ground with my free hand. It’s smooth and dry. But what if we aren’t the only ones to seek shelter in the tree? Just a few hours ago the swamp was crawling with all sorts of creatures—alligators, snakes, spiders. Where have they all gone? I picture the ghosts of the people who used this shelter in the past sitting beside us in the dark, and I have to pinch myself back to reality.
Isabel is holding my body so tightly I’m practically choking. I manage to get us squeezed into a comfortable spot, away from the driving rain, and I pull her into my lap, stroking her hair like my mom did when I had to get stitches in fifth grade. We used to snuggle all the time when we were watching movies, sharing a blanket and a bowl of popcorn—no butter, of course. But not since she told me Dad was moving out. After that, I wouldn’t let her touch me, not even to braid my hair for the sixth grade sing-along. And I didn’t care when she looked hurt. Because I thought she deserved it.
“Hold on a sec, guys,” Adam says, climbing in next to us. I shift over to make room, but even when I’m squashed into the side of the tree, I can still feel Adam’s legs on me, and my nose gets hit with something.
“Ow!”
“Sorry, sorry . . . okay, there.” He’s sitting finally, probably with his legs crossed, because his knees are touching my arm. I pull away, wrapping it around Isabel.
A moment later a light flicks on and at first I think it’s lightning. But he’s balancing a flashlight upright, digging it into the dirt in front of us, illuminating our little shelter. I feel Isabel relax.
“Did you just find that?” I ask. My back is getting wet from the rain sprinkling in through the roots. I’m realizing the earth isn’t completely dry in here either, and my butt is getting soggier.
“Must be from the camp.” Adam scoots closer to me and Isabel. “Let’s take a look at that foot.”
“No!” Isabel shrieks. “Don’t touch it!”
Adam looks at me and I shrug. “Maybe it’s safer to keep it in her boot?”
We angle the light to take a closer look, and we see it at the same time. The red creeping up her little pink sock. Blood.
“Hey,” Adam says to Isabel, untying her shoe, which is ripped and shredded at the top. “Did I ever tell you the story about when my dad and I found a secret—”
“—hot tub in the woods?” Isabel finishes.
“Yes, the hot spring, and we were walking and walking trying to find this waterfall—”
“—but you never found the waterfall,” she says.
“We had this map,” Adam says to me, loosening the laces super slow and careful. “It was some kind of Boy Scouts thing, and we were supposed to hike to the waterfall, but we got lost.” He picks at a knot. “And we were about to turn around when we stepped into this clearing, and right there was this hot spring. Totally natural. Totally in the middle of the wilderness.”
Isabel yelps as Adam tries to pull off her boot and I hug her tighter.
“And then what happened, Isabel?” Adam asks.
“You went in the water in your underpants!” she says, but not in her normal pink-frosted-doughnut-with-sprinkles kind of way. Thunder vibrates the ground.
“We sat in there for an hour. We even missed the shuttle back home and had to call Mom to come get us.”
“Your real dad or your stepdad?” I ask.
He stops tugging for a moment. “My stepdad. I don’t have many good stories with my real dad.”
“I don’t have a real dad,” Isabel says, and for a moment I’m sputtering in a tidal wave of shame at all the times I’d been so mean to her.
“Real dads aren’t always the best kind of dad,” Adam tells her, and with a final gentle pull, he gets her boot off.
“Ow ow ow ow ow ow . . .” Isabel reaches for her foot. I hold her hand and Adam takes off her wet sock.
It’s a bad cut and I cover Isabel’s eyes. “You are so brave, Isabel,” Adam says. “I don’t think it’s broken, and it’s not really bleeding anymore. Do you still have my shirt? Can I use it to wrap up your foot?”
She stiffens.
“Hey, have I ever told you the story about when I went to New York City with my dad when I was eight?” I ask, trying to quiet her cries, rubbing her arms against the wind that whips into our shelter.
Adam takes the shirt from Isabel and, with his teeth, starts ripping it into strips.
“We took a train there and I got to wear a fancy dress, like one of those kinds made out of sequins, you know? It was blue green like the ocean, and he put it in a box and stuffed it under my pillow. He likes to do that, put things under my pillow for me to find.”
“One time George Kensington put a glittery rock under my pillow and it was probably a diamond,” Isabel says, watching Adam wrap her foot in what’s left of his plaid button-down. “And then what happened?”
