Alone in the Woods

by Rebecca Behrens

  Just ahead, our stubborn little stream tumbled over a formation of smooth rocks, flowing into a frothy river the color of root beer. (That doesn’t mean it’s dirty—sometimes the water takes on that hint of reddish color in the Northwoods because tannins from cedar trees seep into the water.) I didn’t know for sure that it was the Wolf we’d found, but it was definitely some big Northwoods river. Not one that would fade away.

  Tears welled at the corners of my eyes. I glanced back at the forest, searching the trees for any movement. In a way, the wolf had helped us get here; I made my decision to keep on following the stream because of it. So I looked at the wolf on the sweatshirt Alex was wearing. Thank you, I mouthed.

  “Are we there yet?” Alex asked, dropping to a seat next to me near the edge of a rocky outcropping above the water.

  “Well, we found the river. Or a river,” I self-corrected.

  “Great. Wait here, them find us.” She lay down flat on the rocks, then turned to press her face against the cool slab of stone. Her skin and lips must have felt as fiery and angry as they looked. The rash had spread farther across her legs, and all the sores either oozed or crusted. I studied my own limbs, covered in bites, cuts, and ticks. One flip-flop and one foot wrapped in formerly light-coral fabric now the color of red mud.

  We were still in the middle of nowhere. How often would people pass by? We weren’t near a trail or anything, as far as I could tell. It could be minutes before someone floated along or, I supposed, days.

  “Let’s rest for a while. See if anyone comes downstream.” I sat next to Alex, spreading the inner tube out behind us. If only it didn’t have that tear—we could blow it up to float to safety on our own. I ran my finger over the damaged part. It didn’t need much to be patched—a generous square of duct tape would do the trick. But we didn’t have that. If only pine pitch would work. It was certainly good at keeping leaves and needles stuck in my hair.

  Alex handed me the dry bag, a handful of berries still inside. I grabbed a few. We’d been okay since eating them this morning (assuming the wolf wasn’t a hallucination), so they were safe. I needed more food: my stomach was back to feeling hollow, my muscles weak.

  We ate the berries slowly. Normally, when I pile blueberries into my breakfast bowl, I gobble them by the spoonful, paying no attention as my molars mash them up. I mean, who sits at the breakfast table and really contemplates the blueberry? Now, each berry was like a precious jewel. I would put one in my mouth, rolling my tongue around it, feeling the plumpness and the texture, eagerly anticipating the burst of flavor when I finally allowed it between my teeth to bite open. After the explosion on my tongue, I would chew maybe thirty times, until it was just blueberry juice I held in my mouth, before I would finally swallow. Then, repeat. It could take you half an hour to eat ten blueberries if you savored them that way.

  Alex ate just as slowly, methodically. When she turned to face me, her eyes were clearer. The blueberries had restored her, or maybe it was the thrill of finally finding our way out of the woods. “If I could time travel, I would go back to the version of me sitting at the table at Paul Bunyan’s, and I would eat a freaking doughnut. I would eat it so hard.”

  I laughed, spraying a bit of the precious blueberry mash out of my mouth, which was really a shame. “Yeah, that seems like an entirely reasonable time-travel choice.” I paused. “I’d go back to Walden, registration day. I’d…I don’t know. I guess I’d wear something different.” My face flushed as I said it. I doubt Alex could tell I was blushing, though, considering how dirty my cheeks were.

  She hugged her arms to her chest, rubbing the thin fabric of the sweatshirt. “Don’t be stupid. I mean, I guess it’s obvious that, like, I was…” It took her a long time to say the words. “A little embarrassed. Because it’s important to me to look good. It gives me confidence. But what happened that day wasn’t your fault. Or what happened the rest of the summer.” She stopped, fiddling with the stalk of a maidenhair fern. “I just got caught up in being Laura’s friend. Honestly, Jocelyn, I really do like spending time with her. We’re interested in a lot of the same stuff, and she’s actually super generous, and also hilarious.” She paused again. “I know that’s weird for you, so I feel bad saying it, but it’s the truth.”

