Lost in the Backyard

by Alison Hughes

  I needed something to occupy my skittering mind. Something that didn’t involve monsters and blood. I tried counting backward from a thousand, but I kept losing my place. I went through the times tables, something I’d never done except for marks. They were remarkably soothing, but once I got up to twelve times twelve, I was pretty much at the limit of what I could remember.

  Then I did what I always did at home if I couldn’t sleep. It was my own version of counting sheep.

  Okay, NHL. Hockey teams. Western Conference teams. I closed my eyes and started listing them slowly. Flames, Oilers, Avalanche, Stars, Kings, the Wild…Predators…Coyotes…I swallowed nervously and looked around. This was not helping.

  Moving right along to the Eastern Conference: Leafs, Bruins, Sabres, Red Wings…Islanders, Rangers. I jumped at a loud crack. Uh…Senators…There was a quick, light scurrying sound up a nearby tree. Uh… Senators…

  It was no use. Everything but raw fear (which has a metallic taste, like blood) kept slipping out of my mind as I startled at each new sound.

  Finally, I gritted my chattering teeth, stared into the blackness and waited for morning.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Supplies

  It took a few years, but morning finally came.

  I started awake from a fitful, shivering half sleep to feel something cold on my face. “Whaaa,” I cried, groggily batting at my face with my frozen hands.

  My eyes! Something was wrong with my eyes! They were oozing something, there was some sort of crust on them, they weren’t opening properly—I couldn’t see!

  I rubbed them frantically with my bruised and bloodied claws.

  It was only snow. A thin film had collected on my lashes and was now melting, the cold water running down my cheeks.

  I sort of wheeze-laughed in relief, my heart still hammering painfully hard.

  It was snowing in the pale, early dawn, big flakes wafting down and settling like a white blanket over the whole forest. Now that it was light, everything seemed more cheerful. Snow decorated every rock and tree and branch and twig. And every huddling, miserable creature. I stared at the forest that had scared me half out of my wits the night before. It was beautiful, a winter wonderland glinting and sparkling in the fresh snow.

  There was a hush, as though the forest were admiring itself.

  I broke the silence by groaning as I pushed myself up to a sitting position. Every muscle in every part of my body where there were muscles was aching, and I was so stiff I doubted I would be able to stand up. I rubbed my grimy face with my hands and just sat there, staring stupidly at the falling snow.

  I tilted my head back and opened my mouth, and a few flakes settled and melted on my tongue. It tasted wonderful. I needed more. I scrabbled around, scooping snow off a low branch and shoveling it into my mouth. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until I’d inhaled most of the snow in the area. I’m sure an old spiderweb was in there somewhere, because something really stuck on the way down. But the thought of eating a spiderweb for breakfast didn’t even really bother me. In my ravenous hunger, I saw it as a little bonus protein.

  When had I last eaten? The two gagging mouthfuls of Ellen’s veggie stew at about 4:30 yesterday. I was pretty sure that stew would taste a whole lot better right now. Mmmm, kale, lentils, chickpeas.

  My stomach rumbled. Hunger must be why I felt so faint and weak. I looked around. What did a person eat in the forest? I picked off a little bark from my tree, chewed it and then spit it out. Well, not that. It was disgusting, inedible.

  Then I remembered the granola bar.

  The granola bar I had offered Cassie while she was waiting for the bus. The one she didn’t want! What did I do with that granola bar? Did I throw it out? Is it in the back of the car? Think, Flynn, think…

  I stopped, my mouth gaping open and a blank, frozen look on my face.

  Like a movie in slow motion, I saw myself and Cassie near the bus, saw me offer her the granola bar. I heard her say, I really hate that kind. And I said, Yeah, me too. Why does Mom buy these things? And I watched, still in slow motion, as the hand with the granola bar fell to my side, then tucked the bar into my back pocket.

  My back pocket!

