Connect the Stars (11 page)

Everybody stared at me. They were trying. Really trying. Trying to understand me. But
I
didn't even understand me. Time ground to a halt and silence fell and the whole thing turned into a disaster.

Finally a redwing blackbird whistled a song. “Listen,” whispered Kate. It was beautiful.

“Wait. What's that?” asked Louis when the song was done. He cocked his head curiously and turned to look behind us. And then he was lying on his back in the trail.

Randolph had smashed into him from the rear and was
sprinting up the trail, Daphne hot on his heels. They'd sneaked up on us while I was yammering about wheelbarrows. Daphne shoved Audrey down as she and Randolph disappeared up over the edge of the creek bank. For someone who tromped around in boots as big as Frankenstein's, she could move fast.

“Come on!” cried Kate. “We have to catch them!” The sun beat down. All the strength I'd felt half an hour before was gone. My thigh muscles twisted into knots.

By the time we got to the flag, Randolph had yanked it out of the ground and was waving it in both hands. Audrey tried to tear it away, and Daphne struggled to pry her off Randolph. I did my best to peel Daphne loose from Audrey, but Edie and Cyrus panted up the hillside at that moment, carrying their packs
and
Daphne's and Randolph's, and they dropped the packs and each of them grabbed one of my arms. Just as Kate and Louis laid hold of them, Randolph gave a huge heave and tore the flag out of Audrey's hands. Holding it above his head, he sang, “We are the champions, my friend!”

Atrociously.

Louis covered his ears.

Daphne rolled her eyes.

“What?” Randolph asked her. “We got the flag!”

“It's not fair!” cried Kate. “We were in the lead all the
way. We figured out all the clues. We did all the work. We won it!”

“Nevertheless,” said Daphne, “we have it.”

“But
we
have to have it,” I said. “I mean, we really really
have
to have it.”

“Shut up, Memory Boy,” snarled Randolph.

“No. Wait a minute. Hold on, Randolph,” Daphne said. She looked at me with interest. “Memory Boy has something to say. I think we should listen.”

Randolph's eyes just about popped out of their sockets. He ground his teeth so hard, I thought they would shoot sparks.

I glanced at Louis. He sat in a dusty patch where nothing grew. He looked at me, shrugged, and pulled his hat brim over his eyes. “We need it for Louis,” I blurted.

“Aaron, don't—” said Audrey, glaring at Daphne.

“Daphne really wants to hear this, Audrey,” I said.

“I really want to hear this, Audrey,” Daphne said sincerely.

So I told her. I told her how hard it was for Louis out here, how he didn't sleep. Kate jumped in to tell her how we'd volunteered to give Louis the air mattress on our nights, so he'd have it all the time. Audrey didn't say anything during this. She just stared at Daphne, and once in a while, she shook her head.

“Amazing,” marveled Daphne.

“Thanks,” Kate and I said. Wow. We'd had Daphne all wrong.

“Just plain astonishing,” Daphne said. “What are the chances, Randolph?”

“What are what chances?” he said sulkily.

“That of all the stupid survival camps in all the lame deserts in the entire world, the four biggest losers on the planet end up right here, on the same team, losing to me?”

“Yaaaaahaaahaaa!”
brayed Randolph like a delighted donkey when he realized what Daphne had been up to. “I don't know, Daphne. I don't know!”

“Had you going, didn't I, Memory Boy?” Daphne smirked. “You've sure given me a lot to think about while I relax on my air mattress.”

“What?” I said. “I mean—I thought you were—”

“It's not enough to win.” Daphne snarled. “The other guy has to lose. And you, my friend, are the other guy. And so is she and so is he and so is she,” she added, glancing at Kate, Louis, and Audrey.

“Hah!” crowed Randolph.

Daphne's group shouldered their packs and started back the way they'd come.

“Daphne, you forgot the last clue,” piped up Cyrus timidly.

“What?” barked Daphne.

“‘By turning, turning we come out right,'” he said.

At the word “turn,” I saw Audrey glance over my shoulder. A look of disbelief appeared in her eyes.

I looked too, and right behind me jutted—Caesar's Nose? I peeked at the trail under our feet, and I realized that the shadows were falling in the same direction as when we'd started the day before.

“No way,” I whispered.

“Did he really do that?” murmured Kate.

It looked like Jare had hiked us around in a great big circle with all those peculiar clues of his. Sure enough, through the scrubby trees on the hillside below, I could see the sun glimmer off pots and pans beside the campfire, and the orange water cooler glinting in the tree.

