Distress Signal

by Mary E. Lambert

  Lavender stood. She staggered back and forth. She slapped her own face, pinched her arm, and bit the inside of her cheek: anything to stay awake. The long night stretched on and on, and Lavender could not sleep, would not sleep, and so it was Lavender alone who watched as the clouds overhead broke and the night grew bright with moonlight and starshine. Late in the night, she heard a rustling noise, and Lavender looked over to see her friend’s eyes glitter in the reflected light.

  “You awake?” Marisol whispered to her.

  Lavender nodded. “Too much on my mind,” she said. “How about you?”

  “My ankle,” Marisol answered. “It really hurts.”

  “How can I help?” Lavender asked in a whisper so they wouldn’t wake Rachelle.

  “Having you next to me—knowing we can talk—is enough. At least it gives me something else to think about.”

  “Then … can I ask you a question?”

  “Anything.”

  Lavender bit her lip. She was almost afraid to ask, but if she didn’t just say what was on her mind, she might never get a chance. So despite the cold and the hundred aches and pains, she took a deep breath and asked, “Why did you ditch me for Rachelle?”

  Marisol was silent for so long that Lavender didn’t think she would answer, but then Marisol said, “Just because we’re best friends, that doesn’t mean we can’t have other friends. You never want me to hang out with anyone else. You even joined choir when I did.”

  “I thought you wanted me to be in choir,” Lavender said.

  Marisol cocked her head to one side. “Do you really like being in choir?”

  “I like to sing. I really do. But I don’t love it, not like you do, and choir practice gets really boring sometimes.” Lavender paused before adding, “I guess I can think of other things I like better.”

  “Then you should do those things. We have to be our own people. My mom said that it’s healthier to have our own lives.”

  “I thought your mom liked me. Why would she say that?”

  “She does, but I was crying after I failed my ham radio test.”

  “You took the ham test?”

  “I tried and—”

  “You should have told me! I could have helped you study. You’re so smart. You could easily pass.”

  “But that’s the thing. I didn’t really want to do it. I was only trying because you wanted me to take it. And that’s when my mom told me that it’s okay for us to have some things that belong to just us. She said that I shouldn’t always try to do what you do … and then, I guess if I’m being one hundred percent honest, I got mad at you, too.”

  “Why?” Lavender asked with a small shiver.

  “You always get all the attention from everyone without even trying or realizing it. You’re just always better than me at, like, everything.”

  “No, I’m not. I can’t speak another language. I can’t sing like you. I wasn’t Alice in the school play. That was you …”

  Marisol held up a hand and Lavender’s voice faded away. Marisol said, “I just mean that, like, singing is my thing. And I was really excited about my solo. If we had just waited, Mrs. Jacobson would have come back and restarted the song. Everything would have been fine, but you jumped to the front and got all the attention, and I was so thrown off by everything that I didn’t sing very well, and … and I just wanted some space. I probably could have found a better way to talk to you. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings exactly, but I was upset and I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

  A slight breeze stirred the air.

  Lavender shivered and edged a little closer to the fire.

  Marisol’s words were slowly sinking in. As much as Lavender wanted to explain and defend her motives—she’d only been trying to help—maybe Marisol did have a point. In a way, it wasn’t that different from what John had said. Sometimes it was better to listen to others than to just jump in and take over.

  The silence stretched on until Lavender broke it by clearing her throat.

  “And you know I’m sorry, too? Right?” Lavender said. “For tricking you and getting us stranded out here and lying and—and for trying to take over and ruining the concert for you. I really am sorry.”

  “I know,” Marisol said.

  “And you really do forgive me?”

  “Without forgiveness, no one would ever stay friends.”

  For an injured sixth grader who was stranded in the woods and on the brink of dehydration and starvation and hypothermia, Marisol was really wise. Lavender felt curiously reassured and whole and safe. And suddenly she wanted to laugh. She shook with silent, semi-hysterical laughter.

