Mr. Walker’s eyes flick upstream, his face going pale. “It’s flooding,” he admits.
My hope snaps like a rubber band. Fear billows out in its place, making me woozy.
“Sera, move!” Lucas says, prodding my backpack.
“I got it!” I snap, plowing ahead.
Hayley screams again behind us. They’re all three shouting. Something about a shoe. Someone’s stuck. Mr. Walker is yelling at Emily and Jude to back up, back up! And then the rain changes, the shower shifting into a driving roar with drops so hard they feel like sand spraying down. Everything is garbled. Muffled. Fear pushes the hair up on the nape of my neck.
We’re not going to get across.
“Go, Sera!”
Lucas. His voice right behind me, his wide hand just under my backpack, urging me forward. I stumble, spreading my arms wide for balance.
“Lucas, help!” Madison’s cry filters through the rain, but Mr. Walker shakes his head.
“No!” he bellows. “Move, Lucas! Ms. Brighton, pull Hayley and Madison back to shore!”
The water is moving quicker and higher, and my boots are sucking down into the mud at the bottom. The current pushes back at me. Steps turn into half steps. Quarter steps.
“Forget her shoes!” Mr. Walker screams. Someone’s coughing back there, but I don’t look, though I can hear their garbled cries. They’re struggling.
“I can’t get her!” Ms. Brighton’s voice is suddenly young and small, nothing like the serene woman from before. This is scared little kid voice. “Help! Hel—”
Someone else screams. Hayley maybe. I turn over my shoulder to see Ms. Brighton haul Hayley up and stumble back. Water’s pushing at their thighs, but they’re all three up. They’re OK.
Mr. Walker is screaming at them. “Get back! Faster, faster, move!”
I shriek as the frigid water laps up my thighs. Then—Snap! Pop!—off to my right. Dread spikes through me. Something’s coming downstream. I have to go. Right now.
“Come on, Sera,” Mr. Walker says, sounding breathless.
I rush, feet lurching. Almost there. So close now. I stumble. Lucas grabs my pack and hauls me up, and then I’m snarling at him—“Don’t touch me!”—while Mr. Walker snags one of my straps and half drags me out. Water pours down my pant legs. I’m soaked and freezing.
I take a soggy step, and my boot slips on the muddy bank. Lucas is out too, swearing and scrambling up while Mr. Walker stares across at the girls, hands in his hair, eyes wide with terror.
My knees are buckling, but I grab branches and exposed roots and, finally, Jude’s smooth, dark hand. Once I’m up, I follow him past brambles that snag my poncho. My hair.
“Over here.” Jude points to a vantage point near the path. No earbuds now. He’s wide-eyed and utterly focused on the stream fifteen feet below us. Emily and Lucas are beside him, both shaking.
There’s a tree wedged across the stream. That must have been what I heard. The water is rushing under and over it, pushing it harder and harder. And then it’s loose. I hold my breath as it rolls with the mud-brown river, snapping anything in its path.
“The others,” Emily says softly.
They’re lined up on the other side, mud-spattered and white with fear as the log hurtles past, ripping its way through the streambed and releasing a wall of sludgy brown water in its wake. The current surges up the banks behind it, littered with smaller branches and clumps of vegetation. Madison’s eyes track us across the water, finding Lucas and then me.
“They’re stuck over there.” I know it’s obvious, but I say it anyway.
Mr. Walker barks instructions at the edge of the stream. Ms. Brighton nods along, one arm wrapped around each girl, her dark braid coiled around her pale neck like a snake.
“What’s he going to do?” Jude asks.
“Nothing, rich boy,” Lucas says. “There’s not a damn thing he can do tonight. Can’t even call for help because there’s no signal anywhere with this rain.”
“What will happen to them?” I ask.
“If they listen to Mr. Walker, they’ll go set up camp on that ridge. We’ll stay here for the night, probably farther up the path. Us here, them there. Regroup in the morning if we can.”
I whirl on Lucas. “What do you mean if?”
