The Distance Between Lost and Found (11 page)

There's a rustling noise up ahead. Twigs snapping. And then Jonah appears. His face is in shadow, but his voice is worried: “What happened?”

“I turned my ankle,” Hallelujah says. “I'm okay.”

“She's not okay,” Rachel gasps. “She can't put weight on it. Can you carry her?”

Jonah doesn't hesitate. He wraps one arm around Hallelujah's waist, and then he scoops up her legs with the other. In a single, fluid motion, she's off the ground. She holds on to his shoulders. For a second, she thinks about how strange this is—to be held like this, to be held by Jonah. Then he starts moving, and she can't think of anything but the pain.

When they reach the clearing, Jonah lowers Hallelujah to the ground near the fire. He takes a step back. “Are you bleeding?”

“I don't think so.”

“I'll take a look.” Rachel squats down and rolls up Hallelujah's jeans leg. She loosens the laces of Hallelujah's hiking boot and slides it off. She folds down her sock.

Hallelujah leans back on her elbows and stares up. She knows they have to see what's going on, but her ankle
hurts
. The tears well up again, and she squeezes her eyes closed to hold them in.

Until: “This isn't good.” Rachel's voice is low and serious. And so Hallelujah forces herself to open her eyes and sit up and look.

In the light of the fire, it's easy to see the swelling. The inside of her left ankle, where there should be just the tiny ankle-bone bump, is darkening and growing puffy.

“We have to elevate it,” Rachel says. She looks at Jonah for confirmation. He's still standing about a foot away. Not helping. Hallelujah thinks,
Why isn't he helping?
Rachel must be thinking the same thing, because she pauses for a second and then says, “Jonah, we need to get her foot above her heart. Can you find, I don't know, a rock or a pile of branches or something?”

“Sure. Yes.” Jonah vanishes into the woods.

Rachel turns back to Hallelujah. “Put your foot in my lap,” she says. “Lie back.”

Hallelujah does as she's told, a patient on an exam table.

The knife-pain is lessening, but the throbbing is still strong. She feels it reverberating up and down her body. She feels it behind her eyes, deep in her skull. She focuses on breathing in and out.

Footsteps. Jonah's back. “This all right?” he asks.

Hallelujah cranes her neck to see. He's holding a rock the size of a toddler.

“Looks good,” Rachel says. “Maybe find something soft to put over it?”

“Thought of that.” Jonah sets the rock down carefully. Hallelujah can see that his fingers are muddy, fingernails cracked and split, like he dug the rock up with his hands. “There's some pine needles over that way. Should make an okay pillow.” He strides back off the way he came.

Rachel has pulled her backpack toward her and is rummaging through it. She gets out a pink one-piece swimsuit with tie straps. She stretches and pulls at it, appraising.

“What's that for?” Hallelujah croaks. Her nose is starting to run. She wipes it on one sleeve.

“Bandage. We've got to wrap your ankle to try to keep the swelling down.”

“Oh.” Hallelujah leans her head back again, letting it rest on the hard ground. “How do you know so much about sprained ankles?”

“I want to be a physical therapist,” Rachel says. She carefully lifts Hallelujah's leg and sets the swimsuit underneath. “At my old school, they let me shadow the trainer for the girls' sports teams.” She wraps the suit around and around Hallelujah's ankle, aligning the bra cups with the worst of the swelling. “I don't know much. But I've wrapped a few ankles.” She pulls the spandex snug but not too snug and ties the straps securely. As an afterthought, she moves the knot so it's not directly on top of the swollen area. “How's that?” she asks.

Hallelujah looks down at her foot. It looks ridiculous, a puffy, pink polka-dot bandage. But it feels sturdy. “I think it's good,” she says. “Thanks.”

When Jonah returns, arms full of pine boughs, he doesn't even blink at Hallelujah's pink ankle wrap. He uses the boughs to create a pine-needle cushion on top of the rock, and then helps Hallelujah move closer so her leg is as comfortable as possible.

“There,” Rachel says. She sits back. “Are you okay?”

Hallelujah nods. Her eyes well up again. Jonah and Rachel stare down at her. Having their eyes on her reminds her, abruptly, of that night with Luke, and she has to shake her head to clear that image out. “I'm fine,” she says. She closes her eyes and tries to will the throbbing to stop.

It doesn't.

Which is why, God knows how long later, after Rachel has fallen asleep on the ground next to her, Hallelujah is still awake. Watching the fire flicker.

“Jonah?” she says softly. She can't see him. He could be asleep too.

But he's not. He stirs. “Yeah?”

“I can't sleep.”

“Does it hurt bad?”

“It's . . .” She manages a small snort. “It's not good.”

A shifting behind her. Jonah's shadow comes into her line of vision. Jonah himself follows. He sits next to her, careful not to block the fire's warmth from reaching her. Hallelujah pushes up to sitting. Jonah smells unwashed, like sweat and dirt and mildew. Hallelujah knows she probably smells the same.

