Alone in the Woods

by Rebecca Behrens

  “Fine, let’s go to the zoo.” We’d only see anyone from school there if they’d been dragged along with younger siblings.

  I kind of hated myself for thinking about how I could avoid being seen with Jocelyn.

  We biked down the quiet, leafy streets of my neighborhood and past our old elementary school. Like always, once we hit our “secret shortcut” (the bike path parallel to Monroe Street), we raced each other to the end. Joss was beating me, so I tried to trick her into slowing down—calling out that I saw an abandoned baby raccoon alongside the path, but she didn’t fall for it, because I’m sure she could hear the laughter in my voice. (Anyway, she knows too much about animals to believe me—like that raccoons are nocturnal. At least I think they are.) When I caught up with her at the end, I admitted defeat, promising to pick up our snacks at the zoo. We took a break then, resting on some sun-warmed boulders, with our bikes off to the side.

  I fiddled with a blade of grass. “Are you nervous about going back to school?” It wasn’t until I said it that I realized maybe I felt that way.

  “Not really. Except for figuring out what my TAG project should be this year. I’m thinking about focusing on the Wisconsin wolf population. And I guess the eighth-grade state tests make me a little anxious.”

  I shook my head. “Come on, Joss. You never have to worry about a standardized test. You’re always in, like, the one hundred and first percentile.” I don’t know if that’s even a thing. I paused, searching for the right words. “I meant, like, socially. If you’re nervous about that.”

  Joss shrugged. “It’s not like we’re going to a new school. I know what the deal is at Walden.”

  I pressed the backs of my legs harder against the rock, which was the perfect almost-too-hot temperature. “I guess you’re right… But I haven’t always liked the deal.”

  Joss stayed quiet next to me. We were talking like we used to—meaning, honestly—before everything got weird. Since that day at Michael’s, every conversation felt like we might be on a patch of thin ice. So we’d glided along on the surface, sticking to the safe edges, most of the time. Now I’d steered us right out into the middle of the frozen lake.

  Finally, Jocelyn said, “Maybe we can change things up. We already did.” There was an extra stress on that word, we. “Like going to the dance?”

  Which had been fun, I guess. But I still wanted the next one to be different. I wanted to be out on the dance floor. With Laura.

  In the past, Joss and I could have fun together in any situation, as long as we were together. But I didn’t know if that were still true. If being besties with Jocelyn was enough for me anymore. I’d always secretly wished we sat at a different lunch table, the one with Laura and all her cool friends. Now maybe I could be sitting there, would be sitting there. Yet Joss…I couldn’t picture her sitting next to me. It felt terrible to admit that.

  She was still waiting for me to reply. “You’re right. The dance was something new.” I dropped the blades of grass I’d been braiding and stretched my arms over my head. “Anyway, I just hope eighth grade isn’t too hard.” I meant it in all the ways: academically, socially, whatever.

  “Cosigned.” Joss stood up. “I’m hot. Let’s go. The red pandas are waiting. Did you know they’re not related to pandas at all? They’re in a superfamily with raccoons and otters.”

  (What did I say about her knowing all about raccoons?)

  “See, this is why you don’t ever need to worry about school.”

  We took the bike path alongside Lake Wingra to the zoo. The golden late-summer sun shined down on us. I wasn’t thinking about Laura or nail polish or whose lunch table I would be sitting at in September, but only the breeze on my face and the weedy smell of the lake and whether we’d see any turtles sunning themselves and the friend pedaling next to me. It felt, blissfully, like old times.

  I think about that bike ride a lot because of how everything unraveled afterward.