“Shhh,” I hissed quietly, because Daphne hadn't figured it out yet.

“Shouldn't we use the last clue, Daphne?” persisted Cyrus.

“No, Ant Brain,” snapped Daphne. “We already have the flag, don't we?” And she took off in the wrong direction.

As he shouldered past Louis, Randolph fished something out of his pocket, wound up, and pitched it at Louis's face. Louis flinched, but just before it hit him, the bat
unfurled its leathery wings and flew away.

Louis yelped and collapsed in a heap, and Randolph laughed.

“I'm going to kill you,” muttered Kate, lunging for Randolph. Audrey and I managed to grab her. She thrashed like crazy, but she was tired, so we managed to keep our grip.

“I'm a licensed cage fighter,” chortled Randolph. “I'd like to see you try.”

“What you are is a liar,” said Audrey.

“I'm not a liar!” cried Randolph.

“You're not a licensed cage fighter, and you don't hate your mom, and your mom didn't make you work on your birthday,” said Audrey slowly. “You just said all that to impress Daphne.”

“What—I—how do you—you were spying?” stammered Randolph. “Cheaters!” He turned to Daphne. “Daphne,” he whined, “they're cheaters! They were spying on us!”

Daphne didn't seem too upset at this news. In fact, she looked like spying was the only thing we'd done since she'd met us that she actually admired.

“And let me be the first to inform you, Randolph,” Audrey went on, “Daphne is not impressed by your wild stories.”

It was true. Daphne didn't look impressed with Randolph. She looked disgusted.

Randolph charged at Audrey. Kate managed to yank one arm free in time to grab my water bottle and squirt it in his face.

“Well now, what have we here?” said Jare, who'd hiked up the hill just in time to catch her. “You weren't wasting water in the desert, were you?”

It only took about three minutes to walk to camp, because Jare
had
hiked us around in a giant circle, which meant that even though we'd trekked ten miles, we'd never been more than three miles from where we started. This was his way of keeping track of us. “Hey, Little Miss Sunshine,” he said to Kate as soon as we got back. He picked up a ten-pound railroad spike from beside the abandoned tracks. “Come over here and turn around.” Kate did. Jare unzipped her pack and dumped in the spike. Now Kate's pack probably
did
weigh as much as she did. Audrey had to catch her as she stumbled backward, and help her stand up straight.

“What's that for?” cried Kate.

“To carry,” said Jare.

“Carry where?” asked Kate.

“Everywhere,” said Jare.

“Why?” asked Kate.

“'Cause you need to learn a lesson,” said Jare.

“What lesson?” asked Kate.

“Don't waste water in the desert,” said Jare.

“How long do I have to carry it?” moaned Kate.

“Till your lesson is learned,” said Jare.

The only bright spot in the whole episode was that even though we didn't win the air mattress, Daphne's team didn't either. Jare wasn't too happy with the way Randolph had treated that poor bat. So he kept the mattress for himself.

That night, when the fire was nothing but embers far dimmer than the stars, and the other groups had wandered off to sleep, and Daphne crouched in the brush staring daggers into the dark for reasons she didn't bother to explain, and Randolph hid in the shadows watching her, I told Louis I was sorry we hadn't done a better job. Audrey and Kate said they were too. But Louis said
he
was the one who was sorry. He said next time we found ourselves chasing a flag, and he started wigging out, just leave him behind and go capture it. Maybe even choose the fastest one of us to go alone, for instance Kate. But definitely ditch him.

I said, “Experts agree that individuals in survival situations may be prone to loneliness, face greater individual responsibilities and workload, and may not be able to
establish full perimeter security, while members of large groups will enjoy the benefit of a full support system, more numerous solutions to problems, a divided work effort, and the ability to sleep in shifts, not to mention companionship and the ability to establish full-perimeter security. So, um, like I said earlier, it's better to keep groups together.”

“Okay,” Louis answered. It didn't quite seem like he believed me. But it seemed like he wanted to believe me. “If you say so!” He almost sounded cheerful. “By the way,” he asked, “what's full-perimeter security?”

“That part I'm not totally clear on,” I admitted.

“I guess I'm going to sack out,” yawned Louis. I could hear the fear returning to his voice. Nighttime. The long black tunnel.

“How about,” said Kate, “if the rest of us stay awake with you two hours at a time? That way you won't feel so lonely. Maybe you'll get some sleep?”

