by J. L. Esplin
“Now what, genius?” Stew says. He’s got this smirk on his face.
Cleverly is looking at me, probably wondering the same thing. There is nothing to tie the tarp to, no tree or big sagebrush. All we have is our packs. They’re almost three feet tall and reinforced with an aluminum frame, weigh about twenty-five pounds without the canteens, so they normally stand upright without a problem.
“Get our packs,” I say to Stew, and he shakes his head like that’s a dumb idea. But he still walks over to his and drags it across the dirt to Cleverly’s side. The dragging really bugs me, and I almost yell at him to pick it up, but then Will runs to get mine and does the same thing, so I just roll my eyes and forget it.
“Thanks, Will,” I say, unzipping a utility pocket and putting away my hatchet.
“No problem.” He grins up at me, and then runs his tongue along those red, chapped lips of his.
“Don’t lick your lips. You have that ChapStick, remember?”
“I lost it.”
“What?” I say, thinking he must be kidding. But he’s not—I can tell by the way his eyes drop. “I just gave it to you!”
“I think it fell out of my pocket when I put this on,” he says, pulling at the front of his oversized hoodie.
“It’s fine,” I say, gritting my teeth a little, because he looks close to tears. “Don’t worry about it right now.”
In the front mesh compartment of my pack are a couple of thin ropes, and I take out a short one and uncoil it. I feed it through the corner grommet of the tarp, and use a few half hitch knots to tie it to the top of the aluminum frame of my pack. Will watches me closely the whole time, crouched down with his hands on his knees. I carefully let go of it, to see if it will hold, and it immediately blows over.
“This isn’t gonna work!” Stew yells from the other corner.
“Just tie your side!” I prop my pack up again and sort of angle it upright against the wind until I get it to stay. Then I go help Cleverly and Stew with their side. Stew didn’t even try to make it work. He’s tied a couple of sloppy overhand double knots, and the rope is too slack. Probably because he thinks my idea sucks.
It’s going to take me some time to get the knots undone; so I hold up the corner for them and say, “Go ahead and get in.” Stew, Cleverly, and Will all duck under the sloping tarp.
When I finally get it undone, a big gust of wind hits me in the face, snatching my breath away and making me stumble a little. Holding both the tarp and Stew’s pack in place, I wait for it to pass and then tie the rope and angle his pack the same way I angled mine, until it looks like it’s gonna stay.
The whole shelter is crap—I know that. The roof is low and rippling like crazy; the packs make it completely unstable. But it’s blocking the worst of the wind, and it only needs to last us thirty minutes, tops. That’s plenty of time for a food-and-water break. Thirty minutes, then we can get on our way again.
Stew and I each have a gallon-sized ziplock bag of food in our packs, but they contain different things. Stew has a lot of high-protein crap that he actually likes but I can’t stand. Plus almost everything he has left contains some sort of nut, and I have a mild nut allergy—the kind that makes my throat itch, not the EpiPen-to-the-thigh kind. I have typical hiker’s food in my pack—granola, dried fruit, crackers, a couple cans of Vienna sausages. We both have jerky. These weren’t intended to be three-course meals. In fact, I never actually believed we’d be eating this stuff at all. If I had, I might have talked my dad into something that actually tastes good.
Unzipping Stew’s pack without disturbing the tarp, I take out his food, as well as his tin mug, and then I go to my pack and get my food too. I grab one more thing—sunscreen for Cleverly and Will—then I hunker down, duck my head under the tarp.
My breath catches, and I freeze in place.
Sunlight hits the roof of the shelter, casting everyone in a blue pool-like glow. Like the flag over my bedroom window. The morning my dad left. The smell of his aftershave, the lawn mower fading in the distance, his heartbeat echoing in my ear.
John, I know I’ve been gone a lot lately—
It starts to happen again. That thing where my chest tightens, like a balloon is inflating in my rib cage, squeezing the air out of my lungs—
“John,” Cleverly says, and I blink at her, clearing my vision. She puts her knees up and scoots closer to Will, patting the space next to her, like I’m just waiting for an invitation to sit.
