“Based on the fact we’re not going to give up.”
“Who said I was going to give up?” She’s indignant. “I’m just mad about getting us lost. I’m not giving up, you got that straight?”
“You didn’t get us lost. We both got us lost.”
“Whatever. So, you figured out which way is north?”
I nod and point.
She adjusts her walking stick, tucking it firmly under her arm. “Then we better start—what did you call it?—blazing a trail. The sunlight is already fading, and I have no intention—none whatsoever—of spending a night in the woods. I don’t care if my ankle swells up to the size of a basketball, we’re not stopping till we find the Jeep.”
In the old days, they left the blaze mark on the trees with an ax or a hatchet. We don’t have an ax or a hatchet, and trying to carve a mark with the jackknife would take too long. Another way is to mark each tree with a strip of cloth, and that gives me an idea.
“Delphy, what happened to your backpack?”
“Left it by that tree stump near the Jeep. Why?”
Discouraged, I explain about using strips of cloth for markers.
She gets a funny look in her eye. “Maybe I can help with that.”
Turns out she’s wearing a swimsuit under her clothes, from that first night she spent in the woods. Whoever was supposed to meet her, they had planned on swimming in the moonlight. “I didn’t want him to think I’d go skinny-dipping, so I wore a one-piece.” She sounds ticked off, so I keep my trap shut. “Stay where you are, Sam. Be right back.”
She emerges from behind a thick patch of tall ferns with a lifeguard-red swimsuit over her arm.
I cut it into strips with my jackknife. It takes a while. Delphy looks on with a sour expression. I don’t think ruining the swimsuit is what bothers her. More like being reminded that her friend never showed up. Whatever, she takes a handful of the bright red strips and helps me mark the trees as we hike through the dense woods. It’s hot, miserable work.
My gut tells me the logging trail is to the east, and I’m pretty sure that’s the way we’re heading. We tramp maybe a mile through the dimming forest, dry pine needles crunching under our feet, making sure we’re never out of sight of the last tree marked. Trying to keep in as straight a line as possible.
Nothing. No logging trail, just more trees. So much for my stupid gut.
“It’s going to be dark in a few minutes.” Delphy’s voice is full of dread.
“Double darn rat puke.”
She laughs. “Is that the best you can do?”
“I pledged not to swear.”
“You really are a Boy Scout,” she says with something like affection. “Good for you, and lucky for me. Okay, so what do we do next?”
It’s not like we have a lot of choices. Before the last of the light fails, we pick out a nice big tree and sit with our backs against the trunk. The ground is uncomfortable and the tree is rough against our shoulders. The only good thing, there’s no danger of getting a chill. Plus, being with another person somehow makes me less afraid of bears.
Not that I mention the word “bear,” because there’s no reason to give Delphy something else to worry about.
“I wonder how much blood you lose in each mosquito bite?” she asks. “I must be down a pint by now.”
“Mosquitoes suck, they really do.”
“Ha ha.”
“It could be worse.”
“Oh really? How?”
“We could be alone.”
“We are alone, dummy.”
“No. I mean alone alone. Then you’d get bitten twice as much.”
She chuckles. “You’re funny. Do you think you can sleep, leaning against this tree?”
“No way.”
“Me neither.”
We sit in silence for a while, leaning against the hard bark of the tree. Me personally, I’m wishing for a nice cool pillow. That and wondering what Mom is doing at this very instant. Hoping she’s not alone. She had friends before the pills got in the way. But true friends would keep her company in an emergency, wouldn’t they?
I’m not sure, and that makes me sad and worried.
Delphy breaks the silence. “Can I ask you a question, Sam? It’s like really personal.”
“Okay.”
“What happened to your father? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
I shrug. “He’s dead.”
“I figured that. But how did he die?”
So I tell her.