“You expect us to believe he’s just going to leave them?” Jude asks.
“That flood isn’t going anywhere soon. And I don’t give a shit what you believe,” Lucas says to him. “Since someone has to set up our tent again, I need to find a clearing.”
Lucas storms away, and my eyes drag back to the stream. Three girls with arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. The river gushes along, a monstrous evolution of what I just crossed, swallowing the bridge inch by inch.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not like this at all.
Chapter 2
The temperature is dropping fast, and between that and the rain, my fingers are shaking. Not helping the tent setup situation. I blame my tent stakes. Flimsy pieces of crap, they’re bent to hell from the first two nights out here. I hate them. I also hate the rain and the backpack that’s so heavy I might as well have a dead moose strapped to my shoulders.
And Lucas. I definitely hate Lucas right now.
“Give back the hammer,” I say, one dripping hand outstretched toward him.
“Why? I can hammer it in for you, Sera.”
I grit my teeth hard and resist responding to the innuendo he loads into every word. I don’t know how anyone can turn a conversation about tent stakes into something depraved, but he’s managing.
This is what I get for looking at him, for reacting. I have no one but myself to blame.
“Can you please give me back the hammer?” I ask again, voice sweet but glare dialed up to murderous.
“Your loss.”
He shrugs and drops the rubber mallet on my pile of soggy tent fabric. I valiantly resist the urge to pick it up and fling it at his head.
Beside me, Emily shudders.
I unclench my fists and turn to her. “You OK?”
“Just cold. Do you think…” Her eyes drift to the path behind us. The one that leads down to the river where we left the others. “Do you think they’re all right?”
“Oh, sure. Ms. Brighton is totally together. And Mr. Walker will get us out of here tomorrow. It’s no big deal.”
“You really think so?”
No, I think it’s an enormous deal, but freaking her out won’t help. It takes me a beat to find Emily’s dark eyes inside her plastic hood, but when I do, I smile.
“She’ll make it great,” I say. “She’ll probably have them building a new bridge out of repurposed water bottles or something.”
“Maybe she’ll sing the ancestor spirits song again.” Emily wrinkles her nose.
I laugh, remembering Ms. Brighton’s little fireside performance after all the ghost stories. “Yeah, Madison’s story was better. Dead people in the trees really sets the mood.”
Emily nods.
I look around, frowning. “OK, tell me the truth. Did someone really die out here?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, a girl. I mean, probably not like Madison told it at the fire. I doubt she was killed. That’s an urban myth.”
“God, it’s a creepy one though. Left to die by your friends. A bear dragging pieces of you out?” I shudder. “Let’s hope they don’t go there. They can make their own cool story.”
“Yeah, the night they froze to death, lost in the woods,” Emily says, shivering.
I position a stake now that I have my mallet back. “For me, it might be the night I go to jail for shoving a fistful of mud down Lucas Crane’s throat.”
I pull back to strike the metal stake. It folds like a taco, just like the first ones. That’s why I’d let Lucas take a turn with the mallet. Clear
ly, the break did not improve my ability. Whatever. I keep right on hammering, banging away until the bent metal is buried in mud. Success. Sort of.
This trip was supposed to be great. Mr. Walker practically promised mythical nirvana out here. We’d see mountains and ancient trees and unicorns that come to drink at sunset or some crap. Extremely remote, he said. Personally enlightening, Ms. Brighton added.
They pegged the remote part. We’re in Nowhere, West Virginia, where the only thing less common than people is cell phone reception. Of course, we’re not remote enough to get me away from the one boy I’m trying desperately to avoid.
“Sera?”
“Yeah?”
Emily’s eyes dart to the subject of my glare. “I know you and Lucas have a history.”
“We don’t…” There’s no way to finish because I don’t want to lie. Or explain. I trail off instead, drifting into the space my lies want to fill over.
None of it would have happened if I didn’t want that stupid stage scenery so badly. I could have made do, but I wanted real metal, and I have a way of getting what I want. Just like my mother.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, hating the way her smile forms in my memory. Oh, she would have loved Lucas. No. No, that’s not quite right. She would have loved everything about the way I am when I’m with him.