“No,” said Louis. “You're all tired. I couldn't ask you to do that.”

“You don't have to ask,” said Audrey.

“Because we're doing it,” I added.

Louis unrolled his bag, and Kate sat in the doorway of his tent.

“You made that up,” Audrey whispered to me after they were gone.

“What?” I asked as innocently as I could.

“That it's better to stay together. I mean, the main facts were probably right,” she said. This seemed important to her. “But you made up the last part.”

I didn't quite know what to say. Because I
had
made it up. The jury is still out on the question of splitting up in survival situations. Nobody knows if sticking together is better. So I admitted it. But I also told Audrey that since there's no way we could ever leave Louis behind, it was clear sticking together was better for
us
.

“Maybe
you're
Louis's white chickens,” Audrey said.

“What
are
white chickens?” I wondered.

“You're the one who brought them up,” Audrey said. “I thought you knew.”

“Just because I bring something up doesn't mean I know what it is,” I reminded her.

“Maybe it's time to turn in,” said Audrey, as if this conversation had gone on long enough. But I swear I could see her smiling in the last of the firelight.

El Viaje a la Confianza

I WON'T GO SO FAR as to say that the camp started to feel like home after the failed flag contest. For one thing, the whole point of the camp, at least for me, was that it
wasn't
home. No school, no Lyza, no best friend who turned out to be a liar and a thief and—worse than either of those—not my friend at all. For another thing, I wouldn't feel at home with the likes of Daphne and Randolph if we were the last three people on Earth. And then there was Jare. In moments, I suspected that Jare might be a total psycho, even though Aaron said it would be more accurate to call him an individual with antisocial personality disorder. Either way, the guy didn't exactly give off homey vibes.

But I will say that the days started to take shape, arrange themselves into a pattern. I'm not really talking about the camp's routine, although that had its own pattern: we'd
wake up; make, eat, and clean up after breakfast; PHWSS; hike, either as a group or in teams, breaking once for lunch; have wilderness survival training—orienteering, fire building, wildlife identification—make, eat, and clean up after dinner; have campfire time; go to bed. That was the daily, predictable stuff.

I'm talking about the pattern that the daily,
un
predictable stuff took on. Or maybe the pattern I imposed on it. When I mentioned this to Aaron, he went on for some time about a guy named Klaus Conrad, a German psychiatrist who studied apophenia, which, I think, is the tendency to see patterns in completely random and meaningless data. After about thirty seconds of scientific jargon, I got confused and told Aaron to stop, which caused him to shift gears and start talking about a related phenomenon called pareidolia. I had to admit that this was more interesting, especially when Aaron got to the part about people seeing faces in inanimate objects: the man in the moon, a face on Mars, the Virgin Mary in a tree stump, the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese, Jesus in a grilled cheese, Jesus in a pierogi, Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun (as if religious figures had nothing better to do than show up in pieces of food). Anyway, whatever the reason, after a while, our days seemed to fall into a kind of rhythm.

Maybe because we were in the desert, which is an
extreme place—extremely hot, extremely dry, extremely beautiful, extremely scary—the rhythm wasn't a relaxed one. It was full of highs and lows. In my tent at night, when I took inventory of my day, I took to calling them “hells” and “heavens.” Every day had a hell. Every day had a heaven. I guess it was a way to organize it all in my head. Also, I think it was a way to not forget what was happening at the camp, because the longer I stayed, the more I understood that, for better or worse, it was an experience I'd want to hang on to.

Day Four

Hell

I grabbed a cactus. I wasn't even falling or anything, at least not at first. I just leaned over to look at what I thought was a rattlesnake's rattle—minus the rattlesnake—on the ground and used the cactus for balance. It burned so much—sent flames of pain shooting up my arm—that at first my discombobulated brain thought I'd grabbed a hot coal.
Then
I fell. Fell and rolled around awhile, not just shrieking but actually yelling “Ow, ow, ow,” just like a comic-book character in a seriously unfunny comic book.

Kate ran for Jare, and when he came, he said, “And here I thought you were the one member of your group who might have some common sense,” thus neatly insulting
four people with a single sentence and making me feel even more like an idiot than I already felt. With a sneer but with no explanation whatsoever, he tossed a bottle of craft glue and a plastic bottle of witch hazel in my general direction.

“What are we supposed to do with this stuff?” asked Louis, but Jare had already lumbered off.

“In addition to using witch hazel bark and leaves for medicinal purposes, Native Americans also used its Y-shaped branches for dowsing,” said Aaron.