Think of something else. Not Dad leaving again. Not me being responsible for everything that’s happened since, being responsible for my brother …
“Nice shelter, John,” Stew says.
I look at my brother, sitting cross-legged with his forearms on his knees, his head tilted to the side. That cowlick at his hairline pushing his hair the opposite way, his mouth pressed in a sarcastic grin.
I take a breath, force air into my lungs. “Thanks,” I say to him, and crawl inside, sitting next to Cleverly, right on the edge with my ankles crossed, knees bent upward like bat wings.
“Kind of hot and cramped in here,” he continues. “It will probably collapse. But otherwise, nice shelter.”
“Exactly what I was going for.” My heart rate is already returning to normal. I take another breath.
“It’s not bad, right, Will?” Cleverly says, nudging her brother. And I realize she’s trying to defend me. She’s also eyeing the low, flapping ceiling like she thinks it’s going to collapse any second.
“Yeah, I think it’s amazing,” Will agrees, nodding encouragingly.
Those words are barely past his lips when the pack on my side starts to topple over, pulling the roof down with it. Reacting fast, I roll forward onto my knees and grab it, propping it back up from the inside.
Stew laughs. “Amazing that it stayed up as long as it did,” he says.
I don’t really care that the shelter sucks; I just want to get this break over with. I toss Stew his pouch of food and he catches it. I give Cleverly the sunscreen. “Your whole face, your ears, the back of your neck.”
She cringes but takes it.
“Won’t it make us sticky?” Will says, squeezing his eyes shut and scrunching up his nose as she wipes down his face.
“There are worse things, Will,” Cleverly says.
I pull open my ziplock bag and take out three individually wrapped packages of dried fruit, taking one for myself and passing one to both Cleverly and Will. My dad stored this stuff away so long ago that it’s best not to check the expiration dates, but I can tell by the packaging alone that this flat rectangle of fruit leather is old. Still, Cleverly and Will open it with so much enthusiasm, you’d think they were biting into a fresh-picked Washington apple, with the juices trailing down their chins.
I hesitate, then go ahead and take out two pieces of jerky from my pouch, and zip it closed. I hand it to Cleverly and her brother. “It’s not a cheeseburger, but…”
“Thank you,” she says, and I can tell she means it. Will immediately tears into the jerky with his back teeth.
I peel away the wrapper on my fruit leather and bite into it. It’s so tough that I have to work my teeth back and forth to tear off a bite. In this dried form, the sweet tang of apple is really strong, almost sickeningly so. It sits heavy on my tongue, absorbing all the moisture in my mouth like a sponge. I chew on it for a while, and it goes down like a lump of pasty oatmeal.
On Stew’s lap is the canteen he was drinking out of earlier. “How about you share your water with them?” I say, holding out his mug to him, but he doesn’t take it. He has the wrapper pulled down on a protein bar and is about to take another bite, but he hesitates.
“Why can’t you share your water, John?” he says in this confused, thoughtful tone.
He knows why—he’s just trying to be difficult. My water is still contaminated. I could have boiled it before we left the shack house, but I was so anxious to get going …
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea.
Stew is waiting for my answer, and I realize ignoring him isn’t going to make him shut up about it, so I go ahead and say it. “I haven’t boiled it yet.”
“Oh yeah,” he says real slowly, like I just jogged his memory, “that’s right. You gave me all the clean water, and took all the toilet water for yourself, like a real hero. And now it’s way too windy for a fire. Who knows when you’ll have a chance to make it drinkable—”
“All right,” I say, mostly because I don’t want to argue with him. “I screwed up. I should have boiled it right away. Can we drop it now?”
“So, you do make dumb decisions?”
I glare at him. “On rare occasions, yeah.”
Stew looks so satisfied by my answer that I suddenly realize that was all he was trying to get me to admit. I, John Lockwood, sometimes make dumb decisions. So what? What’s his point?