  Nine

  The first time my stomach rumbled, it was so loud I thought something was in the woods with us and that it was growling. I startled, raising my hands protectively in front of my chest, before I pressed one down to my belly and felt the rumble. Breakfast had been hours ago, and bagels and fruit only last you so long. At least I’d globbed on the peanut butter with abandon. By that time, we should’ve been eating our picnic in a park alongside the river. I pictured the spread Mom had packed for our families: deli sandwiches on thick sourdough bread, lots of potato and pasta salads that she’d whipped together in the days before we headed up north, because it’s cheaper to bring your own food than to buy it at a café meant for vacationers. And Mom had even made her no-bake cheesecake with the graham-cracker crust. I’d watched her load everything into the trunk before we took off from the cabin for the Wolf River. It made me weirdly sad to think of all the food going untouched, and I wondered how long it could last on a late-summer day before spoiling. Because it was unlikely anyone was eating it—they would be frantically looking for us. The potato salad, I’m sure, was a goner. All that mayo.

  My stomach groaned again, loud enough that Alex, still sitting on her leaf throne, could probably hear it. I had to eat something.

  I yanked open my backpack and dug around, one-handed, because I was crossing my fingers on my other hand. Please, please, please let me find a granola bar or something in here. I shoved my neatly folded beach towel out of the way, and my hand landed on more fabric—my sweatshirt. The sweatshirt. I was glad I had it, but at the same time, I hoped we’d be out of the woods before it got cold or buggy enough for me to need to put it on.

  It seems ridiculous to think that a sweatshirt played some part in what had happened on registration day, because it’s not like Alex hadn’t seen me wearing my favorite sweatshirt before. But I remembered feeling like there had been a bull’s-eye on my chest, at least because of how Alex had stared at me. When I’d glanced down, thinking maybe I had spilled juice or gotten bike grease on myself or something like that, all I saw was the familiar, faded image of a wolf, midhowl.

  Underneath the sweatshirt, though, was my backpack’s jackpot: not one, not two, but three plastic-covered rectangles. Energy bars I’d thrown in as emergency snacks. And in the side pocket of my backpack, I had my water bottle too.

  I pulled out two of the bars and stood up, stretching my legs. As soon as my weight went back into my feet, the water shoes tightened and clamped down on my heels. The gouges from the shoe fabric rubbing against my skin really stung. I limped toward Alex, then stopped. I slipped one bar back inside my backpack. It might be a long time before we would be back at the cabin, eating whatever was salvageable of lunch. Maybe it would be safer to start by splitting one energy bar, just in case.

  Sharing food reminded me of the day I’d run into Alex and Laura at Michael’s, and how they’d split that single junior-size dish of frozen custard. No toppings, even. The only way it could’ve been sadder would’ve been if they were sharing plain vanilla instead of chocolate. (No disrespect to vanilla, but it is made for toppings or mix-ins.) I wondered whose idea it had been to share, and I guessed it was Laura’s, because every time Alex and I went to Michael’s, we got our own treats. And if I didn’t watch mine like a hawk, she’d sometimes even snag a few roasted pecans from my turtle sundae when I wasn’t looking. To be fair, I pulled the same trick with her. As best friends, it was our right to pick off each other’s plates.

  I stopped a few feet away from Alex’s leaf throne. She was hunched over, her back to me, inspecting the torn part of Laura’s cover-up. I cleared my throat, but Alex didn’t turn to face me.

  “Are you hungry?” I finally asked.

  “Yes!” She whipped around immediately. “You brought food with you? Please tell me you did.”

  “Yeah,” I said, holding it up. I tore open the shiny wrapper and split the bar in half, then placed Alex’s share in her outstretched palm.
“I have two more in my bag.”

  “You’re amazing,” she said, spraying a bit of the bar out of her mouth as she chewed. “Anything to drink?”

  “Got my water bottle,” I said, then walked back to where my backpack was sitting atop the inner tube. I decided to carry all my stuff back to her leaf throne, now that Alex’s alone time was over.

  “Here.” I passed her the bottle. She started chugging from it, so quickly that I could hear the glug from her throat. “Whoa, don’t drink too much.”

  She stopped, panting. “Why? Not?”