“And then when we got off the train, there was a limousine, a big extendo one, and Jake was so mad that he couldn’t go. But it was just me and my dad that night. It was for an awards show and I was Dad’s date.” I think for a minute and wonder if that was the last time Dad took me on one of his Daddy-daughter dates. When I was little, we used to do that kind of stuff all the time.
“Wow,” Isabel says. “It’s like you were famous.”
It was probably the only time I was in the newspaper with my dad without a Pop-Tart hanging out of my mouth or something.
“I still have that dress,” I tell her. “It’s a little big, but I’ll give it to you if you want.”
Isabel sits up so fast, Adam almost drops her foot. “Really? And do you have high heels? Because I’m really good at walking in high heels.”
I laugh. “Maybe we’ll have to go shopping for those.”
“Yes!” She does a little shimmy.
And for a second it’s like we forget we’re huddled under a tree in the middle of the swamp, muddy, wet, and injured.
“There,” Adam says. “Done.” He double knots the shoelace he tied around his shirt-bandage. “Feel better?”
Isabel nods her head. The storm is finally passing. I can’t feel the rain against my back anymore, and the thunder is fading to a distant rumble.
The ground beneath the tree is cleaned from the work of the archaeology camp, a few little holes scattered around with red flags indicating important finds. Isabel finds a pail of brushes and picks and shovels by one of the tree roots. She jangles the tools inside the pail, the sudden clatter in the silence of the forest surprising us. Because besides the drip-drops of rain, it’s like a ghost town out there.
Adam reaches for a flag. “What are these for?”
“Don’t touch that!” I say. “It’s a marker for really important stuff.”
Isabel digs a little hole and inspects it with a magnifying glass.
“From people who lived here a long time ago.” I take it from his hand and put it back where it belongs. “Like maybe hundreds and hundreds of years old.”
He looks around our little hideout. “How do you know?”
“Ronnie and Theo told me. They gave me a tour of their camp.” Regret warms my face. I wonder if I’ll ever hear from them again. “They were looking for evidence that people used to hide in the Great Dismal Swamp. Like, people who escaped slavery.” And then I whisper, “And I heard from a little old lady that there might be some ghosts too.”
“What did you say?” Isabel asks, straightening up, still holding the magnifying glass to her eye.
“Creepy,” Adam says.
“What’s creepy?” Isabel nuzzles close to me. “Do we have to sleep here?”
“Don’t worry, Isabel. Adam’s just being a baby.” But my skin is all goose-pimpled. It’s one thing to be in the middle of a place like this with a chef and a stunt lady and a million-dollar camper. But to be out here alone in the wild with whatever else—living or not living—cal
ls this place home is a different thing. A different thing entirely.
“I’m hungry,” Isabel says, dropping her pail, the contents scattering on the ground.
I dig into my pocket for something—anything—to distract her from her stomach grumbles, but all I find is an old, swampy peppermint candy. I hold it up, frowning.
“I love those!” she says, clapping her hands.
We watch her rip it open and pop it into her mouth and then listen to her lip-smacking noises, ignoring our own stomach growls. According to the chef’s menu, dinner tonight was supposed to be spaghetti and meatballs and extra-buttery garlic bread. My mouth waters.
But then a howling sound breaks the quiet of our shelter. Loud and long—and close.
“Pudding?” Isabel says, lunging for my lap.
Adam and I are on full alert. “Mountain lions don’t howl, do they?” I ask.
He’s quiet, still listening. We hear the howl again. Closer?
“Wolf,” Adam says.
And then, right at that moment, the flashlight batteries run out. We plummet back into the darkness.
Thirty-Two
Isabel is practically hyperventilating. Her candy drops onto my leg, sticky.
“Isabel,” Adam says, “Isabel, it’s going to be okay. It’s only dark.”
But Isabel is not okay, wailing, screaming. I’ve never been in such complete darkness before either. And maybe it’s her screams that make the wolf go away, because there are no more howls, the forest back to silence except for us.
“We’re safe in here, Isabel. Safe.” Adam is trying to get the flashlight back on. I can hear him smacking and shaking it.
“I guess it’s bedtime,” I tell Isabel. “Do you normally sleep with a night-light?” I pretend it’s just another day camping in the wild, time to hit the hay after our bellies are full of s’mores and our minds full of campfire stories.