by Jeff Strand
“I’m not crying, all right? I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s only an outhouse. How scary can it be?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”
***
The boys sat around the stack of logs that would have been a campfire if they’d been able to get one started, eating raw marshmallows. The bird, which was alert but couldn’t fly, rested on Randy’s leg.
“There were some victories today,” said Max. “Not many of them. Mostly disappointments. Mostly shameful, crushing disappointments. But it’s only been one day and you’ve put forth a real effort. And though I would not be proud to call any of you except Erik my son and even though we all know that Erik is going to win the Games, I think we’re moving in the right direction. So get some sleep and we’ll resume our training in the morning.”
Everybody got up and started to walk toward the barracks, which were about half a mile away. Henry didn’t think he’d ever been more exhausted in his life and couldn’t wait for his head to hit that pillow. It was a very thin pillow that felt like it might be stuffed with corkscrews, but still, he couldn’t wait for his head to hit it.
“Not you, Henry,” said Max.
Henry stopped walking.
“You will be sleeping in less comfortable accommodations. Or had you forgotten?”
“I think I’ve learned from my mistakes,” said Henry. “You’ve had us do all of this cool stuff, like archery, BB guns, fishing, climbing trees, not starting campfires…and it’s changed me. I was different then. I was wrong. And I hope you can find it in your heart not to punish me for the things that a different Henry said. Sir.”
Henry had not forgotten about the less comfortable accommodations and had mentally rehearsed this speech during the half hour that they were failing to create sparks by rubbing two sticks together. “Sir” was an ad-lib.
“No,” said Max.
“No?”
“No.”
“No, as in…?”
“No, as in, I cannot find it in my heart.”
“C’mon, it’s been a long day and I just want to get some sleep. Punish me tomorrow.”
“This is not punishment. This is training. You will be sleeping outdoors.”
“He mouthed off to you to defend me,” said Randy, “so I’ll sleep outside too.”
“No,” said Max.
“No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is something your friend must do alone.”
Randy’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not sure he’ll make it, sir.”
“I’ll be fine,” Henry assured his friend. “Don’t worry about me. You enjoy your cot with all of its…softness.”
The other kids resumed their walk to the barracks. Randy gave one last forlorn look over his shoulder, as if they might never see each other again, except in death, and then disappeared into the darkness.
“Where am I going to sleep?” asked Henry.
Max pointed to the ground. “Right here. It’s nature’s Sleep Number mattress.”
That wasn’t as bad as Henry had expected. He’d thought that he might be sleeping in a spiked pit with some cobras. “Okay. Can I have a blanket at least?”
“You get a sleeping bag. Despite what you might believe, Henry, I don’t want you to die. I’m not here to torture you. In the morning, when you wake up and realize that you’ve successfully slept by yourself out in the wilderness, I think you’ll discover that you have a lot of unlocked potential.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Max patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. I will, however, leave you with a bow and arrow…just in case.”
***
Henry lay in his sleeping bag in the darkness. The bow and arrows did not make him feel safer. In fact, he was sort of worried that he might roll over onto them while he slept. He’d eased this fear by putting them about ten feet away, but then he worried that they wouldn’t be close enough if he woke up in the middle of the night in danger. Then he remembered his bull’s-eye had been total luck and having the bow and arrows nearby probably wouldn’t do him much good anyway—unless he was just naturally lucky with bows and arrows, in which case they would do him some good. So he had to weigh the odds of rolling onto sharp, pointy arrows versus the odds of waking up with a ferocious beast about to make him a meal. Henry had to admit that the more realistic danger would be waking up with an appendix full of arrows, so he kept them out of rolling range.
He stared up at the stars. They were beautiful. He didn’t really see them very often. He tried to identify the different constellations, like Sagittarius, the archer. He couldn’t see anything that looked much like an archer with a horse body, but maybe you needed to chug a few cans of Red Bull first.
He tried to find the one that looked like a crab. Were there crabs out in the woods? Probably not. Even if there were crab-spawning ponds around here, the crabs wouldn’t make it this far away from the water.
There was also Aries, the ram. Even at his maximum level of “I’m gonna get eaten!” paranoia, Henry wasn’t worried about being attacked in these woods by a wild ram.
Of course, it would be a terrible irony if he found himself impaled by a ram, the one animal he was almost positive wasn’t lurking in these woods. Maybe he should fear them.
No, it wasn’t going to happen. His chances of encountering a ram were about the same as his chances of encountering a ghost.
Crap. There were probably ghosts everywhere in these woods.
Ghosts watching him right now.
Ghosts of those who’d died badly, who sought vengeance for the way they’d exited this plane of existence. Ghosts who were searching for a soul to possess, perhaps that of a sixteen-year-old boy lying helplessly outside with only a sleeping bag as protection against the spectral dangers.
Henry stopped looking at the stars and rolled over on his side. He was way too old to be worrying about ghosts. In fact, though he often wondered why he wasn’t lucky enough to have a girlfriend, it was possible that this provided a very specific clue as to the root cause.
