You don’t remember stopping, or heaving the crushing weight of the boat from your burning shoulders, but the next thing you know, you’re sitting on what appears to be the shore of a lake. Coarse rocks jut out around you, lily pads dot the water, and the soil beneath you is the color of rust. After a while, someone shoves a bowl of what appears to be reconstituted hummus under your face, and you mechanically shovel it into your mouth with your fingers. Then you wipe your hands on your pants and close your eyes.
When you wake up, it’s dusk, and you immediately hear a hollow clicking sound. It sounds like it’s coming from inside your body, and it takes you a moment to realize it’s your teeth chattering. The temperature has dropped. Precipitously. It must be 30 degrees cooler than it was when you first set out this morning. You lift a hand to wipe your eyes, and you notice that it’s shaking too. You dig through your pack for a hoodie, and once it’s on, you pull the hood up, tightening it around your head like a ninja mask. As you sit up, you hear the sounds of an argument going on.
“I told you that was the groundsheet!” says Will.
“The fly and the groundsheet are basically interchangeable,” says Troy.
“Says the guy who has never been camping!”
“Just shut up and hand me a peg.”
“I already—Ah god! I’m freezing!”
The two of them are violently rubbing their arms to stave offthe cold, fumbling all the while with a large tarp that is either the groundsheet or the fly.
“I gave you the pegs a minute ago.”
“I have zero pegs, Will!”
Nearby, Diana and Fran sit zipped inside their tent, which is already pitched. You can see them through the mesh. You slowly stand up, a little lightheaded, and start to zombie-shuffle over to them to ask how you got here. You’re not warm yet, but your teeth have stilled for the moment. You stop walking about halfway there because as you get closer, you see that the two girls are locked in conversation, the kind you think maybe you shouldn’t interrupt.
They’re both sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent, holding water bottles. Diana is nodding, and Fran is talking quickly and softly gesticulating with intensity. You have no idea what they’re talking about—you’re just out of hearing range—but you know what it feels like to be with Diana like that. To be blocking out the rest of the world and just lost in a simple moment of connection.
It’s what you miss the most.
There aren’t many people you’ve been able to just be with in that way, where you’re not hiding somehow or feeling self-conscious to the point of distraction. Sean was one. And the other is right in front of you. But she couldn’t be less aware of your presence at the moment. You know you should turn around, go back and help Will and Troy with their shelter so all of you do not die of exposure, but you’re too woozy to make it happen. So you just stand there, knees locked, staring through the slit in your hoodie.
“He lives!” says Fran finally. “He walks among us.”
Diana looks at you and blinks, and you think of what she said after the storm:I’ll cut you loose.You had never heard her so serious, and since that moment, you can already feel it happening. Less eye contact. Most comments made in passing. You want to say something about it now. Something that lets her know that you don’t want to be cut loose, but instead you say:
“Where are we?”
Fran takes a swig from her water bottle.
“North,” she says.
She closes her eyes to think.
“And… by a lake.”
You take a cold breath and blow it out hot into your hands.
“We’re north by a lake,” she says. “Is that enough?”
You look down and see that her knee is touching Diana’s. She watches you watching her, but doesn’t move it.
“Fire,” you say.
They both just look at you. You are, you remember, standing there like a ninja with bad posture. And you’re speaking in one-word sentences.
“What was that, Frankenstein?” says Fran.
“We need to make a fire. For the cold.”
Diana nods slowly.
“Or you guys could put up a tent,” she says.
