Alone in the Woods

by Rebecca Behrens

  “Alex,” I said, softly at first. Then louder. She made a snuffling noise and moved her head to the other side. I didn’t want to take my arm out from underneath the towel, but I needed to get her up. Shivering, I stretched out my hand and lightly tapped on her shoulder. “Wake up,” I rasped.

  “Don’t want to,” she mumbled.

  “It’s morning.” Sunrise was around six and sunset at eight. The day would be long, but it might take hours to wend our way out of the forest, especially in our condition. I didn’t want to spend another night like this. I didn’t know if we could. “We need to start walking.”

  “I can’t move,” she said, moaning.

  “Try.” I reached for my wadded-up sweatshirt, ignoring the ache in my arms. A mosquito landed near my elbow, then another by my wrist. I slapped at both, gasping at how much the impact stung against my poor, pink flesh. Then I quickly worked the sweatshirt over my head. Protection from the bugs, and sun, was great, but the fabric—normally so cozy!—felt awful against my raw skin, rough like sandpaper. I think there’s one bug-repellant wipe left in my backpack. We’d have to share it, but it would be enough to protect our legs while we were walking. At least for a while.

  Alex was still lying down, on her back, but now her eyes were open. She blinked up at the sky above the trees.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Do I look okay?” she replied.

  I couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic or legitimately wanted to know. I scooted closer and peered down at her face.

  Her eyelids were as puffy as mine felt, and her face looked like she was having a truly awful breakout of acne—but the bumps were bug bites, not pimples. Worrisome, though, were her lips. They were swollen, like the time we were hanging out in the backyard while Mateo and Nolan were playing with a boomerang, and Mateo accidentally tossed it right into Alex’s mouth. Even though she’d iced it immediately, her lower lip still swelled up and bruised, and it stayed that way for a couple of days. Bee-sting lips, her mom had called it.

  “Did you hit your mouth somehow yesterday?” I asked, trying to remember if she had. Maybe when we’d first dived into the river she’d bumped it on something.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why? Is my mouth messed up?” She brought her fingers to her lips and began gently pressing.

  I bit down on my own chapped bottom lip, thinking. I didn’t want to freak her out. “Well, it looks a little swollen…” Maybe she had bee-sting lips, literally. Maybe something bit her mouth while we were sleeping, and now she was having an allergic reaction. That was terrifying to consider. It’s not like we had an EpiPen.

  Alex dove for her tote bag, and after rummaging through it for a few moments, she pulled out a sparkly compact with a mirror. Once she flipped it open and saw her reflection, she shrieked. “Oh my God! What’s wrong with me?”

  Freaking out wouldn’t help us. “It’s probably just dehydration or sunburn—your legs are kinda pink.” Although the redness on her legs appeared more rashlike than a sunburn. “Does your throat feel normal?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes?”

  That was reassuring.

  “We really should start walking,” I said, even though I couldn’t think of anything that sounded worse considering how much my feet hurt, how much the rest of me ached, and how woozy I felt from being cold, sleep-deprived, and hungry. Hungry. I’d been going for the energy bar before I woke up Alex. I unzipped my backpack and pulled it out. It had gotten smushed or had melted at some point, and the bar had flattened into the shape of the wrapper.

  “Oh, food,” Alex said, with something in between a sigh and a growl. She moved to her hands and knees to scoot toward me, grimaced, and then sat back, holding out her palm.

  I gripped the bar in my hands, staring like if I looked hard enough, it might magically multiply. This was the last bit of food we had. Should we eat all of it? We needed energy to walk. But what if we didn’t find our way out in the next couple of hours and had to spend another night... “We should ration this.”

  “Ration it? It’s one little bar. That’s, like, what you would eat when food is already being rationed.”

  “Yeah, but this ‘one little bar’ is all the food that’s left. I had three in my backpack. We ate the other two yesterday. After this, nothing.”

  “I’m eating half of that. I don’t care what the consequences are.” She opened and closed her palm.

