The Distance from Me to You (27 page)

• • •

Back at Walden's, McKenna had returned to her perch beside the radio. Different voices crackled through, lamenting spots coming up empty, sometimes the sound of helicopter rotors nearly drowning out everything she heard. Until finally she thought she heard a light female voice nearly as elated as she would have felt, announcing:

“We found him! Severely dehydrated, not completely lucid. Ankle really bad. But he's alive!”

Coordinates, details coming through. McKenna pressed her hands against her cheeks, hardly daring to believe it was real. She turned her head. Walden stood there; for a moment she thought he was frowning, then she realized it was only his permanent scowl and somewhere underneath it was a movement, a smile.

McKenna stood up. “Where will they bring him out? Can we meet him there?”

“We don't want to get in their way,” Walden said. “We'll head to the hospital.”

He already had keys in his hands. McKenna nodded and followed him outside.

How strange and
at the same time how normal, the buzz and glare of fluorescent lights. After all, McKenna had lived in the civilized world for nearly eighteen years before she took to the trail. Even while she was hiking, she had walked back into civilization and sat under lights like these in restaurants, walked under them when stocking up on groceries. All that time living between the layers of the Appalachian Mountains, civilization and its lights, cars, air conditioners, and machines lay, if not in easy reach, at least in mappable reach, a simple matter of consulting the guidebook and walking the prescribed number of miles.

Until she went off the trail.

She sat by Sam's bedside in the hospital, machines beeping, bustle visible through the glass door. Sam slept, wearing a plaster cast that went nearly up to his knee and a saline drip to replenish all the fluids he'd lost, plus antibiotics to combat the giardia he'd tested positive for. McKenna had tested negative for the bacteria, but because she'd also drunk unpurified water and been in such close contact with Sam, they gave her pills
to take as a precaution. When she filled the prescription at the hospital pharmacy, she'd automatically made a mental note of where she would keep them in her dry bag to protect them in case of rain.

It was impossible to believe that she wouldn't be returning to the trail. This moment, here in the civilized world, felt like another rest stop. It didn't feel like the end, even though her parents were on their way, and even though Sam lay here, in the hospital bed, sleeping and drugged, with that heavy cast. Sam would not be walking anywhere, not anytime soon.

She reached over and stroked the heavy blond hair off his forehead. Sam looked pale, as if everything vital had been drained from him. McKenna traced the bones in his face with the tip of her finger. When she first saw Sam, she'd thought he was gorgeous, intimidatingly so. Now his face did not intimidate her. It only made her heart swell, a painful ache that also made her feel more herself, more human. Not because his face was beautiful, but because it belonged to him.

Sam, the person she'd come to know so well, brave and vulnerable, often wrongheaded, but so smart and resilient, so unique. So willing and able to live outside society's rules, rules that imprisoned everyone within the same damn life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

The truth was, McKenna felt a lot of emotions sitting there with him, listening to the hospital machines beep, and the fluorescent lights buzz. The strongest emotion, apart from love, was relief. To see Sam lying there—wounded and depleted,
true, but alive, and warm and safe. It overwhelmed her. According to the doctors, his body would be replenished in just a few days. The ankle, of course, would take longer. But he would be all right, he would survive, hopefully even flourish. After everything he'd been through, not just these past few days but his whole entire life, Sam deserved to flourish.

McKenna had been so afraid, first that she would never find help, and then that the rangers would never find Sam, or that if they did, they would find him dead. Now the sight of him and the promise from the doctors that he would be all right flooded McKenna with such deep and urgent relief that if she started crying over it now, she might sit there for days, crying. Producing enough saline water that they could simply hook Sam up to her tear ducts.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Behind Sam's eyelids: motion, movement. The drugs and exhaustion were apparently not too heavy to combat REM sleep. McKenna watched the eyeballs roll beneath his lids, the flutter of his pale lashes. What was he dreaming about? His dad? His time on the trail? Her?

She withdrew her hand and sat back, rubbing her knees. She was still wearing the Gramicci pants that would always have round, dark stains over both knees from all those nights of kneeling in the dirt in front of the fires Sam had talked her into building.