I push my mother’s face out of my mind, but another memory rushes in.
The scent of metal, as sharp as the hiss of the torch. Long sturdy tables and sparks that cascade to the ground, skittering like glowing insects. Our school is brightly colored murals and paint-spattered floors, but this room is different.
Lucas looks up when he sees me, the dark glass rectangle in his welding mask fixing on my face. Under the mask, he’s formed with the same angles and hollows as the shop around him.
I should tell him why I’m here, but I don’t. My gaze trails over his heavy-lidded eyes too long. I linger. And I know I shouldn’t.
“Be careful,” Emily says, pulling me back. “Do you know what he did to Tyler Kenton?”
If you’re within a hundred miles of Marietta, Ohio, you know what Lucas did to Tyler at the homecoming soccer game last year. If you’re smart, you remember it before you kiss him.
My lips quirk. “I think it’s required knowledge for graduation.”
I nudge each of the stakes with the toe of my boot. They’re a mess, but the tent feels sturdy enough. Maybe we won’t get blown away after all. I slam in the last two stakes and stand up as the rain tapers off. Mist clings to the trees and turns the air even colder.
Lucas stands up on the other side of our tiny camp, and I narrow my eyes, imagining his wide shoulders sending Tyler flying. I know nothing about soccer, but you don’t have to be an expert to know Tyler went into that game a star forward senior with dreams of a full ride. Then newcomer junior Lucas showed up. One collision later, Tyler’s leg snapped. Senior season over and sainthood secured.
Lucas meets my eyes across camp like he can sense me thinking about him. I turn back to my tent. My boots squish with every step, and the collar of my T-shirt is wet enough to chafe.
I tug the tent cover out of Emily’s pack, and she starts pushing in the poles to lift this mess of canvas off the ground.
“I officially hate camping,” I grumble. Every breath fills my head with the smell of wet tent and hard rain. Another damp night awaits, with rocks digging into my shoulders and mosquito bites keeping me squirmy and miserable. At least it will be dry inside the tent. My eyes linger on a rivulet running down the canvas. Dry-ish at any rate.
Emily gasps, and I look around the side to see her holding the broken string of one of the tie-downs. I sigh and start toward her, and she stumbles back desperately, her face chalky.
“I-I’m sorry,” she says.
I laugh. “It’s fine. Did you see what I did to the tent stakes?”
Across the camp, Lucas snarls something at Jude, and Emily flinches again. The girl’s a nervous wreck.
“Poor Jude, huh?” I say.
Emily’s mouth draws tight, her shoulders shifting under her poncho. “There’s nothing poor about Jude.”
I lift my brows, surprised at her candor. True enough though. Jude’s super rich. He’s also super talented on the cello. I used to roll my eyes when he’d talk about Julliard, but then I heard him play. He’s the real deal. It might be cool if he weren’t an elitist, antisocial tool.
I shift our tent poles to straighten them as best I can, and Emily swishes the tent cover around. It’s a little lopsided, but we get it upright. I hold one hand out wide, giving Emily some jazz hands. “Ta-da!”
“You’re pretty good at this.”
I shrug. “We had tents in the background of one of our summer plays. I spent three nights a week setting them up on stage.”
Emily helps me straighten the tent, locking the poles for security. “I thought you were a director or something now.”
“I am. Usually. Which means you do all the jobs that don’t get finished. Tent assembly included.”
A snap-cracking in the woods to the south tells me Mr. Walker is returning from the creek, where he’d stayed to direct Ms. Brighton. There he comes from stage left, hands tucked under his backpack straps and a deep furrow over his brows. I try to imagine what lines will be his.
Except this isn’t a stage, and there won’t be an intermission or flowers after the curtain call.
“Are they OK over there?” I ask.
“Ms. Brighton’s plenty capable of getting them through the night.” He says it convincingly, but his eyes are too squinty. I don’t believe him.
