Lost in the Backyard

by Alison Hughes

  Whoever is responsible for the common belief that you can start a fire by rubbing two sticks together is a complete and total liar. You can’t. I couldn’t.

  My hands were raw, and my head was throbbing in a kind of rhythmic pulse with my left hand. I gathered up the bits of paper and moss and stored them carefully in my pocket. Why? No clue. It just felt better having some possessions.

  “Okay, no fire. No big deal,” I reassured myself, rubbing my arms. This motion caused a few branches to cave in. “I’m warm enough under here. Plenty warm.”

  I was lying. Even though the snow had stopped, it was bitterly cold. I backed farther into my little lean-to.

  I pulled an evergreen bough across to cover the “door.”

  I clutched a thick stick and a rock.

  And I curled up, shivering and whimpering, listening to the coyotes (not wolves, I reassured myself), and closed my one good eye.

  The other eye was already swollen shut.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Wildlife

  A sound woke me.

  Snuffle, snuffle. Heavy panting and grunting. Big, big animal sounds.

  I will always and forevermore consider a ringing alarm clock a happy, friendly noise.

  The snuffling was close to me. A large animal was sniffing and rummaging on the other side of my tree. Then it slowly circled the tree and lumbered closer. It shuffled and grunted, getting nearer and nearer, until it seemed to be about six feet away.

  My hand made the faintest motion toward my cell phone. How stupid. What was I going to do? Video this thing? Text somebody?

  No, once and for all, Flynn, you are alone in the middle of this vast, confusing forest.

  I lay there frozen with fear, my heart pounding so loudly that I thought it must be audible to the beast panting by my front door.

  I wondered if fear has a smell.

  Without moving my head, I swiveled my eyes to my evergreen-branch door. It was less dark than the night before, with a clear sky and a shining moon, the slight carpet of snow sending up ghostly reflections.

  All I could see was a dark outline that accompanied the terrifying sounds by my head. I couldn’t possibly tell what kind of animal it was, and I wasn’t feeling in the mood to classify it anyway. It was enough that it was a) big and b) an animal and c) right by my head. It appeared to be digging vigorously, making complicated, jerky movements with its front paws. Then it froze and listened.

  My heart thudded. I hardly dared to even breathe.

  Suddenly, in a thrashing, snarling lunge, the animal sprang at something, which made a horrible shrieking noise that trailed off to a gurgle. I hoped it wasn’t my friend the rabbit.

  This tiny episode dashed my hopes that it might be some benign vegetarian pawing for roots and moss beneath the snow by my very head. This was a carnivore for sure, judging by the tearing, smacking sounds and the smell of…the smell of…oh, my… blood. The smell of blood! My stomach lurched.

  Death and dismemberment, death and dismemberment. The phrase pounded through my mind. Where had I heard that cheerful little jingle before?

  While the animal was preoccupied with its kill, I tightened my grip on my stick and, as noiselessly as possible, pulled a few of my stockpiled rocks closer.

  I gave myself a sort of pep talk in my mind, trying to drown out the death-and-dismemberment loop that pounded relentlessly through my brain.

  You are not going to die like this, Flynn!

  (death and dismemberment… death and dismemberment)

  You’re not. Not without a fight. Mom and Dad and Cassie are not going to find what’s left of you beside what’s left of that other dead animal!

  (death and dismemberment… death and dismemberment)

  No way. If you go, you go out fighting.

  The big animal dragged what was left of its kill over to where it had been digging, right by my tree. It started up with the snuffling and pawing and digging again.

  Closer, closer…

  I coiled, every nerve in my body straining.

  Closer…

  The best defense is a good offense! The phrase came to me in a flash. I’d thought my basketball coach had come up with that one, but my dad said it was an old strategy, originally used in war. If you’re cornered and sort of sliding into the role of victim, the trick is to turn the tables and attack first. Then you have the element of surprise on your side. Also a little bit of control over the situation. And a little bit of control is an attractive thing when faced with almost-certain victimhood.

  The best defense is a good offense…

  I didn’t know how good my offense would be. I had little to fight this animal with. A stick and some stones against its jaws and teeth and claws and demonstrated predatory skills. Not good odds.

  But I had the element of surprise. It seemed a small consolation.

  Okay, Flynn, I thought over the pounding of my heart, make it big, make it loud, make it count.

  Here we go…on three…

  One…

  Two…

  I took a deep breath.

  Three!

  “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” I screamed.

  I crashed the evergreen-branch door back and hurled the biggest rock I had.

  I think it connected, because the animal reared back in a staggering lurch. It gave a snarling growl, which was one of the most terrifying things I have ever heard.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed again.

  I threw another rock in the direction of the first, then another. I lunged up from my lean-to and began heaving all the rocks and branches toward the animal, screaming the whole time.

  Incredibly, the animal scrambled back, snarling and grunting. In the moonlight, silhouetted against the light snow, it turned and loped away.

  Something about how it moved seemed familiar to me. The big roundish shape, the thick legs, the loping run.