  I swiveled around on my knees, frantically grabbing at both back pockets. Left one, empty. Right one, something there! I dug it out. It was the granola bar—or at least the tattered remains of a granola bar. A granola bar that had been pummeled and pounded during a huge fall, soaked, then slept on. The wrapper had broken open, and a lot of the bar had disintegrated and fallen out, but about a quarter of it was left. Only it didn’t look like a granola bar anymore.

  “Okay, Flynn, you don’t know how long you’re going to be here, so you’d better ration this piece of granola bar. One small bite…” I took a little nibble.

  That granola bar was the best thing I’d ever tasted. It amazed me that I would ever have thrown those bars in the garbage when Mom put them in my lunch. It was heaven. I took another nibble. Mmmm. Oats, cranberries, some kind of dry yet sticky substance…

  Better stop, better ration—

  I wolfed the rest down in one big bite.

  Then I licked the remnant of wrapper. Then I dug around in that magic back pocket and picked out the linty crumbs and ate those too. I chewed and gulped that wonderful, soggy mess, wondering again why I’d ever hated the taste of it. I guess when food isn’t much of an issue, you get choosy.

  The granola bar had gotten my hopes up. I wondered what else I had on me. Maybe I had other supplies. I began rifling through my pockets to see what I had that might be useful. I started with my hoodie.

  One dead cell phone.

  One gum wrapper. I licked it, then folded it carefully away. You never know when the slight whiff of peppermint might come in handy.

  One bus ticket, for when I thought I was going to Max’s house.

  One crumpled stir stick with my teeth marks on one end.

  “Oh, come on!” I said aloud. “Sam from My Side of the Mountain gets a ball of twine, a knife, an ax and some flint and steel, whatever you use that for, and this is what I get?” Things seemed very, very unfair at the moment.

  My jeans pockets were even worse. Two balls of lint and one small piece of paper with a website for funny animal videos written on it. I stared at the unfamiliar writing. Purple? When did I ever use purple ink? Then it clicked.

  “Trust me,” Gracie had said, holding the slip of paper out to me, her eyes dancing, “it’s hilarious.” My hand went to my phone automatically. Still dead, of course. And if it weren’t, I doubt I would have sat watching hilarious animal videos. I probably would have been shrieking and shouting incoherently at some bewildered 9-1-1 operator.

  But still…I folded the paper and put it back in my pocket.

  Seriously, that’s all I had? These were my supplies?

  Wait! Mom’s fleece! I was still wearing that hideous baby-blue fleece under my hoodie! I had a knee-weakening thought about how cold I would have been without it during the night. Then, in a flurry of dead leaves, I was unzipping my hoodie and feeling feverishly for the pockets in the old fleece. There were two of them.

  The first was empty except for a shred of paper. A fragment of an old grocery list in Mom’s writing. Bananas, cheese, bagels—not sesame seed! Mom knew I hated sesame seeds. The writing blurred as I read it. I must still have had some excess snow in my eyes.

  So anyway, the first pocket was essentially empty.

  The second…wasn’t. There was a ball of something. I grabbed it. Dollar-store black gloves! Too small, and not food, but they would be warmer than nothing. I would also be able to avoid looking at my bloodied left hand. I gave the pocket one last swoop to make sure there was nothing else there.

  There was a little piece of something. I pulled it out. It was half a piece of gum! Gum! I popped it into my mouth almost before I knew for sure what it was. It took about five minutes of chewing to get the small piece soft, because it must have been about ten years
old, but I enjoyed every last minute of it.

  Good old Mom. Always tearing her gum in half, saying a whole piece felt too big in her mouth, saving the rest for later. I thought how much this small habit had irritated me in the past, and how much that half-piece of gum meant to me now. I would have to thank her for her obsessive, annoying habit when I saw her.

  If I saw her.

  I chewed, savoring the faint, decades-old hint of cherry, and thought about my mom. How she could be frustrating. How she could be hilarious. How she was always having friends over or talking on the phone. I thought about how we were kind of similar, and how Dad and Cassie were more alike.

