And worry, which doesn’t help.
On the other side of the fire, it’s about as quiet as it is here. The whole camp is thick with unease.
It’s starting to soak down into my marrow, the anxiety I was able to banish with all my reassurances and plans.
I shudder.
I want to say, “It’s fine, guys! Perk up! Truly, an adventure!” But I can’t. It wouldn’t help anyone, and I can’t make myself say something I don’t really believe, not when it comes down to it. Not when it comes down to the reality that we are spending the night turned all around without a tent or cell service.
I’ve camped, but I’ve never camped without anything over my head.
A coyote—a wolf? I don’t know. Are there wolves in Colorado?—howls somewhere in the distance, and I actually laugh. Because hey, as it turns out, I’m fucking terrified.
Jonah’s voice is the thing that cuts through the tense silence.
He says, “I ever tell you about that time my truck broke down about ten miles from here?”
Jaxon’s head pops up, and he and Jonah exchange a long look. Jaxon says, “Nah. Tell us.” Like he knows something.
Jonah says, “It was dead winter, a night kind of like tonight, actually. Wind howling, wolves, snow, all that shit.”
“Atmospheric,” says Jaxon.
Jonah flips him the bird and says, “So I’m up here scouting and I cross this creek. It’s a little hop for me. Frozen over, kind of, but anyway, not solid enough I’m gonna step on it or my boot will go right through. I hear this crack and I look back, and there’s this tiny little spiderweb fracture splintering out in the ice. Like someone’s walking on it. Then another a few inches away.”
I furrow my brow and hug my coat around me. The smallest breath of wind whispers through the sparse forest, if you could even call it that.
Jonah says, “I don’t really think about it much; I just keep walking. I saw some elk sign up the way last year, so that’s where I’m headed. Well, a half mile down, I realize it’s not just my footsteps I’m hearing in the dirt. I’m hearing me and these little muffled steps that are moving twice as fast, at least. Small. Like a little animal maybe? Or like . . . a little kid.”
“Bullshit,” Sam whispers.
An owl hoots in the distance and because I’m cool and mature, I do not immediately think it’s a ghost.
“Yeah, sounds like I’m losing it. But then a quarter mile down the cow path, I see something. It’s a little stuffed porpoise. And it’s got its stuffing ripped out. At this point, I’m just kind of freaked out. But it’s nothing compared to what I see hanging in the trees when I follow that cow path into the pines. It’s a fucking menagerie. Dolls and shit, various states of disrepair. I can hear the wind whistling, hear those little footsteps behind me; it’s like a kid’s horror paradise in the woods. And I don’t know what the hell to do except I know I can’t turn my back on it. Not on a place like this. Suddenly I hear those little footsteps behind me and they stop.”
I’m holding my breath.
We all are.
“And this tiny little voice says something I can’t understand.”
I lean in.
“She says—”
Suddenly Jaxon grabs Jolie by the shoulders and shakes her and says, “I HAVE COME FOR MY REVENGE,” and Jolie shrieks and we all shriek and then we’re laughing in relief.
Jolie says, “You asshole!”
Jaxon is losing his shit, and Jonah is laughing, too, and he says, “Which one?”
And Jolie says, “Both of you! I HATE YOU.”
Then someone else starts in on a scary story, and it’s like the spell is broken.
It feels . . . unreal now.
Like a story.
Like an adventure we can make it through.
At least a bunch of us feel that way, or it seems like it. Distracted by stories and the fire.
The flames are by turns too hot and too cold, warming my front until I feel like my skin is on fire while my back freezes, then doing the opposite. Smoke stings my eyes. But the pain, the discomfort, is something to focus on.
The lateness of the night sinks in, even through the fear.
Through the hot and cold.
One by one, most of us drop into sleep.
I can’t.
I’m not gonna be able to sleep all night.
I can’t stop hearing those wolves.
How am I going to sleep through this cold, with nothing at all to shield me from whatever’s home we are invading?
As though a tent would do that.
It doesn’t matter; it’s the principle of it.
Eventually, Jaxon and Jonah and I are the only ones awake.
Jaxon yawns, and I say, “Go to sleep, man. I can’t. I’ll stay up and keep this fire stoked.”
Jaxon doesn’t argue with me. He just says, “It’s gonna be okay, cuz.”
I say, “Yeah.”
Jonah meets my eyes across the fire. They are intense, determined. Assessing the reality of the situation.
The risk.
He is concerned.
So am I.
Neither of us says anything.
We don’t have to.
The fire crackles between us in the dark.
CHAPTER SIX
I DON’T THINK I slept all night.
I’m missing time; I couldn’t tell you every single moment that passed in the last six hours, so I must have dozed off at some point. But it feels like I was up forever. My eyes are burning and I’m cold, and I look like a mess, I’m sure.
On the plus side, so does everyone else. It’s not like anyone slept in a king-sized hotel bed last night, but everyone else at least got a few hours of sleep.
I got none.
Jonah looks like a total wreck, too.
His eyes are red and there’s dark circles under them and his hair is standing up all wrong.
It’s charming, or it would be if I wasn’t worried about being completely exhausted and cold and stranded in the freaking woods.
I lie on the hard ground for a while, like I can fall asleep with the sun on my face and the freezing earth hard under my hips. I shut my eyes.
Nothing happens.
I’m just cold.
I’m just tired.
My eyelids are straight up glued together.
I force my eyes open—it hurts—and roll from my side up to my butt so I’m sitting up. I’m committed now, I guess. I’m up.
I stand and stretch, wrists and back and neck popping audibly.
I look around the woods, willing myself to just magically see one of Tzipporah’s yellow trail markers we all teased her for earlier, one of the breadcrumbs she forced us to leave so we could find our way back home.
But it . . . it all just looks like trees.
One by one, everyone in the camp wakes up, remembers where we are. Where we aren’t.
Someone digs into their pack and passes around water bottles and granola bars. No one has to say that we should ration. No one goes nuts on the food or the water or anything because last night we said we were going to be fine.
But we all know that was the kind of truth you can only tell when you have no fucking clue what’s real.
I eat my bar silently.
Staring into the dead fire.
Suddenly, beside me, Lydia starts sniffling. I’m almost mad, which is shitty of me, but Jesus, dude, pull it together.