Distress Signal

by Mary E. Lambert

  Marisol shook her head. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying”—she took a long breath, trying to steady herself—“I’m saying, we might be saved.”

  Rachelle knelt beside Lavender on the ground, clutching her arm. “Are you serious? You think you can, like, actually call someone on that thing. For real this time?”

  “I think so.” Lavender nodded and held down the talk button.

  Lavender held down the talk button.

  Whatever she said would be rebroadcast for everybody to hear. Other radio operators for dozens and dozens of miles would be able to hear her message.

  “Help,” she said. The word was dry and cracked. She suddenly had no breath to say the words. Her finger slipped from the talk button.

  “Here.” John produced Lavender’s water bottle and handed it to her. She took a few sips. “You’ve got this.”

  Calm down, be calm, Lavender coached herself. You outran a flood, escaped from a bear, and climbed a mountain. You can figure this out.

  But reaching out and asking for help, it felt like the scariest thing that had happened so far. Because if this didn’t work … if there was no one listening … if she was wrong about the repeater … if she couldn’t contact anyone … this might be the thing that finally broke her beyond repair. To have this much hope and be disappointed. She didn’t think she could recover.

  Lavender took a deep breath, held down the talk button, and this time she spoke with more conviction. “This is KG7XAB. I am lost in the Chiricahua Wilderness with three of my classmates. This is an emergency.”

  She let go of the talk button, waited, and heard the beep that indicated she had actually contacted the repeater.

  Now she just needed someone to be listening. Someone had to be out there. They just had to.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” she transmitted again. “Please, please answer me. This is KG7XAB. I am stranded in Chiricahua with my friends. We got separated from our class after a flash flood. We need help. It’s an emergency.”

  Only static filled the little radio.

  With every second, every crackle, Lavender felt a little piece of her heart start to die.

  And then—“This is KB7XWT. I hear your distress.”

  Lavender was so startled she dropped her radio. “We’re saved! We’re saved! You guys, we’re saved!” She clapped and jumped around in an impromptu jig that made her head pound. She didn’t even care. This had to be one of the best moments of her life.

  “You did it!” John grabbed her shoulders and shook them. “You really did it.”

  Rachelle jumped on them in a group hug.

  “Come in, come in,” the faint voice crackled over the radio. “This is KB7XWT. Come in.”

  “Lavender!” Marisol shouted from her spot on the ground. “Focus. We’re not home yet.”

  Lavender, John, and Rachelle broke apart, startled out of their celebration by Marisol’s reality check.

  “Is anyone there?” the man’s voice spoke again.

  Lavender dove for the radio, scraping her elbows, and mashed down on the transmitter. “Come in, KB7XWT. This is KG7XAB. My name is Lavender. I’m on a mountain in Chiricahua Wilderness. We were at our sixth-grade science campout, and we got separated from the rest of group by a flash flood. Please, please send help.”

  “You’re really the missing schoolkids?” he said. “You’ve been all over the news. Folks around here have been awfully scared that you didn’t make it out of that flood, but your dad asked for volunteers to listen to this frequency twenty-four/seven until you were located.”

  Lavender’s eyes prickled, thinking of her mom and dad. They never would have quit looking for her, but they might have given up hope that she would be alive when they found her. They would be so happy when they heard she was okay, probably even happier than she was to get away from this mountain … if that was possible.

  “Can you tell my parents I’m all right?” Lavender said. “We’re hungry and dirty and injured, but we’re alive. I’ll give you their phone number if you’ll just tell them I’m alive.”

  “You’ll tell them yourself, kid. Help is on the way.”

  From there, everything moved both too fast and too slow all at once. The search and rescue workers couldn’t just materialize on the mountaintop. First, they had to locate Lavender and her friends, based on their descriptions of the area. As Lavender tried to answer their questions, John and Rachelle built up the fire so their rescuers would have a signal to guide them to the right mountain peak.

  Lavender heard the helicopter before she saw it, and no sound was ever sweeter than the chop of the helicopter blades when their rescuers arrived.

  In her excitement, Lavender dropped the radio again. She jumped up and down, waving her arms. Rachelle and John joined her, and even Marisol from her spot on the ground waved both arms like her life depended on it.

  It felt like an eternity for the helicopter to maneuver into position. Huge gusts of wind from the copter’s blades turned the mountaintop into a hurricane. Then a man on a rope and harness was floating down, down, down toward them. When the man was firmly on the ground, Rachelle pointed and shouted, “Take Marisol first. She’s hurt. Broken ankle, I think.”

  And then the man was walking toward them and shouting back that it was hard to hear through his helmet, so Rachelle should just keep talking as loud as she could.

  Once he understood, their rescuer stabilized Marisol’s leg before hooking her to himself in a thing like a big vest that connected them both to a cable, and then they were pulled into the helicopter. Lavender was the last one to get taken up. She insisted on it.

  As the man in the jumpsuit helped Lavender into the harness, he said, “Just stay nice and calm. Keep your arms tucked in. Don’t try to grab anything.”

