Part One
Before I Was Lost
The world is not tame.
People forget that. The glossy brochures for state parks show nature at its most photogenic, like a senior picture with all the pores airbrushed away. They never feature a coyote muzzle-deep in the belly of a still-living deer, or a chipmunk punctured by an eagle’s talons, squirming as it perishes in midair.
If you’re quiet in the woods long enough, you’ll hear something die. Then it’s quiet again. There’s no outrage about injustice, or even mourning. One animal’s death is another’s dinner; that’s just the way it is. What remains will go to the earth, yesterday’s bones sinking into today’s dirt, the only bit of life left where a mouse nibbled, leaving tiny indentations that say there was once something of worth here.
“Gross,” Meredith says as I lift a deer skull out from under a layer of dead leaves.
“I thought it was just a drop,” I say, giving her a chance to catch her breath at the side of the trail while I check if there’s any spinal cord left. Usually the vertebrae are carried off by mice and squirrels, little midnight snacks for them to stash in their burrows.
“A what?” She slips the straps of her backpack off as Kavita catches up to us, holding her jet-black hair in a pile on top of her head, beads of sweat forming on her upper lip.
“A drop,” I explain to Meredith. “Bucks lose their antlers every spring, but they’re really hard to spot on the forest floor.”
I’d been lucky to see this one, mistaking it at first for the bleached white of a dead ash branch. When the entire skull had come up along with the antler I’d barely suppressed my excitement, something that didn’t escape notice.
“Why’d we stop?” Kavita asks, dropping her hair so that it falls around her shoulders.
“Ashley’s having a National Geographic moment,” Meredith says.
“Damn straight,” I tell her.
“Good thing she knows that shit too,” Kavita says, coming to my defense. “Or else we’d die out here.”
That’s true enough. Meredith had spotted a mushroom earlier and, assuming that anything that can go on a pizza in the civilized world is safe in the natural one, was about to chow down on a destroying angel. I told her that if I hadn’t stopped her in time in about five hours she’d be vomiting and become delirious. But since we’re planning on vomiting and being delirious tonight anyway, I don’t know that anyone would have even noticed until she started convulsing.
In other words, way too late.
Meredith had sniffed and said, “Then why are they even allowed to grow in a state park, anyway?”
Luckily Kavita was there to defuse the situation and stop me from saying something shitty. I guess being the only person in our school who isn’t white has probably taught her a lot about handling confrontation. Me, I just get mad. I’d wanted to tell Meredith we aren’t in a state park—we’re in a state forest—which means that the trails aren’t maintained as well, something she’d complained about the first time we had to straddle a downed tree to stay on the path, and nobody gets to tell poisonous mushrooms where to grow or not grow. It’s our job to learn not to eat them.
We live in a place where geography can not only kill you, but also dictates your friends. I don’t like many people, and while Meredith has made the cut since kindergarten, it’s by a slim margin. She is constantly horrified by the bruises on my legs that blossom under poison ivy rashes; I’m equally turned off by her manicures and the fact that she wing-tipped her eyeliner before coming on this hike. Past our skin, we genuinely like each other. But days like today I have to actually remind myself of that fact.
To be fair, I bet she does too.
“What’cha got?” Kavita asks, motioning toward the skull in my hands.
“A dead animal,” Meredith answers for me. “Ash found a dead animal. Please tell me you’re not taking that to the party.”
Truth is, I’m thinking about it. It’s rare to find one in this good of shape, and it’s an eight-point, the sharp edges of the antlers still intact. I’m rubbing my thumb along a smooth curve, debating, finally choosing to toss the skull into the leaves. Maybe someone else will find it, hang it on their living room wall or zip-tie it to the grille of their truck.
We head uphill, and I set a pace that will leave Meredith gasping, though Kavita stays steady at my heels. I hold a branch back for her, and she smiles at me as I do, though none of us are talking. We need our energy, need our breath for the long walk to the campsite where the boys and the beers are, somewhere secluded enough that we can get rowdy. It’ll be loud later, when we celebrate the beginning of summer vacation, talk about how crazy it is that we’ll be seniors next year, the bittersweet tang of something good coming to an end filling our mouths.
But right now it’s quiet, and I’m grateful for the silence. In it I can think about what I saw as I turned to go, a perfectly aligned spinal column pressed into the dirt, undisturbed by hungry mouths or digging paws. To be in that kind of condition the deer must not have gone violently, or its bones would have been tossed about by the teeth that took its life. Instead it lay down and died quietly of old age, either dappled by the sun or with soft snowflakes that landed on closing eyes.
It died quiet, under the trees.
I think that’s how I’d want to go too.
Hiking—much like drinking—is something that sounds more fun to the uninitiated than it actually is. I’d doubted the intelligence of combining the two ever since Meredith came up with the idea. A party far enough into the Smokies that nobody bothers us might sound like a good time, but both hiking and drinking require enough common sense to get through without seriously injuring yourself, and I’ve known enough people to prove common sense is anything but common.
I try to remind myself of Meredith’s finer points when I spot the electrical cord for a curler trailing out of her pack as she digs for a granola bar. Kavita sees it too and hides a smile. I decide not to tell her that outlets don’t grow on trees. I love Meredith. I swear I do. She’s just not on my apocalypse-survival team. I, on the other hand, am on everyone’s, despite the fact that I keep telling them that in any such scenario I’m striking out on my own because they’re deadweight.
“How much longer?” Meredith asks, and I realize she’s done me the favor of not asking until now.
I know better than to pull out my phone. There’s no more cell service out here than there is the magical electrical current that Meredith is relying on to fix her hair once we’re at the campsite. I take a second to get my bearings. The trek we’re on is a small leg of the Appalachian Trail, and I’ve done it enough that a casual glance tells me where I am. I’d love to do the whole AT someday, when I’m older. Or have enough money for a decent kit. Whichever comes first. Probably the older part.
“The guys headed out yesterday,” I tell her, eyeing the heavy brush where it’s clear someone crashed off the path, probably to take a piss. “They wanted to fish for a bit and set up camp. It’s not far, maybe a mile. We’ll be able to hear them soon, drunk or sober.”
“Drunk, I bet,” Kavita says.