3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (13 page)

“That new -waitress? You know, the one -with the huge boobs and the dark hair? She told Megan that Zach is her boyfriend. They hooked up last summer and stayed together all year.”

Not very close together, Jo thought, but did not say. She kept setting the table, like this was of no special interest to her. “I don’t believe it. Megan told you that?”

“Violet told me. Megan told Violet.”

“Right,” Jo said, casually, as though she didn’t much believe it or care.

Jo looked around in mounting frustration. She had seven tables still to set and one party that would not leave. It was unfair, because most of the waiters were allowed to go once their section had cleared out, while the bussers had to stay until every last table in their section -was wiped and set.

The majority of the girls were already gathered in the bathroom. Earlier, during the lunch shift, Megan had said Jo could come along tonight, but Jo knew they weren’t all going to wait for her. They would take off for the night’s activities while Jo was still stuck here. Zach -would wait for her, though.

She wiped manically, ignoring Bryn and her gossip. The big-boobed, dark-haired girl might believe she was Zach’s girlfriend, but she was obviously wrong. Zach didn’t think so. Maybe they had hooked up last summer. That was totally possible. But Zach had clearly moved on, and that girl was just going to have to deal with it.

Jo watched with a sense of desperation as the girls left in a noisy group. The other -waiters had mostly closed out too. She -was left among the lowly people: Brownie, Jordan-the- doofus, and Carlos. Even Bryn and Lila had already left.

She and Brownie wrapped up the paper from table after table with all the crab shells and guts in them and carried them to the big garbage cans out back. Jo was going too fast to be careful. She was going to stink of crab guts for the rest of her life.

Zach -was probably -waiting out back for her. He’d jump out from behind a Dumpster or something. But how long would he wait?

She considered leaving. Would Jordan fire her? He’d have to give her at least one more chance, wouldn’t he?

When she finally got out of the restaurant Zach -was gone. The rest of the group was long gone.

She took out her cell phone to call her mom. She couldn’t just go home. No possible way.

“Mom, I’m going to go out with the staff for like, half an hour, okay?”

“Jo, it’s almost eleven.”

“I’ll be back by eleven-twenty at the latest. I promise.”

“Do you want me to come pick you up?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m fine.”

“Honey, did you call your dad?”

Damn. She was supposed to call him and she forgot, just like she forgot last night and the night before. “It was really busy. I’ll call tomorrow.”

She walked fast along the boardwalk, hoping the guilt wouldn’t get a chance to settle on her. She appreciated the fast-blowing -wind against her face.

She’d pass by the big arcade and then swing past the Chatterbox. There weren’t that many places they could be, unless they were partying on the beach.

They weren’t in the arcade, but she did recognize some familiar faces as she approached the Chatterbox. The group of them liked to sit at the big table by the front window. She grabbed the brass door handle and was about to pull it open and walk in -when she caught sight of Zach through the big window.

She felt her hands shaking as she dropped them to her sides and backed away from the light.

She’d really only seen half of Zach’s face, because the other half was buried in the neck of the dark-haired girl. The girl had her arm looped around him possessively while she talked to somebody across the table.

The dark-haired girl thought Zach -was her boyfriend, and Zach apparently agreed.

Ama dreamed rough dreams that night, both tedious and strenuous. She went in and out of sleep, too tired to keep track of anything.

The first sting came after dawn. She coiled and scratched her ankle and threaded it into the narrative of her dream. Some time later, the second and third stings came, dreamlike too, but when the fifth through the fiftieth came all at once, she had no choice but to wake up and stick her head out the top of her sleeping bag and scream.

She stripped off her sleeping bag and smacked at her ankles and arms.

Fire ants! Ahhhhhhh! She jumped around and screamed and slapped with superhuman speed and dexterity until she got them all off.

After that she looked up slowly, very slowly. In the full light of day she looked up, expecting to see the rest of the campers watching her insane performance.

But there wasn’t anyone around. She was disoriented. She felt the sun on her head. It was later than she’d thought.