He stuffs the rest of his protein bar in his mouth, crumbles up the wrapper and jams it in his pocket, and then leans forward and grabs the mug from me.
“Start with half a cup each, all right?” I say.
“Did you hear that?” he says to Cleverly and Will, his mouth still half full. “You each get a whole half cup of water!”
Will has a concerned frown on his face, and Cleverly turns to give me an Are you kidding me? look, her eyebrows arched over her widened eyes. Because half a cup of water is nothing. It’s backwash. And she isn’t complaining about it, even though we both know it’s not enough water to keep anyone walking. That look is because she’s beginning to realize just how desperate our water situation is.
I could point out to her that her first clue might have been when she caught us scavenging water from a toilet, but I decide not to bring it up. For obvious reasons.
Stew gives both Will and Cleverly their water ration, and then takes the mug back, pours a third cup, and holds it out to me before I can stop him. “Pour it back. I don’t need water right now.” Once it’s out, I realize it’s kind of a stupid thing to say. My mouth is so dry that my lips stick together when I talk. Almost without realizing it, my tongue glides along my bottom lip, and then begins the spit-gathering-and-swallowing ritual.
Cleverly is eyeing me thoughtfully, chewing on a piece of fruit leather like it’s bubble gum. “You don’t need water? Is that another one of your dumb decisions?”
Stew laughs again. “I’d say so. But if he’s not gonna drink it…” He shrugs, and then tosses back the half cup in a single swallow.
An obvious attempt to get under my skin. I grit my teeth and swallow more spit.
But Cleverly leans past her brother and hits Stew on the knee. “Hey, he needs that. Pour him another cup.”
“I’m fine,” I say, barely containing my annoyance.
“We all need water.”
“Not John,” Stew says. “He can survive without water. Right, John? Because you’re so much stronger than the rest of us, right? Only the strongest idiot survives!”
I’ve had enough at this point, but before I can tell Stew to shut it, Cleverly comes to my defense again. “Could you have set up this tarp shelter?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at my brother.
“I could do better than this—”
“I’m not asking if you know how to set up a tarp shelter. I’m asking if you could have set up this shelter, right here, right now. Because a few minutes ago, you seemed pretty much useless.”
“I’m only useless when I want to be,” Stew says, which might be true, but he’s definitely losing ground here.
Will is gnawing on his jerky, watching them go back and forth like it’s a tennis match.
Cleverly shakes her head. “You couldn’t even hold the stakes in place, let alone hammer them into the hard ground. John got them in. So stop acting like his strength isn’t important to our survival.”
I immediately feel blood rushing to my cheeks, and I’m not typically a blusher. I mean, I shouldn’t be blushing over this at all. That’s the worst part. Because I know she’s just trying to take Stew down a notch—and it worked, because it shut him up. But my body is reacting as if she had just given a speech on the wonders of my right biceps.
“Why are you grinning like that?” she asks me in this exasperated tone. Then she sighs and says, “Look, it’s kind of freaking me out that you won’t drink half a cup of water. I get that there is not much of it, but—”
“Enough,” Stew interrupts.
“What?”
“Enough,” he repeats. “I’m just correcting you. You said there isn’t much water, and the truth is we don’t have enough water. To make it to Brighton Ranch, I mean. We have less than two gallons to get us there. Or not get us there, I should say.”
No, Stew, you shouldn’t say anything. Really, you should keep your mouth shut!
I see the look on Cleverly’s face and I want to insist that everything will be fine, that we can make it through the desert on what water we have left. But I know she won’t believe me. She shouldn’t believe me.
It would be a complete lie.
Even if Stew hadn’t messed up the ration, even if he hadn’t guilted me into letting two strangers tag along with us, we just don’t have enough water to make it. That’s what Stew’s little water rebellion is all about, isn’t it? Getting me to admit that we don’t have enough water?
It’s Will who finally breaks the silence. Staring off at nothing, he says in this wooden voice, “Last night I dreamt I jumped into a swimming pool and started gulping down the water. I drained the whole pool, every last drop, but I was still thirsty for some reason. I don’t know why I was still thirsty. I drank a whole pool.”