  His warning almost sounded like the workers at amusement parks who told people to keep their arms inside the ride at all times. The helicopter moved back into place, and the man in the tan jumpsuit hooked them onto the rope with a big metal clip, and Lavender suddenly pictured the clip breaking or the cable snapping. Surely, they could have found some other way to rescue her.

  With a yank, they were airborne. As they rose up toward the helicopter, they spun and twisted. Lavender felt like she was riding the teacups at Disneyland while flying through the air. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to watch as the trees shrank into toothpicks. Don’t vomit, don’t vomit, don’t vomit, she ordered herself. If she’d made it this far, she could survive the rescue, too.

  Then a woman in a matching tan jumpsuit was pulling her farther into the helicopter and asking her if she was okay and handing her water. Lavender took small sips. The water was pure and clean. She could feel it rinsing away the grit that lined her mouth—her teeth felt like they were full of dust and sand after days of sleeping outside and drinking dirty water.

  John, Marisol, and Rachelle were tucked into different corners of the crowded helicopter. They looked as pale and shell-shocked from the ride as she felt.

  “We’re taking you to the hospital. Your parents are being notified. They will meet you there.” The man shouted to be heard.

  “She’s the only one who needs a hospital,” John shouted back, pointing at Marisol.

  The woman and Rachelle shook their heads at the same time.

  “We want to have you checked out. You were out there a long time,” the woman answered.

  “We sure are glad you found a way to contact us,” the man hollered again.

  “Everyone was afraid you had drowned,” the woman said. “And one girl from your class swore you’d climbed out of the wash on the opposite side from here.”

  “Does that mean everyone else was okay?” John yelled to be heard.

  The man nodded. “Yep, the others backtracked to a trail, and one of the teachers eventually got a phone signal.”

  “We’ve been searching for you ever since they called us,” the woman added.

  A chill ran up Lavender’s spi
ne. She was relieved that the rest of the sixth grade was safe, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how close they’d come to never being found.

  But they were rescued. And they were going to see their families. These people in the helicopter had dropped everything to come and pluck Lavender and her friends off the top of a mountain.

  Lavender turned to the lady who was closest to her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  No shower ever felt better than the tiny, sterile hospital shower with the astringent shampoo and body wash. No bed ever felt softer. No pillow more wonderful. Lavender and the other three stayed overnight at the hospital with their moms and dads, too. All their parents had been helping comb the park, looking for their lost children. And none of them were going to let their kids out of sight for a long, long while.

  After being fed and fussed over by about a hundred doctors and nurses and medical assistants, Lavender sat on her hospital bed while her mom combed the tangles from her hair, occasionally finding a small leaf or twig.

  “You might need to shower again,” her mom said.

  Lavender wrinkled her nose. “At home,” she said. “I’m too tired now.”

  Her mom agreed. Both of her parents had asked her a barrage of questions, and Lavender had answered, skimming over some of the details because her mom started to sniffle in a heartbroken way when the story got too intense.

  Her dad’s phone buzzed continuously as they talked. Friends, relatives, neighbors … everyone was sending texts and getting in touch to make sure that Lavender really was okay, to say how happy they were that she’d been found, and things like that.

  After one message, her dad looked up and said, “That was the Today show.”

  “The news show?” Lavender asked.

  “They want to fly you and your classmates out to New York for an interview.”

  “Whoa,” said Lavender, impressed with herself and her friends. “That’s the other side of the country.”

  “I don’t know,” said her mom, gently working at a stubborn tangle. “I don’t like all this publicity focused on such young kids.”

  Her dad nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll have to talk to the other parents about the best way to handle this.”

  “But, Dad,” said Lavender, “at least promise that I can talk to QST magazine if they want to do a story.”

  “The ham radio magazine?” her mom asked.

  “Yes,” said Lavender. “It saved a lot of lives. First with the flood, and then getting us down from the mountain.”

  Her dad chuckled. “I think we can let you do at least one interview.”

  Her mom finished combing out Lavender’s hair, and then Lavender crawled under the covers, and in the quiet of a little room with her parents on either side, Lavender slept in safety and warmth, and it was the most perfect night of sleep she could ever remember.

  Best of all, both of her parents were still there when she woke up again.

  The next day, as they were waiting to be discharged, John stopped by Lavender’s hospital room to ask if she would help him study for his ham radio license.

  “Really?” she said. “You really want to take the test? You have to learn a lot about radios and electronics.”

  “That sounds interesting to me. I’ve always liked science.”

  “Cool.” Lavender smiled.

  “John, come on. The doctor’s on his way to your room. Your dad’s waiting.” John’s mom appeared in the doorway and put her arm around her son. She gave Lavender a little wave and then took John back to his room, and that’s when Lavender knew that John was going to be okay.

  His parents were there for him. Both of them. He’d been wrong about one thing: They loved him more than whatever problems they were having. And, even if things weren’t going to be perfect at home, he had friends who would stand by him no matter what.

  At last, the final discharge papers were signed, and the families headed out to the parking lot. The parents had decided to caravan back to Phoenix, but as they went for their cars, they were ambushed by reporters.