  “Well, we don’t know how long we’re going to be out here, so we should probably ration—”

  She shook her head before taking a huge swig, then said, “Seriously, if we’re in the forest for more than another hour, I’m going to lose it.” She looked like she was about to take another gulp, and I reached out my hand so she’d give me back the bottle. Guess I was smart to keep the other bars from her.

  Alex finished eating, licking the sticky remnants of the bar—mostly melted carob—from her fingertips. Then she stood, scratching various bites as she rose up. “Let’s get moving. I wanna be back in the cabin and taking a shower so freaking bad.” She paused. “I mean, what I really want is to be home, in Madison, but I’m trying to be reasonable with what I ask of the universe.”

  I nodded. I didn’t exactly disagree. The forest was awesome; being lost in it wasn’t. And that’s what we were: totally lost, with no idea how near or far the river was. I didn’t know it was possible to feel claustrophobic when you’re out in the wilderness—that’s the opposite of an enclosed space. But trapped is exactly how it felt, being in the woods and not knowing how to get out. We might as well have been locked in a closet; it felt just as tight and oppressive. If I thought about it too hard, my breaths got short and my pulse began to race. I closed my eyes and listened to the rustle of the breeze, the buzz of cicadas, and the chirps of birds, and I pretended I was back in Madison, taking a walk in the arboretum or something. Any place with really well-marked trails, where it would be hard—maybe even impossible—to get completely lost.

  “Which way were we walking?” Alex asked.

  I blinked, trying to remember a landmark to guide us. Why hadn’t I picked out a specific tree or rock, or something, so we’d know which way to go when we started walking again? I guess when we’d stopped, I’d been too frazzled to think. A mosquito buzzed my ear, like it was criticizing me for not having planned better. I swatted it away. A mean deerfly immediately took its place and began circling my head like it was taunting me.

  We could keep following the sun, though. Which was much lower in the sky, but its rays still poked through breaks in the evergreen branches. “That way,” I said, pointing in its direction. West. At least if we kept walking in one consistent direction, we wouldn’t end up going in circles. That was something.

  Unless, of course, west would only lead us deeper into the wilderness. The Nicolet National Forest covers 664,822 acres. To put that in perspective, a football field is a little over an acre. Once on a school trip, they let us onto the field at Camp Randall, where the University of Wisconsin Badgers play. We got to run the whole length of the playing field, which felt superlong. So the forest was something like over half a million times bigger? If we were going in the wrong direction, we could keep going in the wrong direction for a very, very long time. There are roads and ranger stations and campsites and fire-lookout towers in the forest, and nearby towns, but you can still walk miles without seeing another human.

  So I really hoped following the sun was right.

  I managed to roll the inner tube into a long cylinder so I could tuck it under my arm instead of having to drag it on the ground or hold it overhead like an umbrella. My arms were too tired to keep doing that.

  We began walking again, this time with me in the lead. Every step I took, I felt the edge of my shoes rub deeper into the cuts above my heels. They hurt so much, I just wanted to stop. Instead, I gritted my teeth and kept going. I pictured sitting on the pier, once we were back at the cabin, dipping my heels into the cool, comforting water of Buttercup Lake. Imagining that soak made me feel a tiny bit better.

  This time, I paid attention to the landscape we passed, in case later on I needed to remember where we’d been. One tree tilted across another in the shape of an X. Two boulders next to each other reminded me of the slow, dust-covered tortoises at the zoo. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pick out those landmarks if I needed to in the future. I have a camera, though.

  As I stopped to fish it out of my backpack, Alex bumped into me. “Jeez! What are you doing? I almost fell onto that rock.” She pointed at a jagged stone sticking up to her left.

  “Sorry—I thought I should start taking some pictures.”

  Before I could explain why, she interrupted me. “Oh, because we want to remember this wonderful hike so much.”

  Even though she couldn’t see me, I rolled my eyes. “Actually, no. So we can recognize where we’ve already been.”

  Alex shut up after that, and I snapped a few photos.