  “It is kind of weird. The you who is friends with her—Lexie—is different from the you who’s friends with me—Alex.”

  “They’re both me. I’m not, like, having a split personality.”

  “But you’ve changed,” I said. “Even when you’re not around Laura, you act different than you used to.”

  “So do you? I mean, we’re all just figuring it out. Who we are, and who we want to be.” Alex sighed. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I think I needed to push you away a little bit to know who I am. But also to know that I do still want to be your friend. It’s just…I want other friends too.” She was quiet for a moment. “Do you think that could be okay?”

  For so long, we’d been Team Alexelyn, a dynamic duo that didn’t allow much room for anyone else. Not even shared friends like Houa and Kate. If I were being completely honest, I didn’t really want Team Alexelyn to change. But it already had. So now rather than clinging to a ghost version of our best friendship, what I wanted was to still be friends—even if we weren’t exactly best anymore.

  “Yeah, I think it could be okay.” I paused because my voice was rising with emotion and I had to swallow it back down. “I’d like that.”

  There was one big blueberry left in the bag. “It’s yours,” Alex said.

  I shook my head. “No, you take it. You’re probably still dehydrated from puking.”

  She rolled her eyes, which, honestly, was reassuringly normal behavior. “Don’t be ridiculous, Joss.”

  I’d been “Jocelyn” to her since registration day. It felt good to hear her use my nickname again. She plucked the berry out, put it between her teeth, and bit it cleanly in half, one of which she held out for me. “Sorry, kind of gross, but what can you do?”

  I laughed and popped it into my mouth, thinking of the day that she and Laura had shared the dish of frozen custard at Michael’s. This wasn’t gross. It was friendship.

  * * *

  We waited on the rocks, watching the river, for hours. Long enough for the blueberry fuel to run out and for us both to start shivering again, as the sun inched from directly overhead toward the tree line. The only creatures we’d seen in or around the river had been some birds—sparrows and a couple of turkey vultures I briefly misidentified (they’re nicknamed “tourist eagles” for a reason)—and one shy white-tailed deer, stopping for a drink. Most fishermen like to go out in the morning. Kayakers and canoers too. The odds of someone passing by were getting slimmer.

  “Maybe we should walk downriver,” I suggested. “At least to where we’re level with the water’s edge.”

  Alex startled—she’d drifted into sleep again. Then she nodded. We gathered our things and began climbing down the rock ledge. The surfaces were slippery, and my arms and legs all felt rubbery and weak. My fingertips trembled as I gripped lichen-covered stones to steady myself.

  Alex was going first, focused on stepping carefully from stone to stone, and looking away from me.

  “Hey, Alex,” I called, when I noticed that the strap of her tote bag was sliding toward the edge of her shoulder. If she stopped, I could readjust it.

  When she heard me, she looked up in my direction while still moving forward. And that’s when one of her—my—slippery water shoes slid on a mossy boulder, and she fell.

  It wasn’t from a big distance—and it was more of a slow crumple than a fall—but she still landed hard. I heard something—hopefully her tote bag—thwack the rock surface. Followed by her shouting in pain.

  “Alex!” My single flip-flop flapped against the stones as I scrambled to reach her side. “Are you okay?”

  “I bumped my head,” she
said, reaching for it. Already her temple was red. At least it wasn’t bleeding. But head injuries can be really dangerous even if they don’t bleed.

  “Open your eyes wide.” She did, and her pupils looked okay. But do they get wonky right away if you have a concussion? “Do you see stars or anything?”

  “No, it’s daytime.”

  I sucked in a breath. “In your vision—because you hit your head.”

  “Oh. Nope.” She paused. “I whacked my knee too.”

  “Can you still move okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she said through gritted teeth. “Help me up?”

  I grabbed her elbow to lift her up from the rocks. She could stand at least. “Try taking a step.”

