Lost in the Backyard
Page 1
LOST in the
Backyard
ALISON HUGHES
O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S
Copyright © 2015 Alison Hughes
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Hughes, Alison, 1966–, author
Lost in the backyard / Alison Hughes.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4598-0794-5 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0795-2 (pdf).—
ISBN 978-1-4598-0796-9 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8615.U3165L68 2015 jC813'.6 C2014-906673-2
C2014-906674-0
First published in the United States, 2015
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952060
Summary: When Flynn gets hopelessly lost in the woods, he wishes he had paid more attention in his Outdoor Ed class.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover design by Chantal Gabriell
Cover images by Getty Images, iStock and Depositphotos
Author photo by Barbara Heintzman
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
PO BOX 5626, STN. B
VICTORIA, BC CANADA
V8R 6S4 ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
PO BOX 468
CUSTER, WA USA
98240-0468
www.orcabook.com
18 17 16 15 • 4 3 2 1
For Sam (who brings me on long walks in the woods) and Ben (who wore skimpy little hoodies to the Environmental Ed classes he didn’t skip).
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Warning Signals (Four Days Earlier)
Chapter Two: Outdoor Education
Chapter Three: Change of Plans
Chapter Four: The Drive to the Middle of Nowhere
Chapter Five: Off the Grid
Chapter Six: The Great Outdoors
Chapter Seven: Alone
Chapter Eight: A Bad Decision
Chapter Nine: Wet Socks
Chapter Ten: Night
Chapter Eleven: Supplies
Chapter Twelve: Living Off the Land
Chapter Thirteen: So Close
Chapter Fourteen: Shelter
Chapter Fifteen: Warmth
Chapter Sixteen: Wildlife
Chapter Seventeen: Shelter (Take Two)
Chapter Eighteen: The Way Out
Chapter Nineteen: Rambling
Chapter Twenty: Just the Ticket
Chapter Twenty-One: Two People
Chapter Twenty-Two: Home Free
Acknowledgments
I am lying alone in the dark forest, dying.
Well, maybe not actually dying-dying. Yet.
I am shivering in a rickety “lean-to” I built out of brittle branches, afraid to move, breathe or even think because a huge, snuffling animal I’m too scared to look at seems to be about six feet from my head.
Even though my hood is up and I’ve stuffed my hoodie with itchy dead leaves, I’m freezing. My Nike Air Force 1 shoes, once a proud and glistening white, are slathered in river mud. This pains me even more than my bloodied hand, throbbing head and swollen eye.
My socks are slimy and very, very wet.
I ate spiderwebs for breakfast.
I haven’t slept for days, and my mind is wandering. The cheerful phrase “death and dismemberment” keeps running through my head in a constant loop, and I can’t remember exactly why.
Death and dismemberment…death and dismemberment… Six syllables pounding away rhythmically, like a train on tracks.
Wait. The sounds of the snuffling, snorting animal just stopped. But it’s still there. Is it sniffing? Listening?
Time stands still while I hold my breath. My heart is pounding so loudly it seems incredible that the animal can’t hear it. Maybe it just did.
The stupid survival books never end this way.
CHAPTER ONE
Warning Signals
(Four Days Earlier)
“Okaaay…and done,” I said to Cassie as I sent the text. It was a good one. I love texts where you nail it in only a few quick thumb clicks. I wasn’t a full-sentence, proper-punctuation-and-grammar kind of texter. I was replying to the stupid, gushy text Nick had sent everyone. Pretty standard Nick stuff: Oilers game tonite!!! Fifth row tickets dont mean 2 brag LOL!!! Enough with the happy-happy exclamations, Nick, and oh, yes, you meant to brag.
I just replied, 2-11. Short and cutting. Nick would understand. The Oilers’ record so far: two wins, eleven chokes.
I tucked my phone into my pocket, picked up the papers on the desk and spun around in Cassie’s chair.
“Where was I, Owl?” I asked, flipping through the pages idly. “I think we were on the Death and Dismemberment section. That one sounded interesting.”
“Who are all these people that keep texting you?” asked my little sister, looking over at me. Her room was a mess. Piles of clothes and a huge duffel bag teetered on the bed. A sleeping bag sprawled open on the floor.
“Just…people. Friends. None of your business, actually. Anyway, did I read the Death and Dismemberment section?”
“Risk of death and dismemberment,” Cassie muttered, trying for the fourth time to roll the sleeping bag tight enough to fit into the ridiculously small pouch it came in. She was determined to do it right, folding it three times and bunching it tightly as she rolled. Her bushy hair kept falling into her face, and her glasses slid down her little nose. I watched while I swiveled around and around on her chair.
“You need some help with that, Cass?” I asked. I didn’t want to embarrass her or anything, but, man, just get that sucker in there already. If it were me, I’d have shoved it into a garbage bag a long time ago. Maybe a recycling bag so it looked better. It’s not as though she’ll get a gold star or a Guides badge if she manages to fit the sleeping bag into its original bag or if it comes out wrinkle-free. Actually, what do I know? Maybe she will.