Something rustled in the trees.
Henry sat up.
The rustling continued.
It’s just an armadillo, he told himself. No big deal. You see squished armadillos on the side of the road all the time and they aren’t going to cause you any harm.
He scrambled out of his sleeping bag and fumbled around in the dark until he found the bow.
There was a sudden beam of light.
A ghost!
A ghost or a flashlight! One of the two!
Psycho killers with flashlights!
He hurriedly grabbed an arrow and notched it. Then he spun around.
A dark-haired girl his age stood there. She was the most beautiful potential psycho killer Henry had ever seen.
WILDERNESS SURVIVAL TIP!
If you need to start a fire, you can burn the pages of this very book. Yes, you’ll hurt the author’s feelings, but that’s okay. Your life is more important. (If you’re reading this as an e-book, setting it on fire is not recommended.)
Chapter Seven
“Hey, whoa, whoa,” she said, holding up her hands to show that she was not carrying a knife or a throwable cactus. “Chill. Put down the bow.”
Henry set the bow and arrow back down on the ground. This could be some sort of test that Max had set up, but even so, Henry thought it best not to risk accidentally killing a beautiful girl. (Or for that matter even an average- or below-average-looking girl.) (Or even a dog-ugly one.) (You really shouldn’t kill girls, period.)
“Sorry,” he said.
“Kind of jumpy, aren’t you?”
“You could have been a bear.”
“Oh, well, that’s flattering. I guess I forgo
t to shave my legs this morning.”
“No, I meant—”
“That I’m gigantic?”
“No.”
“That I give off a bearlike scent?”
“No.”
She smiled. “I’m just messing with you. Though you do know that bears don’t use flashlights very often, right?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Oh, good.” She walked over and crouched down next to the unlit campfire. “My name is Monica.”
“I’m Henry.”
“Nice to meet you, Henry. So you’re part of that survival camp thing?”
“Yes.”
“Is it any good?”
“Not really.”
“That’s too bad. I’d love to have done that. Not to brag or anything, but I’m a vicious fighter. My older brothers are terrified of me. Nice underwear by the way.”
Henry flinched. He quickly decided that leaping back into the sleeping bag with a yelp would be more awkward than just being there in his underwear, so he stayed where he was. At least he was wearing boxer shorts that were not embarrassing in their style or their condition.
She was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. Her hair was cut short. She had the body of a gymnast, which Henry thought was an excellent kind of body to have.
“Thank you,” he said. He tried to think of a clever follow-up comment (I sewed them myself. They’re bulletproof. I bought them with my own money. They used to glow in the dark.) but rejected all of his ideas. “Are you from the music camp?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t realize it was that close.”
“It’s about three miles away.”
“You walked three miles?”
Monica shrugged. “I like to walk at night. I find it relaxing. Don’t you find it relaxing?”
“Yes,” said Henry, who most certainly did not find the idea of walking at night relaxing.
“Why are you out here alone? Do you snore?”
“I gave attitude to the leader.” Henry hoped this made him sound dangerous.
“Why?”
“He tried to make my friend do push-ups.”
“Not in favor of push-ups?”
“I’m okay with the concept of push-ups,” Henry told her, promising himself that this would be his final lie of the night. “But he was a jerk about it.”
“Did you call him a jerk to his face?”
Henry almost went back on his promise from two seconds ago, but he figured that the odds were pretty good that he’d do something cowardly before she left and give away the lie, so he might as well be honest. “Nah.”
“I don’t blame you. It’s that guy in that one video, right? The Steroid Avenger?”
“Yeah, he’s a little intense. So I have to sleep out here tonight. It’s not that big of a deal.”
It occurred to Henry that this was the longest continuous one-on-one conversation he’d ever had with a girl this beautiful. No, wait. There was his freshman-year lab partner, Charlene. So this was the longest continuous one-on-one conversation he’d ever had with a girl this beautiful that didn’t end with him accidentally spilling hydrochloric acid on her blouse.
“Do you have to sleep out here every night or just tonight?”
“Hopefully just tonight.”
“Oh. Well, if you give him attitude again, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“You’re leaving already?”
Monica shrugged. “I don’t have to, I guess. I left my bunkmates a note not to freak out if they woke up and I was gone. Is it okay if I start the fire?”
“Can you do that?” Henry asked. “We tried with sticks all evening and we couldn’t even get them to smoke.”
Monica took out a lighter, flicked on the flame, and lit the tinder.
“Well, yeah, that works too. We aren’t allowed to have modern stuff. What instrument do you play?”
“Clarinet.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s kind of hard to rock out on a clarinet, but it’s fine. It makes my parents happy. I may or may not keep it up after I graduate. Haven’t decided yet. Do you play an instrument?”
“I’m awesome at Guitar Hero.”
“That almost counts.”