  We kept walking, even though my feet felt like they were slowly being sawed off, and Alex kept exclaiming every five steps that another branch had stabbed her toes. The flies and mosquitoes surrounded us, like our sweat and grime and worry had mixed into the opposite of bug repellant—bug attractant?—and now we were irresistible to them. We were bugnip, like catnip. Or maybe the insects were coming out in full force because the sun was sinking lower and lower in the sky. Now it hid behind thick tree trunks, not just their spindly upper branches. Every part of me ached: the curve of my shoulders, where my too-small swimsuit straps dug into my skin and collarbones; my calves, from all the hiking; my head, from the worries that kept racing through my brain. All that walking, and I didn’t know if we were any closer to the river, or an actual trail, or anywhere we might find people.

  I took pictures any time we passed something unique, but there was a sameness to the landscape. The trees blended together. I feel bad saying that because they were all beautiful, with their brown textured trunks and fringe of thick green needles, which waved at us like beckoning fingers. Rich green moss climbed up their sides, like they were all wearing cozy sweaters. There were white cedars and red pines and tamaracks and hemlocks and sugar maples and aspens and balsam firs and paper birches. A smorgasbord of native Northwoods species. If we weren’t lost in the woods, but hiking, I’d want to capture them all in carefully composed photographs. But right then, I just wanted to plant one aching foot in front of the other and move forward, hoping we were getting closer to the river and my parents and Nolan and food and going back to the cabin.

  We walked until I couldn’t see where the sun was in relation to the tree line anymore because it had gotten so low. It was dusk. I had been hoping that at some point Alex would suggest we rest, but she hadn’t. So I finally broke the silence. “I think maybe we should stop.”

  “For another break?” Alex asked, her tone both hopeful and annoyed.

  “No, like…for the night?” I couldn’t believe the words as they came out of my mouth. We’re going to be lost in the woods overnight. In our swimsuits. Without a tent or anything, just a busted inner tube and a really big ziplock bag. Alone, except for the coyotes and bears and bobcats and bats and spiders and, yes, wolves. How is this real life?

  “Are you serious?” She was only a few notches below shouting. “Like, where would we sleep? In a tree house? Are we going to build a tree house?”

  “Of course not,” I shot back. Why is she acting like this is what I want us to be doing? Maybe Alex was hangry. “But we should just stop here. Or wherever we can make some kind of a shelter. It’s getting late—look how much the sun has gone down. Eventually it’ll be dark. And it’s already getting colder.” I wasn’t sweating at all anymore, and now that we weren’t moving, I felt goose bumps forming on my limbs. It mi
ght’ve reached eighty degrees in the sunshine at midday along the river, but even in August, temperature lows in the Northwoods can drop to the fifties. That’s why we wear sweatshirts and pajama pants while we stargaze and roast marshmallows, and why sometimes we even use the potbelly stove in the cabin’s living room on a particularly chilly night.

  In the dark, in the cold…we couldn’t just keep walking. We might stumble on something and fall, twist an ankle or worse. We needed to rest and hope that the people looking for us—They must be looking for us, right?—would find our shelter spot.

  “If we haven’t found a way out by the time it gets dark, we’re not going to during nighttime. We’re better off using the daylight we have left to set up a shelter. We can keep heading toward the river first thing in the morning.”

  “No. We should keep walking,” Alex said, crossing her arms over her chest, pouting slightly. “Until we literally cannot.”

  “Fine. I literally cannot anymore, okay?” I raised my right leg and pointed at my heel, which was smeared with mud and blood. “My shoes are literally killing me.” I swung my leg down quickly, before I fell over. Maybe it was just having my backpack on, but I felt super wobbly. I crumpled to sit on the nearest rock.

  Alex’s eyebrows scrunched in either disgust or sympathetic agony; I couldn’t tell which. “For the record, I think stopping is a dumb idea,” she said. But she still dropped her stuff to the ground. Then she let out a small sigh of something like relief as she plopped down next to me.