And if I was leading him…
To keep myself distracted from those thoughts, I kept taking pictures of all the interesting things we passed. A rabbit hiding in the brush. A web with a humongous spider on it. An occasional brightly colored flower.
Finally, it was just Sean and me.
“Figure out who is going to lead who,” Ed said. He patted my shoulder. “Good luck getting back.”
He walked off.
“That had an ominous ring to it,” Sean said.
“I can’t believe they’re just leaving us out here.”
“Honestly? I don’t think we’re that far from camp. He was circling around, trying to make us think we’d walked a long way.” He shrugged, pointed. “But it’s just over there. Go ahead and cover your eyes with the bandanna.”
I stared at him. “And why do I get to be blindfolded?”
“Because I was paying attention to where we were going, while you were distracted taking pictures.”
“Sean—”
“I know. You don’t trust me. The thing is, Jessica, I don’t trust you, either. Not when it comes to following a trail that you weren’t paying any attention to.”
That hurt. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. To not be trusted. I didn’t deserve that. I hadn’t done anything to earn his not trusting me.
I turned around, looked at the area where Ed had disappeared. No toilet paper to mark the path.
Sighing, I pulled the bandanna through my fingers.
“Come on, Jessica,” Sean said. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”
I looked over at him. “You know the way back?”
He nodded.
What did I have to lose? And who knew? Maybe I’d gain something. I tied the bandanna around my head so my eyes were covered.
“All right, Sean,” I said. “Prove to me that I can trust you.”
Chapter Thirteen
“We’re lost! I don’t freaking believe this!” I turned around slowly. Nothing looked familiar. But then I wasn’t on a first-name basis with trees. And that’s all that surrounded me. Big, towering trees.
I saw no trail, no lake, no cabins.
No sunlight. Only the dim glow of Sean’s flashlight. It was night!
“I’m not believing this,” I repeated. I glared at Sean. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Because I thought I’d find the way,” he said, seriously irritated.
I couldn’t figure out why he was irritated. I was the one who had trusted him…. Whoa! No, I hadn’t completely trusted him. And my lack of trust was apparently well deserved.
“What now, Daniel Boone?” I asked. I plopped down on a hollow log. “Weren’t we supposed to be back before dark?”
“Yeah.”
“So you think they’re looking for us?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “This isn’t one of your tricks, is it? You know, like the snake in my bed?”
“I wish.”
He sounded seriously bummed out.
I worked my backpack off my shoulders and removed the water bottle from the side pocket. I drank some water and then held the bottle out to Sean.
He shook his head.
“Look, you don’t want to get dehydrated,” I said.
“I’ll take some when I’m really thirsty.”
“Fine.” I put the bottle back. Then I flicked my wrist to turn on the indigo light on my dad’s watch and looked at the compass. “Do you even know if we need to go north or south?”
“Not really.”
I glared at him. “My mom always gives my dad a hard time, saying that men have this gene that prevents them from asking for directions.” I shook my head. “You should have told me we were lost. I could have taken the blindfold off earlier and helped you figure out where we were.”
“That would have been cheating,” he said absently, looking around the small clearing.
I stared at him, knocked the side of my head a couple of times, pretending to clear water out of my ears. “Excuse me? Cheating Sean was worried about cheating?”
“Can you get over that already? I told you I’ve changed.”
“You also said you had a good reason for doing what you did. Well, I can’t think of a better reason than survival. But this afternoon, you wouldn’t cheat? Explain that one, Einstein.”
He said nothing. But it made no sense. He would cheat to win a game, but not to survive?
He started gathering up limbs and sticks. Then he put them in the middle of the clearing.
“Are you going to build a fire?” I asked.
“Just a little one. Maybe someone will see it. If nothing else, it’ll keep us warm.”
Not that it was really cold or anything, but it was a bit cooler than it had been earlier in the day. And having a fire would allow us to turn off our flashlights and save our battery power. Who knew what the night would bring or when we might get rescued or find our way back to camp?
I shoved myself to my feet and began to help him. We worked in silence for a long time, until we had a pile of dried branches, leaves, and twigs in place, surrounded by a tight ring of rocks so the fire wouldn’t spread. Sean crouched down and began rubbing two twigs together.
I’d always heard about people starting fires by rubbing two sticks together, but watching Sean, I realized it was a lot of work, and sparks didn’t instantly appear.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“Sorta. Friction is supposed to create heat that will start a fire.”
I reached into my backpack and took out a small box of matches. I struck a match and lit the leaves we’d placed beneath some twigs. They caught fire immediately. By the time they’d burned, the smaller twigs were flaming.
I figured that, before long, we’d have a full-fledged campfire.
Sean dropped back. He didn’t look too happy. “You could have told me you had matches.”
“You could have told me we were lost.”
