Alone in the Woods

by Rebecca Behrens

  “Were you actually, like, planning to write letters home? Oh my God, the envelopes are even stamped.”

  I had been. I hid my blush with a laugh. “To be fair, I thought I might get pretty bored.”

  “But you got letters from someone!” She waved three envelopes in the air above her head. “Dude, are they from Kelvin?!”

  I shook my head. “Laura—think about it. He’s here. Why would he mail me a letter?”

  “Whatever, maybe he’s a hopeless romantic or something.” Had she seen him flick the fries? Laura studied the return address. “Two are from ‘Jallard.’ And the other is from ‘Special Agent Lupine’? Huh?”

  I blushed again. “They’re all from Jocelyn.” Jallard is one of my nicknames for her: J (Jocelyn) Allard. And Joss and I used to play this elaborate game we made up that involved both spies and mythological creatures and scientists—she called them cryptozoo-somethings—and her character’s name was Special Agent Lupine. I had never realized how dorky that sounded till Laura read it aloud. “That’s, um, an inside joke.”

  “Are you still, like, really close with her?”

  I shifted my position on the floor. “Yeah, I mean, she’s been my best friend since, well…forever.” The kind of friend who mails a letter to you at camp three days before you even leave so that on the second day, when you’re peak homesickness and unsure about everything, you have an envelope to slit open and comforting words from home, along with a handy “Days Left” countdown filled out on an index card.

  “That’s cool,” Laura said, with a tone that kind of suggested it was the opposite. “It’s just that, you’re really fun and supercute. Kelvin agrees.” She giggled. “It seems like maybe you wouldn’t have a ton in common anymore with someone like Jocelyn Allard. You know?”

  What was unsaid was that she thought Jocelyn—my best friend—was neither of those adjectives. Not really fun, not supercute. It made me cringe to think she felt that way. If Laura knew her like I did, she’d know that Joss can sometimes be dorky, like anyone, and it’s true she’s not into clothes, but she’s also hilarious, and loyal, and fun. Just in a very different way.

  I nodded in agreement. Guilt formed a pit in my stomach, or maybe it was the loaded baked potatoes and grilled hot dogs they’d served us for dinner. But I still said, “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad I got to know the real Alex. Lexie.” Laura grinned at me, and it felt like winning a prize. The real Alex. Lexie. Maybe she was right. This cool version of me had been trapped inside for a long time, and camp had finally given her—Lexie—a chance to shine. “What should I do with these?” The letters from Joss were pinched between Laura’s shell-pink nails. “Pack or trash?”

  “Trash,” I said without a second thought.

  Five

  It was like I was watching one of Alex’s cell phone videos with the slow-motion effect turned on. After I heard that final chime, the expanding bubble of rage inside me popped, and the force of it sent my arm flinging down, hard, onto the side of the inner tube. Kind of like a karate chop. Alex was still draped facedown across the tube, so she didn’t see the chop coming.

  I wasn’t thinking when I whacked my side of the tube—I was feeling. So I’m not sure it would be 100 percent fair to say I did it on purpose. Honestly, my action surprised me, too.

  As my side sank slightly, Alex’s bounced upward, separating her stomach from the plastic momentarily as she hovered a tiny distance above it. Her limbs all flung out instinctively, kind of like when you squeeze one of those rubber pet toys to make their eyes pop out. Startled, her fingers loosened her grip on her phone, and it went flying free.

  It dropped onto the very top of the tube’s curve, where it bounced up again. The phone hung in the air, debating which way physics was going to take it: left, and it would fall into the middle part of the tube, or maybe even into the partially unsealed dry bag. But if her phone veered to the right, it was going to plop into the cold, murky Wolf River.

  It fell to the right.

  I gasped as soon as I heard the splash. Alex was too stunned to make a sound. She gripped the sides of the tube, which had resettled on top of the water. She slowly turned to me, blinking and gaping, and then back toward the spot where it had entered the water. “My phone!” she finally screamed.

  Then Alex flung her legs over the side of the inner tube, like a runner going over a hurdle, and splashed into the water herself.