  She bent her knee, wincing, and moved forward to put her weight on that foot. She winced again, then took another step. “It hurts a lot.”

  I bit at my lip. “Do you think you can keep walking downriver?”

  She put her hand on her forehead, like she had a headache. “Not very far.” She sank back down.

  We were trapped. Again. I threw the rolled-up tube against the rocks. “I’m so sick of dragging that useless thing around! If only it didn’t have a stupid tear—we could tube our way back to civilization. But no.” I kicked at it. “Instead we’re doomed.”

  Alex stared at the tube. She blinked. “Wait.” Her tone sounded almost excited. She pulled her tote in front of herself and dug around inside. I could hear her unzipping one of the interior pockets. Whatever her hand landed on made a huge smile spread across her face, despite the obvious pain that a smile caused her cracked lips.

  “This.” She held out a thin and glossy square of paper.

  Except it wasn’t paper—it was a sticker. A bumper sticker with a picture of a howling wolf in front of a moon, a lot like the one on my sweatshirt. Printed below was: I ❤ WISCONSIN WOLVES.

  “Thanks?” I was really confused. Is her head injury making her give this to me right now?

  “At Paul Bunyan’s, when I was wandering around trying to find cell service or a Wi-Fi network, I saw it and thought it was so you, and I was still feeling super bad and guilty about stuff, so I bought it and put it in my bag. I guess it was going to be, like, an olive branch?”

  This time, I couldn’t fight back the tears welling in my eyes. Thought it was so you. The sticker was, and I loved it, and it felt so good that Alex had wanted to get it for me. Alex still knew me, she accepted me, and she still cared. That meant the world. I blinked, and tears ran down my cheeks, but I didn’t mind that she was seeing me cry. “That’s really nice.”

  Alex began crying a little too. “So yeah, I don’t know why I was waiting to give it to you, but now is clearly the perfect time.”

  Sniffling, I started to unzip my backpack to put the sticker inside for safekeeping.

  “What’re you doing?” Alex asked.

  I stopped, confused. “Making sure I don’t lose it?”

  She started to roll her eyes, until she winced and stopped. Her head must’ve really hurt.

  “It’s for the tube, Joss. A patch. So we can float the heck out of here.”

  Twenty

  I couldn’t believe it. Now we had a patch. Actually, we’d had one the whole time—I tried not to think about what would’ve happened if we’d known that on the first day, although when we set off on that footpath, we had no idea that we were going to wander so far from the river and get completely lost in the woods.

  “I almost don’t want to use it,” I said, holding the sticker in my left hand while I used my absolutely disgusting towel to dry and clean the area of the tube where the puncture was.

  Alex struggled to even pull a face at me. We were that exhausted, plus she was injured. “Please. I’ll buy you ’nother.” Her speech was still syrupy, and now I had no idea if it was for the same reasons as before or because she’d hit her head.

  I used my ragged, dirt-caked fingernail to peel off the backing, and then I carefully placed the bumper sticker over the hole. I pressed it down and smoothed the sticker flat, so no air bubbles were left trapped between it and the plastic of the tube. “You’re a genius. Seriously.” Alex beamed with pride. “We’ll just give it a minute to really stick.”

  I don’t know how strong bumper-sticker adhesive is or whether it’s waterproof. I do know that it’s pretty hard to peel it off actual bumpers, which is why my parents have never allowed us to put stickers on our car. “What if you stop liking that slogan?” Mom always asks. Sometimes that’s a ridiculous question, though—I’m never going to stop liking the environment. Or the Wisconsin Badgers. Or wolves. Still, I worried this sticker wouldn’t stay put and we’d start leaking air on the river. Then I remembered what else was in Alex’s bag.

  “Hand me the nail kit?” I asked.

  “Is this really the best time to tweeze off ticks?” Alex countered, although she reached for her bag anyway.

  “Nope,” I said as I took the pouch from her. I unzipped it to pull out the bottle of clear, glossy polish. Whenever my mom gets a run in her tights, she uses nail polish to cover the hole so it doesn’t get worse. So I did the same, covering the sticker with polish to reinforce its hold.

