The Wild

by Owen Laukkanen

  Apart from her little brother, the men in Dawn’s life are uniformly shitty.

  She’s never had a real boyfriend. She’s dated a bunch of weirdos and assholes, but, you know, that was more out of boredom than anything else. It was more out of wanting to fit in, be normal. Normal girls date. So Dawn dated.

  Meh.

  And Julian is obviously bad news.

  You knew that, though. He’s a middle-aged bartender who smokes a lot of pot and can get Dawn into parties and whatever, but again, he’s middle-aged and he’s losing his hair and he always smells kind of funky.

  (He’s a middle-aged bartender.)

  Plus he’s always asking Dawn if she has any friends who’d be up for a threesome, and that shit gets old.

  (Dawn doesn’t have any friends.)

  (Also, ewww.)

  * * *

  So anyway.

  You know how you can go through your life never noticing someone until you go on a trip with them or have to do an assignment together and you more or less have to hang out for long periods of time and you start to realize that maybe you might actually have a thing for them?

  (And sometimes it lasts past the end of the trip, and sometimes you get home and you wonder what the hell you were thinking, but that’s kind of irrelevant right now.)

  Yeah.

  Dawn’s in the middle of that stage, I think. Like, she’s a total captive out here.

  Warden is cute and brooding.

  Lucas is cute and happy.

  Where does it say that Dawn can’t at least try to enjoy herself?

  (Actually, it does say that. OUT OF THE WILD RULES AND REGULATIONS. Rule No. 6: No cohabitation between group members.)

  (I.e., No hookups.)

  (#Lame)

  But rules are meant to be broken. And Dawn wouldn’t even be here if she hadn’t already proved she was willing to break a couple.

  So with Warden in the picture and this burgeoning love triangle starting to heat up, let’s take a minute to talk about Warden and Lucas and Dawn.

  See, Dawn likes Lucas. Lucas is funny, and he’s kind, and he’s cute. He makes Dawn laugh a lot, and he makes the days go by quicker, and he’s always around if Dawn needs help with something.

  Lucas is a good guy. The world needs more people like him.

  But Warden?

  Warden is mysterious.

  Warden is dangerous.

  Warden is brooding and smoldering and sexy.

  Warden is Dawn’s kind of guy.

  (Sorry, Lucas.)

  “I STOLE A TRUCK.”

  It’s the next morning. Dawn can’t look at Warden without blushing—or checking if Amber is in the vicinity—but here they are hiking together again. (Sorry, Lucas.)

  The morning was the usual. Up at sunrise. Chores. Breakfast. Pack. Hike.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  They’ve left the lake and walked through the forest a short ways to another lake, which they’ve skirted around, and they’re climbing through the trees again, but away from the ridge and up the other side of the valley, toward more cliffs and rocks and such.

  Fart Mountain/Raven’s Claw looms ahead. It’s getting closer. It looks impossibly tall and, like, craggy. There still does not seem to be an optimal way to the top.

  By the end of the day, the Bear Pack will make base camp at the bottom. By noon tomorrow, they’ll be standing at the top. But Dawn’s trying not to think about that. She’s realizing she might actually be super afraid of heights.

  She’s trying to distract herself by asking Warden about his Origin Story.

  * * *

  “I stole a truck,” Warden says. “I stole it and I went on a little joyride and then I crashed it, and when I woke up in the hospital they told me I could either go to juvie or come here, so here I am.”

  He’s from Oregon, he tells Dawn. Coos Bay.

  “It’s a shithole,” he says. “There’s nothing to do but get drunk and try not to fight surfers.”

  “You don’t surf?” Dawn asks.

  “Hell no.” Warden gives her a look like he’s personally affronted. “Surfers are douchebags. No exceptions. They take over the beach and everywhere else that’s cool and if you’re not part of their crew, you’re like dog shit to them. You don’t surf, do you?”

  Dawn laughs. “I’m from Sacramento.”

  “Yeah, well,” he says, continuing up the hill. “Good. Don’t ever start.”

