Alone in the Woods

by Rebecca Behrens

  She glanced toward the bear, who still hadn’t noticed us. Alex also took a deep breath, then unlaced her fingers to join me in clapping. “Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky.” Her voice was unnaturally high and tight-sounding, and out of tune—but Alex has never been able to carry one. Not even the “Happy Birthday” song.

  “With a hip, hop, hippity, hop.” I raised my hand so she could high-five me. The smack echoed through the trees.

  “Hip, hop, hippity, hop,” she repeated in a warble.

  “Leap off a lily pad and go kerplop!” we sang and sealed with the loudest clap yet, and then we fake-laughed in unison.

  The bear, which had waded all the way into the stream, suddenly stopped. Its ears perked up. It sniffed at the air. The muscles in its legs tightened. I held my breath, hoping that it would turn and move away, upstream. But it didn’t. Instead, it looked downstream, right at us.

  My heart seemed to rise into my throat as the bear’s dark eyes now locked with mine. Okay, now it knows we’re here. It’ll leave. Any second now…

  The bear stayed in the same position, watching us, with its nostrils flaring.

  “Next verse?” I said to Alex. We clapped another high five. The bear watched us. It opened its mouth, wide like a yawn. But I don’t think it was bored or tired. I think it wanted to show us its huge, sharp teeth.

  “I don’t think this is working,” Alex hissed in between lines of the song.

  What else are we supposed to do? My pulse pounded in my head so hard that it was becoming impossible to focus.

  “I’m going to make a run for it,” Alex whispered, still next to me. “I’m not going to sit here like a little mouse, waiting to be eaten.”

  “No!” I grabbed her arm. “It’ll run after you. Unless we convince it we’re nothing like little mice.” I paused. That was what I’d been trying to remember. “We need the bear to think we’re bigger than it is. That we’re the alphas here.”

  I looked around frantically. Behind us, the life vest lay on top of the unrolled inner tube. I grabbed the vest first, arranging it around my head like the weirdest crown you’ve ever seen. The inner tube I held up and sort of behind me, almost like it was a cape or wings. Then I slowly stood tall. With all that stuff on me, I must have looked a lot bigger. Hopefully in an imposing way, not just a ridiculous one.

  You’re supposed to speak calmly but loudly to a bear. You aren’t supposed to show any fear. I don’t know if they can smell blood from far away, but they definitely can sense fear up close. Then they know you’re the beta, or worse: prey.

  “Hi, Bear,” I called to it, trying my hardest to sound relaxed, almost cheerful. “We are big, strong humans over here. Total alpha females. Just doing our thing.”

  I had hoped that the bear would suddenly turn and scamper through the trees. Instead, it rose to stand on its hind legs. It wasn’t snarling at us or anything aggressive, though. Maybe it was curious? I really wished I’d done a TAG project on bear behavior.

  I stood there long enough for my arms to burn from holding up the inner tube. I was now in the middle of a staring contest with a bear. Okay, so what do you do if making yourself appear bigger doesn’t immediately scare the bear away? We were at an impasse…until the bear opened its mouth, let out a loud grunt, and took one slow, deliberate step in our direction.

  “Oh no oh no oh no oh no.” Alex whimpered next to me.

  “Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, stay calm,” I whispered back. I raised my arms higher, even though my biceps ached. “Do you have all your stuff?” Alex shook her head. “Grab all your stuff. Our stuff,” I added because my water shoes were still sitting on a rock near Alex’s flip-flops and tote bag.

  Alex frantically tossed the shoes into her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

  I spoke quietly out of the side of my mouth. “Okay, I’m going to keep talking to the bear. You’re going to stay behind me, and we’re both going to walk backward downstream, slowly. And calmly.” I didn’t think we should dash for the woods, where we might not be able to monitor where the bear was in relation to us, and where it would be impossible to escape quickly because of the overgrown trees.

  Alex became my shadow, standing so close behind me that I could still smell her mango body spray, mixed with her sweat. “Ready?” I asked.

  “Ready,” she replied.

