by Chris Babu
“I’m pretty sure it was in front of us,” Eugene countered.
With no sign of the Guardians anywhere, they resumed their trek east, off the road. Drayden repeatedly peered behind, half expecting to see them charging.
“Cut it out, man,” Charlie said from the back of the group. “You’re making me nervous. There’s nothing back there. I think they’re ahead of us.”
Sidney held a hand in the air. “If they’re ahead of us we should go slow so we don’t bump into them, but if they’re behind us we should go fast. Great.”
Drayden walked beside Catrice up front, with Eugene behind them. Despite her warm embrace of Eugene earlier, Catrice actually seemed to notice Drayden again during the fishing challenge. Even though it wasn’t girlfriendy attention, at least she’d acknowledged his presence. That was something.
Eugene hurried past them. “I swear they’re in front of us. Let me be up front in case I’m right.”
Right after he passed, Catrice locked her arm inside Drayden’s.
Drayden internally rolled his eyes. Of course, she’d do that now—Eugene wasn’t watching anymore. He kept his arm sort of limp. While her touch usually made his heart flutter, he didn’t feel much of anything this time. He stared straight ahead and didn’t say a word.
Catrice pulled her arm away. “What’s wrong?”
Drayden released an exasperated breath and whispered, “What’s going on with you?”
Eugene turned his head back for a second.
Catrice glanced at him before returning her attention to Drayden. She crossed her arms. “What are you talking about?”
She spoke a tad louder than he wished, making him regret opening this box. “I don’t know, something feels weird, different.” He whispered, softer this time, hoping she would take the hint that he desired this conversation to remain private. “You’re not exactly talking to me. But you’re talking to…other people.”
“Are you kidding me?” she whisper-yelled. “What do you expect me to do? Oh, Dray, you’re so amazing, let me shower you with kisses. We’re in the middle of this horrible journey that’s turned into a disaster!” She groaned. “Grow up.” She reached into her holster and pulled out her Glock.
For a microsecond Drayden thought Catrice was going to shoot him.
She stormed ahead, past Eugene, and walked alone up front, accelerating away.
“That went well,” Drayden mumbled to himself. Was it all in his head?
Eugene slowed until Drayden ambled beside him. He slung his rifle over his back and wrapped his arm around Drayden’s shoulders. “Girls.” He shook his head. “Listen, I don’t have much experience because there’s only like five girls my age in the Palace. But I wouldn’t go try to fix that yet. Let her cool down.”
Incredulous, he studied Eugene. The guy stealing his girlfriend was giving him advice on how to retain her, again. Was Eugene messing with his head? He didn’t think so. The kid sounded sincere.
Eugene eyeballed Catrice in the distance. “Lemme guess, Catrice was a loner back in school? Not too many pals and no boyfriends?”
Drayden regarded him for a few seconds before answering. “Correct. Go on.”
“She didn’t invite her parents to join her in the Palace when you guys moved. Obviously, she had a terrible relationship with them. She was unloved, or something. It’s clear she likes you.” He cocked his head, his index finger in the air. “Maybe it scares her. She’s afraid of getting too close and being hurt. By you, like, if you dump her or something. If she couldn’t trust her parents, who can she trust? She’s keeping her distance a bit, pulling away. She may not even realize it.”
Wow. Eugene might be on to something. Perhaps Drayden and Charlie were wrong to be suspicious of him, and he wasn’t luring Catrice away. He could just be an incredible dude.
Eugene pulled his arm back and retrieved his rifle. “I would tell her how much you care about her, and, I don’t know, probably apologize later.”
“Yeah. Hey, thanks, Eugene.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Eh, anytime. I enjoy reading about psychology a lot too.”
Drayden allowed Sidney to catch up to him.
“Hey,” he said.
She pursed her lips, apparently fighting off a smile. “Hi. Nice fight.”
“Yeah, um, thanks?”