“What's dowsing?” asked Kate.

“Finding underground water sources,” said Aaron. “Well, mostly. People also dowsed to find precious stones, oil, even gravesites, although I'm not sure if they used witch hazel for all those purposes. Dowsing is also called divining and doodlebugging.”

“Doodlebugging? I thought doodlebugs were roly-polies,” said Louis. “You know, those little gray bugs that look like armadillos.”

“The Latin name for the roly-poly or pill bug or wood louse is
Armadillidium vulgare,”
said Aaron.

Just as I was starting to wonder if that was because both armadillos and roly-polies curled up in balls, I remembered that I was in horrible, excruciating pain.

“Who cares about wood lice?” I yelped. “Hand. On. Fire!”

About thirty seconds later, Kate was pouring craft glue all over my palm. About a minute later, Kate and Aaron were debating about whether to pull it off fast, like a Band-Aid (“No!” cried Louis) or peel it off slowly, like when you apply a fake tattoo (“No!” cried Louis), and I reached over with my good hand and ripped the darn thing off, so fast that the white-hot flash of pain almost didn't register. Almost. We all leaned over to examine my palm at exactly the same time so that we blocked the light and no one could see a thing, and then we all leaned out again. I closed my eyes and stuck out my hand in Kate's direction.

“Kate, you look.”

After a few seconds, she said, “It's swollen and red and kind of terrible looking, but I don't see a single spine.”

I opened my eyes and stared down at my poor, throbbing palm. Gingerly, I ran a finger over it. Smooth. I squeezed my eyes shut and thrust out my hand again.

“Witch hazel,” I said. “Please.”

I heard Kate struggle with the lid to the bottle, and then someone must have gotten it off because suddenly the inside of my nose was prickling with a medicinal smell. It wasn't bad, really. I mean, you wouldn't want to use witch hazel for perfume, but at least it smelled powerful, and I was hoping for a powerful cure. But I heard a gagging noise and opened my eyes. Louis, looking, as my mom would
say, a bit green around the gills.

“I'm okay,” he said, following it up quickly with “I'm not okay.”

“Go,” I said.

“Sorry.”

He bolted for the brush at the edge of the trail. Later, when we were hiking again, my hand better, if a tad smelly, Louis caught up with me to say, “I'm sorry I'm hanging back, but that smell—it's like a cross between cleaning fluid and pink erasers and the inside of airplanes.”

“No problem, Louis,” I told him.

And it wasn't a problem, but just the three of us hiking together—Aaron, then Kate, then me—felt incomplete, off-kilter. Kate's narrow back, her swinging, shining bob of black hair, was a new view, not a bad one, but unfamiliar and also oddly faraway, like I was looking at her from a distance. That's when I realized it: without meaning to, I was leaving a Louis-sized gap, saving his place.

Heaven

After dinner that evening, Kate, Aaron, and I climbed a hill and sat on its stony, nearly bald top to watch the sun drop down into the scooped-out place between two faraway mountains. A glowing strawberry pink filled the scooped-out space, while thin, flat, opalescent clouds floated above
like ice islands in a punch bowl. We didn't speak, but if we had, it would have been under our breaths, in the most reverent of whispers. Just as the colors hit their supersaturated peak, I heard someone scrambling up the hill behind us, and there was Louis.

Kate started to move over to make a space between her and Aaron, but Louis walked over and sat down right next to me. I could smell the witch hazel glazing my palm—I'd just smeared on a fresh coating after dinner—so I knew Louis could. But he sat, steady as the red rocks surrounding us, and he watched the sunset.

We stayed until the pink faded and the dusk lay down in layers of shimmering gray, violet, and a smoke blue so lonely and perfect, you felt it at the base of your throat and the pit of your stomach and all the way down your spine. It was the perfect moment, and even though I was keeping to my no-friends vow, I was happy we were all there to see it. When the first stars came out, I said, “I'm glad you came up, Louis,” and Louis said, “Me too.”

Day Five

Hell

During a break in a hot, long desert-floor hike, after I resisted the urge to frantically gulp water from my bottle and instead drank it down in long, careful swallows the
way Jare had told us to, I flipped over my pack to take a quick glance at the photo of me with my parents. It was something I did when the going got especially tough. I'm not sure why. Maybe because seeing us smiling through the clear plastic of the luggage tag reminded me that the going wasn't always going to be this tough. Maybe to remind myself that if I died of exhaustion and vultures picked my bones clean, at least two people out there would definitely miss me. Either way, looking at the photo made me feel stronger, if a little bit homesick, every single time.