  “Okay, Bear, we’re going to mosey on our way now. Enjoy your drink,” I said, my voice sounding firm but friendly, like a kindergarten teacher’s. “Don’t mind us.” I took two tentative steps backward, which was tricky with the flowing water and the slippery rocks below the stream’s surface.

  “Can you spot me?” I asked Alex.

  “Uh-huh. Actually, I’ll lead,” she said.

  “Good idea.” She grabbed a fistful of my sweatshirt and gently tugged me along to follow her. The water splashed around our calves and up to our knees. My towel skirt was heavy from the bottom half being soaked. I felt the knot starting to unravel, but I couldn’t lower my hands to grab it. The towel dropped into the water with a splash.

  “Got it,” Alex said, reaching her free hand to scoop it up.

  The bear was still on its hind legs, watching us intently.

  “See, Bear? We’re not bothering you. You can go back to whatever you were doing. Taking a bath. Fishing. Having happy hour. It’s kind of hard to tell.”

  Alex tugged me downstream again. My toes gripped the rocks and pebbles on the bottom of the stream. I wanted to lower the tube so badly. My arms were shaking, hard.

  The bear made one last grunt, almost sounding exasperated. Then it lowered onto all fours. Please let us go, I begged. I held my breath, wondering if it was about to charge us.

  Instead, the bear dipped its snout back into the stream for a drink. It wasn’t even looking at me anymore.

  It had worked.

  We still needed to get out of the bear’s sight, though. “Walk faster,” I instructed Alex. She pulled me along. My eyes stayed glued on the bear. I could keep holding up the tube for maybe a minute longer before my arms would drop.

  The stream curved to the left as it sloped downhill, and once we finished the turn, the bear disappeared from view. My arms tumbled down like strings that had been cut on a marionette. The inner tube made a big splash as it hit the surface of the water, soaking me. “Go, go, go!” I urged Alex, turning to face the same way. I grabbed the tube, and we began running, even though we were still in the stream. We made it only a few feet before Alex tripped and fell.

  I whirled around to pull her up by her armpits. Her tote bag was mostly right-side-up, but it was all wet.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, glancing back nervously to see if the bear had followed us downstream.

  “Yeah, I think so—there was a branch or something underwater.” She wiped her hair off her face, and I helped her resettle the tote bag on her hip.

  “Maybe it’s safe to go back to the shore now. I don’t see the bear anywhere.”

  “Should we walk on the other side?” Alex pointed across the stream. “Because the bear came from the one we were on.”

  “Good idea.”

  We waded over and climbed onto the rocks. I checked one last time for the bear, craning my neck to see as far upstream as possible. It was gone, somewhere into the forest. We were safe. At least, for now.

  Fifteen

  For a few moments, we sat in silence on the rocks, like we had before the bear showed up, except this time without our feet and legs dangling in the water. Instead, we both had our knees tucked up to our chests, like we were giving ourselves hugs. We were shivering because the sun had disappeared under thick, gray clouds, and we were soaking wet again, and it wasn’t as warm as it had been the day before, even when the sun did peek out. Last night’s storm must have been part of a cold front—an early sign that fall was on its way. But I think we were
also shivering from the adrenaline leaving our systems. We’d just escaped a bear, after all.

  I started to laugh. Everything was so ridiculous and scary and strange, and laughing seemed like the only reasonable thing to do while sitting on rocks and logs, staring at your bug-bitten and battered limbs, lost in a national forest with your ex-best friend. Then I couldn’t stop laughing.

  Which confused Alex. “What’s so funny?”

  In between breathless giggles, I managed to choke out, “Just…everything. Like, I was wearing a life-vest crown and an inner tube. To scare away a bear. By clapping and singing. And it worked! What is going on?”

  Alex’s furrowed brows slowly smoothed, and her mouth curled into a tiny smile. Well, as much as her swollen lips could smile. Then she started laughing too. “Now that was a fashion mistake.”