  They follow the rest of the Pack up a series of switchbacks until they’re out of the trees again and looking across a wide bench of rock toward another far ridgeline. It juts out to their right, and in the distance lies the Raven’s Claw. It looks incredibly close now, even though Dawn knows they still have nearly a full day’s hike before they’re even at the bottom.

  “I guess it isn’t so bad,” Warden says, and it takes Dawn a moment to realize he’s still talking about Oregon. “My mom’s an ER nurse and she’s busy all the time, so I can pretty well do what I want. It just sucks that everyone in town is either some douchebag surfer or a materialistic asshole.”

  “What about your dad?” Dawn asks.

  Warden doesn’t look back at her, but she can tell how his shoulders hunch up that it was the wrong thing to ask. “I don’t want to talk about him,” he says, and his voice is flat and dull. “He’s not worth the effort.”

  “Okay,” Dawn says. Warden doesn’t say anything else, and they follow the trail toward the far ridgeline in silence.

  Finally, near the top, Warden heaves a sigh, and his posture relaxes a little. “What about you?” he asks, glancing back at her. “What did you do to get stuck here?”

  “Ran away,” Dawn replies. She’s half out of breath from the climb, so it’s all she can manage. She’s really hoping Warden doesn’t look back again and see how gross and sweaty and out of shape she is.

  But he does look back, his head cocked and his expression quizzical. He doesn’t seem to notice she’s gross.

  “That’s all?” he asks.

  “I mean, habitually,” Dawn says. She lets it sit a beat. “Plus, there was a little bit of a drug problem.”

  “Pot?”

  “Pills.”

  “Nice,” Warden says. “Your parents must have loved that.”

  Dawn forces a laugh. “Not even a little bit.” She really isn’t sure she wants to tell Warden about her dad. She doesn’t say anything else.

  “Why’d you run?” Warden asks once they’re atop the ridge. “What was so bad that you couldn’t stay home?”

  Nothing, Dawn thinks. Nothing was bad at home. Not until I fucked it all up.

  “I just don’t get along with my stepdad,” she tells Warden. “He didn’t think I should be partying all the time. And I didn’t think it mattered what he thought.”

  She’s putting up a front, trying to sound brave and confident like she’s all out of fucks, but it’s pretty transparent, and Warden probably sees right through it.

  He doesn’t let on, though, doesn’t push the point. “Parents suck,” he concedes, and they leave it at that.

  They hike for a while in silence. This ridge seems to lead straight to the bottom of the Raven’s Claw, though you have to drop down into a deep, deep gulch and climb out the other side before you get there. The sun has come out and there’s blue sky above them, and a beautiful lake down the ridge to their left. To their right, the ridge drops away into a wide, forested valley. There’s still no sign of other people, just the trail and the occasional cairn, but today, with the sun shining, Dawn can actually appreciate the beauty—assuming she doesn’t focus too intently on the mountain in front of them, tall and sharp and riddled with steep gullies were rockslides have ripped away at the face. There is still no obvious way to the top. Dawn’s beginning to believe that Christian and Amber just
intend to fake it.

  “Where would you go, if you could be anywhere right now?” Warden breaks the silence. “I mean, judging by the look on your face, I’m guessing it’s not up on Fart Mountain, right?”

  “No, it is not.” Dawn meets his eyes, grateful for the distraction. “I still can’t believe we’re going up there.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” Warden shrugs. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s easy, but we’ll take it slow.”

  The way he says we, Dawn isn’t sure he means the Bear Pack, or just the two of them. She kind of hopes it’s the latter.

  “I guess we’ll see,” she says.

  “I promise, you’ll be fine,” he says. “I’ll make sure.”

  He kind of smiles at her with those green eyes, and it’s nearly enough to make Dawn believe him.

  “So anyway, where?” he asks again, after the moment stretches a little too long. “Where would you go, if you didn’t have to be here?”

  Dawn hesitates. There’s an easy answer for this; she’s just not sure she wants to share it.