“Listen, Dray, it’s none of my business. But she got all angry with you and played dumb, like she had no idea what you were talking about. That’s shkat. Trust me. I’m a girl; I know. She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
He arched his brows. “Seriously?”
“Yes. If it was in your head, would me and Charlie have noticed? It’s so obvious. It’s possible Eugene is, in fact, innocent since you boys are such clueless idiots. She’s not, though. She’s also totally useless out here, but whatever. You do what you want. I’m just saying you don’t deserve to be treated like that. You deserve better.”
Drayden surveyed the roadway behind them again, past Charlie. Having been engrossed in the Catrice drama, he’d stopped paying attention to their surroundings. He heard it before he saw it.
Catrice had stopped up ahead, and Eugene had reached her.
As Drayden, Sidney, and Charlie joined them, everyone stood in awe. Drayden rested both hands behind his head.
“Now we have a problem,” said Charlie.
“This is not on the map,” Drayden said.
The river before them raged, whipping right through Route 6 with blazing speed and violence. The white frothy water swirled, splashed, and sprayed, making the air misty and cool. The late afternoon sun blared, draping the world in gold. The map of the Massachusetts coast did indicate lots of water. Still, they’d had enough of it.
“I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here,” Charlie said, “but Catrice, you really need to learn how to swim.”
A chill ran down Drayden’s spine. Catrice wasn’t the only one too weak to swim through that. It was no picturesque stream or piddling ten feet of shallow water to wade through. This river was something out of a movie.
“We definitely can’t swim that,” Eugene said. “Even I’d drown in there.”
Drayden squatted and removed his Yankees hat. Feeling around the emblem evoked memories of his mother, and usually some inspiration. It didn’t this time, which was odd, so he shared the first thought that came to his mind. “Since this river shouldn’t exist, there won’t be any bridges across it, no matter how far upstream we hike.”
Catrice refused to look at him. “Further north the water might be calmer.”
“We can try that,” Drayden said.
“It might be worse,” Sidney said.
Eugene turned his back to the river, the sun brightening his blue eyes, and faced Drayden. “What if…” His expression went blank, his gaze suddenly past Drayden’s head. He whipped his rifle out.
“Get down!”
Drayden dropped to the ground on his stomach. He drew his pistol and rolled onto his back.
The others darted behind trees for cover. Eugene took a few powerful steps back down Route 6 with his weapon raised. He scanned the area through the rifle’s sight, panning left and right.
“What do you see, Euge?” Charlie shouted from behind a tree.
He didn’t answer.
Charlie dashed out beside Eugene, his rifle raised as well. “What is it?”
Eugene lowered his gun. “Nothing, I guess. Sorry, guys. False alarm. I thought I saw something. Movement, a person.”
The Guardians.
Drayden beheld the river, scratching the back of his neck. “Eugene, are the other Guardians strong enough to swim across that?”
“No way.”
“Then they must be behind us.”
Catrice finally locked eyes with Drayden. “Or they walked upstream, trying to find a safer pl
ace to cross.”
She was kind of hung up on this upstream thing, but she could be right.
“If so, we shouldn’t walk upstream, or we might run into them,” Drayden said. “Or if they’re behind us, we need to hurry up and find a way across.”
“How much rope do we have?” Eugene asked.
Sidney dug through her pack. “We each have a bunch coiled up.” She tossed hers to Eugene, who unrolled it. It was marked with lines by foot and stretched roughly fifteen feet.
Eugene wound it back up. “How about we tie them all together, secure it to the other side of the river somehow, and hold onto it as we walk across?” He stood in front of Drayden, squinting with the sun in his eyes again.
“Seems super dangerous,” Sidney said, wringing her hands. “It would be real easy to lose the grip and be swept away.”
Eugene shifted a few feet to Drayden’s left and ducked down into his shadow to block the sun. “That’s better.”
The shadow.
Drayden strolled to the riverbank and checked both ways before looking up. Most of the trees were evergreens, and they were towering. The others caught up, noting his line of sight.
