I felt a little glow in my heart. It had been a long time since Martin had said anything like that to me.
Once the can filled, Martin drank it. Martin held the shirt as I filtered a canful for myself, forearms aching from the effort. When I tipped the can into my mouth, the water was delicious going down my throat.
After we drank, the donkey trotted off. I was sad to see her go, especially since she helped save us. But we were too weak to try to catch or chase after her. Here in the wash, the cut bank was about as high as the basketball nets at school. It created shade. We scooped depressions down into the damp sand and sat with our backs to the bank. It was a stark relief from the burning sun, and I felt I’d never move again. Sighing, I took my goggles off and rubbed my eyes.
“I’m so thankful we had our donkey to help us find water,” I said. “I don’t know what would’ve happened without her.”
Martin dropped his face in his palm and yelled, “She’s a burro!”
I turned my head away to hide a grin.
We both heard a noise and looked up. I recognized the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter. They couldn’t see us down here, hidden by the banks of the wash.
We scrambled out of our damp-sand seats and tried to scale back up into view. The more we rushed, the more our feet sank in the soft sand, slowing us down. The helicopter flew low, right over us, before we could climb to the top.
“Over here!” Martin jumped around, waving his arms.
I grabbed the wet shirt and waved it like a flag. But nobody saw us. The helicopter didn’t come back.
Chapter Eleven
“NO!” we both yelled.
We watched the helicopter move farther away. Once it was almost out of sight, it began doing low circles. I threw the T-shirt to the ground. They’d never see the shirt anyway. It was earthy-tan, the same color as everything around me. Martin fell to his knees and hung his head.
“We should’ve grabbed the mirrors off our bikes,” I said, realizing too late that Martin’s book had called them lifesavers. “We could’ve used them as signaling mirrors. That’s one of the most important things to have in an emergency.”
“Now you say it? Really?” Martin jumped up and pointed at me. “Smarty-Pants, Think-You-Know-Everything-in-the-World, couldn’t think to mention that when we were back at the bikes?”
“You were on that page for, like, five minutes. I’m not the only one who read about the signal mirrors!” I yelled back at him.
“Yes, you are! You are the only one who read it because I couldn’t read it!”
“I’m sick of you being so mean . . . Wait . . . What?” I stammered, confused. “What do you mean you couldn’t read it?”
Martin was silent for a moment. All the fight and anger seemed drained out of him. “I wish I was as smart as you,” he said, so softly I almost missed it.
“You’re smart,” I said.
“No, Jen. I have to work hard for everything. Like reading. I can’t understand the words if they’re too long, or if they’re all squished together small like in a grownup book.” Martin kicked a rock and refused to meet my shocked gaze. “I didn’t know what you were talking about earlier, when you said you’d read stuff in my book, because I didn’t read it. I was just looking at the pictures.”
“You were what? ” That didn’t make any sense. I’d grown up with Martin. I knew everything about him.
“That’s why I like Club so much,” he continued. “I understand how the coordinates and the GPS work. I like numbers. They’re easy. It’s just not fair how much I have to work at reading. Everything comes easily to you. You read something once, and you remember it.” His voice grew louder as he went on.
“And then you joined Club too, the one thing I’m good at. You ruined it. That’s why I stopped being your friend. That’s why I’m always trying to beat you to the caches. I wanted to be better than you at one thing.” He finally looked at me. “But you couldn’t let me, could you? You’re always trying to be better.”
We both stood motionless in the silence left behind by the helicopter.
“I thought . . . I didn’t know . . .” I avoided his eyes while I tried to think about what to say. “I’m sorry. But really . . . you have trouble reading? Are you sure? ” I could hardly believe him.
He threw me a look that made my face burn even without the sun, and I looked away. “We should . . . um . . . stay here in case the helicopter comes back. But we need shade. I’ll go find wood to build some kind of shelter.”
I watched Martin turn and stomp toward the crop of willows and shrubs.
How could I have missed that he had trouble reading? I thought back to all the projects we’d shared and worked on together. He hid it well. He did things like pretend to read books when other people were around.
The desert sun scorched down on my bare head. I bent to retrieve Martin’s T-shirt and wrapped it over me again. It was cool and gritty with mud. I peered down at the shade near the water, longing to go back. But we couldn’t stay down there again. No one would see us. What we needed to do was make an SOS sign with rocks.
I scanned the open area at the top of the wash. Yes, right here. And then we could sit and wait to be rescued. We had water now. Martin was right; we needed shade.
“Hey, Martin, remember when we went to the Tucson Desert Museum?” I yelled.
“So? I think I’ve seen enough of the desert.”
“Could we make one of those shelters they had for shade, do you think?”
Martin was silent a minute. “No. They anchored their poles into the dirt to support the roof. The ground out here’s too hard to dig.”
I pondered the problem. How were we going to get out of the sun but still stay out in the open for searchers to find us? I thought about a picture I’d seen, showing huts made out in the open like this . . . yeah. We could make a tepee. All the poles supported each other. We wouldn’t need to dig.