If McKenna was honest, among the emotions she felt was anger. Anger at Sam for all the things he'd talked her into, most notably leaving the trail, walking into so much danger. Not pretend danger, but
real
. It had almost gotten them killed. But more than at Sam, she was angry at herself for not standing firm, for not listening to her own inner voice. Much as she loved him, much as—in ways—she felt grateful to him for his friendship and everything he had shown her about life, she wished she had been strong enough to listen to herself instead of him. McKenna had listened to Sam as if he had something to teach her about what was wrong with herself, what needed to be changed. When really, she didn't need to be changed, not by someone else.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

The back of her neck itched from a cluster of bug bites—spider? mosquito?—that she hadn't even noticed until she got to the hospital and all that adrenaline subsided. By now her eyelid was almost back to normal. She scratched the bites on her neck the way her mother had taught her a million years ago: around the bites, not letting her nails break into the actual swelling.

It made her guilty to think it, but McKenna felt strong. In front of her lay Sam, broken by their experience. The rangers had found him collapsed, delirious, near death. Whereas McKenna had walked out of the woods on two feet. She had escaped whole and unhurt. The only treatment she needed was
a good meal or two, lots of water, and a dose of possibly unnecessary antibiotics. Scrapes and bruises and bug bites, sure. But otherwise whole and healthy and fine.

Part of this was luck, McKenna realized. But another part. That was McKenna. Her strength and perseverance and smart, reasonable brain. She had managed to get out of the woods on her own—well, with a whole lot of help from Hank, but that in itself had been her decision, to trust that crazy hound dog. She wondered where Hank was. She hoped he was okay and wished there was a way for her to see him again, to thank him.

McKenna couldn't help but imagine it. Returning to the trail. Going back and finding Hank. Now, for real, the tears gathering in her throat started to rise. She fought them back, not wanting to wake Sam, not wanting to be crying if someone else walked in. Because the truth was, the same feeling that had overtaken her that day on Mount Katahdin was rising up inside her now. The feeling of a goal unmet. The feeling that she had decided to accomplish something, and now she would have to take a deep breath and leave it unfinished.

Hiking from Maine to North Carolina was an impressive feat. But it was not hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. Her passport lay in her pack, almost but not quite finished. She would not be a thru hiker. She would not have her certificate. Everything she'd done, everything she'd been through, and in the end she'd only failed, as surely as if she'd given up on that very first day.

McKenna leaned forward, resting her head on the tops of her
knees and covering the mosquito bites on the back of her neck with both hands. They itched terribly. Maybe the doctors—who were dying to treat her for something—would give her something to make them go away.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

“McKenna?”

A voice from a million years ago, and a voice from her whole life. McKenna didn't raise her head, not right away. She wanted to hear it again.

Her mother's voice, speaking as if she weren't mad about everything McKenna had put her through, but only so glad to see her alive and well that she formed her name as a question, afraid to be sure. “McKenna?”

In one motion, McKenna lifted her head and stood. Sam's machines beeped. Her parents were in the doorway, staring as if she were some alien being and not their own daughter. Staring like they weren't sure they had permission to cross the threshold, and also weren't sure, once they mustered up the courage, whether they wanted to hug her or throttle her.

McKenna took two steps. Her parents took four. They were there, in front of her. They'd come all this way and would have come a million miles farther. To bring her home.

“I'm sorry,” McKenna said. “I'm so sorry.”

“Oh, McKenna,” her mother breathed, and she started to cry.

Not surprisingly, her parents decided against the throttle in favor of the hug. McKenna never imagined it would feel so good just to have their arms around her.

• • •

Quinn didn't know the name of the restaurant, she barely knew the name of the town. She sat across the table from McKenna, drinking in the sight of her. McKenna had requested Italian food. They would have agreed to pretty much anything McKenna asked for. Any anger over the duplicity, the bad decisions, was all eclipsed by the fundamental fact of their daughter being healthy and well.

“It's a good thing we never knew you were lost,” Jerry said. They had barely touched their pasta, while McKenna had already devoured her salad, most of a basket of garlic bread, and half her enormous plate of stuffed shells. “I don't think we could have survived it.”

McKenna nodded. Although she was freshly showered, her loose hair clean and shiny, her clothes were as dingy and stained as a homeless person's.

