Frozen Stiff (4 page)

I’m not a threat
, she willed to the animal across the water.

If it made a move at her, she would turn sideways. Raise her arms. Make herself look taller. Bigger. Meaner.

All these thoughts rushed through her head in seconds. And then:
If it doesn’t act aggressive, I’ll stand still until it leaves
.

Neither one of them moved.

Even from across the water she could smell its foul breath. It smelled as if it had recently eaten something dead. Its fur was a matted mess—nothing like a bear in a zoo. This bear was wild in a way she couldn’t describe.

Then another sound of rustling in the trees, even louder than before. The noise was behind the bear and farther upstream. Maybe the bear had a mate. Or worse, maybe it had cubs. Mother bears were known to rip people apart if they thought their cubs were threatened.

Suddenly the bear dropped to all fours and left the clearing as quickly as it had appeared. Only when the sounds of trampled branches faded far into the forest did Cody let out her breath, a sigh of relief that was almost a sob. Then she started back down the trail. Her steps were painfully slow because she was walking
backward. She didn’t want the bear to think she was running away. She felt as if its eyes were burning holes in her T-shirt.

Back in camp, Derek had unwrapped the food for dinner and spread it out on a tarp. All he needed was a sign saying
BEAR OPEN HOUSE
, Cody thought. The bear horn was twenty yards away on a rock. Cody didn’t have the energy for a lecture. Instead she made a silent vow to stick together until they returned to Yakutat. She never should have left him alone in camp in the first place.

“Since we’re going back a day early, can we eat tomorrow night’s dinner too?” A pot of water was boiling on the single burner. Derek ripped the package of macaroni with his teeth. “It’ll make the kayaks lighter.”

She nodded. “Sure,” she said, not really listening.

Cody clipped the bear horn on. There was no reason to tell him she had seen a bear at the waterfall. Then neither of them would get any sleep. Maybe she would tell him tomorrow on their way back to the lodge. He would be relieved they were heading back a day early.

Cody loaded the rest of the food bags into her kayak and tucked her life vest tightly over them while Derek worked on dinner. She checked the bow rope to make sure it was secured to the tree stump, then sprayed a ring of Lysol around the kayak—a trick the outfitters used to mask the smell of food. She sprayed a thick ring around the tent too, just to be safe.

After dinner Cody washed the cooking utensils,
using sand to scrape off bits of food and grease and put them in her kayak. She added more wood to the fire and scooted closer to the flames. But no matter how close she sat, she couldn’t warm up.

Why had the bear turned and split like that? She thought about the other noise she’d heard. Whatever it was, it probably had saved her life.

After half an hour she couldn’t see more than fifteen or twenty feet beyond the fire. And past the circle of light the blackness was complete. Derek poked at the coals with a twig, and sparks danced in the air. Ash floated on the chilling breeze.

Cold and tired, Cody left the dwindling fire and crawled into the tent. She stuck the bear horn in one boot, her flashlight in the other. Both boots were pressed up against her side so that she could find them in the dark. Then she wormed into her bag, shivering as her feet slid over the cool nylon.

Derek crawled into the tent behind her and arranged his boots for a pillow. “This is so cool.”

Cody wished she’d thought of using her life vest for a pillow. But it was in the kayak and she didn’t have the energy to get it.

“Too bad I can’t spend every summer in Alaska,” Derek said from inside his sleeping bag. “But my mom would never let me.”

“She might if my mom talked to her.”

There was a long silence between them. Cody figured Derek had gone to sleep. She listened to the wind rustle the leaves and worried that the bear might smell the macaroni and cheese.

Bears were amazing sniffers. The news was full of reports of grizzlies ripping into vans and cars. They could smell a stick of gum in a closed car trunk.

“Cody?”

Cody nearly jumped out of her sleeping bag. “Geez, Derek. You scared me to death. I thought you were asleep.”

“Can I ask you something?”

She caught her breath. “Sure.”

“What happened with your mom and dad? The divorce and stuff?”

Cody wished she had a pillow to punch. She’d asked herself that question a thousand times. “It was Dad’s fault,” she said, surprised she’d blurted it out like that. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

Yeah, she was mad. But not at him. “No, I’m not mad. Go to sleep.”

Soon the silence grew into a sound of its own—a dull throbbing in her ears—until the rumble of Derek’s snoring took over.

Cody was totally exhausted but her mind wouldn’t shut down. The whole family was probably still talking about the divorce. Dad and the other woman, who was only twenty-five. Now they all lived together: her father, her brother, and Tonya, the stepmother. One big happy family. It was enough to make you puke.

Back then, her mother had stared at the TV—the one-eyed monster, she called it—in a kind of shock. Her mind, her heart, everything had refused to accept
what was happening. The waiting—the papers demanding signatures, more papers—the uncertainties about their future.

Cody had missed several days of school, and when she had gone back, she hadn’t been able to concentrate. She’d sit for hours staring at her open notebook—the words blurred and meaningless, replaying the day her father told her, “I’m so sorry, Cody. Your mother and I tried to work it out.” Then the piercing words “I’m leaving.”

The following weeks stretched into months, empty days piling up like old newspapers. No movies with her friends, no hanging out at the mall, no sleepovers. Later the focus shifted to staying busy by cleaning. She’d used every attachment on the vacuum cleaner, sucking dust off baseboards, window frames, even upholstered chairs. Mostly it was just a lot of noise; it didn’t even begin to fill the void left by Dad and Patterson.

Cody hated her father for what he had done. She’d never forgive him.

At first Cody didn’t think she’d been asleep. But she awakened startled and realized she’d been having one of her nightmares about the divorce. Her parents’ voices had been calm and low. Maybe that was what was so scary. Neat and clean, like folding laundry. Orderly piles stacked and ready to be put away. Patterson in the Dad dresser. Cody in the Mom drawer.