“The trees?” Eugene asked.
Drayden tugged on his left earlobe. “How wide do you think the river is?”
“Thirty feet? Forty? Hard to say.”
“We need to find out. Can you tie those ropes together? And do you think you could toss it across the river so we can measure? Attach a rock to the end or something.”
“Wait,” Eugene said, “why not just cut down a tree and see if it reaches?”
“Because we don’t have anything to cut down a tree with. We have knives. That would take all night. Let’s try to find a tree right on the bank with exposed roots that’s already leaning across the river. We might be able to tip it across if we dug out around the roots. Even that’ll be a lot of work. We need to be certain it’s tall enough before we start.”
Charlie tapped a nearby tree. “I’m not getting it. So we figure out the distance across the river. How can we tell how tall the tree is? Kinda tall to climb.”
Drayden locked eyes with Catrice, positive she would know where he was going with this.
She thought about it for a second. “Its shadow,” she said.
The river crossed Route 6 at a diagonal angle. The sun was high enough in the sky that it cast the trees’ shadows on the ground, not over the river. Being late afternoon, the shadows were lengthy, but thankfully over land, meaning they could measure them.
Eugene clapped. “Man, you guys have not disappointed. Can’t wait to tell my dad about how solid you two were out here.”
Drayden wondered why his father would care.
“I’m feeling dumber than a backpack full of soggy food,” Charlie said. “Still not getting it.”
Catrice stood beside Drayden and rested her hand on top of his head. “We measure, say, Drayden’s shadow. He’s six feet tall. Pretend his shadow is three feet. Then we measure the tree’s shadow. The tree will be twice as tall as its shadow’s length.”
Charlie’s face showed that the lightbulb had finally turned on. “Ahhh.”
Drayden gathered all the rope. “Eugene, you’re the knot guy. Join these together and find a rock to secure to the end. When you’re done with the rope, we’ll do the shadow measurements.”
After Eugene formed the elongated rope, with a block-like rock anchored on one end, he stepped up to the riverbank. “Okay, you guys, uh, stand back.” He held the rope a foot shy of the rock, and twirled it in a circular motion, like a cowboy preparing to lasso a steer. Once it was whipping around, he released it with a final thrust and a scream. It reached three-quarters of the way across and splashed into the water.
“Dude, you gotta get it to the other side,” Charlie said.
Eugene put his hands on his hips and gave Charlie a look.
“Sorry.”
Eugene reeled it back in and picked up the rock. “I’ll try throwing it like a baseball.” With a running start and a bellow, he hurled it. It sailed, easily making it across, and the rope dropped into the water. “Gotta do this pronto before the rope gets pushed down the river.” He tugged until the rock rested at the top of the far bank and grabbed the rope exactly above their own, marking the length. As the center of the rope started to drift down the river, he retracted it.
Sidney counted out the feet, and Eugene adjusted for the knots he’d tied. “Forty-six feet, roughly,” he said.
“Now bring the rope here and measure my shadow.” Drayden stood tall.
His shadow measured twelve feet two inches.
“Let’s call it twelve feet,” Drayden said. “So, I’m half as tall as my shadow. Now the harder part, we need to find a tree candidate.”
They explored the riverbank, hunting for a tall tree along the edge that appeared on the verge of falling. Only a handful of trees were close enough.
“How about this one?” Sidney hollered, a bit upstream.
The nominee seemed plenty tall enough. It was one of those skinny, narrow pine trees with almost no branches until the very top. The exposed roots jutted out on the river side, and the tree leaned precariously. Since it lay somewhat alone, they could isolate its shadow from the other trees in the area.
“That one’s perfect,” Drayden said. “Let’s get the rope and measure.”
Eugene straightened out their conjoined rope, which extended sixty feet. The shadow was far longer. Sidney marked the end, and Eugene moved the rope. Still, it didn’t reach the shadow’s top, coming up a few feet short. “Let’s call the shadow 124 feet,” Eugene said.