  All of a sudden, I felt on the brink of some kind of discovery. I was remembering something from way back in childhood. Something important. Something about being lost. Something Mom had told Cassie and me once when we went into a big shopping mall. What was it? What was it?

  I had it!

  I heard Mom clear as day, saying, If you ever get lost, stay still. Don’t wander. Just stay where you are. And just call for me. Call and I’ll find you.

  Stay still. I thought uneasily of the hours I had run and stumbled through the forest. The ravine I had fallen down, and the river I had splashed across. How any trace of that frantic flight was now covered in a layer of snow.

  One rule, and I’d blown it. Completely.

  “Mom,” I said out loud. Then I shouted, “Mom! MOM!” My ragged voice was shockingly loud in the snow-muffled forest.

  A couple of birds startled and took flight in a small flurry of noise.

  And then the silence of the forest closed around me again.

  I staggered to my feet. I had to get back. Just retrace my steps and go back the way I had come. I would have to cross that river again, but I didn’t care. It was light now. I would find the river, cross it, climb up the side of the ravine and then be back at the path.

  Which way? Which way?

  I looked around. There was a bent tree that looked kind of familiar…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Living off the Land

  After what seemed like hours of walking in the slushy snow, picking my way around the endless trees, I gave up looking for the river I had crossed the night before.

  The sun was high in the sky now and warm on my face. I didn’t notice what I should have noticed: which direction it had risen from. I was just glad of the light and the day. But in books, lost people always notice where the sun is. It helps you navigate, apparently. Because everyone knows the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Or is it the other way around? Sets in the west, rises in the east? No, the sun rises in the east (or west?) and sets in the west (or east?).

  Seriously, I can’t even remember probably the most basic fact about the universe here?

  Ultimately, it didn’t really matter because other than feeling more stupid, I had no idea which direction

  Whichever direction it had come from, the sun sure warmed things up. I still dropped into the basketball defense drill periodically, but I wasn’t shivering and chattering so much anymore. I had sort of shifted gears and was worrying full time about my left hand, which I had covered with the dollar-store glove. It was throbbing like crazy. I held it against my chest as I walked.

  Finally, I decided I had better look at it. Dad, who always shakes me awake from nightmares, says things are often worse in our imaginations than they are in real life. Which was good, because in my imagination, my hand was not a hand—it was more of a claw, missing fingers and dripping with pus and blood…

  Stop it. It’s probably just slightly injured. Maybe even just a tiny scratch. Probably nothing.

  I stopped near a small bank of melting snow and gingerly, gently pulled off my gloves. I started with the right one, because that wasn’t the problem hand. Then I pulled off the left one. I glanced down, then quickly away, my stomach lurching.

  “Okay, this may be one of those times when reality is worse than imagination,” I muttered, my heart pounding. I forced myself to look at it again. My hand was like something out of a horror movie. I almost fainted just looking at it. It was a ruddy brown from all the blood, and there were long black lines, presumably cuts, where the blood seemed to have caked and where some of the glove lint had stuck. I turned my head the other way as I bent slowly toward the snow. Like I was pretending the hand had nothing to do with me.

  “Nice and easy…slow and steady. Just going to scrub this hand here—ooh—very, very gently.” I allowed my right hand to help but kept my head turned the other way. I peeked sideways. The snow was stained with blood. I looked away. My heart was pounding, and I felt shaky. One hand washed the other with the cold snow until both were numb.

  I steeled myself for another peek. A quick one. At least my left hand looked vaguely the same color as my right. But there were still those disturbing black lines…Scratches, probably. Just scratches. Nothing that would seriously affect the three-pointers. Unless it got infected and pus-filled, then started to rot and then…

  The hand floated over to where my head was turned away. I peeked again, then looked away. Yes, yes, a definite injury, but nothing some hot water, soap, bandages and serious antibiotics wouldn’t fix. I had my right hand slide the black glove back on.