He withdrew a stick from the pile before it caught fire and began to make X’s on the ground. “I was embarrassed, okay? I knew you didn’t trust me to get you back to camp. I wanted to prove…” His voice trailed off. He sighed.
What did he want to prove? That he could be trusted? Had he really changed that much? I hated to admit that, if not for last summer, I might have developed a serious crush on this guy. He was cute, seemed nice, dependable, made me smile, and sometimes made me laugh. But I’d fallen for that routine before.
Still, I felt really bad that, for whatever reason, he’d tried to go it alone. “I’ve got a great sense of direction,” I said lamely.
“I know. That’s the reason your team always wins Capture the Flag.”
“Is that why you cheated?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything, but that wasn’t a good reason: jealousy. But weren’t cheaters and liars the same? Could you have one without the other?
“Maybe if I climb a tree I’ll be able to see the lights of our dormitory,” I suggested.
Sean stood up. “That’s a good idea, but I thought you were afraid of heights.”
“I’m not too crazy about jumping from heights. But I can climb a tree. No sweat.”
Only none of the branches were low enough for me to reach. It was my being vertically challenged interfering again. I knew without even pondering it that Sean was going to climb a tree. Just hop up and go.
And that irritated me.
He reached for a branch.
“It was my idea,” I said.
Sean stared at me over his shoulder. “So? You can’t reach a branch and I can.”
“Boost me up.”
“You’re going to trust me to boost you up?”
Did I trust him? It was strange. I didn’t trust him, but I did trust that at this point he’d do whatever he needed to in order to get us out of this. At least now that survival was a real issue, and he’d realized the error of his ways. But even I separated tru
st of the person from trust of his actions. Trust of the person went so much deeper. And I wasn’t ready to trust Sean that much.
“You want to survive as much as I do,” I said.
“We’re not in a life-threatening situation,” he said.
“Still, like I said, it was my idea. So help me up.”
“You like to be in charge, don’t you? Why is being the one to win so important to you?” he asked.
Ignoring his question, I slapped my hand on the tree. “Help me up.”
He linked his hands together and bent slightly. I put my foot on his palms, my hands on the tree to steady myself. He hoisted me up. I grabbed a branch, pulled myself up.
Why was winning important to me?
Because I’d wanted to play on the basketball team in middle school, but I was told that I couldn’t because I wasn’t tall enough. I wanted to run track, but the coach said my legs weren’t long enough and I couldn’t run fast enough. But here at camp, I could slip through the woods quietly. I could capture a flag.
Unless someone cheated.
I worked my way up the tree, ignoring the pain as the bark scraped my shins and knees. Yes, I wanted to win. I wanted to prove I was the best. But was I so set on winning that I made everyone else feel bad about losing?
Why hadn’t Sean told me we were lost sooner?
I stopped climbing as the truth hit me.
Because he hadn’t trusted me. He hadn’t trusted me not to make him feel bad, not to make fun of him. He hadn’t trusted me to be his true partner.
We’re a great team, I thought sarcastically.
I’d been so caught up in not trusting him that I hadn’t realized that maybe he couldn’t trust me, either.
“See anything?” he asked.
A lot more than I wanted to see, but what I was looking at was inside rather than outside.
I started climbing down the tree. When I hit the ground, I said, “Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nope.”
“We can’t be that far from camp.”
“Apparently, we are.”
“Great,” he said. “That’s just great. I really screwed up. I’m sorry, Jessica.”
“Jess,” I said. “Only my mom calls me Jessica.”
“I thought only your friends called you Jess.”
Ignoring his statement, I sat on the ground and pulled my backpack into my lap. “I’ve got a granola bar. Want half?”
“Sure. I’m starving.”
I smiled.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m thinking about that ‘Marooned’ list we had to make.” I opened the granola bar, broke it in half, and generously gave him the larger half. So technically it wasn’t cut in half.
“Yeah, I could use a knife right about now,” he muttered.
I chuckled. “What would you do with it? Skin a bear?”
He shrugged. “Whittle.”
“You know how to whittle?”
“Yeah, my granddad taught me. I whittle whenever I miss him. It’s kinda like painting your toenails, I guess.”
Gosh, it was scary to think we might be more alike than I realized.
“I was thinking about the chocolate,” I said, as I bit off a bit of granola bar.
He laughed. “You want chocolate right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Chicks. You don’t take survival seriously.”
“Hey, I climbed the tree.”
He grinned. “Yeah, you did.”
“We just have to survive the night,” I said, speaking more bravely than I felt. “We’ll find our way back to camp tomorrow.”
“At least there are no bears,” he said.
I drew my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my shins, careful to avoid the scrapes. They didn’t look too bad in the firelight.
“So why do you want to be a counselor?” he asked.
“Because I like to be the boss. How about you? Taking care of a bunch of kids at camp can’t be that much different than taking care of your brothers and sisters.”
He shrugged. “It’s different watching out for them at camp. I’m not doing it alone.”