  Sighing, I unwrapped the bar. I broke off half, then thought better of it and tore that in half again. I placed her portion in Alex’s palm. “Start with that.” I wrapped up the rest of the mushy bar and squirreled it away in my backpack, because if it stayed out, I didn’t think I’d have the willpower not to gobble it up.

  Alex chewed furiously, then broke into a cough as she swallowed. “Water?” she croaked.

  I understood when I tried to swallow the tiny bite I’d been savoring. My throat was so parched, the food wouldn’t go down right. I grabbed my water bottle, which felt distressingly light. Either half full or half empty, and considering our situation, “half empty” was the one that fit. I took a tiny sip, then passed it to Alex.

  “Ration that too,” I croaked.

  She took a long sip and only stopped when I reached to pull the bottle away.

  “Are you okay to leave?”

  She shrugged, then winced at the movement. “I guess. I mean, unless we should stay in one place, if that’s a better strategy for them to find us?”

  I wasn’t sure. Everybody knows that if you’re lost, you shouldn’t keep walking or you might get more lost. But we were already so deep in the forest, and we didn’t have enough supplies to comfortably—or safely—wait where we were. If we were near fresh water and some kind of food source, like blueberry bushes, maybe we could hang out till rescuers got there. But we weren’t. “We should at least find drinkable water. Otherwise, we’re going to get really dehydrated.” There was always the rainwater pooled on leaves, if we got desperate.

  Alex nodded, and I was relieved—it seemed like every other idea or suggestion I had, she’d fight me on.

  “Then let’s get moving,” she said, rising to her feet.

  She shoved the plastic dry bag in her tote and the wet magazine too. I rolled up the tube, pausing to inspect the torn spot. The jagged hole really wasn’t that big. If only we had something we could patch it with. Leaves? They’d fall off in the water. The one bandage? Too small and it wasn’t the waterproof kind. Pine pitch or some other kind of tree sap? Maybe we could use that to get a big maple leaf to cover it…

  “Are we walking or not?” Alex shifted back and forth, wincing every time her weight moved from one foot to the other. The swollen tops of her feet bulged out from the straps of her flip-flops. She slapped at a mosquito, waved away a fly. Then she shivered and tried to hug her cover-up tighter, but there wasn’t much to hug.

  “Try wearing your towel to keep the bugs away. And to stay warmer.” I’d rolled mine around my waist like a skirt. With that and my sweatshirt on, the bugs could only swarm around my head. Fewer to swat, at least. I’d reconsidered using the last bug-repellant wipe. The insects were the worst around dusk. I really hoped we’d be found by then, but if we weren’t—I needed to save the wipe to get us through the night.

  Alex draped her towel, which was covered in pine needles and leaf remnants, around her shoulders. I shrugged on my backpack, then tucked the rolled-up tube underneath my arm. The first full step took my breath away because the pain in my blistered heels was so bad. But I gritted my teeth and took another step anyway. And another.

  I paused for one last look around us, at the spot that had been our home for the night. In daylight, it was pretty: a sun-dappled clearing in the middle of a cathedral of pines, the ground softened by moss and needles. It smelled fresh and clean, like cedar. On any other day, on any normal hike, I’d sa
y it was a perfect spot to linger and drink in the Northwoods atmosphere. Listen to the warblers serenade us. But today, I just wanted to get far, far away.

  I needed to do more one thing before we could go: make some kind of sign. I’ve absorbed enough movies and TV shows and books about people lost in the wilderness to know that, sometimes, they end up walking in circles over and over. I didn’t want that to be us. I had my camera, but I couldn’t photograph every landmark we passed. The better thing to do would be to leave something very noticeable behind, like one of our towels. The thing was, we needed pretty much everything we had except the soggy magazine, but I didn’t want to harm the forest by leaving human stuff in it. That was like littering, even if it had a purpose. The rules in a preserve or park are simple: carry out what you carry in.

  If others were looking for us and came across this spot, I wanted them to know that we’d been there. I could do that by making a cairn.

  “What’s the holdup?” Alex asked, her voice as irritated as it was weary.

  “We should mark that we were here. I’m going to make a cairn.”

  “Which is…?”