  Lavender heard her mother groan; Lavender herself felt like groaning as Rachelle stepped confidently up to the news camera. Unsurprisingly, Rachelle and her mom were pushing hard for all four kids to accept the offer from the Today show. Rachelle looked like her old self again, just a little sunburned. While the others were dressed in comfortable clothes—sweatpants or gym shorts and T-shirts—Rachelle wore skinny jeans, a flowy blouse, designer flip-flops, and a silver necklace. Her curly hair was pulled back in a beautiful thick braid.

  Lavender held her breath, fully expecting Rachelle to throw her under the bus. Rachelle would tell about the stupid sardines prank. Lavender had a quick flashback to the concert, when Marisol and Rachelle had called her names. Well, if Rachelle had any lingering resentment, this was her chance to get even with Lavender once and for all.

  “How do you feel?” the reporter was asking Rachelle.

  “I just feel so glad to be alive and to have taken a shower and slept in a bed,” Rachelle said. She put a hand on Marisol’s shoulder. Marisol was balanced on crutches. She had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in Phoenix set for the next day.

  Here it comes, Lavender thought, sinking into her mom’s side and bracing for whatever Rachelle might say next.

  “But, most of all,” Rachelle said, “I am grateful that Lavender was able to save us all. First, she warned the rest of our class about the coming flood. If she hadn’t heard the warning on her radio, the entire class might have been washed away because we took a wrong turn on the hike.”

  Marisol nodded. “And then when she figured out how to talk to the repeater, she was able to use her ham radio to call for help. She’s the real hero.”

  John stayed silent in the background, but he was nodding, too.

  Lavender felt her face heat with embarrassment as the entire barrage of people—hospital personnel, parents, and reporters—turned to look at her.

  “So you saved the day?” one lady with a microphone asked, turning toward Lavender.

  Part of her wanted to brag. Before all of this, that’s exactly what she would have done. But she was different now. Facing life and death did that to a person.

  Lavender stepped away from her mom, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. “Actually,” she said, “everyone helped. We were a team. John was so prepared. He had all these supplies in his backpack that probably saved our lives. Marisol had the idea to eat prickly pear when none of us thought we could go any farther. Rachelle knew exactly how to make a splint when Marisol got hurt. And we all worked together to scare off the bear.” There was a gasp from right behind her, and Lavender remembered she hadn’t shared that little detail with her mom yet. Lavender paused and then she added, “You know what? In the end, it really wasn’t just one of us. I didn’t save the day. We all saved each other.”

  And if that wasn’t friendship, Lavender didn’t know what was.

  Turn the page to read a sample of Mary E. Lambert’s Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes!

  The newspapers fell on my sister at breakfast this morning.

  And I didn’t do anything to stop it.

  Sometimes I have this feeling that I’m completely disconnected from my body, like I’m watching my life on TV or in a dream, and it doesn’t occur to me until ten minutes or two weeks later that, hey, I could’ve done something. I don’t have to sit in the audience and watch things fall apart.

  But that’s exactly what I did at breakfast. I just sat there, waiting to see if today would be the day the newspapers finally fell. It was the “highs in the mid to upper 70s” pile that came crashing down. The newspapers are organized by weather report, and since it’s almost June, Mom has been adding to the “highs in the mid to upper 70s” pile every day. Lately she’s had to stand on her tiptoes in order to reach the top, and this morning—before she could even add to it—it was already swaying from side to side, back and forth. It looked like a Je
nga tower right before someone loses, and today Leslie was the loser.

  I’ve known for weeks now that they were bound to come crashing down. It’s why I haven’t sat at the head of the table since spring break. The head of the table is the best seat in the house—it’s closest to the fridge and, therefore, the fewest steps to the milk. Yes, I am that lazy. And, apparently, so is my sister, because as soon as I switched seats, she nabbed my old one. I should have warned her not to sit there, told her why I’d changed seats. But, honestly, it never occurred to me.

  I thought about how the newspapers would probably fall on her head, and in cold, fatalistic silence, I consumed my cereal, morning after morning, waiting and watching.

  I was on my last spoonful of Cocoa Krispies when it happened. The milk had just turned that perfect shade of brownish purple. Leslie was polishing off her Cheerios. Dad was eating his whole-wheat toast. And Mom was in bed or in the shower or on the sofa, doing whatever it is she does after making Dad’s toast. Mom does leave the house every now and then, usually for trips to the grocery store when there’s no one else to do it. But most of the time, she prefers to stay right where she is, thank you very much. And my brother, who never eats breakfast—at least not at home with us—had just raced out the door.

  “Take me with you,” I shouted at Chad as he breezed past, keys in hand.

  “Denied,” he said with a smile. Chad is never mean when he says no. He’s never mean, period. He just isn’t nice. I bet Chad doesn’t even know my favorite color.

  His is red.

  “But it’s the last day,” I said. “I can be ready in two seconds. Please, please, let me come with you. I don’t want to take the—”

  Chad slammed the door before I could say “bus.”

  I don’t know if he was upset about something or running late to pick up a friend or, maybe, he just couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I can relate. Whatever his reason, when I say Chad slammed the door, I mean he slammed it. A real window-rattling, earthquake-imitating, neighbor-waking slam.