Gideon was clever, resourceful, and handy. He always had a pocketknife on him—even when we were in kindergarten, something else I had to process later—and sometimes we’d pull down tree branches and make shelters for ourselves, small, shady places to hide away from the world. He was a genius at damming creeks, climbing trees, and dressing minor wounds. He knew what all the birds were called and any time we saw a snake, he’d get so excited he couldn’t contain himself.
We were best friends, I think; at the very least I didn’t have a better friend. He was in a different category than my friends from school or dance class or girl scouts because he was constant, a baseline, a foundational bedrock. He was the only friend I had who’d known my mom. We told each other secrets, the kind that kids have: he told me about how he’d stolen his younger brother’s Hot Wheels because he was jealous, that he didn’t want his mom to have any more babies, that he’d eaten the last cookie and let his sister take the fall for it.
I told him about how I’d once tripped a girl on purpose during recess and how bad I felt, about the time I stole a purple marker from the school, that sometimes I hated not having a mom. The only secret I never told him about was Rick and my dad, but I guess he figured that out anyway.
We were best friends until suddenly, we weren’t.
* * *
When it feelslike it’s been long enough, I pull out the GPS Gideon gave me, just to check. I feel a little lost in time and space and seeing that our dot is closer to the cabin dot and further from the truck dot helps me feel… less lost in time and space.
Gideon glances back over his shoulder without stopping.
“We going the right way?” he asks, like he doesn’t know, which he’d better be lying about.
“As long as this is right,” I say.
He bounces on a step, adjusting my pack a little. I bite back an offer to take it from him, because I know he’ll refuse and maybe get annoyed about it.
“It’s satellite-linked,” he says. “Weather doesn’t matter. It’s right.”
I slide it back into my pocket and focus on walking: the snow crunching below my feet, the creaks and groans of the snow-laden forest around us, the sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I’m in decent hiking shape, but cross-country through the snow is something else.
“Gideon,” I finally say, when my lungs are starting to hurt. He glances over his shoulder. “Can we take a break?”
He stops without answering, the beam of his headlamp traveling over the landscape in front of us. It’s mostly trees and snow except for one rock, which he points to.
“There?” he asks, and I nod.
Ice-cold granite on my butt has never felt so good. We both guzzle some water. I’m overheated, so I take off my hat and gloves for about thirty seconds before I realize that now I’m freezing, so I put them back on. We both stare, silently, into the darkness of the woods. After a moment I turn off my headlamp. Gideon looks over at me, then does the same.
“Don’t want to waste the battery,” I say.
“Dark is good,” he answers, and then we’re quiet again. Shapes form out of shadow, all shades of the same gray-blue: the lightness of snow and the darkness of the trees; the glow of the moon behind clouds and the inky black of the branches against it. It’s spooky. It’s beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
“I needed a break too,” Gideon says, drinking again from a water bottle.
“No, for needing rescue,” I say, becauseobviously.
He doesn’t answer or look over at me, breath fogging the air, visible when it rises.
“I know this is bad and it’s my fault,” I tell the trees in front of me, not looking at Gideon. “I should have thought ahead, or planned better, or taken a GPS or a satellite phone or something instead of just assuming everything would be fine and there was nothing to worry about.”
There’s a long pause, because Gideon’s quietness hasn’t changed.
“Whydidyou chain yourself to a tree on Christmas Eve?” he finally asks.
“Technically, I chained myself to a tree on December twenty-third.”
He looks over at me, unimpressed.
“Because Chloe asked if I would do it with her,” I say, which is not a great explanation. I rub my face with my gloved hands. “I said yes because I don’t have a lot of friends here yet and I like her, and because Lucia and Frank are on a Mexico cruise and Dad and Rick couldn’t make it down and I didn’t go up, so it’s not like I had anything better to do.”
I blow out a breath, watching it steam in the dull moonlight.
“Also, I like the environment and fracking is bad for it,” I say, as an afterthought.