  “Anywhere you want,” Warden repeats. “Maui? Mount Everest?”

  “Are those my two options?”

  Warden rolls his eyes. “Come on.”

  Ugh, dude, Dawn thinks. Quit making me share embarrassing shit. But she plays the game anyway. Let him laugh if he wants to.

  “Chicago,” she says.

  “Chicago.”

  Dawn meets his eyes. “My nana is there. My grandmother. I just wish I could see her again.”

  Warden doesn’t laugh. He studies her. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “A couple years ago,” Dawn says. “Usually we go visit her every summer, but this year, I…”

  She trails off. Doesn’t finish. Warden just watches her, and Dawn feels tears in her eyes. She bites her lip and turns away. “I can’t stop thinking about, like, what if she dies while I’m out here,” she tells the ridge and the lake and the valley—

  (everything but Warden).

  “What if she dies and I never get to see her again and it’s all because I was too much of a freaking selfish bitch to go see her?”

  Now the tears really are coming, and Dawn wipes them away, angry and embarrassed, and tries to stomp past Warden and continue along the ridge. But Warden puts his arm out, touches her shoulder, and it’s gentler, not rough like when he fixed her straps yesterday.

  “Hey,” he says, and he waits until Dawn meets his eyes again. “You’re going to see her again.”

  Dawn wipes her eyes again, hates herself and her stupid tear ducts. “I’m still a freaking Bear Cub, dude. I could be here until Christmas.”

  But Warden doesn’t blink, those green eyes serious and concerned and really freaking pretty. “We’re all getting out of here,” he tells her. “You’re going to see your nana again, I promise.”

  The way he says it?

  Dawn actually kind of believes him.

  THEY MAKE BASE CAMP on the shore of a little glacial pond, literally in the shadow of, ahem, Fart Mountain.

  Amber calls the pond a “tarn,” but whatever that means, it’s about the size of a swimming pool and the water is freezing cold. So is the air, for that matter; everyone bundles up in whatever they have in their packs, and they all sit by the fire wrapped in their sleeping bags when dinner is done.

  The campsite is surrounded by gigantic boulders strewn everywhere. There aren’t many trees at this elevation, just alpine grass and small, uh, lichen plants—thanks, Amber—clinging to the steep hillside. The Raven’s Claw rises straight above them, reaching so high into the twilight sky you have to crane your neck almost straight up to see it. The summit is another half mile from where they’re camped, and from here, the climb is mostly vertical.

  “Hopefully the weather holds,” Christian says. “It’ll be a real pain in the ass if it snows while we’re up there.”

  “It’s not going to snow,” Amber quickly assures them. “If the last weather report is correct, we might see some rain tomorrow evening, but we’ll be down from the summit by then.”

  She smiles at Dawn, reassuring. Dawn forces a smile back, even though she can’t look at the counselor without wondering if Warden really is hooking up with her, and feeling kind of stupidly jealous about it.

  Shut up, she tells her brain. You have bigger problems right now. Tomorrow, you have to climb half a mile into the sky.

  * * *

  Lucas keeps his distance tonight.

  He’s probably been watching Dawn and Warden hang out all day, and he’s jealous, too. He might have even seen how Dawn started crying and Warden was there to comfort her.

  Or maybe he’s just tired, and as scared of climbing Fart Mountain as Dawn is.

  Either way, he doesn’t say anything to Dawn all evening. He hangs out with Alex instead, the two of them talking about sports and video games like they’re overnight besties. He tries to make like he’s ignoring Dawn, but Dawn knows better. He keeps stealing glances in her direction when he thinks she won’t notice, but she does.

  And when Dawn catches Lucas looking at her, he quickly looks away.

  * * *

  Morning comes early. Dawn wakes up from a dream that she can’t remember except that Warden was in it and they were somewhere warm, and she was actually happy.

  She wakes up shivering under her tarp just as the sky starts to get light again. It’s been another restless, uncomfortable night.

  Everybody moves slow but the counselors. Amber has a fire going already and water boiling for hot oatmeal. She gives Dawn a friendly look as Dawn crawls out of her sleeping bag. “Sleep okay?”