Girlfriend
. The word fit Tonya. At least the
girl
part. One of her dad’s students at the university.
Stepmother
. Cody secretly called her
step-monster
. A small wedding only a month after the divorce. “To satisfy the court.” Dad had said it like an apology. “Because Patterson is going to live with us.”

Even now Cody could hear her mother’s sobs, could see the strained question on her lips. “I don’t understand,” she’d kept repeating, not fully aware of what was happening. Cody hadn’t been able to stand the hurt in her mother’s voice.

Cody shivered, realizing that the foot of her sleeping bag was wet. Water had even soaked that end of the foam pad underneath. “Darn,” she scolded herself,
grabbing her flashlight. “Wake up.” She poked Derek. “We have to move the tent.”

“Huh?”

“Where’s your flashlight?” she said, slipping into her cold boots. “Put on your boots.”

It was dangerous to be wet, especially if a chill set in. Body temperature would drop as blood abandoned fingers and toes to warm the vital organs. That was how frostbite started, with the destruction of skin and underlying tissue. She didn’t want to think about what happened next.

Cody unzipped the tent flap and crawled partway into the vestibule. The beam of her flashlight shone on the water there. Cautiously she touched the water. It was colder than she’d expected: a dull, bitter cold.

The water was slowly seeping higher. So slowly that she could barely see it move. “I messed up with the tide,” she said. “We have to pull the stakes and move the tent.”

“With everything in it?” Derek asked from inside.

“We can drag it to higher ground.”

Her toes felt like shriveled-up prunes inside her boots. She didn’t have dry socks. Derek didn’t have any socks. The sun wouldn’t be up for several more hours and might not even break through the clouds when it did rise.

Cody pulled up the stakes on one side of the tent. Derek uprooted those on the other side. They dragged the tent up the sandy slope to the thick underbrush encroaching on the beach. “The tent should have
been up here against the bushes in the first place,” she said, straining to catch her breath. “I can’t believe it. I must have looked at the wrong date in the tide book. How could I have been so stupid?”

“I still don’t get it,” Derek said. “How did the water come into the tent?”

Cody reminded him yet again that the fjord was filled from the ocean. “I misread the tide table,” she repeated dully. “Pretty soon the water will go back out, moving to low tide.”

“Right,” he mumbled.

With the tent restaked they crawled back inside, pushing into their sleeping bags. Cody kept to the head end of hers, which was still dry. “We’ll rebuild the fire in the morning,” she said, rubbing her shriveled toes. With a bit of maneuvering she could pull the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her cold feet. “Have a hot breakfast and thaw out.”

Cody knew Derek had nodded off because his dull snores cut through the air. Her cousin could sleep anywhere, just like Patterson. She curled into a warm ball and pictured a campfire on the beach—red hot and crackling with driftwood. Her hands were wrapped around a mug of steamy cocoa topped with marshmallows. A skillet of bacon was sizzling next to a griddle full of salmonberry hotcakes.

She was warmer now, dreaming of a cloudless sky. No drizzle or mist, just enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. Then a tidal wave crashed on the campfire. Everything was drenched. Hotcakes and bacon. Even her mug of cocoa.

Cody woke up, startled.

She grabbed her flashlight. Water was still seeping into the tent. Something was wrong.
Really
wrong. She would wake Derek, but then what? This couldn’t be the tide; it had to be something else. She tried to think of a logical explanation, a reason why the water was still rising.

What?
Nothing came to her.

“Derek?” She tried to hide the urgency in her voice. “Wake up.”

“Now what?”

Fortunately the daypacks were at the high end of the tent and still dry. “Something’s wrong.” She peeled the wet sweatshirt from her feet. Her toes had turned from prunes to Popsicles. She rubbed them briskly. “The water is still rising.”

Derek scooted back, focusing his beam of light on the foot of the tent. “The tide?”

She shook her head. “The tide doesn’t come up this high.”

“Never?” he asked.

“Never.”

The dial on her watch showed it was 3:00
A.M
. It would start getting light in another hour. There was nothing she could do in the dark. “We have to stay awake till morning.”

Derek snatched the last of his dry clothes from his pack. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you scared?”

“No,” she lied.

Cody checked the water level every ten minutes for the next hour. She marked the water’s progress with an extra tent stake. They squatted in their boots, inching backward as the water seeped higher. Soon they were shoved against the back of the tent.

“What happened to low tide?” Derek asked, shivering.

Cody didn’t answer. She was transfixed by the early-morning light as it turned the nylon dome into a bright orange ball. “At least the sun’s out.”

Derek followed Cody out of the tent into six inches of water. She stopped, staring at the strange surroundings. The water in the fjord had turned a weird color. Not the usual salty blue-green but almost clear, as if it was covered with a layer of fresh water.

In some places the water had begun invading the forest. The roots of trees and vines normally far above the high-tide line were now drowning. The eeriest thing of all was the quiet.

Cody quickly yanked the tent stakes from the waterlogged ground. They piled what they had in the tent in a soggy heap; then Cody went to get her kayak.

“We’ll be safe on the water,” she said, wading in the direction of her kayak. “If we paddle fast enough we’ll be on the beach we launched from before it’s time for lunch. How’re the blisters on your hands?”

Cody didn’t listen for his answer. She was too busy worrying about what the beach they had taken off from would look like when they got back. Would there be any beach left? Or would it be flooded? And if so, how would they unload? Unloading the kayaks
in water would be hard enough; wading through water while loaded down with gear would be impossible.

Cody stopped in her watery tracks. Her kayak had been tied to a stump on the beach twenty feet above the high-tide line. “I don’t believe it.” She heard the panic in her voice.