  “Alex!” I shrieked. She wasn’t wearing her life vest anymore. I had no idea how strong the current was or how deep the water.

  We’d drifted close to the shore before the bounce had happened, so the river was shallow, coming up to Alex’s thighs once she found her balance and stood tall. I wondered if her flip-flops had managed to stay on. Then she hunched over, arms sifting through the silver-brown water, hunting for her phone. I needed to stop the tube from floating farther away. This is my fault. I had to help her, even if I hated that phone with a fiery passion.

  I tried to paddle the tube toward her, but no matter how furiously my arms cut through the water, the current kept pulling me downstream. Up ahead, our families had hit the river bend. I could hear Nolan’s and Mateo’s squeals as their tubes bounced along the patch of rapids. In seconds, they’d float out of view. “Hey! Help!” I screamed at them. I wasn’t sure if they heard me over their own noise and the churn of the water, so I kept yelling as I turned back to Alex. The only way to not leave her behind entirely would be to also jump out of the tube and then wade over to her, near the river’s edge.

  When I whipped back around to check on our tubing pod, I thought I saw Lucy turn to stare in our direction, her hand shading her eyes. But it was hard to tell if she was looking at us or her open book.

  When we’d gotten into the tube, the guide had been standing in calm, knee-high water next to us. He’d held the tube steady while first Alex clambered in, and then while I did. But now there was nobody to help me keep things balanced, and the tube was in the middle of the fast-flowing river. I swung one leg out and into the cold water. Alex’s now-empty side rose in the air like a teeter-totter. As I swung my other leg over, the imbalance became too much. The tube flipped, sending me tumbling face-first into the Wolf River.

  “Gah!” My mouth had been open in surprise, so I swallowed a huge mouthful of river as soon as I plunged in. My life vest pulled me back up above the surface, where I sputtered the water. The tube landed on top of my head, and all its contents bobbed around me. I grabbed the dry bag containing my backpack and Alex’s tote bag, then clamped my palm around the handle of the inner tube. With my free hand, I pushed upward to flip it right side up. The tube was much heavier than I expected, or maybe it’s because my feet were still kicking around the bottom, and without having my footing, I couldn’t use a lot of force to push it. After three tries, I got it to flip over. Before it could float away, I snatched the dangling piece of waxed rope that had connected us to Lucy’s tube. My feet finally planted onto the slippery bottom of the river. I blinked water out of my eyes. Alex stood only a few feet away, near the rocky bank, still frantically searching for her phone. I pushed myself through the water toward her. I glanced back once, seeing two things: One, that Alex’s life vest was now floating downstream, along with anything that hadn’t been inside the dry bag. Such as my grandma’s binoculars. And two, that our families had made it around the bend and were no longer in view.

  Surely they must’ve heard all the commotion, right? Lucy had noticed that we’d drifted, right? And they’d come back for us, or at least stop around the bend and wait for us to catch up…right?

  I tossed the dry bag—which unfortunately hadn’t been totally sealed when I’d capsized—into the wet bottom of the tube. “I’m coming back, Alex!” I waded as fast as I could, but it was hard to navigate the riverbed, full of sharp and slippery stones and sticks. Thank goodness I’m wearing water shoes.
Some rocks jutted out near the surface, almost like icebergs. I could hear them noisily scrape the plastic as the tube dragged along behind me.

  Panting, I stopped next to Alex. She whimpered as she turned in circles, her arms still plunged in the cold water, desperately groping the riverbed below. “I can’t believe this happened.” Her tone was distraught. I could empathize. I felt really bad about Grandma’s binocs.

  “My fingers are numb. I can’t even feel what I’m feeling around for anymore.” Alex sniffed and raised a hand to rub her nose. Goose bumps covered her arms and legs. Even with the sun out, once you were wet in the river, it was freezing. Especially if you happened to be wearing a super-skimpy two-piece.

  “Hold the tube and take a break. I’ll search.” I passed her the tube’s rope, then hunched over to feel my way along the riverbed with my hands. It would be a miracle to find the phone, which could’ve settled in the rocks or silt or weeds or, with the swift current at work, might already be far downstream. Not to mention, after several minutes in the river, it was sure to be waterlogged and ruined. Especially because Alex’s screen already had that one long crack zagging across it—definitely not watertight.