“I'm really sorry,” McKenna said. “I'm sorry for lying to you. The only thing I can say is, the thought of not doing it—of not hiking the trail—was so terrible. It was something I
had
to do, and I just couldn't let anyone or anything get in my way. You know?”

Her mom refused to nod at this. At the same time, she had to admit to being impressed.

Jerry, though, couldn't let the moment slide without lecturing. “I'm not even going to go into that whole piece of it, lying to us. But I do want you to think about the danger you put yourself in. The first rule of hiking, especially if you're going alone, is to make sure someone knows where you are. That little trick you pulled with Courtney could have gotten you killed.”

“Dad,” McKenna said. “You don't think I know the danger I put myself in? I was
living
it. And believe me. I never want to go through that again. I never want to go through anything close to that again. When I say I'm sorry, I mean it. But there's a lot more to this than sorry. As far as life lessons go.”

Something so deep had changed about her daughter, thought Quinn. The McKenna she'd waved good-bye to in the driveway last June had been a brave girl. The person sitting in front of her now was an accomplished woman. Someone to be listened to. Someone to be respected.

“That boy,” she said. “You saved his life.” There were a million more questions Quinn wanted to ask about that boy—where he'd come from, who he was. But instead of asking, she'd wait for McKenna to tell her.

McKenna nodded as she took another bite.

“I'm proud of you, honey.” Quinn raised her hand to signal the waiter so she could order more garlic bread. The food here was surprisingly good. “And I can't wait to get you home.”

McKenna put down her fork. She might be a new woman, but there was a familiar look rising in her eyes. The exact kind of determination and refusal to be afraid that had characterized her since toddlerhood. Quinn knew exactly what McKenna was about to say, and she tried to channel her daughter's bravery so she could absorb it and accept it, because she already knew: she didn't have any choice in the matter.

“I'm not going home,” McKenna said. “I'm going back to the trail. I have to finish.”

A few hours later
, McKenna sat in the hotel's business center. Her parents had booked her a room adjoining theirs. She'd waited until they'd kissed and hugged her good night before coming down here to check months' worth of e-mail and Facebook messages. After dinner, her parents had told her the news about Buddy, and her eyes were still red from crying. She thought how empty the house must be without him. It must have been so hard for Lucy to go through, and without McKenna there, too. She understood why her parents hadn't brought Lucy along on this trip, but she longed to put her arms around her little sister.

Was there anything harder in the world than letting go of someone you loved?

Scrolling through the long row of e-mails, McKenna found an unfamiliar sender, with the subject line
Bridge Photo
. In a few seconds an image of a very different time and place filled the screen. McKenna and Sam, standing together on the footbridge that led them out of West Virginia.

Her eyes naturally fell on Sam, his face and smile. The light
was perfect, clear and bright, without shadows. McKenna could already imagine the picture, framed in her room at home, a place where she'd always have it to look at.

She tore her eyes away from Sam's face and looked at her own. The freckly girl, smiling and happy. In love. McKenna was still in love as she looked at the picture now, as much as ever. If she lived to be a hundred years old, she couldn't imagine ever looking at this photo and not feeling the rising warmth, an imperative kind of leaning toward him, toward Sam. She almost wanted to say it aloud right there with the hotel clerk at his desk just ten feet away.

I love you, Sam.

But she didn't.

The tears that had gathered for Buddy had company. Sam lay in a hospital bed, thinking he had nowhere to go. But he did have somewhere to go.

After McKenna had told her parents she wasn't coming home yet (it had astonished her that they'd barely protested at all), she also told them she wasn't going to Ithaca after Christmas. Because she knew someone interested in birds who would be a great help, and who could start sooner than Christmas. As long as Al Hill didn't mind working with someone on crutches.

McKenna could tell from her dad's eyes how proud he was of her for giving up this job. For everything.

Some things just don't play like you think they will. That girl in the picture, shiny and innocent and in love: McKenna
had a thing or two to tell her about standing her ground and trusting her own mind. Still, she knew that girl would understand. McKenna had to finish what she'd started. And then she had to go home and wait tables again until it was time to start school next fall.

And Sam: he had to find his own way out of the woods. She could give him a head start, but that was all.

She knew what she had to do, and it would be even harder than saving them both had been.