  Marisol must have felt her moving. “What’s the joke?”

  “Next time,” said Lavender in a voice that still quaked with laughter, “let’s not wait until we’re about to die to be honest with each other. Like, would we ever have talked if we weren’t lost out here?”

  “Good point.” Marisol gave a little laugh. “It’s a deal. Next time, it’ll be different.”

  A cracking twig made Lavender jump, and Marisol inhaled sharply.

  “What’s that?” Lavender whispered. Marisol lifted her head, trying to look beyond her carefully elevated, restrained foot. Lavender sat up on her knees and scrabbled to grab a handful of rocks. The noise could be anything.

  A hulking figure on hind legs emerged from the trees.

  “It’s a bear!” Marisol rasped out the words.

  Drawing back her arm, Lavender threw the handful of pebbles, the only weapon she could locate, at the creature.

  The bear raised its arms to shield its face and cried out, “Ow! Stop. It’s me.”

  “John?” Lavender dropped the remaining rocks and rushed over to the shadowy figure. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Oof—” John grunted as Lavender launched herself toward him and flung her arms around his middle.

  “You came back!”

  “I had to,” he said. “I found water.”

  As dawn broke, chasing away the last of the night stars, the four shared sips of water from John’s bottle. At first, Rachelle wanted to debate whether or not it was safe to drink, and if they should find a way to boil it over the fire. But Lavender decided that if it would help with her headache, she wasn’t going to wait for it to boil, and Marisol pointed out that at the moment, dehydration was a bigger threat than just about anything else.

  As they drank, John told them that he thought he could retrace his steps to the small stream he’d found. “It’s not much,” he said. “Just a trickle, probably the last of the mountain snowmelt, but we should get as much into all the water bottles as possible. And there was a dead tree near the water. We could try to break off some of the branches from the tree and drag them back here for your distress signal.”

  “Perfect,” said Lavender. “You’ll need help. Rachelle can go with you. I’ll stay here with Marisol …” Her voice trailed away as it struck her that maybe she didn’t know best. “Or,” she said, “maybe Rachelle should stay with Marisol, since she seems to know the most about first aid and her feet could probably use a break. What do you all think?”

  After a short discussion, they decided that it made the most sense for Rachelle to stay with Marisol. Rachelle would try to keep the last little embers of their fire from dying out, and hopefully, Lavender and John would return not only with more water but a few big branches.

  Together, she and John set out with all four of the water bottles. She was still sore and achy and exhausted, but hope gave her the will to put one foot in front of the other as she followed John. He had marked the way back to the stream with small rock piles, which he called cairns.

  “I’m ready to light this entire forest on fire if it means someone will find us,” John said as they walked.

  Lavender wanted to lecture him about how selfish and irresponsible and dangerous that would be, but in her heart, she felt the same way, so she said nothing. John took her silence the wrong way.
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  “Are you mad at me?” he blurted out.

  “For finding water?” Lavender’s stomach rumbled, and she wished that John could also magically stumble across a chicken fried steak with country gravy. Or a bottle of Tylenol.

  “No—are you mad at me for leaving? Or for stealing from the class?”

  Lavender took a deep breath. “No, I already know why you took the money. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you wanted that money for your bus ticket.”

  John glanced down at his feet as he guided them past another of the small rock piles. “I never should have done it. It was stupid. And wrong. I knew it was as soon as I’d taken it, but then I was scared to give it back and desperate and angry.”

  “Is that why you were acting so weird?”

  He paused. “I haven’t really been myself, I guess. All I could think about was getting away from my parents. Right or wrong, things got so bad, I didn’t care.”

  “Because of how much your parents were fighting,” Lavender said, remembering their conversation from the day before. Then it hit her like a photon torpedo. No wonder he’d been so tense every time she and Rachelle snipped at each other. With all the fighting at home, he’d just shut down when he heard other people arguing.