“Should we call for help?” Emily asks, pipsqueak soft.
“No signal,” he says, and his grin has a hard edge. “I told you girls not to bother bringing your phones. It won’t kill us to handle this crisis. Might even build some character.”
I’m not sure how wringing out my bra or dying of hypothermia will build character, but I nod automatically.
“They don’t have water, but they have a filter bottle in one of the packs.” He frowns, and I can tell he’s sorting supplies in his head. “I’ve got the bottles we filtered at our lunch stop.”
Ah, those were good times. During the first hour of the downpour, all eight of us clustered around the river, trying to cover the filter with ponchos to protect it from rain contamination. Because the only thing that would make this trip more special would be a case of the trots.
Mr. Walker’s smile goes even tighter. “Bad news is Ms. Brighton’s got most of the food.”
I shrug. The smell of wet leaves and mildewed canvas isn’t doing much to whet my appetite anyway.
“I see you got your tent up without me tonight,” he says, putting on an expression that makes me think of dry-erase markers and trigonometry homework. He’s all teacherly pride and confidence, and as much as I want to gripe about how cold and hateful I feel, his words from sign-up week are still rattling around in my head. You’re such a leader, Sera. I’d love to have you on this project.
So here I am. My friends are repainting the town rec center, and I’m here in hell, collecting enough mosquito bites to contract malaria.
Still, I keep my shoulders back and my smile pasted on. “We’re regular survivalists. It’s all good. Emily helped me wrench this baby into shape.”
“I broke a string,” Emily admits, sounding like she might cry over it.
“Great teamwork,” Mr. Walker says. He moves around to fiddle with our work, shifting a couple of poles and tugging on the fabric here and there. Before I can fully figure out what he’s trying to do, our whole tent is perfectly centered on the poles and tidily covered. He digs around in his pack and hands me a box of Whoppers and a bottle of water for each of us.
“That’s about it,” he says. “But it’s safe. Sorry it’s not more.”
&n
bsp; Suddenly, all the rotten earth smells whisk to the back of my mind. The promise of chocolate is heady, and my stomach growls. My fingers are actually pale and shaky when I hand Emily a water. I’m hungrier than I thought.
“You may be the greatest teacher in the history of teachers.” I laugh, waggling the Whoppers.
“Well, don’t tell the guys. They’re stuck sharing the half-melted Hershey bar.”
“Jude has his own food,” Emily says, that same darkness leaking into her words. I sort of get the Jude hate. He has all the things we don’t. He looks at the rest of us like we’re less.
“You mean the macrobiotic twelve-dollars-a-pop granola bars?” He winks. “Well, unless he’s evolved into a higher life form, he’ll still need water.”
I look around pointedly. “Huh. Where on earth could we get some of that?”
“Clean water,” Mr. Walker says. Then he points at a spot between our tents. “I’ll be setting my tent up right there if you girls need anything. Things will look better tomorrow.”
I nod before unzipping our tent flap with a sigh. It might not be raining anymore, but I’m in a quarter inch of water, and I’m pretty sure I’ll need six showers to scrub off the standard-issue musty camping smell.
The last thing we want is to get the inside of the tent wet, but getting out of our boots and ponchos is a clown show. Emily holds up her poncho as I squish my feet out of my boots and stand barefoot on top of them, wrestling my poncho off. Then it’s Emily’s turn. By the time we’re in, I don’t know if any of it was worth it. Our soggy boots and backpacks are leaving puddles inside the door. Even when I peel off my jeans and sweatshirt, my tank top and undies are wet. Unpleasant doesn’t even touch this, but I put on my sleeping clothes anyway.
Emily doesn’t complain and, like every other night this week, only tugs off her pants when she’s got a sweatshirt wrapped around her waist. The first night, I felt almost pervy just ripping mine off, especially since I’ve got at least fifteen pounds on her. By day two, I was too tired and achy to care. Now as we carefully wrestle our (also damp) sleeping bags out of our packs, I roll my shoulders, feeling knots bunching at the base of my neck.