“And I would destroy you in a battle of the kazoos. Destroy you.” Henry hadn’t played a kazoo in years, but he didn’t think it was a skill that you lost.
“I have a kazoo right here, so I call your bluff.”
“Seriously?”
“No.”
“Oh, I thought you were joking, but you never know. Some people carry kazoos around just in case. Like clowns. Clowns carry kazoos, I think.” Babbling sequence: off, thought Henry as he shut up.
“If we ever do find ourselves together with a pair of kazoos handy, I accept your challenge.” She blew into the fire, spreading the flames nicely.
Henry loved talking to her and really wished he wasn’t in his underwear. There was no dignity in this. He wasn’t comfortable with his body and couldn’t pull off the whole “Oh, yeah, babe, you know you like what you see” vibe.
“Which school do you go to?” he asked.
“Baver. You?”
“Flagston.” Of course. It would have been too much to hope that they went to the same school and had just missed each other in the hallways all this time.
She smiled. “So technically, you’re my arch-nemesis. Sleep with one eye open, Henry.”
Monica’s leg buzzed.
“Who’s texting me at one in the morning?” she wondered aloud, taking her cell phone out of her pocket. She glanced at the display and laughed. “Ah, my friends are such dorks.” She tucked the phone back into her pocket.
“Was that a cell phone?” Henry asked.
“Yes. Have you not seen one before? They’re a pretty sweet means of communication.”
“No, I knew what it was, I was just—Do you have any games on it?”
“I’m not that much into video games,” she said. It was a combination of words that would normally cause Henry to shudder with revulsion, but coming from Monica they didn’t sound so bad. It was okay. They could work through this.
“Do you have any?”
“I think there’s something where you match up coins.”
“Can I match up coins on your phone?” Henry asked. “I won’t use up your battery or run off with it, I promise. One game. That’s it.”
She shrugged and handed him the phone. He swiped through her weirdly small selection of apps until he found Coin Join. The graphics were from about six years ago. The sounds were nothing but annoying beeps and the gameplay seemed like it had been designed for people who took pride in their own stupidity, but oooohhhhhh, the bliss!
Oh, yeah, look at those coins. Look at those coins match. Oh, baby, those were some great digital coins.
Henry glanced over his shoulder, as if Max might be looming above him, snarling with rage. But he wasn’t.
As Henry sat there, matching multicolored coins, he realized that today hadn’t been such a bad day. Sure, there’d been humiliation and discomfort and gross food, yet he’d talked to a gorgeous girl without her—to the best of his knowledge—thinking he was a total loser. Right now, he was sitting next to her by the campfire, playing a video game. The only thing to make it more perfect would be if he had some Cheetos and a highly caffeinated beverage.
Okay, it would be more perfect if she jumped him. That could wait until they’d known each other more than a few minutes.
Life was awesome.
As he got a quadruple coin match on a triple space, which earned him big points, a text message popped up on the screen from somebody named Lydia. Bobby sez he misses your hot bod! Come home or he’s mine LOL!
Well…crap.
WILDERNESS SURVIVAL TIP!
Always bring a first aid kit that contains bandages, antiseptic, and a surgeon’s operating table.
Chapter Eight
Somebody knocked.
Larry Dexter’s stomach immediately cramped up. Knocks weren’t a good thing. He was never happy to see the person on the other side of the door.
He wanted to go hide in the bathroom and pretend that he wasn’t home, but the TV was on, so they knew he was here. This would go a lot worse if they had to break in. He set his bowl of soggy cereal on the coffee table, brushed off his shirt and pants, ran a hand through his hair, and took a deep breath. Maybe it was just somebody selling something. He walked over and opened the door.
It wasn’t Girl Scouts.
“Mr. Grand!” he said. “Good to see you, buddy!”
There were two other men with Mr. Grand. Larry recognized them but didn’t know their names. Mr. Grand’s associates tended not to introduce themselves.
“Are you going to invite us in?” asked Mr. Grand.
“Oh, yes, yes, of course. Come on in.”
The three men entered Larry’s apartment. The last one in closed the door behind him.
“It reeks in here,” said Mr. Grand with a mild grimace. “Don’t you have any respect for yourself? What kind of a man would live in filth like this?”
Larry shrugged. “Maid’s day off,” he said.
Mr. Grand did not smile. Mr. Grand was not a man who appreciated humor.
Larry cleared his throat and gestured to the couch. “Please…have a seat.”
“Thank you, but we won’t be sitting on your plague-infested sofa.”
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Nor will we be drinking anything that was in this disease hole. We may even make you pay for the clothes we’ll have to burn after we leave here. Are you going to turn down the TV or do I have to put a bullet in it?”
Larry gave him a nervous chuckle. “I’ll go you one better.” After a moment of searching, he found the remote and turned the TV off completely. “That okay?”
“It’s fine.”
“Good, good. So to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
Mr. Grand was a big guy and he looked even bigger when he was angry. “Are you telling me that you’re going to make me suffer through this stench and insult my intelligence?”