I look out in front of me at a row of sagebrush that are beating wildly against each other, their long pointed stems waving violently toward the sky, like some sort of crazy battle. I let the scene mesmerize me as I think. I guess there comes a time when you just stop fighting and accept the inevitable.
“Okay, Stew.”
“Okay?”
I nod. “Okay,” I say again. “We’ll stop for water at the reservoir.”
* * *
Stewart hesitates with his hand on the cap of his second canteen. “You’re sure about this, John?”
I give him a look. Because apparently, now he cares what I think.
“I mean,” he says, “since we’re stopping at the reservoir, drinking the rest of our clean water now just makes sense, right?”
“Makes sense to me,” Will says with a nod.
Cleverly nudges him with her elbow. “What do you think, John?”
I meet my brother’s eyes, and I think … he’s testing me. I think the only thing that matters right now is that Stew believes me. I need him to believe me. I don’t want a single doubt in his mind that I’m serious about stopping at the reservoir to refill our canteens.
And I am serious about it. It’s just not going to happen in exactly the way he thinks.
I hold out the mug. “Fill it to the top.”
He grins and unscrews the cap.
I drink the water in a few swallows and pass the mug to Will.
“Thanks,” he says, taking it eagerly.
“So, after we drink this,” Cleverly says, “there’s no water left except—”
“The toilet water,” I finish for her, and she makes a face. “Don’t worry, I’ll decontaminate it as soon as I get a chance.”
“Then first thing tomorrow,” she says, “we’ll head to this reservoir of water, that was actually between us and Brighton Ranch the whole entire time?”
I know what she’s getting at. But I don’t give her an explanation, just answer, “Right.”
She stares back at me, her eyes narrowed like she’s thinking about something.
“Ugh,” Will says, swiping his hand across his mouth and passing the mug to Cleverly. “It tastes like old bathtub water.”
“Don’t complain,” Cleverly says. “And how do you know what old bathtub water tastes like anyway?”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying,
I wish the water was colder.”
Stew takes the mug and says, “Here, Will, do this.” He pours himself another cup. “Let it sit on your tongue for a minute before you swallow.” He demonstrates, holding the water in his mouth, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk. Then he swallows. “Ah!” he says, smacking his lips. “So refreshing!”
We all try Stew’s method, and I admit it helps a little bit. But the constant thirst at the back of my throat? It’s still there. I’m guessing I could drink the swimming pool from Will’s dream and it would still be there.
As soon as the water’s gone, I stretch out my legs and say, “All right, it’s time to get going—” But Stew lies down on the tarp, curls onto his side, and I freeze mid-stretch. “Stewart. Get up.”
“I’m just closing my eyes for a minute,” he mumbles, his head resting in the crook of his arm. “Don’t freak out.”
Don’t freak out?! We’ve gone less than three miles, and you need a freaking nap!
This is exactly why I didn’t want to stop at the reservoir. He’s proving my point, though I’m sure he doesn’t care. Keeping my brother walking for ninety-six miles is hard enough, without adding sixteen more miles to our already insanely long walk.
“I’m breaking the shelter down in five minutes,” I snap, grabbing my food pouch. I reach past Cleverly for Stew’s.
“I got it,” she says, passing it to me, along with his mug.
I crawl out from under the tarp before I explode in frustration.
The wind hits me hard, catching me off guard even though it shouldn’t have. I guess my shelter wasn’t completely worthless after all. Cleverly follows me out, stands beside me with her arms crossed and her head ducked against the wind as I crouch next to each pack.
I get the feeling she’s getting ready to bombard me with questions about the reservoir, and why, until ten minutes ago, I was planning to walk right past it. So when I’m done with the packs, I turn and move away from the shelter, stepping through the knee-high brush.
I don’t have to go far to hide our voices—the wind is still pretty noisy.
“Go ahead,” I say, because she’s hesitating, and in about four minutes, I’m dragging Stew out of that shelter by his ankles.