  “I guess you really were just being prepared,” I said, “by bringing all this stuff along. I take back my snarking.”

  Alex smiled, still looking proud.

  When I’d coated all the edges of the sticker, I capped the bottle and sat down. “How long does that stuff take to dry?”

  “It’s quick, but I always give it at least eight minutes.”

  We waited for what felt that long, although who knows if our sense of time was anywhere close to accurate anymore. “We can reinflate it now,” I said, after running my fingertip over the shimmering polish, which felt smooth and dry. The inner tube, even though it was a heavy-duty one that the tour place had filled with a bike-tire air pump, still had one of those plastic valves that you can use to inflate by mouth. Being big enough for two, ours was going to take an awful lot of breath to fill up. And we both had been breathing kind of funny, like we were only capable of taking in shallow sips of air. “We’ll take turns.”

  I flipped the latch off the valve and put my mouth on it, tasting a hint of minerally river water. I inhaled through my nose, deeply as I could, then started blowing, hard as I could, into the tube. My breath didn’t even create a ripple in the thick plastic. I paused, covering the valve with my finger, and took in another breath. Then I sealed my mouth onto the valve again and pushed all my air out, until my stomach squeezed and it felt like I was going to collapse inward, like a deflating parade balloon.

  Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I kept going until my head spun. If I hadn’t been sitting down on a wet log, I would’ve fallen over.

  “Your turn.” I could barely whisper.

  Alex made it through only two exhalations before she clamped her finger over the valve and dropped her head between her knees. Without a word, I replaced her finger with mine and started again. With that bump on her head, maybe she shouldn’t be exerting herself. And her lips were still so swollen, it must have hurt to use them.

  The tube began to rise up, slightly. We can do this, I thought. It’ll just take some time.

  When the tube was about half full of air, I had to stop for a rest. I felt so dizzy I thought I might throw up. And I was dying of thirst too. Whether it was a good idea or not, I inched over to the edge of the river and scooped water into my cupped hand for a drink. I didn’t think I could keep inflating the tube without it.

  Alex insisted on taking another turn, but then she started coughing and couldn’t stop. She hunched over, wheezing. Her face was cherry red.

  “You’re done,” I said.

  She tried to shake her head no, but that only made her cough harder. I wheezed in another breath and pressed my lips back around the valve. Even the gross taste of plas
tic made me hungry. I kept going until the tube was about three quarters full—it had the round shape of a doughnut again but like one that had gotten smushed in the box. If I pressed on the side of the tube, the plastic would sink. It wasn’t firm and buoyant like it should be. But I couldn’t bear to breathe into it any longer. My head ached, and so did my lungs. I felt like I was about to pass out.

  The question was: Could we still float on the tube? It only needed to keep us above water, like a raft. Hopefully it was filled enough.

  “Let’s try it now,” I panted to Alex.

  She made a little nod, still holding her head, and reached for her tote bag, trying to drag it closer to herself. Her arm lacked the strength to swing it up to her lap.

  I rubbed at my eyes. “The tube’s not going to hold us and all our stuff,” I said. “Too much weight. We have to leave everything behind.”

  “Everything?” Alex mumbled.

  I nodded, biting down on my lip to stay focused. I picked up my backpack and set it on a large, flat rock a few feet from the river’s edge. I didn’t even bother to unzip it and look, one last time, at what was inside. Just my camera, which was dead anyway, and the wrappers of the energy bars and bug wipes and bandages. My water bottle. The used-up tube of sunscreen. The empty mini first aid kit.

  I kicked off the sole surviving flip-flop and unwound the fabric from my other foot. I even untied my towel skirt and dropped it next to the backpack. I hated leaving our stuff in the forest. You’re supposed to carry out what you carried in. Maybe, after we made it to safety, someone could bring us back to this spot so we could collect our things. I could recharge my camera then, and finally see if my wolf sighting had been real after all.