• • •

In the morning, McKenna and her mom did some clothes shopping, and replaced her broken iPhone. Then they drove to the hospital. So far her parents hadn't asked many questions about Sam, more or less accepting her terse explanation: “A friend I met on the trail.” Exactly true, yet not even close to the half of it.

“I'll wait down here,” her mom said in the hospital lobby, digging her phone out of her purse and settling into a chair.

McKenna stopped outside Sam's room. She could see that he wasn't hooked up to a drip anymore. There was a tray next to him, the remains of his breakfast waiting to be taken away. An official-looking woman was sitting in the chair by his bed, showing him papers from a clipboard. McKenna watched Sam, who seemed to be only half listening. He nodded and signed in a few places the person pointed to. Despite the healthy growth across his jaw—the closest to a beard McKenna had seen him with—he looked oddly childlike sitting there, his hospital gown
coming untied behind his neck, nodding obediently as the woman spoke.

After a few minutes, the woman got up, patted Sam on the shoulder, and left, brushing by McKenna as if she didn't notice her.

McKenna walked into the room. It was the first time she'd seen him conscious and awake and sitting up, since she'd left him in the hut. Her determination did not falter. But her throat went tight at the way his narrow eyes widened at the sight of her.

This, McKenna thought, is love. Two people laying eyes on each other, everything inside them widening with happiness.

“Hey,” Sam said. She'd expected his voice to come out hoarse, weak, but he sounded so normal, so exactly like himself. “Mack. Am I glad to see you. They won't let me have coffee.”

McKenna smiled. Then she sat on the bed next to him and he put his arms around her. She hugged him back, her face pressed against his neck, holding him tightly but carefully. After a full minute, she sat back and took his hand. There was still a piece of gauze, a round spot of blood at the center, where the drip needle had been.

“I'm not going to get you coffee,” she said. “But I
am
glad to see you, all sitting up and rosy.”

“Rosy,” Sam said, grinning. “First time anybody's ever called me that. What happened to your eye?”

McKenna touched her eyelid. She hadn't realized the swelling was still visible. “Bug bite,” she said. “It's a lot better than it was. Who was that?”

“Someone from hospital billing. I had to sign up for Medicaid. They'll pay for all this. The luxury accommodations.” He waved his other hand at the room, which was actually pretty nice. Private, with a flat-screen TV and a big window, the mountains that had held them hostage just visible in the distance.

“That's great,” McKenna said. It hadn't even occurred to her to wonder how Sam would pay for all this. What a sheltered life she had led, protected from the world and all its details.

“There are advantages to being dirt-poor,” Sam said.

“No, there aren't,” McKenna said flatly. “We both know there aren't.”

Sam's smile vanished. She could tell he hadn't expected her to get serious so soon. She wondered what he
did
expect, where he thought they would go from here. She picked up the bag from REI and placed it on the bed.

“Remember I was going to tell you how sorry I am about your mom when we were in a hospital room and you had a cast on your ankle?”

Sam nodded.

“Well, I am,” McKenna said. “I'm so sorry, Sam. For your loss, for your mom. For everything you had to go through. You deserved better.”

“Thanks,” Sam said. His voice was hard to read. His face was deadpan.

“We got you some clean clothes,” she said. “Jeans, T-shirts, sweats. A new pair of sneakers. I think I got the right sizes.”

He looked at the bag and blinked. McKenna remembered all the times she'd tried to buy him things on the trail and he'd refused.
Too bad,
she thought now.
You're just going to have to sit back and accept help.

“That's okay,” he said after a minute. “I mean, that's really nice, but I'm good.”

“Oh, really? Are you going to leave the hospital in that gown?”

The clothes Sam had been wearing when they found him were completely wrecked—McKenna guessed the hospital staff had already tossed them, and as far as she knew, they had never recovered his pack. And his sneakers were 80 percent duct tape by now.

Sam shrugged. He reached out and touched the handle of the bag. “Thanks,” he said eventually.

“You can thank my mom,” McKenna said.

“Yeah? Am I going to meet her?”

“Do you want to?”

She wasn't sure why their voices sounded like they were arguing. Maybe Sam could sense it, the thing she'd planned to say.

“Hey,” McKenna said. “Sam. Seriously. What are you thinking? About what you're going to do? Where you're going to go?”