  That only made me laugh harder. Tears streamed down my face, and I’m not sure they were only from how hard I was laughing. I cried from relief too. Because we were being real with each other, and things felt natural for the first time on this trip. No, for the first time since Alex had come home from camp. Because if Alex was sort of making a joke about my sweatshirt, then maybe said sweatshirt wasn’t going to totally destroy us. Maybe all this—getting lost in the woods and getting friend-dumped before we got there—was something we were going to be able to laugh at. Together.

  As we shook with laughter, we leaned closer to each other till our shoulders touched, and then all of a sudden, we were hugging. It didn’t feel casual and normal like it used to, when in every photo of us together our arms were slung around each other’s shoulders and our faces pressed close and often one of us was secretly giving bunny ears to the other. This hug felt tentative and stiff, strangely polite, and it was short-lived. But we both really, really needed it.

  “I’m so glad we didn’t die,” Alex said. “Thanks for making that not happen.”

  “It was a joint effort.” I really meant that. I cleared my throat and wiped the lingering tears from my eyes. My stomach muscles were so tight from all the laughter that they felt like they might snap if I took too deep a breath. And somehow I still felt full, even though we hadn’t eaten anything since the meager bites of bar for breakfast. Maybe it was from drinking all that stream water.

  “So what do we do now?” Alex asked. She was rubbing her belly, like hers also hurt.

  “Keep walking?” I said. “Alongside the stream, because if we’re lucky, it could be a tributary to the Wolf River.” She gave me a confused look. “Tributary means the water flows into a bigger body of water, like a stream into a river into an ocean. Anyway, if that’s the case, we could follow the stream to the river, which would lead us to somewhere with people. Maybe to our families looking for us.” It was possible they’d never figured out that we were far from the Wolf. We hadn’t left much of a trace when we headed into the forest. The only clues they could’ve found were the things we’d lost in the river: Alex’s life vest and my binoculars. That was worrying, both because of what they might think had happened to us—drowning—and because it meant search efforts perhaps hadn’t moved deep into the Nicolet. If we wanted to be rescued, getting close to the river was key.

  I tried not to think about how terrified and sad our families must be, especially if they thought we’d been lost in the water.

  “Sounds good.” Alex reached over for her tote bag and pulled out my water shoes. “Here you go.” She tossed them to me, then pulled out one of her flip-flops.

  I glanced down at my feet. My heels were no longer caked in mud, thanks to the stream, but they actually looked worse clean—bloody and raw. I couldn’t walk through the forest without something protecting the soles of my feet, but the thought of the water shoes pressing against my open wounds was unbearable. I dipped the shoes in the stream, to at least loosen them up before squeezing my feet back inside.

  “Um, I think we have a problem.” Alex was frantically searching the tote bag.

  My stomach twisted. “What kind of problem?”

  “I can’t find my other flip-flop.”

  Oh no. “Were you wearing it in the stream?”

  She shook her head. “I took them off while we were resting. I tossed all the shoes into my bag when we escaped from the bear.” She smoothed her hands through her hair like she always does when she’s nervous—or as much as she could, considering how sticky her hair was with pine pitch. “I was kind of freaking out, though. Maybe I missed one sandal. Or it could have fallen into the stream when I tripped.”

  “Are you sure it’s not in there?” I asked.

  “Pretty positive.” She pulled out her body spray and the wet magazine and swiped her hand around the bottom of the bag. “Definitely not in here.”

  Backtracking in the direction of the bear to find the missing flip-flop seemed like a really bad idea. “We can’t go back for it.”

  Alex nodded in agreement, but she still looked worried. “Guess I’ll have to walk barefoot…”

  I shook my head no while pulling the water shoes off my feet. “Take mine.”

  “Are you serious?” She hesitated to accept them.

  I nodded. “I can’t wear them anyway—the backs of my heels are too cut up. So the shoes hurt like crazy. Because your feet are smaller than mine, they might actually fit you after they dry.”

  “Jeez, are all your clothes too small now?” she said with a laugh.

  I was quiet for a moment. Then I blurted, “We didn’t have a budget for new summer clothes this year. That’s why I’m always wearing old stuff.”

