Bob looks around. “Um, yeah. Is now the time to say I don’t do trees? Or trees don’t tolerate me? Something like that.”
I raise a hand. “I can climb.” More advantages of a youth spent running wild.
“Can you shoot?” Miggy asks.
“No. Can you?”
“I know how to load a gun and pull the trigger.”
“In other words, you can’t hit bupkes.”
“Is bupkes a big-ass target? Because if so, you’re right.”
I’m feeling stronger now. I prefer doing to waiting, participating to watching. This is something I can offer.
“You’re in luck,” I volunteer. “Monkeying up trees and staying awake all night happen to be two of my core strengths. I’ll take overwatch, but I don’t want the gun. I have my whistle. First sign of approach, I’ll signal. Those of you who can handle a rifle, have at it.”
“I have a handgun in my pack,” Miggy says, opening it up. Well, well, the man is full of surprises. “Not so great for stopping grizzly bears, but . . . other kinds of predators.”
He gives us all a look.
“Still, your gun, I’m tree duty.” At the last moment I turn toward Bob. “And if I hear the chopper?”
“When you hear the chopper”—he corrects—“blow the whistle. I have a flare in my pack. I’ll activate it to reveal our new position.”
Or attract our happy hunter, I might say. But I don’t want to ruin Bob’s optimism.
I tuck my whistle into my jacket pocket, grab my blanket and water bottle, and head out. I still have my knife at my waist. Not sure if that’s a good thing or bad, but more and more I’ve come to appreciate the feel of it against my hip.
I’m already vulnerable. I don’t want to be completely defenseless.
Conifers don’t make for great climbing. Too many thin, prickly branches, not to mention sticky pitch. In the dark, it’s hard to tell my options, but I can’t seem to find anything close to a sturdy oak or statuesque maple. In the end, I settle for a particularly large pine tree. I have to scramble up a rock to reach the lowest branch, but once I swing up and get going . . .
Just like riding a bike. In my mind, it’s me and Sophie again, on a sunny California afternoon. I’m escaping from a father already passed out on the couch. She’s escaping from an empty home where her parents arrive late and leave early for reasons neither of us know. But none of that matters as we climb until the thinned-out limbs groan ominously and yet we continue on because we’re young and immortal and the sun is high and summer is good.
Up up up. Top of the world. Shrieking with laughter.
Nothing can catch us up here. Nothing can hurt us. Nothing can go wrong.
It was only on the ground that the world failed us.
I’m not sure what happened to Sophie after I headed to LA. Is she alive? Happy? Does she still remember those sunny afternoons? Miss her dog? Think of me as a childhood friend?
One of these days I should look her up. Except, of course, a woman who never stays is hardly likely to become a woman who finally returns.
Now I find a perch nestled against the sticky trunk, high enough that the skinny branches can still bear my weight, low enough that I can just make out shifting shapes in the darkness below. I’m physically tired, but mentally ramped up. Exactly perfect for night watch.
Bit by bit, my companions wrap up in their blankets, lie down like a row of little cocoons. The creatures in the woods resume their nocturnal song. A breeze wafts through the trees. The stream gurgles beneath me.
I hold my whistle. I look down and study. I glance up and wait.
As hour turns into hours.
But the chopper never arrives.
* * *
—
Only when the sun rises do I carefully clamber down, my limbs heavy, my mind overfull. Was the rescue effort delayed? Is the chopper just now taking off? Do we stay camped here, do we try to continue on? What to do what to do what to do?
My attention is so distracted I almost don’t see it at first. Then, just out of the corner of my eye, a spot of red. Bright red.
Carefully I creep my way through the trees, till I have a better view of the object. I cross over, pick it up, cradle it in my hands.
My stomach plummets. My blood runs cold. I don’t want it to be. It can’t be. It shouldn’t be.
And yet it is.
Much more slowly, I return to the others, my sad discovery clutched tight against my chest.
CHAPTER 32
Everyone is sitting around the hollow when I first approach. Miggy glances up sharply as a twig snaps beneath my foot. I wave my hand frantically before he starts pointing his firearm. It would figure that I survived all of yesterday’s trials just to be shot by a paranoid companion now.