They laughed, briefly, quietly. And Claire couldn’t helpthinking that if she’d opened up to others, maybe it would have been like this sooner. Not everyone was Priya or Angie or her parents. Maybe she wasn’t doomed to be alone in her room for the rest of her life.
I have friends, she marveled.Real ones.She hadn’t realized how thoroughly she’d given up on ever having that, before Mariana and Reyva. Before this, close friends were things that other people had, non-broken people. She’d convinced herself she couldn’t.
When everything was cooked and devoured, they stamped out the fire and continued on until nightfall.
We lived another day, Claire thought. Right now, that felt like a victory of gargantuan proportions. As the stars popped out overhead, they chose a fallen log to sleep against and hid themselves beneath pine branches.
This time, Claire slept through the night without waking.
In the morning, they continued on.
“We’re going to make it today,” Mariana said. “I can feel it.”
“Kind of still all looks the same,” Reyva said. Claire, glancing up at the clouds that blanketed the sky, had to agree. It looked as if someone had smeared cream cheese across the sky. Where was the sun? She felt like she hadn’t seen it in days. Reyva continued. “But sure, today sounds like a good day to go home.”
“You know the first thing I’m going to do once we’re back in civilization?” Mariana said dreamily.
“Get me to a hospital, then go to the police?” Reyva said.
“Well, yes, but after that.”
“Tamales?” Claire guessed.
“As if they’d have anything close to my great-aunt’s tamales here,” Mariana said. “I’m thinking shower and food. Not sure which order yet. Maybe simultaneously.”
They talked about what kind of food you could eat in the shower as they walked along. Fruit, yes. Pastries, no. Soup, no. Pizza, only if you ate it really fast. All of them kept their eyes out for more mussels, more blueberry bushes, and more fiddlehead ferns.
It was almost...Itisnice, Claire thought.
She’d thought she’d never have friends like this, ones who trusted her, who saw her as she was—and saw her at her worst—and still liked her. They even liked herbecauseof the things she was convinced no one would like. They’d stuck together, and they were succeeding, together.
We’ve nearly done it, she thought.It’s almost over.What had seemed so impossible at the start was now within reach. She felt a rush of relief so strong that tears popped into her eyes.
And then as they came around a curve of the shoreline, she halted in her tracks.
Reyva and Mariana kept walking until they noticed that Claire had stopped.
Claire felt as if the air had whooshed out of her lungs. She felt dizzy. Blinking, she tried to unsee what she was seeing—ahead of her, in front of them, was the Lake House dock.
“Did we... did we get turned around?” Mariana asked, her voice small.
Reyva shook her head.
Claire said, “We walked away from it. The dock was behind us. And we followed the shore. We couldn’t have gotten lost following the shore.”
“We must have gotten turned around,” Mariana said.
“There are three of us,” Reyva said. “One of us would have noticed if we suddenly turned one hundred eighty degrees around.”
“We were all tired. All hungry. Not thinking straight,” Mariana said. “We could have woken up one morning and simply headed back the way we’d come.”
“It didn’t look the same,” Claire argued. “We would have passed things we recognized.”
“Seriously?” Mariana said, waving her hand at the forest. “Italllooks the same! We absolutely could have circled back. How else do you explain why—”
Reyva said flatly, “It’s an island.”
“What?” Mariana stared at her. So did Claire.