“Help? From who?” Cassie asked.
Ouch.
“Okay, back to the trip disclaimers,” I said, scanning the long list. “Because you never answered me about whether I read the Death and Dismemberment section—”
“Risk of death and dismemberment!”
“—I’m going to read it again. Just so we’re clear. Perfectly clear. Blah, blah, blah, no liability for any and/or all manner of injury or harm whatsoever, including death and dismemberment. Death and dismemberment!” I said triumphantly, slapping the paper. “Says it right here!”
“You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?” Cassie asked, finally tightening the toggles on the tiny sleeping-bag pouch.
“Sure am! Now how about something a little lighter?” I continued. “Not quite so deathly and dismembery.” I skimmed through the pages. “Hey, here’s one. How about Inherent, Special or Unusual Risks Associated with the Trip? That sounds fun! Blah, blah, blah, slip/trip/fall, bruises, cuts, scrapes. Wow, here’s a long list: dislocations, concussion, whiplash, contusions (whatever they are), sprains, broken bones…and it ends with all manner of injuries and/or death which may result from any transportation and/or activity undertaken whatsoever. Hmmm, that got dark pretty quick there…”
“I’m not as freaked out by a little blood as you are,” C
assie said. “Like, from a little cut or something.”
“What do you mean ‘freaked out’? I’m fine with blood.”
“Oh, yeah, Flynn. You’re great with blood.” She was getting the hang of this sarcasm thing. “You run.”
This was uncomfortably near the truth. My family, always sticklers for the truth no matter how awkward it got.
“Oh, yeah, I run,” I said, trying to look vaguely amused and superior. Hey, you have to try.
“Like in that parking lot,” Cassie continued, “when you caught your hand in the car door? We practically couldn’t catch you to put on a bandage—”
“I was stretching my legs! We had been driving, sitting for quite a long time, and—”
“Riiiight,” Cassie interrupted.
“All right, all right,” I said. “Enough about me. Can we get back to the disclaimers? This is serious stuff here, and we’re nowhere near done.”
“Mom and Dad have already signed it, you know.”
“Exactly. Probably without reading it. Because, seriously? Who would ever sign this if they actually read all this stuff that could go wrong? Leave it up to me to be the adult in the family. Again.”
I flipped a page.
“Insect and/or animal bites and/or lacerations or any and all infections and/or diseases and/or complications caused thereby. Who writes these things? Wait a second. Loss of limb. Isn’t that sort of like dismemberment? Repetitive. Anyway, I thought you were going on a camping trip, not to a war zone.”
“Don’t you have something else to do? Anything else?” Cassie asked. She was stuffing the duffel bag, which was almost as tall as she was.
“Weather-related risks such as sunny/hot temperatures (sunburn and/or sunstroke)…like that’s realistic for the end of October…high winds, rain, fog, snow, thunderstorms, lightning. Ahh, now that’s more like it…”
“Got my rain poncho somewhere,” said Cassie. Her voice was muffled because her head was inside the duffel bag. “Yep, here.” She held out a dilapidated yellow poncho.
“Rubber boots?” I asked.
“Obviously.”
“How about snow wear and/or fog wear and/or lightning wear? C’mon, Owl, you guys are going to be out there in the middle of nowhere—”
“It’s only an hour or something away by bus.”
“Well, may as well be nowhere, because you’ll be in the middle of some dark forest, shivering and wet beside some miserable little sputtering campfire, trying to roast damp marshmallows after some grueling, pointless, slithery hike in the mud.” I took a breath. “And that’s before you spend the night freezing inside your damp sleeping bag on the hard, rocky ground.”
I twirled around on Cassie’s chair. I thought I had summarized that pretty well.
“Look, Flynn”—Cassie had her hands on her hips, and her face was flushed—“I know you hate camping. We all know you hate camping. Probably because you totally suck at it! You don’t even try. I mean, who watches YouTube videos all weekend on his phone on a camping trip to Jasper?”
“I was bored. It was boring,” I said defensively. “Walking endlessly just to see some lake. Exclaiming over the same trees and mountains for two days. Crouching around a campfire, pretending everything tastes so good when it’s really charred or undercooked. Getting your socks wet. That’s the worst. I hate wet socks. Anyway, it’s not only boring. It’s also stupid. We have a warm, comfortable house. Why set up a tent, which by the way, is as much protection against wild animals as plastic wrap—”
“You can’t enjoy anything that doesn’t involve a video or a phone. That’s your problem,” said Cassie. “One of your problems.”
How is it that I’m one of the most popular kids in school and my own sister thinks I’m such a loser?
“Uh, thanks for the diagnosis, doc,” I said in a withering, sarcastic tone. Didn’t even faze her.
“And you know what, Flynn? I happen to like camping. I’m really, really excited about this Guides trip.”
“Seriously, Cassie—and I swear I’m asking you in all seriousness—why?”
She looked at me suspiciously. She probably thought I was setting her up for something. I wasn’t, but I felt a little guilty because I sometimes did. Cassie was a good kid. She wasn’t cool at all; in fact, she was a little weird, and I kind of worried about her starting junior high next year, but she was a good kid.
