Stranded (15 page)

“It's better than nothing.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Isaac replied slowly, looking at each one of us in turn. “I'm not sleeping in that.”

He grabbed his sleeping bag from where it hung on the low branch of an ash tree. It was thinner than mine, I noticed, obviously worn, and I doubted its warmth. Mine was rated to ten degrees below zero, insulated with some weird material NASA probably invented, but what kind of crazy person would want to sleep outside in that kind of weather? By contrast, Isaac's didn't look much warmer than a flannel sheet.

“Here,” I said suddenly. “Use this.” I tossed the folded thermal wrap at him and he caught it, but not before I saw
his face. A look I recognized. Once I thought it was embarrassment, but now I knew it for what it was. Shame. He turned away without thanks.

What did he hear me say? Doesn't matter. Just don't piss him off. Don't even give him a reason.
People like Isaac always seemed to be looking for exactly that, any excuse to explode.

I turned away and crawled into the shelter.

*  *  *

Why am I in the middle?
At least with only the three of us I had plenty of room.

Oscar had zipped the two thickest bags together—making them into a giant pocket we had to slide into. Since mine was still damp, it was hung above us across the top, anchored on each side by flat rocks. It only covered about a third of the shelter, but I had to admit it was warmer here, if not slightly claustrophobic. But if it rained again we'd still get soaked.
What if it snows?

“Snug as a bug in a rug,” Chloe joked as she eased herself in.

“Hey, Wiener,” Isaac called out, his voice sounding very close. “What's it like to finally have a threesome?”

“When I do, you'll be the last one I tell,” Oscar replied.

“Touché, Wiener!”

“Perverts,” Chloe snorted. She turned over on her side and in ten seconds seemed to be asleep.

I couldn't understand how she could fall asleep so quickly. I stared up at the sky, which was not a sky of stars at all, but
a dark shadow of cover. Every cell in my body was awake, a fuzzy tingling of anticipation I thought I'd lost. But here it was again, and I didn't know whether to be relieved or guilty.

My entire body thrummed with that energy, feeling myself so close to Oscar that my breath caught in my throat as though I had choked on it.

And Oscar turned toward me, the heat of his body pressing against my own. “What is it?”

Say something
. His face was only inches from mine. I could just move into him.
Just move. Just move
.

I tilted my head forward.

“Holy shit!” Isaac screamed.

I sat up. We all did, the three of us rising up like puppets on a string.

“Sonsabitches!”

It's just a joke. He's just messing with us
. But my body didn't agree, and I didn't think Isaac was that good of an actor. It was something. Something big.

Still, I sat there motionless, fighting the tingle in my legs.

Oscar pushed the bag off, crawled out the opening, and flipped over on his side, like a soldier exiting a bunker that's under fire.

“What is it?” Chloe grabbed my arm. “What do we do?”

Chloe couldn't run away. Not yet. The whites of her eyes glowed in the dark.

“Stay here.” I dug into my pocket and retrieved the knife, pulling open the longest blade. “Use this if you need to.” It
looked pathetically small, but Chloe curled her hand around it appreciatively. “Give me your whistle.”

I crawled out the way Oscar had—forward on my elbows, toward the lake. Once outside I still didn't hear anything. I rolled onto my side, panic doing strange things to my body. My head felt light and empty, but my legs were lead weights.

Get up. Get up. Get up and move
.

I crouched behind the wall of logs and peered over. The fire was steady, and Isaac stood in front of it, staring over the flames. Oscar was next to him, crouched down like a catcher behind home plate.

I stared, only seeing a solid wall of black beyond the fire.

Then the black moved.

Oh my God, what is it?

I blew the whistle—hard. The shrillness pierced my eardrums like a hot needle.

Branches shuddered and snapped, sending the leaves moving back and forth like a massive black wave. Something large was moving out there, and I could only hope that it wasn't coming this way. It rolled past us, and in the glare of the fire, all I could make out was a dark hulk of something crashing through the bushes.