  My stomach rumbled. I didn’t exactly forget the pain in my hand, but it took a temporary backseat to hunger. I chewed the gum harder. All hint of ancient cherry flavoring was long gone. It was now just a small piece of tasteless old rubber in my mouth. I needed to eat. I carefully extracted the gum, wrapped it in its wrapper and put it in my pocket. I might need it later to chew on or—I didn’t know—to set a trap? Build a boat?

  I looked around. Food. What did the kids eat in those survival books?

  I eyed some clusters of berries on a nearby bush. Would those feed me or kill me? Didn’t Mr. Sampson, my Outdoor Ed teacher, lecture us once about berries? I tried hard to remember. It was something about the color. Bright red berries attracting birds? Or was it bright red berries giving the loud “Go away! Poison here!” message? I couldn’t remember.

  I’d been noticing recently how little attention I’ve paid to things that might save my life. You know how kids always say “We’ll never have to use this in real life?” Well, who knew that that stupid berry class was going to be vital to my survival? Not me, obviously. I had probably been doing something incredibly important, like texting rude emoticons to friends in other classes.

  So back to these berries. In my mind, they had a sweet, delicious, strawberry-like taste. And they were just hanging there…

  A fragment of conversation from the car ride to Joe and Ellen’s came back to me. Me, bored but determined to get as much out of Mom and Dad as I could so I didn’t have to read those two books, asking, So what did they eat out there in the forest? And Dad saying, Well, they looked around at what the animals ate, and they tried those things too. And Mom saying, Yeah, before they ate the animals. There was a lot of killing. Blech.

  Option one! I thought. I pick option one! I liked the sound of eating what the animals ate. Well, I didn’t like the sound of it, but it sounded like a sensible, blood-free, non-raw-flesh-eating plan.

  I found what I thought might be a good lookout behind a couple of large rocks. After doing the quick basketball defense drill to warm up, I sank behind the rocks and stayed still.

  I waited.

  I watched.

  My stomach grumbled again, a long, drawn-out complaint.

  Finally a couple of black-and-white birds zipped over to a nearby bush. Wait—Cassie pointed those out to me last winter. They were…chuck-, chick-, chuck-somethings. My hand strayed to my phone. Cassie had put a bird-identification app on there that I’d never used. Then I remembered for the nine thousandth time that my phone was dead. But it didn’t matter what kind of birds they were. It mattered what they ate.

  The little birds just sat there, making their neurotic little-bird movements. Tilting the head for no apparent reason. Fluffing up the old wi
ngs. Quick, sharp scratching motions with one foot. And then they flew away. Not a peck or a nibble.

  No sooner had they flown away than another bird, a guilty-looking little guy, zoomed in and sat on the side of the tree, pecking not at the berries but right at the trunk. Tock, tock, tock. This was more like it. A woodpecker of some kind, I decided even without the app. I wondered what woodpeckers actually ate from those trees they bored into. Some kind of sap— perhaps some rich, maple-sugary substance?

  Well, in my newfound life of eating what the animals ate, I was willing to give it a try. I found the spot the bird had left, fished the bent stir stick out of my pocket and poked it into the hole. It came out with a bit of gunk on it. I licked it.

  Ack! Blech! Disgusting. Putrid. Surely this couldn’t be what the little guy had been hammering his head against a tree for. I poked the stick in again.

  This time it came out covered in bugs. Which, when you think about it, are almost as gross as raw meat.

  I dropped the stir stick into the snow.

  Okay, forget the woodpeckers.

  I went back behind the boulders to watch for smarter, more discerning animals. Like those other little black-and-white birds.

  Chuck-somethings…chuckadillys…chucka…

  I thought hard. No. The name didn’t start with chuck. It started with chick. Chick-somethings. Chicka-somethings…Chickabooms, chickaloos…

  Got it! I felt triumphant. It was chickadee. The little birds with the cool black heads were chickadees.

  Big deal, rumbled my stomach. So you know what they’re called. The important thing is, what do they eat?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  So Close