She turned around and saw the grassy hill behind her. When she’d fallen asleep she’d been at the edge of the campsite, and now she wasn’t.

She must have rolled down the hill. Amazing but true. She saw the bushes where she’d left her pack, uphill and several yards away.

She lifted her sleeping bag and wrapped it around her shoulders. So much for its magical powers of protection. She headed slowly up the hill.

She found her backpack right away, just where she’d left it. She pulled it from the bushes and walked into the campsite. At first, she was relieved that it was empty so nobody could make fun of her for being attacked by vicious ants and rolling down a hill in her sleep. But that relief was short-lived. Where was everybody?

She walked around the clearing. She saw where they’d had their fire, and a few remnants from cooking. This was indeed the campsite. She hadn’t woken up in an alternate universe or anything.

She tried to remember the plan for today. They were going to hike down into a canyon, she recalled. They were supposed to get an early start, probably hiking the first hour before sunrise.

The worry -was alive and churning in her intestines, growing by the minute. Had they left her? How could that have happened? Wouldn’t they notice she wasn’t there? She thought of how often she’d lagged behind the rest of the group. Hadn’t they seen her pack? She thought of how she’d carefully buried it in the bushes.

“Hello?” she called out. Her voice sounded timid and small in the forest. “Hello?” she tried more loudly.

Maybe if she started hiking she could catch up with them? She tried to push aside the knowledge that she could barely catch up with them even -when she got a head start. Which direction had they gone in?

The canyon had to be downhill, she thought. Canyons -were made from -water. Water traveled down. Her thoughts raced up and down and around. They couldn’t have gone in the direction she had rolled in, because if they’d gone that way they would have seen her.

In a panic she began stuffing her sleeping bag into her pack. She strode several yards before she realized she hadn’t gotten dressed. She wildly unpacked the top of her pack and pulled on the first clothes she saw over her long underwear.

She marched along, downhill, trying to quiet the panic. She walked faster and faster. What if she couldn’t find them? What if she wandered around lost, without food or water? She could die here and nobody would even notice!

She scanned the trees for markings of a trail, but saw none. Just trees and trees and trees and they were all the same. What should I do?

“Hello?” she shouted uselessly at the trees.

She sped up her pace to a near run, vaguely recognizing how much stronger her legs had gotten, how much sturdier her ankles were. She kept on going, barely noticing that she was out of breath and her lungs were aching. She barely felt the weight of her pack.

“Hello?” she shouted down a hill an hour or more later, searching for signs of water, hearing nobody.

“Can I ask you something?” Jo had gotten to the restaurant early so she could catch Zach on his way in.

Zach glanced around and then at his cell phone, -which he held in his hand. “Anything you want to know,” he said lightly, but he didn’t look quite like he meant it. “Until my shift starts in three minutes.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” She’d debated the -wording of it for all the hours it had taken her to fall asleep the night before, and that -was -what she had come up -with. She’d thought of saying Do you have another girlfriend? but she -was -worried about being confusing or presumptuous at such a moment. If he really liked her, he’d say You’re my girlfriend, Goldie.

“Do I what?” he said, like he was hard of hearing.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Besides me? a part of her wanted to say. Besides you? she wanted him to say.

“You mean Effie?” he asked.

That was the wrong answer. “I don’t know who I mean. Is Effie your girlfriend? Is she the one with the dark hair and the big—if she is, then I guess that’s who I mean.” Jo wished her mouth -would stop with the talking.

“Effie and I got together -when -we were -working here last summer,” he said, jiggling his phone around in his hand. “I didn’t realize she -was coming back.”

I bet you didn’t, Jo thought. It might have been the first completely true thing he’d said. “Are you still together?”

He sighed, as though her line of questioning -was irrelevant and somewhat exasperating. “Together? I don’t know. I mean, -we hang out.”

“She says you are her boyfriend. Are you?”

He smiled -while shaking his head. “Settle down, Clarence Darrow. I don’t know -what she says. How do I know?”