“Emma!” Oscar grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back, but I barely heard him. I was blowing the whistle with everything I had. “Get back!” He flung a large rock into the dark.

“Shit!” Isaac yelped. “What is
that
?”

I spit the whistle out of my mouth as Oscar flung a stick in
the same direction as the rock, and I waited until I heard it crash to the ground. “Something really damn big, I guess.”

“You guess?” Isaac stared at me, but I couldn't tell if he looked pissed or amazed. “Why the hell did you blow that whistle?”

“I don't know. I thought the noise would scare it away.” I took another shaky breath and held it.

“We don't even know what
it
was!”

“I think it might have been a bear,” I said. I couldn't really think of another animal that was that big, except maybe a moose. At least I hoped to God it was an animal.

“That was a stupid thing to do! What if you pissed it off?”

Oscar spun around and glared at Issac. “What would you have done, oh mighty hero?”

“I'll tell you.” Isaac considered the question. “I think I would have shit my pants and hoped the bear was so disgusted he wouldn't eat me.”

Chloe popped her head out of the shelter. “Do you think it'll come back?”

“Better not.”

“If it thinks we have food it will,” I said. “It probably smelled the fish.”

“I cleaned off the log with boiling water.” Isaac crossed his arms in defiance. “I'm not stupid.”

It's not your stupidity that concerns me.
“Well, it's probably hungry. And it might come back.”

“Then we need to do something,” Oscar said.

“Like what? It's not like Johnson here can walk.”

“Why don't you mark a perimeter then?”

“How?”

“You know how. You know, mark your territory.”

“You mean like you're trying to do, huh, Wiener?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Of course you don't. Besides, I don't have to go right now.”

“Why? Did you already piss your pants?”

Still shaking, I crawled back in by Chloe. I gave her the whistle, and she handed me my knife.

“I can't believe you did that.”

“Me either.”

“Why did you?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged, glad she couldn't see my face in the dark.

“I wish I had your confidence.”

I pulled the cover up to my chin. “Most of the time I don't.”

Chloe patted my hand. “Could've fooled me.”

“Hey, ladies.” Isaac stuck his head through the entry. “Room for one more.”

It wasn't a question. We shuffled closer together, and Isaac crawled in on the opposite side, next to Chloe. Her teeth flashed a wicked grin at me in the dark when Oscar crawled in next to me. His hand brushed my elbow, running up the length of my arm, and though it may have been an accident,
I decided to take it as in invitation. After all, we could die tonight. We might very well die tomorrow.

I grabbed his hand and rolled toward him, burying my face against his shoulder. His body stiffened in surprise, then relaxed in such an easy way it felt like we had done this before, and his other hand curled securely around mine. Neither of us spoke; I didn't look at his face and enjoyed the feel of his chin resting on the top of my head.

“We'll take turns keeping watch,” Oscar said into my hair. “In case it comes back again.”

We all agreed to take a shift, starting with Isaac.

It was a good plan, a fine idea, but every single one of us stayed awake until dawn.

The plan was this:

Boil enough water to fill the canteens.

Climb a tree.

“Climb a tree?” Oscar furrowed his eyebrows at Isaac. “What for?”

“So we can see where the next lake might be. And if there is any smoke from the fire.”

“It would have to be a really tall tree,” Oscar said.

“I know.”

“How tall?”

“Tall,” Isaac said.

“I'm not climbing a tree.”

“You afraid of heights, Wiener?”

“No. Not abnormally.”

“What does that mean,
abnormally
?”

“It means that I don't have an abnormal fear of heights,”
Oscar explained. “I have a normal fear. All people are born with a normal fear of heights.”

“Why do you always have to sound like such a smart-ass?” Isaac sneered.

“Better than being a dumbass.”

“Touché, Wiener. Touché.”