“That means the tree is sixty-two feet tall,” Catrice said. “It’ll clear—no problem.”
The group gathered at the base of the tree.
Eugene scraped some dirt with his fingers. “Is this gonna work? Digging out all the dirt around the roots?”
Drayden shrugged. “I don’t know. If it was a healthy tree standing perfectly upright, I don’t even think a bus could pull it down. But this tree looks like it’s about to fall anyway. Does anybody have any other ideas?”
Not a peep from anyone.
“All right then.” Eugene gave a double thumbs-up. “Let’s get to work.”
Sidney kicked the roots. “What do we dig with?”
“Rocks,” Catrice said. “I think flat-ish ones, kind of like little shovels?”
Everyone spent some time finding rocks suited to the task. Charlie and Eugene attacked the dirt on the river side, around the exposed roots.
“Drayden,” Catrice said, staring at her feet. “We need to dig a wide circle around the tree on the back side to loosen up the root system behind it. So it can tip.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Can you and Sid work on that?”
“Sure.”
Sidney frowned at him before joining Catrice behind the tree.
Drayden observed Eugene and Charlie, frantically digging out the dirt, both dripping with sweat. Their jacked arms almost tore the sleeves of their gray fatigues.
He squeezed between them, jabbing his rock into the firm soil around the roots, scraping it away. Digging from the river side required some balance since it was on a steep slope.
After a few minutes, the other two boys had made admirable progress. Drayden, not so much. His feet kept sliding down the embankment, and he hadn’t cleared much dirt. He probably needed to hit it harder. Employing every ounce of muscle, he slammed the rock into the unyielding soil. There was no reason he couldn’t match Eugene and Charlie.
“Careful, bud,” Charlie said.
He swung again with all his force.
His feet slipped. He banged his face into the rock-hard bank and tumbled backward down the hill.
“Dray!” someone yelled.
In an instant, he was in th
e frigid water, his cheek throbbing. He was coherent enough to realize he was going to be swept away.
Hands seized him, around his collar and on his arm. Strong hands. Charlie and Eugene dragged him out.
Drayden lay on the shore, quaking. He pawed at his busted face.
Sidney squatted by his side, holding his hand, and pressed a piece of cloth against his cheek.
“Dray,” Catrice said, “are you okay? Can you say something?”
I’m a flunk? How about that? His weakness was so damn humiliating.
“I’m fine, guys. I’m sorry. I just slipped. Thanks for saving me.”
To make it more embarrassing, Eugene scooped him up like a baby and carried him back up to safe ground. Sidney and Catrice stayed with him while the boys returned to digging.
Sidney dabbed his cheek with the cloth. “It’s only a small cut, Dray.”
He hung his head low.
“Hey,” Eugene said, winded. “I think this thing is about to go. It’s sagged a few more feet, and the roots in the back where the girls dug are popping out of the ground. Charlie, let’s push.”
They set down their rocks and doubled over.
Drayden thought about how the two of them had saved his life a moment ago, catching him before the current dragged him away. Then, as if it had been nothing, they resumed digging.
“Sid,” Charlie said, “we could use your help here.”
They wanted Sidney’s hand, not his. Sidney was strong and not likely to injure herself. Once again, though, Drayden remembered what he brought to the table.
“Eugene, don’t push. You’ll be standing on the roots, which we need to lift off the ground. Wrap your rope around the tree, stand down on the riverbank, and pull. Just make sure to get out of the way once she starts falling.”
“Right. Good call.”
Eugene tossed the rock at the end of the rope over one of the few low branches. After yanking a bunch of rope over the branch to give him some slack, he threw it over another branch on the other side. He pulled the rock back to where he began, and it was looped around the trunk fifteen feet up. He, Charlie, and Sidney held both ends and pulled. Pull, relax, pull, relax. The ring of dirt and roots behind the tree lifted off the ground.