“If you really want to know, I love nature. It’s peaceful. There’s no pressure or drama or meanness.”
This made me wonder how grade six was really going for her.
“Sometimes when I’m out in the woods camping,” she continued, “I think of the earth underneath me and the trees around me and the stars above me and I feel kind of…I don’t know, melted into everything. One. With everything.”
Cassie’s round, serious face broke into a smile. She pushed up her glasses. Then she turned away, embarrassed. “That probably sounds really weird.”
“No, no, Cass. It sounds nice. I’m no camper, not at all, but I can almost imagine it. Sort of. I kind of get a calm feeling when I play Skyrim.”
“That’s nothing like what I’m talking about,” she said loudly.
“Okay, sure, it’s a video game. But it’s set in a forest mostly,” I said. “It’s very realistic.”
I thought about warning her that some people, some grade-six or junior-high kids, might think she was a bit weird if she said these kinds of things at school. But I didn’t. I didn’t want her to change just for other people. She’d figure things out.
I threw the field-trip form on the desk and grabbed the duffel bag.
“Well, I think we’re clear about the day after tomorrow’s injury and/or death.”
“Risk of injury and/or death,” Cassie said, holding up a little index finger.
I laughed. “C’mon. Let’s pack some warm stuff. Do you have enough really, really warm stuff? I mean, loads of really, really warm stuff. There was something in those papers about hypothermia.”
CHAPTER TWO
Outdoor Education
I thought about Cassie’s camping trip the next day as I shivered in a hoodie on the bleak school field. Even though I had clearly chosen several other options (and had even written Anything but Outdoor Education! on the option sheet last spring), they’d put me in Outdoor Education. If you have absolutely zero choice, how is that an option? Anyway, I had to endure this lesson in bodily discomfort for a whole year.
Personally, I think it was a money grab: Outdoor Ed cost something like 150 bucks extra for the privilege of endless field trips on smelly school buses to various freezing, barren locales. And, apparently, it would continue all winter, in all kinds of weather, and end in June with the big finale: a three-day camping trip.
I was already planning on skipping the camping trip. I just hadn’t figured out how. I was big enough now (almost five foot ten) that my parents probably couldn’t physically force me to go. Dad would be disappointed and do the old sad eyes and slow shake of the head. He’s a big guy; he could still lift me up and throw me on the bus. But he wouldn’t. Dad is the softie, the kind of guy who always helps shovel the driveway even when it is technically my responsibility. Frankly, I was more worried about my mom. She’s way smaller than I am, but she would literally pull out the wheelbarrow, no joke. But June was months away. It wasn’t even Halloween yet. I had time to bulk up.
But I still had to suffer through Outdoor Ed, which, as the name indicates, was outdoors, three times a week. It had been fine, even fun, in September when the weather was good. We took walks in the ravines near the school. We collected leaves, twigs and rocks for classification, which is as useless and boring as it sounds. We practiced building fires, which I thought was pretty brave of our Outdoor Ed teacher, Mr. Sampson, who had twenty-five thirteen-year-olds on his hands. We inflated rafts and “launched” ourselves down the river. We also did absolutely impossible things, like “building bridges” across a stream using only rope.
The bridge-building class was a turning point for me. If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s wet socks and shoes. Especially cold wet socks and shoes. So after rope-burning my hands as well as soaking my shoes while helping to build something that looked more like a drunken spider’s giant web than a bridge, I decided to accept my uselessness at everything outdoorsy. I decided to embrace it. I made outdoor ineptitude cool and started attracting a core group of followers. Two rules: one, you had to be conspicuously useless at everything; two, you had to laugh at the try-hards who weren’t.
Today, as the wind bit through my white hoodie and my whole body clenched against the cold, it hit me how truly hideous this class was going to get in the winter. It would be unimaginably cold. I hadn’t read the syllabus, but I was sure there would be lots of freezing wetness in my future. “Winter Survival Strategies” was our current topic. You would think there would be a DVD about those. One a class could watch indoors.
“This is the kind of day where layers matter!” barked Mr. Sampson. He seemed delighted with the vicious cold and biting wind. He was one of those annoying people who find bad weather invigorating. He probably cheerfully bustles out to shovel at the crack of dawn the morning after it snows rather than burrowing deeper under his duvet and hoping somebody else does it, like most normal people do.
Mr. Sampson looked like a cartoon Boy Scout inflated to adult size. His gray brush cut showed his red ears. His cheeks were pink, and his blue eyes sparkled.
“Layers,” he repeated. The class recoiled in alarm as he unzipped his coat and started pulling his shirts out from his waistband. The mere possibility of seeing Sampson flesh had many of us looking at the ground or scuttling to the back of the group.
“See? One, an undershirt, which you tuck in. Two, a long-sleeved shirt. Wool is best. Warm but wicks moisture. Then sweater. Then coat. Toasty warm!” He smiled at the frozen faces in front of him; none of us were dressed in fourteen layers of clothing.