Jo -was getting annoyed too. “Let me put it this -way: if I told her you’d been trying to stick your tongue in my mouth for this entire summer, -would she have a problem -with it?”

Zach pushed his hair around on the top of his head. He’d stopped smiling. “Jo. Come on.”

Until that moment she’d actually thought that he thought her name was Goldie.

Hours later, the sun -was casting a pink light, and Ama was losing hope. She walked more slowly now, preparing to accept her early, solitary death.

She wished she could find her -way back to last night’s campsite. It had finally occurred to her, after hours of panicky twists and turns, that when the group noticed she wasn’t there, they would logically send somebody back to the campsite to find her—the last known place where the group was intact—and she wouldn’t be there. If she had just stayed put, she would probably have been found and would probably not be facing an early, solitary death. But she hadn’t. She’d long ago lost her bearings. She no better knew how to get back to the campsite than how to get anywhere else.

It doesn’t matter whether I keep walking or not, she told herself. But she kept walking anyway.

She walked until she spotted a slight clearing and a signpost. Her heart surged. She put a hand to her chest to keep it from jumping right out of there. Was the sign a mirage? She stumbled toward it, grabbing on to it with both hands, making sure it was an actual thing -with actual mass.

It was a trail map. It showed a hiking trail, of course, but more importantly, it showed a ranger station. Would the station still be open? Would somebody be there?

She printed the map on her brain. She started walking fast, vaguely aware of how easy it had become for her to follow trails. She followed the markings at top speed. The distance disappeared under her boots. If she had any nagging blisters she couldn’t feel them.

She exulted at the sight of the wooden structure as she came upon it. She threw her pack down, raced up to the door, and pounded on it.

“Please be there,” she begged of the door. She wasn’t even sure if she said it out loud or just in her head. “Please, please, please.”

The opening of the door startled her so dramatically she staggered into the building. A very tall middle-aged man in a green ranger outfit and hat stood staring at her as she picked herself up and pulled herself together.

“My group left without me. I got lost,” she burst out. She wished she could present herself with a little more poise, but she couldn’t. She tried to catch her breath.

The ranger, -whose name turned out to be Bob, gave her some time to calm down and then asked her the relevant questions. She figured she made at least a little sense in answering them, because he led her to a phone at a desk and pointed at it. “All yours,” he said. “I’m going to try to find the number for Wild Adventures.”

He went to another part of the building and left her alone sitting at the desk -with the old-fashioned phone.

She picked it up with a shaking hand. Her fingers instinctively called home. She pictured her mother and heard her mother’s voice. She hoped she could keep from crying until after she’d explained the problem. But her mom didn’t answer. Nobody answered. The answering machine picked up. Ama left a halting message, giving the station’s number and asking her parents to call back right away.

Where was her mom? What day was it? What time was it? What time was it here? What time was it there? Was it two or three hours’ difference between here and home? What state was she in, anyway?

What a strange set of questions for a person -who always prided herself on knowing exactly where and when she was. She thought of Esi, with her giant watch that told the time in all twenty-four time zones always around her -wrist.

Ama couldn’t remember her father’s cell phone number. She couldn’t remember the number of his dispatcher. These were numbers she kept in the memory of her cell phone rather than in the memory of her head. Her mother didn’t have a cell phone, and she was almost always at home. Except for now!

She knew Esi’s number by heart. She should call Esi. But what should she say? I’m lost? I’m an idiot? I got left and forgotten? Nobody even noticed I was missing? I’m the worst camper in the history of Wild Adventures? By the way, they are giving out grades, Es, and I’m getting an F? Remember how you thought I could go to Princeton just like you?

She called Esi’s number. It rang and rang. She hung up without leaving a message. Esi was spending the summer before medical school -working in a chemistry lab. Esi always turned off her phone when she was in the lab or in the library and those were the two places where she almost always was.

Now -what?

Ama rested her head on her arm. No crying yet, she -warned herself.