  Dawn shrugs, mumbles something about coffee. Then she wanders off to find a boulder to pee behind.

  While she’s gone, all hell breaks loose.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!”

  Kyla is screaming when Dawn comes back around the boulder, dreading having to wash her hands in the freezing-cold water of the tarn nearby. Kyla’s voice makes Dawn forget about washing her hands.

  Kyla is pissed.

  “If you ever touch my ass again, dude, I swear, I will cut you,” she’s saying.

  She’s saying it to Christian, who is backing away from her with his hands up and his eyes wide, shaking his head and kind of laughing—like Calm down, crazy; just relax—and then he looks around and sees how everyone’s watching him, watching what’s happening, and he kind of goes a little bit red. “It was an accident, Kyla,” he says. “Just chill.”

  But Kyla isn’t having it.

  “Yeah, an accident, bullshit,” she tells him. “Just how many accidents are you going to have, asshole? You think I’m that stupid to fall for your shit?”

  Christian glances around again, and nobody’s turning away. His face goes hard. His voice gets an edge to it. “Now, calm down,” he says. “I apologized, and that’s that. You keep making a big deal out of this, I’m going to have to—”

  “Have to what?” Kyla asks. “Bust me back down to Black Bear so you can touch my ass for two more months?”

  Christian starts to answer, but Kyla waves him off, turning back to her tent. “We all know what you’re up to,” she says. “Creep.”

  Christian claps his hands. “That’s it, you’re busted. Black Bear, Kyla. Congratulations.”

  Over her shoulder, Kyla shoots him the finger.

  “Brown Bear, then.”

  She’s singing now. “Fuuuuuuuck youuuuuuu.”

  “Bear Cub,” Christian says. “I hope you like it out here.”

  For a beat, Kyla doesn’t respond. Then she bends down by her tent, and Dawn thinks maybe she’s just letting it slide, ignoring Christian, finally, like maybe if she just shuts her mouth he’ll go away. But that’s not what’s happening here.

  Kyla stands back straight, turni
ng around as she does, and she’s holding a huge, jagged rock, and her face is lined with tears.

  “I fucking hate you!” she shrieks.

  And she lunges at Christian with the rock. Pointy end first.

  “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!”

  Amber moves faster than Dawn’s ever seen. In an instant, she’s between Kyla and Christian, shunting Kyla backward, hugging her, holding her upright. “Whoa now,” she says again, softer, like it’s only for Kyla’s ears. “Whoa now, let’s all just relax, kay?”

  Kyla’s still glaring murder at Christian, her whole body shaking, still sobbing, but Amber doesn’t let her go, doesn’t stop talking, and Dawn watches as Kyla just, like, deflates, collapses limp in Amber’s arms, dropping the rock with a thud and just breaking down, crying, the kind of crying you do when you’re exhausted and broken and beaten and you just want to give up and, like, go die somewhere.

  But Amber doesn’t let go of her. Amber hugs her tight, and pets her hair, and Kyla lets her, still crying, and Dawn watches as Kyla’s arms wrap around Amber, too, until they’re hugging each other, hard, like neither one wants to let the other go.

  And gradually Kyla stops crying.

  Meanwhile, Christian is standing there like the piece of shit he so obviously is, watching Amber and Kyla with his lip curled like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t, and anyway, it’s doubtful his piece-of-shit language could permeate the barrier that Amber and Kyla have thrown up right now with their moment.

  So Christian straightens and kicks a rock and glares around at the rest of the Pack. “All right, the show’s over,” he tells them. “Get packed up already. We move out in ten.”

  Dawn glances back at Amber and Kyla and thinks, Fat chance. Nobody else moves, either. Dawn watches Brandon and Evan exchange meaningful glances behind Christian. She feels her heart start to pound, though she isn’t exactly sure why.

  All she knows is Christian is suddenly very alone in the middle of the Bear Pack. And Brandon and Evan have looks on their faces like they know it, too.