  But Alex was really upset, and I felt at least partly responsible, so I fished around for it anyway.

  Although Alex was supposed to be holding the tube, after a few minutes, she angrily shoved it onto the rocks, leaving it wedged in a spot crowded with fallen logs and branches, out of the water enough that it wouldn’t float away. Then, shivering, she waded back to where I was still searching. Her teeth chattered.

  “You should stay out of the river for longer,” I said. “Dry off. You’re too cold.” Soon, I would need to do the same. It’s not like my one-piece and shorts were keeping me much warmer. I could hardly feel my toes, even when I scrunched and wiggled them in my water shoes.

  Without a word, Alex slumped, splashed her way over to the tube, and dropped herself into it. The tube made a weird exhalation sound as she did, like a person having the wind knocked out of them.

  Why haven’t our parents circled back to us yet? Maybe, if they hadn’t seen that we were lagging behind—and having trouble—until they’d hit the bend, it had been too late to stop before the turn. If you’re going through rapids, even little baby ones, you have to ride them out. Plus, it had been hard enough to get our inner tube to stay in one place after Alex had dived out of it. It would be even harder to maneuver a whole pod of connected inner tubes upstream, against the current.

  I stepped a few feet closer to shore and bent to touch my hands to the bottom. Sliding my palms across the scuzzy rocks was creepy. It reminded me of that Halloween party game where you blindfold someone and then have them feel a bowl of peeled grapes, telling them they’re touching eyeballs. I shuddered. I totally respect nature, and I think even the sort-of gross things—like earthworms and egg sacs and cocoons—are at least theoretically cool, but it’s a whole other thing to be touching unknown stuff at the bottom of a river. Or unknown creatures. There are water snakes in the Northwoods. And then my palm brushed against something smooth that definitely didn’t feel like a rock or slimy stick. I shrieked and yanked my hand away in surprise.

  The thing I’d felt wasn’t snakelike but hard, rectangular, and thin, with a shape so deliberate I knew it hadn’t been made in the forest. The object loosely balanced between stones, like it hadn’t been there a very long time. I blinked, took a deep breath, then plunged my hand down till my fingers closed around it. I pulled my arm out of the water, triumphantly, clutching Alex’s phone.

  “I found it! I actually found it!”

  She sprung off the inner tube, causing it to make another loud exhalation. “What? Are you serious?” I nodded. “Oh my God! You’re my freaking hero!” A smile overtook my face. Maybe this is the start of our turnaround. I mean, what says love more than fishing around in a freezing-cold river to rescue your friend’s presumed-dead phone?

  On numb feet, I stumbled over to her, holding out the phone like a prize. Alex reached to grab it. She looked happier than she had all summer; as happy as she normally did when we pulled into the parking lot at Paul Bunyan’s. So happy that I grinned right back at her.

  Her smile faded, though, once she started tapping the screen.

  “Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to work. It was in the water a long time.” Alex kept pressing the home button, like a cell phone version of CPR chest compressions. “I mean, I’ve heard if you stick a wet phone in a bag of uncooked rice, it will absorb all the moisture, and then in a couple of days, the phone will work again.”

  “Seriously? Where can we get a bag of rice?” Her head whipped around, like she almost expected a rice emporium to pop up out of nowhere, in the middle of a national forest.

  “Um, Minocqua? There might be rice in the cabin…” Probably faded boxes of Uncle Ben’s wild-rice mix from the 1990s.

  “We need to get home fast.”

  “Alex, I hate to break this to you, but it’s probably a lost cause.” I paused, trying to find the right tone. “Now might be the time to say your goodbyes.” I was being sarcastic but also not. “I’m going to prepare a eulogy for those binoculars.” I thought of all the times I’d used them to get up close and personal with loons gliding along Buttercup Lake.

  “This isn’t funny, Jocelyn.” She pressed the home button again and made an anguished moan. “Not at all.”