  Alex’s face blanched. “I’m really sorry. I had no idea.”

  I didn’t feel very bad about it—clothes aren’t that important to me. And anyway, because things were looking up with Dad’s new gig, Nolan and I would have a little money for back-to-school shopping. “It’s fine—you didn’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t have always suggested shopping if I had,” Alex insisted.

  I could tell she felt bad.

  “Thanks, but I didn’t take that personally. You love shopping—and that’s okay.”

  She nodded, and we smiled at each other, almost shyly.

  When Alex slid her feet into the shoes, they were a Cinderella-perfect fit. “Well, you can use my one surviving flip-flop.” She tossed it to me, and I worked my right foot into it. We both stared at my bare left foot and its raw, blistered heel.

  “Wait.” Alex stood to unravel the towel from around her torso. Laura’s cover-up, still wet, clung to her legs. She took a deep breath, then grabbed the section that already had the tear in the beading. Before I figured out what she was planning to do, she yanked her hands away from each other with a huge rip of the fabric.

  “Alex?” I gaped at her. She’d made a pretty clean tear and was now holding a long strip of the material, which was similar to gauze. She balled it up and tossed it to me.

  “Use that to wrap your foot, like a bootie. So at least it won’t be bare.”

  I held the wad of fabric in my hands, shocked by her generosity. And feeling a smidge guilty about how satisfying it had been earlier to rip the cover-up, under less dire circumstances. “Isn’t Laura going to be kind of mad—”

  “It’s stained and torn, so whatever. And I think she’ll understand.” Alex paused. “I mean, if we die in these woods, it’s not like Laura’s going to get it back, anyway.” Her words hit me like a mallet.

  “Thanks.” I got to work, wrapping the gauze all around my foot, taking special care to cover the wound on my heel. I tied the bootie off with a firm knot, then took a practice step. It felt weird, like walking around with balled-up tights stuck to the bottom of your foot. But it was better than going barefoot.

  “Are we ready?” I asked, bending to pick up the tube and then adjusting my backpack.

  “We’re ready,” Alex said.

  * * *

  W
alking alongside the stream was tricky because of all the rocks, which were slick with lichen (or was it moss?) and sometimes hidden beneath fallen leaves and brush. Also, the bugs had come back with a vengeance—mostly gnats and blackflies, which apparently also hang out by streams. Maybe also they were attracted by our scent, which was…pungent. Even though we’d been in and out of the stream, the dirt, sweat, natural body smells, and lingering mango spray were commingling into the kind of scent that normally does not exist outside of a locker room.

  We’d been out of the stream for a while, but my hair refused to dry. Same with my sweatshirt, swimsuit, shorts, and towel skirt. The air was much cooler than the day before, and I longed for the sun to sneak out from the clouds and warm us. My fingers were pale and wrinkled, and I had a shiver that would not quit, no matter how fast we moved. Although we weren’t moving very fast. After all the bear-encounter adrenaline faded, I felt more tired than I ever had in my life. Even more tired than the time Alex and I had stayed up all night during a sleepover, marathoning every season of our favorite baking-competition show, with only pee breaks in between. The next day I’d gone with my mom as she did errands, and while we were waiting in a long line at the bank, I’d actually fallen asleep standing up.

  I felt like that now—groggy and a little disoriented. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if the trees were swaying or if I was. Everything had a bit of a haze on it, the fuzzy look of old family photos people took before digital cameras—or the apps people use now to make their smartphone pictures look old-timey. My thoughts started to drift with the cedar-tipped breeze.

  Maybe it was also the fact that Alex was wearing my water shoes, and I was wearing one flip-flop and a cover-up-fabric bootie, but we both seemed clumsier. At one point, Alex tripped on a log that was obviously right in front of her. I stepped on a flat stone, and although it wobbled only slightly, it sent me tumbling to my hands and knees, into a cluster of ferns.

  “Ow!”

  “Are you okay?” Alex turned slowly to check on me. Even her voice was slow; it sounded like she was pouring the words out the way you wait for syrup to drip from a bottle.