Martin came out of the shrubs, dragging two wood stalks taller than him. I went to help. “Perfect. If we can find one more, we can make a tepee.”
Martin dropped the stalks and peered around.
“We can use the stalk from that yucca over there.” I picked my way past a toothy bush and reached the plant with long green fronds. A tall stalk the color of oats grew upright from the center. I grabbed the stalk and snapped it off. Then I dragged the stalk back, noticing how tired and lightheaded I still felt. Since we’d gotten so dehydrated, we needed to stop working and drink more. But the helicopter was going to return, and soon we’d have all the cold, refreshing water we needed.
I dropped the stalk next to the others. “When the searchers come back, we should lie flat on the ground; we’ll be easier to see than if we’re standing. I read about it . . . in a book once . . .” I trailed off.
Martin narrowed his eyes at me. Then he bent and pulled the lace out of his right shoe. We tied the ends of the poles together and set them upright against each other. We braced the ends on the ground with rocks so the frame was sturdy.
“Now what?” Martin asked, studying the poles.
I thought about the photos I’d seen. “If we tie willow branches sideways along the middle, we can weave fronds and willow into the frame to fill it in and block out the sun.”
Our project gave us the chance to avoid talking or looking at each other. Martin used his other shoelace to tie the horizontal branches, but we were running out of string.
I pulled my earbuds out of my pocket. “I wonder if I can use the cord to tie this branch with,” I said.
Martin’s eyes went big when he saw what was in my hand.
“Why didn’t you say you had those?” He grabbed them from me, searching the ground wildly.
“What?” I asked. “What are you doing?”
“All this time,” he muttered to himself. He found a rock and smashed one of the earpieces.
“Hey! I was only going to use the cord, not break them!”
The earbud split in half, and
its insides spilled out. Martin reached in and pulled out a tiny round piece with a black ring around it. He held it up. “I’ve been trying to figure out what we could use for a magnet, when all this time you had one in your pocket.”
I stamped my foot. “Martin, what are you talking about?”
He blinked at me and pulled the Snake Byte coordinate sheet out of his pocket. He ripped the staple off the paper and held it up next to the earbud. “We’re going to make a compass and get out of here.”
Chapter Twelve
I stumbled after Martin, back down to the dried riverbed, our partially finished shelter forgotten. “How? How can you make a compass?”
He stopped to pick up a dried leaf from the ground before kneeling beside our tiny pool of water. “Mom and I made one at home once. But we used a paper clip, a fridge magnet, and a cork. All this time, I was trying to figure out where to find a magnet out here.” He chuckled as he straightened the ends of the staple.
“I didn’t even know there was a magnet in my earbuds,” I said.
I watched as he held the metal staple and rubbed it against the magnet as if he were lighting a match. “You need to do about fifty strokes,” he explained, counting quietly to himself. Finally he held up the staple. “Now it’s magnetized.”
He placed the staple on the leaf in the center of the still pool. We both gasped as the staple and leaf began to slowly spin on top of the water.
“It’s working!” I said.
“It’s being pulled by the earth’s magnetic field,” Martin said, his eyes dancing with hope. “I wasn’t sure if it would work again, but look!” He pointed at it.
The staple stopped and held its position.
Martin indicated where the staple pointed. “That’s the north-south line. The sun rose somewhere over there this morning.” He waved with his left arm. “That’s east. That means behind us is magnetic north. Now we just need to figure out true north. We’re about eight degrees east declination here. So I’d say that’s true north.” He waved slightly off from where the staple pointed.
I stood. “What? Eight degrees east? That’s not right. North is north. I’ve never heard of ‘declination.’”
Martin dropped his arm and stared at me. “What are you talking about? How can you be a geocacher and not know the difference between magnetic north and true north?”
I shaded my eyes and searched the horizon where he pointed. “The GPS tells me where to look,” I said. It sounded lame.
“Seriously? Look, just trust me. From the map we drew of the road location, we know that we’re supposed to be heading southeast. So when we factor in the declination, that’s where we need to go.” He pointed.
I checked the staple again. “The compass says that southeast is this way.”
“Jen, a compass points to magnetic north. Declination is the difference between magnetic north and true north. For this area, the declination is eight degrees east. So we just subtract eight degrees from magnetic north and that’s how to get true north.”
This was a big decision. I didn’t want to get something this important wrong. We had to know exactly which direction to go; otherwise, we might walk parallel to a road for miles and not even know it. We could die out here. Suddenly I was too afraid to go anywhere.
“I’m not sure. And the helicopter is coming back,” I insisted. “We can’t leave.”
Martin sighed and took off his hat, rubbing his hands through his short dark hair. He peered at the horizon as if he could make a road appear now that we knew which direction to travel. Kneeling, he plucked the staple from the leaf and put it back in his pocket.
“Maybe you’re right. We’ve got water here. Let’s stay for the rest of the day in case they come back. But if they don’t come, we’ll leave in the morning.”