  She stopped walking. The sunrise was breaking, and early-morning light was piercing through the pine overhead. John paused beside her.

  He nodded and said, “I think my mom and dad hate each other more than they love me and my brother.” His voice cracked. “Since my brother left to study abroad, it’s been really awful. I just don’t have anyone to talk to.” He stopped and swallowed hard like he was pushing down a sob. “I don’t have the kind of friends I can talk to about stuff like this, and—” He broke off.

  Lavender reached out and squeezed his arm. “You do now,” she said, and after her talk with Marisol last night, Lavender knew it was true. She had room for more than one friend in her life, and if anyone ever needed a good friend, it was John.

  John looked shocked, but then he nodded as a smile spread across his dusty, dirt-smeared cheeks. He started walking again, leading Lavender around a boulder.

  “Just promise me, if we ever make it back to civilization, that you’ll talk to me before you try to run away or steal again,” she said.

  He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a long, hard look before saying, “I can do that.” And she believed him, because that’s what friends did. They forgave. And they trusted.

  They walked a little farther in silence. He was leading them downhill now. The empty water bottles clunked together with each step.

  “What happened to the money? Did it all get blown away?” he asked.

  “No. I think I picked most of it up,” Lavender said. “I haven’t counted, but I think it’s mostly still there.”

  “Good. If we get back to school … No, I mean, when we get back to school, I’d like to talk to the principal and—”

  “No!” Lavender said. “I’ll figure it out. I’m going to come up with a way to return the money.”

  John shook his head. “No, you don’t always get to call the shots, remember? It’s called teamwork.”

  Lavender tried, rather heroically, not to roll her eyes. She failed.

  John grinned. “I know it’s cheesy, but this is my deal. I have to own up to what I did. Hopefully, everyone will be so glad we’re alive that they won’t throw me in juvie.”

  “But what can I do?” Lavender asked, following him between two trees to a spot thick with brush.

  “If it goes badly, you can visit me in jail.”

  “You got it,” Lavender said, and then she fell silent in reverent wonder as he knelt in the brush and pulled back some branches to reveal a small trickle of water, hidden from view by the foliage. It took her breath away.

  Friends, Lavender decided, were like that improbable little stream that was going to save all their lives. They were water in the desert.

  After filling the water bottles, they returned to camp, carrying and dragging as many branches as possible. The sunbeams on Lavender’s face chased away the last of the night chill, and Lavender made a mental note to put on her sunscreen after they got the fire going. Yesterday, they’d at least had some shade under Apache pines. Here on the mountaintop, there were fewer places to hide from the blazing sun. But Lavender kept her complaints to herself.

  Tilting her head up, she scanned the empty sky. They needed a plane or helicopter or drone to spot their fire. Because they were out of backup plans. Without help, they would never get Marisol down from the mountain.

  “How’s that?” Lavender asked John. She and Rachelle had been helping him create a tepee structure that John claimed would make a taller flame.

  “Good,” John said. “Now we just need to get the embers to catch.”

  The fire from the night before had almost completely burned itself out. Without a large supply of fuel, they hadn’t been able to keep it going all night. And since they’d already burned the driest pieces of wood, the signal fire was going to be even harder to start.

  “I found some dead grass we can use for kindling,” Rachelle said.

  “I think that’s a good start,” said John. “But if we want these bigger branches to catch, I wish we had more.”

  “What about the toilet paper from my cast?” Marisol chimed in.

  “No,” Rachelle said. “We’d have to move your leg, and I don’t think we should do that unless we have no other options.”

  “There’s always the envelope and telescope money …” Lavender said reluctantly. She didn’t really want to burn the class’s money, but if it saved their lives, it would be worth it.

  “No! Don’t do that,” John said. Then he smacked his forehead. “You know what? I think I have some papers in my backpack. We could burn those.”

  Lavender remembered the maps and bus schedule she’d seen yesterday.

