“Okay,” Beth called before she and I continued up the winding riverbank.
We stepped over logs and large rocks and climbed up the occasional boulder, searching the rushing river for a sign of Courtney. I imagined her trapped beneath each logjam we came upon. I suppressed a shudder as I scanned the moving water beneath a fallen tree.How did this trip go so disastrously wrong?
I climbed over a fallen tree and envisioned the evil glint in Courtney’s eyes in the glow of my flashlight last night. And how her expression remained triumphant with blood dripping from her nose after I’d punched her.
No,I thought.Courtney’s alive, and she’s probably enjoying this, knowing we’re all looking for her, fearing the worst. Having a laugh at our expense.
Beth turned to me. “What do you think Gigi meant by ‘It’s all my fault’? Do you think she pushed Courtney out of the raft? They were pretty pissed at each other before we got onto the water.”
“I was wondering the same thing. Gigi looked really distraught, like she felt guilty.”
Beth’s gaze traveled over the river’s fast-flowing current. “Imagine how Gigi will feel if we never find her.”
I shot Beth a look, surprised by her morbid words. “Don’t you think we will?”
Beth looked away from the river and met my gaze. “Yeah, I do. I mean, it’s Courtney we’re talking about.”
I studied the river as we walked farther, trying to recall rafting through this part, but it didn’t look familiar.
“How long do you think we’ve been walking?” I asked Beth.
Beth checked her wristwatch. “Almost an hour.”
Walking along the river wasn’t a straight path. We’d had to move away from the shore several times to get around fallen trees and the occasional boulder. I scanned the thick forest to my right.Had we gone past the place where we’d gotten in our rafts?
I slowed my pace. “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been walking farther than we rafted?”
Beth took a wide step over a large rock. “It does, but I think we were just moving really fast in our rafts. We haven’t come to the clearing yet where we put the rafts in the water. I’m sure of it.”
A bird chirped from somewhere in the trees. My gaze drifted toward the sound as dread sprouted in the pit of my stomach.
Beth motioned to her right. “Let’s cut through this way.”
Straight ahead, a cluster of large mossy rocks lined the river. Directly behind them, the foliage looked too thick to walk through. I followed Beth away from the water until the woods thinned out enough for us to make our own path.
When we emerged from the forest onto a river-rock shoreline, Beth pointed. “That’s the drop-off!”
I saw it, too; the same one we’d watched Gigi raft over alone. My heart sank. Then why hadn’t we found Courtney? As I scanned our surroundings, I was surprised to find that a part of me was relieved. What if Courtney was gone forever? No longer able to wreak havoc on anyone’s lives, including my own. I started to imagine my life without her, the four of us returning home in Beth’s van peacefully without Courtney, then stopped myself.
What kind of monster wishes for someone to be dead?
Beth hurried up the side of a large rock, and I followed. When we got to the top, I saw the spot beside the clearing where we’d put our rafts in the river.
“Courtney!” Beth shouted.
I called her name, too, ashamed of the hope that had surfaced inside me at the thought of Courtney being dead. Atop the rock, I pivoted 360 degrees, yelling her name along with Beth. The only response to our shouts was the echo of our own voices.
I looked to Beth, fearing for the first time that Courtney might never have made it out of the river. “She’s not here. What do we do now?”
Despite my disdain for Courtney, my veins constricted with panic. We had no way to call for help. We were at least a day’s hike from Beth’s van at the trailhead, and it was already midafternoon.
I stared at the glacier water rushing by, imagining Courtney trapped somewhere underneath the surface. “Oh, God.” I grabbed Beth’s hand. “Beth, this is bad.”
Beth appeared calm as she assessed the river. “We need to split up. I’ll go back along the river in case we somehow missed her. Maybe she grabbed onto a fallen tree or something.”
Or was held down underneath one,I thought as I surveyed the moving water.
Beth turned to face me. “Then you go back along the trail. It wasn’t easy to walk along the river, so maybe Courtney went that way. You might also find someone you can ask to call for help.”