No need to gross Delphy out with the gruesome details, so I give her the general idea. That Dad was a civilian truck driver in Afghanistan, making really good money, and there was an accident and he didn’t survive. I don’t mention what kind of tanker he was driving, or exactly how he was killed, because I can barely stand to think of it myself, even though it’s always there in the back of my head.
It’s kind of amazing I can talk about my dead father without freaking out, but after three years, it’s my reality. A terrible thing happened, and no matter how much you ache to have him back, it can’t be changed. That first year was the worst, with some days worse than others, like his birthday and every holiday and Sunday nights and especially Christmas. Me and Mom went to grief counseling, and that helped a little, but it never goes away. You just have to live with it, and one thing I know for sure, Dad wouldn’t want us to be sad forever, not all the time. No way. He loved us way too much.
After I finish, Delphy doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then she goes, “Hey, Sam? I got lucky when you drove by. You saved my life, so thanks. And I’m sorry for thinking you were some little dork showing off with a stolen Jeep. You’re an amazing person and your father would be so proud.”
“Huh! I don’t know about that. My dad thought letting yourself get lost in the woods was really lame.”
“That was an accident,” she says earnestly. “An accident, okay? We got excited by the plane. It would have happened to anybody.”
“We’ll find the trail, Delphy, as soon as the sun comes up. How’s your ankle?”
“Fine. Sort of. It only hurts when I put weight on it.”
We sit quietly together, propped up against the scratchy tree. Not talking about the fire, or how it might catch up, but it’s always there in the back of my mind. It’s full dark now—I can barely make out my hand in front of my face—and night noises are starting. A brittle creaking from the tall trees as they react to the warm wind. A fluttering of wings—birds taking shelter in the pine and spruce branches, or so I hope. Something light and furtive padding over the pine needles. What lives in these woods?
Best not to think about it. Best to cover the mysterious noises with the sound of our voices. Maybe that will scare the critters away.
I say, “Can I ask you a personal question? What were you really doing out in the woods in the first place, if you were going swimming?”
“That was dumb, huh? Can you keep a secret?”
“I swear.”
“Okay.” She sighs. “I was supposed to meet this guy, Jason Dean? He’s a counselor at your camp. We’ve been texting. Just plain texting, nothing bad. We never met in person, and my two weeks were almost over, so finally he texted for us to meet up on this trail behind my camp, after lights-out, and we’d go to a good spot he knew on the lake.”
“And he never showed?”
She laughs, but not a funny laugh. An angry, hurt kind of laugh. “What was I thinking? That a super-cute guy like Jason would actually want to meet me? In his first text, he said he had his eye on me. As if. What a joke. And there I was with a swimsuit and a beach towel. Pathetic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The really stupid thing? I waited until after midnight, because he kept texting he’d be there any minute. That went on for hours! I bet they were laughing themselves sick, him and his friends. Pranking this pathetic loser girl.”
“You’re not a loser.”
She says, scornfully, “No? Big and tall mi
ght be okay for some girls, but me? You think I don’t know what I look like? Big Friendly Giant, ho ho ho!”
“Delphy, stop.” There’s nothing worse than when someone’s hurting and you can’t do anything about it.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not crying because of Jason Dean. I’m crying because mosquitoes are eating me alive and I’m thirsty and hot and hungry and tired and wish I was anywhere but here.” She pauses. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Are there bears in these woods? Tell the truth.”
“Not in this part of the forest,” I lie.
Bears aren’t the only lie. Because I know for a fact there’s no counselor named Jason Dean at Camp Wabanaski. Whatever rotten person pranked Delphy, he was too cowardly to use his own name.
I wake up coughing. Smoke in the air. I leap to my feet and stare at the early morning sky above the swaying treetops. That familiar ash-gray tint means there’s a fire burning somewhere nearby, too close for comfort.
“Delphy! Wake up!”
Her face is so puffy and swollen by bug bites I almost don’t recognize her. From her reaction, I must look the same, or worse.
“Fire coming! We have to find the logging trail fast!”
Delphy pushes herself upright, props the walking stick under her arm. “Let’s go. What direction?”