  “A human-made stack of rocks. Sometimes people use them to mark trails or to show which is the right, or wrong, way to go.”

  “Are we trying to lure someone here?” She snorted.

  “No, but it might be helpful to mark that we’ve passed through. Because people are looking for us. Hopefully.”

  “Why don’t we just spell out ‘Help! We’re lost’ in rocks and twigs, then?”

  That wasn’t a bad idea, but it would take a lot longer and might be less noticeable to people stomping through the woods, considering how busy the forest floor was. Squirrels and chipmunks could carry our writing away. “This is faster. Hand me any rocks you see.” I bent down and grabbed a few smooth stones and one that was rough like a geode. When Alex brought me a few more, I sorted them in order of size, then started stacking. It was harder than it had seemed when I’d read about it in some book. The stones, especially the rough ones, didn’t fit neatly on top of each other. The mossy ones were slippery. But I managed to make a short, lopsided tower that stretched up almost past my knee. I stepped back to admire my work. I looked at Alex, expectantly. She shrugged.

  “That’s good enough, I guess. Follow me,” I said to Alex. She picked up her tote bag, and then we were off into the forest, with nothing but half an energy bar to fuel us and only hope to guide us.

  Alex

  Pool Party Day

  There are actually two Official Pool Holidays that Joss and I celebrate each summer: First Day at the Pool, and then Pool Party Day, which usually happens right before registration for the new school year. It’s a family party, where the moms and dads who were too busy all summer long to hang out at the pool come with their kids to eat burgers, compete in the water-balloon toss, and chill in the deep end while a DJ blasts oldies across the PA.

  But our parents were either at or heading to work, so the plan was for Lucy to drive us before her shift at the zoo. From upstairs, I heard Joss ring the doorbell, then my mom welcomed her inside. “I haven’t seen enough of you this summer, Jocelyn!” I felt a pit in my stomach. A pity pit. Or maybe a guilt knot. Well, I thought, they’ll get to see each other every day, up at the cabin.

  Whatever Joss replied, I couldn’t quite hear. Then she bounded up the stairs and knocked on the door to my room, lightly, like she wasn’t sure she could still barge in, which made it even harder to ignore that guilt knot/pity pit in my stomach.

  “Come in!” I hollered. I was struggling to tie the bikini I’d bought with Laura. If only she were there—she’d be able to figure it out. Tying the suit’s strings was more complicated than braiding friendship bracelets at camp. Joss was always good at that kind of arts-and-crafts stuff. “Can you give me a hand with this?”

  “W-what happened to your old suit?” Joss stammered. She was still wearing her turquoise one, which was faded and pilling.

  I’d only worn my new bikini when I went with Laura to her pool at the country club. I avoided the suit otherwise, partly because of the complicated straps, and partly because my mom probably would not be okay with me wearing something skimpy. So whenever I went to our neighborhood pool with my family or with Joss, I wore an old one-piece. But today was a party. It was special, and now that everyone was coming home from trips and camps in time for school registration, more Walden kids might be there—Laura’s friends. I needed to look like I belonged with them.

  I shrugged. “It was time for an update.” Then I did a twirl and shook my hips, the way Laura would while modeling something in a dressing room.

  “Has your mom seen it?” Jocelyn asked, one eyebrow arched.

  I stopped twirling. She was making me second-guess wearing it. “No, but she won’t care.” That was about as likely as her allowing Mateo to move into a bouncy house in our backyard (which is an actual thing he has asked to do).

  Joss adjusted and readjusted the straps that cut into her shoulders, leaving red marks. “Maybe I should get a new swimsuit…”

  Laura’s voice popped into my head, from when she had called my identical suit a fashion “Don’t” at camp. I didn’t totally agree—it was an athletic cut. So, a “Do” for actual swimming. But I also understood Laura’s point: that unless you’re going to the pool to swim laps, wearing something more stylish makes a statement.

  “I could help you pick out something new.” Joss nodded but looked skeptical. “Anyway, help me double-knot this, so we can get going.”