Except this time.

Someone had scratched out my parents' faces. Not just their faces, but their whole heads were obliterated with white scratch marks, some so deep that they'd ripped through the photo paper. Whoever had done it had probably used a rock, but the paper looked clawed. For about ten seconds, I felt slammed by fear and grief, as if my real mom and dad actually had been attacked by some vicious animal and were gone, clawed right out of the world. I eased the photo out of the luggage tag and held it in my two hands, my eyes burning with tears. Then I looked up and saw Daphne, perched on her pack and staring at me with her beady eyes like the bird of prey she was. Slowly her mouth twisted into a mean smirk, and I felt a fiery rush of rage. I wanted to body-slam her, rip out her ketchup-colored hair
by the fistful, and I had just jumped to my feet to go do it, when a voice right behind me said, quietly, “Don't give her the satisfaction.”

It was Aaron. I handed him the photograph.

“I know,” he said. “I saw it just now.”

“Why?” I demanded furiously. “Why would she do this?”

Aaron's dark eyes got that narrow, thinking look, and I prepared myself for a jargon-laced paragraph about the latest scientific research on photo-destroying psychopaths. Or something. But slowly, tentatively, Aaron said, “Remember what she said about seeing your parents at the airport? I think maybe, even though she would never admit it, she wishes her family were more like yours. That”—he pointed at the photograph—“is her way of trying to take your parents away from you. Which is stupid. Because that's just a picture, a piece of paper. It's not them.”

I stared at Aaron, blinking, so surprised that I forgot my plan to yank out Daphne's hair.

“What?” he said.

“That's it? No facts?”

“Oh! Sorry. Hold on.”

I shook my head. “No, no, I think you might be—”

“What?” he said nervously.

“Right.”

Aaron looked shocked. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Thanks.”

Aaron smiled. “Anytime.”

I looked down at the picture that was nothing but a picture, and I folded it up and slid it into my pocket.

Heaven

It was at the tail end of the most grueling hike we'd done so far. Twelve miles on the desert floor, although “floor” conjures up an image of a flat, smooth surface, and what we discovered is that it's not flat or smooth or anything close to easy. The land was pitted and scarred and scattered around with these little hills, so you had to watch your step—every step—and the terrain was so up and down, up and down, that my thighs practically cried out in pain. And it was hot. Oven hot. Kiln hot. We were like clay pots in a kiln, except that clay pots don't have to hike, endlessly, and we did. The only breezes were dragon's-breath gusts that did not deserve to be called anything so breezy as “breezes.”

And did I mention that we were on mile
twelve
. We had just taken what Jare announced (with evil satisfaction) would be our last break before we got to our next campsite, and along with everyone else, I groaned, and stood up on my aching legs, and slung my monstrously heavy pack
over my aching shoulders, and started to hike, and I'd gone maybe ten steps when I realized that even though it was hard, it wasn't
that
hard, and I also realized that just a few days ago, it would have been
impossible
. My heart gave an exultant leap. I was getting stronger, sturdier, learning to work hard and get along with the bare essentials. Henry David Thoreau would have been proud.

Day Six

Hell

In the middle of the night, or I guess it was very early morning, I woke up to the sound of someone crying. It was muffled, as if the person doing it was trying to keep anyone from hearing, and somehow that lonely, dreary, low-key weeping was more heartbreaking to hear than loud sobbing would have been. I sat up and listened more carefully, and I could tell that the crying was coming from the tent next to mine. Kate's tent. I started to get up to go talk to her, but her crying just sounded so turned inward, so private, that I changed my mind. I lay in the dark, listening, for a long time before she finally stopped.

Heaven

After an hour of the dry, stony, uphill hike Jare had sent us on, Aaron, Kate, Louis, and I came upon a little grove
of madrone trees. It's what the desert does: you think you know where you are and what's around you, and then, suddenly, there's something unexpected to knock the breath out of you, cactus flowers the color of lemon drops; two brilliant blue birds on a branch; a peregrine falcon, wings folded, plummeting like a soundless missile; or, like with the madrones, a flash of emerald when you least expect it. The trees had skin-smooth, tawny bark on their curving, twisting limbs, and they seemed to spring out of a kind of cup in the side of the hill, which I guessed trapped enough water for them to thrive. The madrones were a gathering of rarity and grace, like a family of gazelles. We stood, hushed, and drank in the sight of them.