  I turned away, staring in the direction of the river bend. I couldn’t see anything beyond it, and there was no sign yet of our families coming back for us. Alex’s life vest had floated away downstream, out of view. I swallowed hard, thinking of how much it would freak everyone out to see that drifting alone, before they knew we were perfectly fine.

  “Ow!” Alex frowned, slapping at a fly that had landed on her leg. They love wet skin, for some reason. I could see—and hear—a few others circling us.

  “Maybe we should cover up, so we don’t get eaten alive waiting here.” I moved past Alex, still clutching her dead phone, and toward the tube. The sun beat down on us, and I felt really exposed, standing in calf-high water. “On second thought, we should probably get back in our tube and head downstream. They’re going to worry about us.”

  “My parents will be so mad I ruined my phone again,” Alex grumbled, moving to follow me.

  When I got close to the tube, I heard hissing. I turned back around because I thought it was Alex. But her mouth was closed in an angry pout. Where’s that coming from? It sounded like the noise when you screw off the cap on your bike tires to fill them up at the gas station. Wait a minute…tires. Full of air, just like inner tubes.

  I took off running, splashing wildly.

  “Hey!” Alex called after me. “What’s your deal?”

  When I reached the tube, my stomach dropped. It was still safely wedged where she’d left it, but no longer puffed up and bouncy. The plastic ring drooped into the water and over the rocks, defeated. Deflated. It wasn’t floating anywhere.

  Which meant we wouldn’t be, either.

  Six

  “Well, this is a problem,” I said, scratching at a mosquito bite on my thigh. I heard the buzz of a fly and swatted it away, then once again after it circled back. Blackflies are deceptively small but incredibly determined.

  “How did that happen? They gave us a defective tube?” Alex kicked a flip-flop at it.

  Aside from dull scratches and discolored spots, the tube had been perfectly fine when we got in. I remembered the guide carefully inspecting it. “This isn’t the tour company’s fault. Something probably poked it while we were getting out of the water.” Or when Alex flopped onto the tube while it rested on top of a bunch of sharp objects like sticks and rocks. “Here, hold this?” I tossed Alex the dry bag, which had about a quarter inch of water at the bottom. Then I picked up the partially inflated inner tube and began inspecting it, searching for a hole. Maybe, if th
e air was leaking from the valve, we just needed to reseal it.

  That wasn’t it, though. “I found the culprit,” I said, pointing. A branch like a spear had impaled the side of the tube. When I held my fingertip next to the spot where it pierced the plastic, I could feel the air hissing out. I yanked the tube off the branch, which only made the hissing noise louder and the airflow faster. I plugged the tear with my pinkie to stop it.

  “What are we going to do about that?” Alex asked, readjusting the dry bag in her arms.

  “I don’t know—maybe with the life vest, we’ll still be able to travel downstream? Because that’s a flotation device.” If the tube could still support both of us. “I could keep the hole covered. We probably won’t have to float far. Everybody must be waiting for us right after the rapids.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, tossing the dry bag back in the bottom of the tube. “Let’s push it out, and I’ll hop in.”

  Shivering, we guided the tube a few feet into the river, and then Alex carefully grabbed the side. The tube sank from her weight. She slowly slithered herself onto it; the more she advanced, the more the tube smushed. I kept my palm pressed against the part with the tear so more air wouldn’t escape, but I could still hear the hissing.

  About three quarters of Alex was on the tube when it began taking on water. A few splashes at first, and I imagined crossing my fingers (because my actual fingers were stopping the leak) so it wouldn’t take on much more. But once Alex tucked her flip-flop-clad feet inside, water poured into the middle. The tube, and Alex, began slowly sinking like the Titanic. My puny, stinky life vest was not going to overcome that.

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” I said. “Maybe you should get out.”

  She nodded and slid off the sinking tube, holding the dry bag above the water.

  “Ow! Jeez, these things are terrible,” she said, slapping after another blackfly. “I’m covering up.” She dumped the dry bag onto the rocky shore, then yanked it open, hunting for her cover-up. Still wet and wrinkled, it clung to her arms and legs awkwardly once she put it on.