“East didn’t work. Let’s try south.”
Deciding which way is south takes longer than I expect, with my head still full of sleep and bad dreams, but finally we set off. As usual, I have trouble keeping up with Delphy, who only has one good leg. Girl could circle the world and I’d still be tying my shoes. We don’t bother to blaze the trees, there’s no time for that. We just have to try our best to move in a straight line.
We keep the wind behind us, and that helps. My heart is racing and my brain is all jumbled, but there’s one thing I know for sure: If we don’t find the logging trail and the Jeep, we’re in big, big trouble. I’ve seen how fast wind-driven wildfires can move, eating up the landscape, turning everything into flame.
We can’t see the fire, but I know it’s there, somewhere behind us. Might still be a few miles away. Maybe we have time to get ahead of it. But not without the Jeep. Fast as we’re going, we can’t outrun fire. We need wheels, and speed, not to mention luck.
I’m glancing behind us, checking on how straight we’re going, when Delphy cries out. “Sam! Over there!”
At first I think she means the fire, and I almost don’t dare to look where she’s pointing. Not straight ahead, but off to the side. A gap in the trees, brightened by daylight.
We race to the daylight and find ourselves on the old rutted logging trail! “Oh, Delphy, you did it! You found it!” I throw my arms around her. “You did it!”
She shoves me away with a grimace of pain. “You’re standing on my foot.”
“Sorry.”
“Which way, Sam?” she asks. “Two choices!”
The urgency in her voice hits me like a slap of cold water. She’s right. Finding the logging trail is great, it’s amazing, but we still have to locate the Jeep.
Two choices, right or left.
I nod at her. “You pick.”
Immediately she swings her bad foot to the right and starts loping along. I have to jog to keep up. “This looks familiar,” I say, panting. “See? That’s our tire track. Has to be! Which means we came this way, and the Jeep must be somewhere ahead.”
“Hurry!” She picks up the pace.
Is it my imagination or has the smoke thickened? Is the fire getting closer? Is the air harder to breathe, or do my lungs hurt because I’m jogging in this awful, endless heat?
Freaking out doesn’t help, I tell myself. Concentrate on the task at hand. Find the Jeep. Then you can worry about levering it off the tree, and getting away from the fire, and whatever else happens next.
Taking things one at a time makes sense, and it sounds easy, but my mind is swirling with a thousand thoughts and concerns. Escaping the fire, sure, but worrying about Mom is right up there. At best she knows I’m missing; at worst she thinks I’m dead. Is she sticking with the program, or has worrying about me set her back on the wrong path? How long has it been since the fire started? It feels like a week, but it can’t be that long. Night at the logging camp is one. Cottage by the pond is two. Night lost in the woods is three.
Three nights, four days. How long before the fire burns itself out, or gets contained by firefighters? A week? It can’t be as long as a month, can it? Because we’ll never make it that long. We’ll run out of food and water. We’ll run out of gasoline, and out of luck.
Stop thinking about stuff you can’t control! Concentrate on the task at hand, which is keeping up with Delphy. Who lopes furiously along, crutch-stick pounding into the dirt, her face a puffy mask of determination.
Ignore the smoky taste in your mouth and the ache in your lungs, and follow that girl.
Ahead of us the logging trail takes a curve to avoid a huge, lichen-covered rock. Which rings a bell in my exhausted brain. I remember seeing that big rock out of the corner of my eye just before the moose appeared. Sure enough, there it is—the Jeep! It’s still leaning up against the tree, exactly as we left it when we started chasing after the plane.
Delphy limps up and whacks the vehicle with her walking stick. “Yes!” She turns to me with an expression of triumph. “Not bad for a girl with a limp, eh?”
We slap five. “Are you kidding? Not bad for Wonder Woman!”
“What’s that?” Delphy wants to know, looking up at a patch of sky.