  Then it came to me. I was seven years old, in the backseat of our car, and we were stopped on the highway into Jasper. Some fool was feeding a big black animal from his car, throwing it pieces of sandwich. My dad unrolled his window and yelled, “Don’t feed it, don’t feed it,” then laid on the horn. And I remember watching that animal rear back, turn and lumber into the forest. I remember how it looked, how it moved.

  I stood there shaking like a leaf. My ears strained to hear any sounds.

  I may be an idiot. I may be a hopeless camper. I may be lost and clueless without my phone. I may almost be failing Outdoor Ed.

  But I had just scared off a bear.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Shelter

  (Take Two)

  I couldn’t stay in that spot.

  Nobody could. The hardiest, most experienced camper in the world would be packing it in right about now.

  First, the bear might come back. The thought of that made the hair rise on the back of my neck. It made me long for the cute yodeling of the cuddly wolves and coyotes. Second, there was the bear’s midnight snack, the dead animal about three feet from my tree. Even if the bear didn’t remember it and lumber back even hungrier and angrier, some other forest predator was probably already smelling it.

  Time to go. Now.

  I grabbed my stick with one hand, a rock with the other, and looked around in the gloom, my heart still pounding. I didn’t do any of my usual indecisive waffling about which way to go. I would go the complete and exact opposite of the way the bear had gone, wherever it led me.

  I crashed through the forest, slipping and falling and blundering into trees. It was not in any way an organized, well-planned escape, but I kept putting distance between the bear and me, going as fast as I could.

  In the silence of that still night forest, I was making a whole lot of noise. Panic noise: panting and thumping and crashing. It began to worry me. I was probably disturbing other predators, who might wake up alarmed and then hungry.

  I stopped once or twice, convinced something was following me, but all I could hear was my ow
n raw, gasping breath and pounding heart.

  It was exactly like a nightmare. In fact, if you had to pick the setting for a nightmare, that night forest would have been perfect. Eerie, ghostly, illuminated dimly by the thin moon and the snow, the looming, spiky trees pitch black against the deep gloom. The evergreens, the big, fleshy monsters of the night forest, stood like massive giants against the other spindly trees.

  I surprised a couple of rabbits sheltering underneath one of these huge evergreens. They shot out, almost giving me a heart attack, and bounded off in different directions.

  I stopped uncertainly, straining to hear anything around me. My legs were quaking and burning, and my head was throbbing. I was shaking all over. Fear? Shock? Cold? Hunger? Take your pick. I had to take cover, and if the rabbits thought the underside of that evergreen was a decent night shelter, it was good enough for me.

  I pulled my hood tight around my face, steeled myself for the inevitable prickles of the needles and crawled under the low-hanging branches of the big tree. It was so big that there was room to crawl, especially as I got farther in. I slithered as far as I could, right up to the trunk.

  I bruised and broke and crushed so many needles that there was a heavy smell of pine in the air. Improbably, here in the middle of nowhere, in flight from almost-certain death, I got the happy whiff of Christmas. And not only that, I found the spot where the rabbits had been. It was still slightly warm from their furry little bodies. It was like a gift.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, rabbits,” I whispered. “You are officially my favorite forest creatures.”

  I lay on my side under the massive evergreen, trying to get my heart rate and breathing under control. I looked up. What a monster it was, this tree. Massive, thick branches spiraled up above me, wide and black.

  I tried to think about nothing other than the tree above me. About how it was shaped like a triangle or a pyramid, its huge branches getting smaller the closer they got to the cone-laden point at the top. I tried to forget that my hand was throbbing and my eye was swollen shut and my face was stinging from all the scratches. I would not think about the bear or the wolves or the coyotes. I would ignore how I was freezing and starving. I would forget about everything except this tree.

  I turned on my back in the rabbit bed. It was quiet under the tree, all the forest noises muffled by the snow and the thick branches. For the first time since I had wandered into this forest, I felt safe and protected. I rested my head against the huge, hard trunk.

  I glimpsed the sky through a gap in the tree’s branches. Unlike the previous night’s snow-laden, overcast sky, it was brilliantly clear, stars pricking shining points in a blue-black velvet sheet. I had never learned any of the constellations (I had an app for that, but I’d never used it). I just asked Cassie. Cassie knew a lot of them. She’d call them out like they were old friends.

  That’s my favorite—Cassiopeia, the queen, she would say, stopping in the middle of the driveway, pointing up and pulling my face over beside hers so I would see what she saw. See the sideways W? She’s sitting on her throne.

  I never saw it and wasn’t really interested, but I would always say, Oh, yeah, I see it now.

  Tonight I craned my neck to find the queen, sitting up there on her throne in the sky. It seemed desperately important to find her. She was the only link out here with Cassie, with home. I hoped Mom and Dad hadn’t gone and pulled Cassie from her camping trip. I hoped she was somewhere feeling one with the forest.

  I couldn’t see that stupid queen. Truthfully, I couldn’t see much. Just a small triangle of sky. But one star seemed particularly bright to my eye. I’m not sure if it was the first one I saw, but close enough.

  “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight…”

  I whispered it slowly and carefully, like I was a little child, like it was prayer.