  As Rachelle piled her handful of leaves and twigs at the base of the firewood, Lavender poked the black ash from last night’s blaze, searching for any red embers.

  “Maybe you should try the lighter,” Rachelle suggested.

  Lavender pulled the lighter from her back pocket and was just touching it to Rachelle’s kindling as John said, “Got it.” She heard the sound of paper crumpling, and then he said, “Here, this’ll do the trick.” He tossed the papers into the fire ring.

  As the edge of the closest paper—one of the maps—caught, John held something out to Lavender. She glanced away from the flame to see it was a couple of hair ties.

  “These were in the front pocket. I forgot I had them,” he said.

  Lavender reached out and took them. “What?”

  Something important was niggling at the edges of Lavender’s brain. She gave her head a little shake. If only her mind wasn’t so muddled.

  “You dropped them on the bus,” John reminded her.

  Like lightning, it all came together. The hair ties weren’t the only thing she’d dropped. The paper. The note from her dad. Where was it?

  Without thinking, Lavender reached into the fire.

  “What are you doing?” Rachelle shrieked.

  “Careful!” John shouted at the same time.

  The bus schedule and the maps were completely consumed, but the last paper—the one with the distinctive black letters in all caps—had landed a little farther from the flames. Fire was licking the edge of that last paper, and it singed Lavender’s fingers as she snatched it out of the flames and dropped it in the dirt.

  “Stamp it out!” Marisol called to her.

  That was the first sensible thing anyone had said or done since Lavender stuck her hand in the fire. Lavender smothered the flame with the bottom of her shoe.

  “What did you do that for?” Rachelle cried out.

  “She obviously needed the paper,” Marisol said.

  It was so good to hear her best friend defend her that Lavender smiled. “I saw my dad’s handwriting,” she explained. “He said he put
a note in my backpack, but I lost it. I dropped it on the bus without ever reading it.” Lavender choked over the last words.

  Lavender bent to pick up the paper. It was dusty and wrinkled. The note had been folded and unfolded and then wadded up and singed by fire. As she reached for it, she noticed that her own hands weren’t faring much better. She barely recognized them. They were cut and scraped. Her right palm was still crusted in dried blood from the splinter even after trying to rinse it off in the stream. The dirt and ash under her fingernails were pitch black. But none of that mattered as she smoothed out her dad’s note.

  FREQUENCY: 146.420 MHZ

  NEGATIVE SHIFT (OFFSET -0.6 MHZ)

  PL TONE: 162.2

  TALK SOON. LOVE YOU, DAD

  That was all it said, but it was enough.

  “I need my radio,” Lavender said.

  “Haven’t we already tried this?” Rachelle asked with a little huff.

  “Shhhhh,” Lavender ordered. Her stomach was flipping and her hands were shaking worse than ever before. She felt like she might fly into a hundred pieces. Hope was terrifying. She was afraid to explain, afraid to try, afraid of the crushing disappointment if this didn’t work.

  “What was in the note?” Marisol asked for the third or fourth time.

  “It looks like gibberish to me,” John said. Lavender could feel him leaning over her shoulder to read it.

  “It’s everything we need to talk into the repeater,” Lavender said, frantically programming her radio.

  “Still gibberish,” Rachelle said.

  “My dad gave me the repeater settings so I could talk with him in Phoenix.”

  “English, Lavender. Speak English,” Marisol commanded.

  They weren’t going to leave her alone until she explained. With a sigh, Lavender tore her eyes from the radio. “A repeater is kind of like an antenna that takes a weak radio signal and boosts it. I haven’t been able to reach anyone with my radio, because it has a small antenna and not a lot of power. Kind of like how John’s phone won’t work, because we don’t have a cell signal. A repeater is just like a cell tower. But a radio repeater will transmit our signal. Even though this radio is small, it will reach a lot farther than a cell phone. My dad told me we could talk through the repeater, but without the right settings, it was hopeless.”