  She walked over and quickly secured all the straps so I wouldn’t have a wardrobe malfunction. I threw on a sundress, then bent down to grab my overstuffed tote bag, which was still stocked from the last time I went to Laura’s pool.

  “Holy moly, Alex. Are you running away?” Joss snorted. “What’ve you got in there?”

  Why did she always have to act so judgy about this kind of stuff? “The essentials, Joss. Makeup case, some hair things, a magazine, body spray, nail polish for touch-ups.” I shifted the bag onto my shoulder. I had to admit it was really heavy. I glanced at her backpack. “You’ve got a bag too.”

  “Yeah, with sunscreen, a towel, and a book.”

  We walked down the hall, and I banged on Lucy’s closed door. A muffled “Go away, I’m reading” came from inside. I banged again.

  “We can ride our bikes,” Joss said. “Or walk.”

  “I don’t want to get all sweaty.” I’d spent a lot of time making my hair look right—a high ponytail like Laura’s. Also, I didn’t think biking in my bikini, even with the sundress on, was such a great idea. “Lucy, we need our ride to the pool. Now!”

  The door flung open, and Lucy stalked out, scowling. “Yikes, did a unicorn poop all over your face? You’re so…bedazzled.”

  Next to me, Joss stifled a laugh. But Lucy’s comment stung. All I’d done was put on a bit of gloss, and some highlighter… It was a party, after all.

  “Mom!” I yelled, “Lucy told me I look like I have poop—”

  “What did I tell you?” Mom hissed from the landing of the stairs. “You need to BE QUIET. Stop squabbling and go before you wake Dad.” My dad—he’s a pilot—was napping before he had to leave for a long flight. “Lucy, can you please just do me a favor and drive them?”

  Lucy followed us downstairs, grumbling about being so close to finishing a chapter. Maybe it was a good thing that we had argued, because my mom didn’t pay any attention to what I was wearing.

  Once she started the car, Lucy said, “Please tell me I don’t have to pick up Longbottom.”

  “No,” I answered quickly and nudged at Lucy with my elbow, because with Joss in the back seat, this conversation was making me uncomfortable. “It’s just us going to the pool today.” Like old times.

  She ignored my nudge. “Laura’s kind of a bubblehead. Don’t you agree, Joss?” Lucy
and I both glanced in the rearview mirror.

  Jocelyn’s face pinched, like she was stifling either a smile or a sneeze. She glanced up and saw me watching her. Finally, she said, “I’ll neither confirm nor deny.”

  “That’s very diplomatic of you,” Lucy said, slowing for a stop sign.

  I rolled my eyes at both of them. They were the ones acting like mean girls. So do they think I’m a ditz now too?

  The pool deck was already crowded when we got there. I spotted a few kids we knew from past years of water ballet over by the diving well and waved hello. A bunch of high-school girls were lying out near the deep end, and next to them, the DJ was setting up his speakers. A cluster of Laura’s friends from Walden—Monique, Bidisha, and Frannie—hovered nearby.

  I’d talked to Bidisha one day when Laura and I saw her at the mall, and she was pretty nice. Most of Laura’s cool friends were, once you actually talked to them. So I took a deep breath and rolled back my shoulders. “Let’s say hi!” I pointed to the girls. By then a couple of Walden boys had joined them.

  “Why?” Joss scratched at her elbow.

  “They’re Laura’s friends.” I pulled my sundress over my head, careful not to mess up my hair as it came off. A nervous flutter started in my stomach.

  But Joss didn’t budge. “Earth to Jocelyn?” I waved a hand in front of her face, the metallic flecks in my nail polish glittering with sunlight.

  “We should grab a spot before all the lounges are taken.” Joss lunged toward the row of chairs. My skin prickled with annoyance. It bothered me that she wouldn’t even try to get to know them. After a second, I followed her, after one last, longing glance at the crowd.

  We chose two lounge chairs close to the shallow end. Jocelyn pulled out her tube of sunscreen and started smearing it all over her arms and shoulders.

  “Don’t you think you’ve sunscreened enough? You’re starting to look like the undead.” It was the mineral kind that doesn’t rub in easily, so her skin was ghostly white.