  Like it really mattered.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Way Out

  I think I slept. I woke, so I must have slept.

  Now if I were one of the kids in the survival books, I would think: Okay, as rescue seems less and less of a possibility, today is the day I plan for the coming winter. I will build a cabin, kill a whole lot of animals with a bow and arrows I make myself and stockpile pemmican.

  I tried to think about how I could do any of this without tools or weapons or remembering what pemmican actually was.

  My stomach growled.

  I pulled some of the deer moss out of my hoodie sleeve and gnawed on that.

  Handy to have this insulating eat ’n’ go moss, I thought.

  I ate the two pieces of paper I’d torn into smaller pieces for my imaginary raging campfire. I ate the gum wrapper. I gnawed and chewed on the string of my hoodie. Not the sort of idle gumming I might have done in class if I was bored. Actual chewing, with teeth and tearing motions. I kept thinking of all the breakfasts I had taken for granted in my life. Just a bowl of cereal now seemed like a feast. Or raisin toast, dripping with butter. Or Mom’s raspberry pancakes. I chewed harder.

  I moved on to imagining lunch and dinner. Pizza, burgers, mashed potatoes, enchiladas…even Dad’s “spaghetti squash delite” was looking good right now.

  I lay under the tree and listened to the forest. Silent. Still. This silence was getting on my nerves. It was too deep, too lonely.

  “Anybody out there?” I yelled. “ANYTHING?” Silence, complete and absolute. Sound just disappeared in the forest, like a stone thrown into a lake. I thought fondly of the coyotes; at least they shook the place up a bit with their nightly howl fests.

  I hummed while I chewed on the moss. I sang any song that came into my head, rocking back and forth to try and get warm. It didn’t last. The forest just absorbed the tiny sounds; if anything, they made the silence deeper.

  I had to come up with a plan. I was dangerously close to staying under this evergreen forever. It was as good a place as any to die. Better, actually, when you considered it was reasonably protected. It would probably not be death or dismemberment by bear or wolf, but just death by starvation.

  “Or exposure!” I argued out loud. “Exposure might get me first!” The thought cheered me a little. And, as I was shuddering from the cold morning, death by exposure or hypothermia or whatever seemed like a realistic possibility.

  It was the morning of another day. Another long day alone, lost in the forest, with no prospect of rescue. I had no idea what to do. I was so tired and sore and cold and hungry that I couldn’t think straight. My thoughts were muddled and confused.

  Just give up. A cold little voice cut through the fog in my mind like a knife. Just give up, Flynn. Just curl up right here and go to sleep. Sleep would feel good now, wouldn’t it?

  That cold, dangerous voice scared me almost more than the bear.

  “Stop it!” I yelled.

  I scrambled out from under the tree into the slush and mud of the forest and stood up quickly. The forest spun in a kaleidoscope of brown and green and white. I leaned down with my hands on my knees until the forest stopped spinning.

  “This is nothing, Flynn. A slight touch of concussion, that’s all. There. Better.”

  I gritted my teeth and looked down with my one good eye at my hands on my knees. I took a few deep breaths.

  “You will not give up. You will keep going. You will hang on. You will find a way out of this.”

  I ignored the cold, dangerous voice that whispered How? and straightened up slowly. I looked around. Which way? Which way?

  A flock of Canada geese flew overhead in a loose V-formation, honking loudly, like a rowdy house party in the air. Geese fly south for the winter; I knew that. Everyone knew that. So, assuming these geese weren’t as lost and clued out as I was, the direction they were heading must be south. Would south take me anywhere? Would north?

  I looked around.

  There was a bent tree that looked kind of familiar.

  I turned and walke
d the other way.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Rambling

  Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, left—

  Stop. Wait a minute.

  What was that? Was that a shot? I thought I heard a shot.

  I strained to listen, which is a ridiculous thing to do when something has already happened. I guess the point is to listen for whether it happens again. It didn’t. Already the forest was absorbing the sound, and I couldn’t be sure it hadn’t just been a falling branch.

  Didn’t Joe mention hunters when I was at their house several years ago? When is hunting season anyway? Wait, what month is it? What month?

  I had a panicky moment where I couldn’t remember.

  “October!” I said, relief flooding over me. “Of course it’s October.” I laughed nervously, looking around the way people do when they want somebody to laugh with them. But there was nobody there.

  October. Almost Halloween. So when is hunting season? Is it in October?

  What if it was a shot? What if there was some trigger-happy maniac out here with a rifle, blasting away at anything that moved?

  I stopped, looking around uneasily.

  I hope those beautiful deer have cleared right out of here. Gone far away, disappeared into the deep, deep forest, letting it close around them, letting it cover their tracks.

  I hope I don’t look like a deer…

  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a shot.

  It was just the forest.

  The forest.

  Fo-rest, fo-rest, fo-rest.

  Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot…

  * * *

  It was afternoon, I figured. The sun was high, a white circle behind the clouds. It was cold; the day felt still, heavy and expectant, like it was bracing for snow. Perfect. I was just thinking that what I could really, really use right now is more snow.