While we waited for rescue, we made a giant SOS sign out of rocks on the ground. I kept scanning the sky and listening for helicopters. All I saw was a dust devil off in the distance. It was nothing like the storm that had driven us here. I watched as a spiral of dust rose up a couple hundred feet into the air. It spun for a moment until it fizzled out and scattered.
I tied my goggles back on when my eyes started to ache again. Martin said his hat was good enough, but I suspected it was because he was worried about me.
To finish the shelter, we used the Clovis point to slice at the flexible willow branches. “We can use these to weave between the horizontal branches and the poles of the tepee,” I said. “I’ll fill in the bottom part and leave a space for the door. You fill in the top section.”
By the time we weaved the last of the branches into the frame of our tepee shelter, daylight was already fading. The desert glowed in the soft light. My stomach pinched and felt caved in suddenly. In the heat of the day, I wasn’t hungry. But now in the cooler air, and after we’d had something to drink, I noticed my hunger. It had been almost two days since we’d eaten.
Two days. We’d been lost a long time. Were our families all in Las Cruces, along with the search and rescue people? I had wanted to believe they’d spot us easily. Why hadn’t they found us by now? But I knew. We’d made the mistake of moving around after we realized we were lost. What if we were so far gone now that no one would ever find us? My throat tightened. I could not die out here. I was going to get back home to my family. I was going to survive. We both were.
Chapter Thirteen
Martin and I collected grasses for the floor of the shelter to keep us out of the dirt. It was hardly big enough inside for both of us to squeeze in.
“We’re not going to be cold like last night,” Martin said, lying down and taking up the whole floor. “Home sweet home.”
“We survived another day.” That sounded heavy once I’d spoken it. Survived. It was a scary word out here, not like at home, scrolling through TV shows like Do or Die or another season of Survivor. This was real. Were we going to die out here? How were we going to survive another day? Martin sat up, and I crawled in next to him. We both looked out at the darkening sky in silence.
“They’ve already searched this area. You know they’re probably not coming back here, right?” Martin said. He was interrupted by the sound of coyotes.
“Again?” I cried, and crawled out toward the spot I had prepared for a fire.
Using the Clovis point and steel to make a fire was easier now that I’d figured out the technique. This time we already had a rock wall built on three sides to protect our tinder from the wind. Martin ripped more paper off the Snake Byte coordinate list and balled it up for the sparks to land on. After a few strikes, a thick spark leaped off and landed on the paper. I bent closer, breathing on it carefully until it burst into flame. “Fire out of stone and steel,” I murmured proudly.
A branch cracked, the same sound as last night. I whipped my head around and thought I saw a gray donkey butt disappear into the willows.
“Must’ve been the burro last night too,” Martin said. “She’s either strangely attracted to fire, or she’s following us.”
“I don’t mind her following. I think she’s watching out for us,” I said, ducking back into the shelter.
The night noises began with clicking and hooting. I heard a tiny crunch-crunch-crunch somewhere beside us. The coyotes howled nearby, but this time it wasn’t so scary. Not with our shelter and fire. In fact, their songs seemed completely right, out here in this big lonely place. I’d thought it looked empty without the big cacti from the Sonoran Desert back home, but now I saw how this desert was filled with its own beauty.
I thought again about heading back out across all that space tomorrow. Martin was better at numbers than me. I could trust him to know about declination.
“We should follow your compass,” I told Martin. “You’re usually right about stuff like that. Like, how did you know how the windmill worked? I wouldn’t have known to turn it on. And I certainly didn’t know about making a compass out of a magnet. I have a good memory, but you’ve been figuring things out for so long that
you know things. That’s better than memorizing.” I nudged his arm shyly. “If we work together, we can figure out anything.”
Martin finally smiled at me the way he used to when we were friends. I didn’t know how much I missed that smile until I saw it. I smiled back as the tension left the space around us. I could feel our old friendship coming back to life.
Martin poked me in the arm. “Goodness, gracious.”
“Great balls of fire!” I let out a chuckle and poked him back.
My smile turned grim as I looked out at the endless stars. I missed my family. I missed my home. I missed being able to turn on a tap whenever I was thirsty or dive into the pool when I was hot. I missed being safe.
Would we ever get back?
* * *
By the time a filtered pink light began in the sky, we were ready to go. The helicopter had not returned. We were going to find our own way back.
My head felt better. I made sure we had the can full of water, my goggles, my T-shirt on my head, and our compass. We headed out once again into the desert. But this time, by lining up our compass, minus declination, we pointed to one of the far ridges. It dipped in the middle like a chair. We planned to keep it right in front of us as we walked.
We marched on, determined. The desert looked different today. Instead of a big dead thing, I saw it was filled with life.
We walked for a long time, not talking. We conserved our energy, kept our mouths closed, tried not to sweat, took sips of water. Martin looked behind me suddenly and froze. I glanced back and felt adrenaline charge through me.
Chapter Fourteen
“Oh, no!” I yelled.
Another storm was taking shape. The clear blue of the sky above us highlighted the dark, ominous clouds stalking behind us. A monstrous wall of dust and debris ripped across the desert with dizzying speed. It was nearly here.
Dust Storm! Page 4