We’re searching along the logging trail for a branch that’s strong enough to pry the Jeep off the tree. Making sure we don’t stray out of sight of the trail—one night lost in the woods is more than enough, thank you—when Delphy notices something in the air.
It looks like gray snowflakes.
“Ash.” I hold out my hand to catch a few flakes. “Still warm. Blowing ahead of the fire, I guess.”
“We don’t have much time, do we?”
“I don’t know. Honest. Phat Freddy said it was moving a mile an hour. But that was yesterday. With this wind, who knows?”
Delphy sweeps hurriedly through the underbrush, using her stick to push aside old leaves and pine needles. “This will do,” she announces, lifting one end of a sturdy spruce branch.
I grab the other end and we drag it back to the Jeep. Delphy studies the vehicle and the tree it’s leaning against, and announces that we need to get “high purchase.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Best place to put the lever. Up high, just under where it meets the tree. Come around to this side and help me.”
The branch is about six inches around and maybe ten feet long and too heavy for one person to handle. With both of us sweating and grunting like weight lifters, we manage to jam the end in place.
“Hold the weight on your shoulder, like this,” she tells me.
Harder for me because I’m shorter, but I manage to do it. And then we’re pushing against the branch with all our might. Our backs are to the Jeep, so I can’t see what’s happening, but our big lever must be working, because I can feel the weight shifting. Then, suddenly, we’re falling forward, scrambling to avoid having the big branch fall on us, and there’s a whomping sound of steel and springs hitting the ground, hard.
The Jeep has landed upright, in a cloud of dust and pine needles. I walk around it, surveying the damage. The windshield is smashed, the headlights shattered, but all four tires are holding air.
We hurriedly grab the canned goods and jugs of water, and load them into the back of the Jeep, along with Delphy’s backpack. The smoke makes my eyes sting.
“You think it will start?” she asks.
“Only one way to find out.” I carefully climb into the driver’s seat and test the steering wheel. Feels solid. I push in the clutch, and then press my other foot against the starter pedal.
The engine turns over but doesn’t start, and the battery sounds weak. I get out from behind the wheel.
“That’s it? You’re giving up?”
“I think it needs fuel. Like maybe the gas leaked out of the carburetor when it was tipped on its side.”
Delphy helps me get the hood open. I’m trying not to panic with all the sweat and smoke. “Sam! Hurry up!”
I’m no mechanic, but I remember Dad working on his pickup truck, an older model, and adjusting the carburetor. Him explaining how it squirts gas into a mist that’s inhaled by the cylinders. Or something like that. All I really know is that an engine needs fuel. “Delphy, pump the gas pedal.” I put my ear to the carburetor, and hear the sound of squirting gas.
“Okay,” I say, lowering the hood. “Give it a few minutes to make sure it isn’t flooded and I’ll try it again.”
“Sam? We may not have a few minutes. Ouch!”
The falling ash now contains live sparks. I look up, and sure enough, some of the highest spruce branches are starting to wink into flame.
I slip behind the wheel, and give it a go. The starter turns over once, twice—and then the engine roars to life, and the next thing, we’re speeding down that old logging trail under a shower of ash and sparks, me and Delphy and the Jeep, which seems to be as alive as we are.
Two or three miles down the trail and we’re out from under the falling sparks, mostly. I say mostly, because much to my surprise, Delphy pours water on my head and then explains that my hair was starting to catch fire.
“You looked like a human candle,” she says, very pleased with herself.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s kind of funny. A teeny little bit,” she says, chuckling. “You can smile now, Sam. We made it. We escaped!”
I start to say, “Yeah, for now,” but then decide to keep my mouth shut. Maybe she has the right idea—be happy when you get the chance, and never mind what may be coming around the next bend in the trail. But I can’t help worrying about that. Look what one moose did to us! We’d probably have found a real road by now, if not for that moose. Add to that the mistake of chasing a plane that couldn’t possibly see us through the tree cover, even if it was searching for us, which it obviously wasn’t.
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