“All right.” Chloe was getting sick of their conversation. “So let's say we do climb a tree and see a lake. So what? How do we know that's the direction we should go?”

“Well.” Isaac raised his eyebrows. “That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? If we go east, eventually we'll hit Lake Superior.”

“That's probably at least fifty miles away,” Chloe said.

“More than that, I bet.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Well, we'd probably find people or something before that.”

“Says you.”

“I wish we had a compass that worked,” Oscar muttered. “Or a watch. Then we could find south.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why would that work?”

“I was talking to Chris about it the first night,” Oscar explained. “I asked him how many times he'd been out here. Said he used to go camping all the time by himself, and I asked him if he'd ever gotten lost.”

“Well, did he?”

“No,” Oscar admitted. “Said he always had a compass and
a map, but then he pointed at his wristwatch and told me that if something happened and he lost those things, that he could still make a compass out of his watch.”

“Are you sure?” Chloe narrowed her eyes. “How?”

Something turned over in my head. Chris. A watch. A fuzzy whir started at the front of my forehead. Something. Something. What was it? I was still tired, still lethargic, but something turned me around. I headed over to my backpack. The bottom inside pocket.
Where is it?

“He showed me,” Oscar said, squeezing his eyes shut to remember the instructions. “It didn't really work because the sun was already setting, but he showed me how you did it. He said you just needed a sunny day.”

“Well, we got that,” Isaac replied. “You remember how to do it?”

Oscar nodded. “I just need a watch.”

“Here.” I grabbed Oscar's hand and put the watch in it. I curled his fingers over it. “So let's see it.”

“Oh my God!” Chloe said. “You had it all along?”

The way she said it made it seem like a bad thing. “I found it, yeah, but I had no idea about the compass thing.” I swallowed, nervous. “I thought maybe his wife or family would want it back. If he did have a wife or family,” I added quickly. I turned to Oscar, who still looked a bit stunned. “You didn't tell me about the compass thing.”

“I know,” he said slowly, and slipped the watch on his wrist. He looked up at the sky.

“All right, Wiener.” Isaac crossed his arms. “Let's see it. Find us south.”

“Why south?” I wanted to know.

“That was the other thing he told me,” Oscar said softly. “That you should always try to head south, at least up here anyway. He said that if you did that, eventually you'd find a road or a trail. On the map the road ran east-west, so if you kept south you'd eventually hit it.”

Chloe nodded. “I'm so glad you talked to Chris.”

“Me too.”

“Chris never told me that,” Isaac protested, sounding more than a bit defensive. “And we spent a whole afternoon fishing together.”

“Did you ever ask him?”

“No, why would I do that?” Isaac crossed his eyes at him.

Oscar sighed. “Okay, if I remember correctly, he said you had to find the sun, line it up with the hour hand like this.” He stretched his arm out and turned, and I saw that it was a few minutes after one.

“Then what?”

“Then I bisect the angle between the hour hand and the twelve to get the direction.”

“What do you mean, bisect the angle?”

“It means cut in half.”

“I know what bisect means,” Isaac huffed. “But why?”

“That becomes the north-south line.” Oscar turned again. “So the line is here, between the twelve and the one.”

“Okay,” I said, not really getting it. I looked at Chloe—her face was open, curious, something forming behind her eyes.

“So then,” she said, somewhat excitedly as she did a slight turn with Oscar. “This would be south.” She pointed into the trees, and I wondered if that was the original direction we had come from. It seemed right.

“Are you sure?” Isaac looked disgruntled. “How do you know it's not north?”

“Because when Chris drew a picture in the sand, the
S
was at the top of the line, and the
N
was at the bottom,” Oscar explained. “I think you do it differently if you're in the southern hemisphere.”

For one second I understood, and then it was gone. “Well, it sounds like a good plan to me.”

Isaac crossed his arms, unmoved. “I still say we should find a tree. We should head east to Lake Superior.”