I drew my brows together. “I know Billy was here. Were your sisters here, too?”
“Nah, just Billy.”
“I remember him.”
“In your nightmares?”
I grinned. “He wasn’t that bad. Is he going to be here this summer?”
“Yeah, first session.”
“Bonding again?”
“I don’t think so. They won’t put relatives in the same group.”
The truth dawned, and I unwound my arms. “You want to be a counselor because you don’t want to bond with him.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to bond with him. I just…” He sighed. “I just think it would be easier on him if he didn’t feel like I was watching him all the time.”
“I can dig that.”
“You know, who wants big brother watching?”
“Right.” I scrounged through my backpack, came up with a melted mint. I wondered how old it was. I dropped it back inside. “Don’t you have any food?” I asked.
“Nope.”
I leaned back against a tree. “It’s going to be a long night. Maybe we should at least try to find the camp.”
“If I couldn’t find it in the light, I don’t see how we’ll find it in the dark,” he said.
He had a point.
“Have you heard that Ed and Edna are twins?” I asked.
“Yeah, but you already told us that Ed says they’re not.”
“Exactly, so then what are they? Do you think maybe Ed’s her son?”
Sean laughed. “I don’t think that’s it. They look about the same age.”
“Do you think they could be married?”
“That would explain the matching rings on their left hand.”
Matching rings? How had I missed that?
I was disappointed that we’d figured it out so quickly. I was looking for something that would challenge me through the night, keep me awake and alert. Something to keep my mind off the fact that we were lost.
Normally I loved the woods, but it was kinda creepy being in the woods at night with only Sean. Not that Sean was creepy, but the woods were so quiet, except for an occasional owl hooting. Once I heard a rush of wings and then a squeal. I didn’t want to contemplate what might be going on there. I was all for survival of the fittest, but I had a weak spot for small creatures. Came from being a small creature myself.
“Should we take shifts keeping watch?” I asked.
“You’re going to trust me to watch over you?”
“Never mind. Bad idea. But if you want to sleep…”
“I don’t.”
I thought about saying that I might trust him a little—
“Do you want to know what time it is in Japan?” I asked to keep myself from confessing something I might regret.
“Nah, that’s okay. Cool watch, though.”
“Thanks. It’s my dad’s.”
We both sat there for a while, not saying anything. The night got really quiet, except for the bugs chirping.
“Jess?” he said after a while. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me…what with the snake and all, but that first summer…I was just trying to get your attention.”
I jerked my head around and stared at him. “What?”
“I thought you were cute. I wanted you to notice me.”
“With a snake?”
He grinned, shrugged. “I was ten. Romance wasn’t exactly in my vocabulary.”
I picked up a stick, started scratching at the dirt. “I thought you were cute back then.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Would flowers have worked better than a snake?”
I laughed, actually laughed. “Most definitely. Chocolate even better.”
He chuckled, then got really quiet. “We’ll be at the same high schoo
l next year.”
“If we survive tonight.”
“Yeah,” he said solemnly. “If we survive tonight.”
Chapter Fourteen
I didn’t remember falling asleep. One minute I was staring into the fire, and then…
I wasn’t.
I jerked awake, disoriented and aching, as though I’d spent the night sleeping on the ground.
Oh, wait. I had spent the night sleeping on the ground. Yawning, I struggled to sit up. The fire was gone, but we weren’t in darkness, because dawn was arriving.
I looked over and Sean was asleep, too. Some guard he turned out to be.
I couldn’t believe that he’d told me that he’d liked me that first summer. Or that he’d thought he could get my attention with a snake!
How lame was that?
Guys. Honestly. They were cute. And they were fun. And I wanted a boyfriend more than anything…but sometimes guys did the goofiest things for the silliest reasons.
Like switching out a map just so his team could win.
I remembered how the lead counselor, Hank, had made everyone gather in front of the main lodge. He’d held up the fake map and wanted to know who was responsible for it.
We’d all known it was someone on the other team, and so we’d all waited. I remembered that I’d started being interested in Sean again. We’d set the bird free two days before and had kinda bonded over that.
I’d looked through the crowd trying to find Sean…he was talking to Billy. Billy, who was his new brother. And Sean had looked mad.
Then he’d stepped forward and announced, “I did it.”
Sean, who had nursed a baby bird back to health. Who had taken such good care of it. Sean, who I had seen more than once giving attention to Billy, talking to him, trying to be his friend as well as his new big brother.
Sean, who wanted to be a counselor so he wouldn’t be in charge of his brother this year.
Sean’s eyes suddenly opened. He grinned. “Hey, Twinkle Toes.”
“You’re a liar,” I said quietly. “Not a cheater.”
His brow furrowed as he sat up. “What?”
“Let’s play a game of Truth or Dare,” I said.
He yawned. “No way. It’s daylight. We need to try to find our way back to the dormitory.”