“I just barely woke up,” Sam said.

“Well, they're not going to let you stay here forever. The drip's gone, you're rehydrated. What did they say about how much longer you'd be here?”

“I don't know,” Sam said. “Couple of days.”

“What then?”

“I guess I can't go back to the trail.” He gestured down toward his ankle.

“No. I guess you can't.”

Sam didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the bag of clothing, not opening it to see what she'd picked out for him. Finally he said, “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to finish. My parents are dropping me off at the trailhead tomorrow.”

Sam leaned his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. For a second McKenna thought that tears were about to snake out between his lashes. But his eyes were dry. He put his hand, the one McKenna wasn't holding, on the top of his head, cradling the top of his skull. Wide, strong knuckles, chapped and red. She leaned forward and kissed them, then sat back.

“Sam. Listen.”

In a rush, she told him about her plan, him going up to Ithaca to work for Al Hill. “He's got a place for you, an apartment over his garage. It's part of the pay. It's where I was going to stay.”

Sam still didn't open his eyes. “How am I supposed to get there?” he said.

“My dad will buy your plane ticket. You can pay him back when you can. You know, out of your paycheck.”

“Wow,” Sam said. “You've got it all figured out.”

“No,” she said. And then, because this didn't sound quite honest: “It's just a suggestion. Nobody's telling you what to do. We're just trying to give you options.”

He opened his eyes, impossible blue. “We,” he said. “That's funny. I remember when
we
meant me and you.”

She was not surprised that when she drew in a breath it felt damp and shuddery.

“Listen,” Sam said. “Before you say what you're about to say, just listen. Because I need to say it, and I need to say it first.”

McKenna nodded, twisting her hands together. She felt two ways. She wanted to get away, out of this room, to have the hard part be over. And she wanted to stay right here, wherever Sam was, forever.

“Thank you,” Sam said. “Thank you, McKenna, for saving me. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for almost . . .” He stopped, then collected himself. “I'm sorry I almost got us killed. You were right, and I was wrong. If I'd listened to you, we wouldn't be here. In the hospital. With you about to break up with me.”

It seemed so odd, the phrase
break up
. McKenna had never heard Sam speak about them in any kind of conventional terms, like
boyfriend
or
girlfriend
or
relationship
. Certainly not
break up
.

“But that's not the point,” he continued, before she could contradict him. “The
break up
part, I mean. I'm not complaining. I'm grateful. Are you listening? Grateful like I can't express.”

He paused. McKenna knew him well enough to know he wanted to say
I love you, Mack
. But he didn't, because he didn't want to make this even harder on her. A burst of her own love rose up. She didn't bother fighting it.

“The main thing is,” she said, “you need to take this. The
job. The loan. Okay? If you . . . if you're grateful. For me, this is how you can say thank you.”

“It doesn't feel like saying thank you. It feels like taking more. Letting you do more for me, when you've already done everything.”

McKenna leaned forward and put her hands on the bed next to him, clasping them as if she were praying, which, in a way, she was.

“Sam,” she said. “Sometimes people need a helping hand. You know? And that's okay. The reason I can go back to the trail, the reason I'm going to college next fall . . . it's because people, my parents, have been helping me my whole life. And you haven't had that. You've survived, and become you, amazing you, even while all those hands were trying to hold you back and beat you down. So please. Take these hands we're offering you. Because you deserve them, Sam.”

She watched his face, trying to figure out what he was thinking. More than she'd ever wanted anything in her life, she wanted Sam to agree to this. His face looked so stony and so pale, no answer visible there.

When he did speak, his voice sounded clear, composed, and calm.

“I don't suppose you'd want to come to Ithaca for the winter,” he said. “When you finish hiking. Come and live with me.”

She swallowed, sharp and prickly against her throat. “They'd never let me do that,” she said. “My parents, I mean. And Al wouldn't allow it, if they said no.”

Afraid she'd just given him a reason to say no to the job, she hurriedly added, “Anyway, I have to work at the restaurant. I promised my dad I'd make money to help pay him back for the hike. And then in the fall I'm going to Oregon. We're only eighteen. And you have to find a way to finish high school. Go to college yourself. You're so smart, Sam.”