“We'll get found tomorrow, right?” she asks.

“Yeah.” Jonah's voice is soft but fierce. Like he's challenging the universe. Challenging God. “We will get found tomorrow.” Because saying it makes it seem true.

It's late, and the wind is cold. It's hours until dawn. Until the sun. They stare into the fire. Their arms are touching, and Hallelujah can feel waves of emotion rolling off Jonah, hitting her.

Out of nowhere, he says, voice breaking, “I'm sorry.”

“Me too.” And she means it. Before doesn't matter in this moment. It certainly doesn't help.

Jonah pokes at the fire with a stick. His shoulders are hunched. He looks young. He looks vulnerable. He says it again: “I'm sorry.”

“Me too,” Hallelujah repeats. She hesitates for a second, then puts her arm around him, just across his back. It feels both totally wrong and completely right—to be sitting here, now, under an open sky, raw and injured and exposed, to be comforting Jonah, to be apologized to. She doesn't know if it feels wrong or right to him, because they don't talk after that. Jonah adds a few more branches to the fire. After a while they lie down, closer this time, careful not to disturb Rachel, whose sleep exhales puff white and frosty in the mountain air.

She remembers talking to God a lot right after everything happened with Luke. She remembers crying and asking why, over and over. Asking for help, for strength, for understanding. Apologizing for what she did wrong. Talking through everything she could have, should have done differently. Begging for the torment to stop
.

She remembers belief and trust slowly turning sour. Still, she kept talking to God out of habit. And because she didn't have anyone else to talk to. At night, in the dark sanctuary of her bedroom, alone, she could say the things she'd been keeping quiet. But she stopped expecting an answer. Stopped hoping for one
.

After a while, God felt as distant, as uncaring, as everyone else
.

And her prayers faded away
.

S
HE WAKES WITH THE SUN
. H
ALLELUJAH CAN FEEL IT
through her eyelids, in that split second between asleep and awake. She wants to pull the covers over her head. She wishes she
had
covers.

She's stiff. So stiff. Everything hurts. Her left ankle especially, though last night's angry throb is now just a dull ache. Her hands, meanwhile, feel thick and scaly.

When she yawns, she feels the dried tears crack on her cheeks.

Rachel is asleep, mouth open.

Jonah is squatting by what's left of their fire. “Morning,” he says softly.

“Morning,” Hallelujah murmurs back.

“How are you feeling?” Jonah asks. He comes over and takes her by one arm to help her slide toward the fire.

“I'm okay,” Hallelujah says. But the movement makes her ankle
ping
and she bites her lip, waiting for it to pass. “I'm okay,” she says again.

Jonah watches her. “Liar,” he says. “You don't have to fake it, you know. You're allowed to hurt.”

“Maybe I can”—another
ping
—“trick myself. Into being okay.”

Jonah nods. “Sure. But tell me if you need anything.”

“Okay. I will.”

Jonah pulls his flint and steel out of his back pocket and starts striking it over a small pile of wood. He frowns a little, pursing his lips in total concentration. With his hair sticking up and sleep lines on his face, he looks much younger. And adorable—as much as she hates to admit it. Watching him work like this, Hallelujah feels like she's witnessing something intimate, something she shouldn't be seeing. Peeking into his bedroom while he's sleeping. That thought makes her blush, and she looks away.

For a second, she wonders if morning-Hallelujah is as attractive in her rumpled, dirty, matted-hair state. She doubts it. Not that it matters.

The scenery is enough to distract her. Sunrise over the mountains, all pinks and purples and peaches with white cotton-ball clouds. The clouds are low, so low Hallelujah feels like she could reach up and grab one. Light streams down, split into actual shining rays. The sea of trees is a vivid, happy green in the early morning light, a stark contrast to last night's dark, threatening void.

The hills still stretch out in all directions, but now they look bright and new. And for just a moment, Hallelujah feels hope burble up in her chest, fresh and sharp and cold as a mountain spring. Anything could happen today. Great things could happen today. Rescue—improbable as it seemed last night—
could happen today
. And she is hit by such a strong sense of
everything's going to be okay
that she gasps.

Jonah rushes over. “What's up?”

“It's just . . . really beautiful,” she answers. That's not it, not really, but it's where the feeling came from. Maybe Jonah can feel it too.

“Oh.” Jonah sounds surprised. He looks out over the landscape, considering. “Yeah, it is.” He sits down next to her. Shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, thigh to thigh. He feels warm and solid and safe. And she feels warm and solid and safe, for the first time in a long time.

It's not just Jonah giving her that feeling. It's something else, too.

“I feel like—” She stops, not sure how to put it, not sure she wants to put it into words at all.

Jonah glances over at her, waiting.

“I feel like we're safe. Right now. I feel like—” She stops again. Then says, softly, “Do you think God is watching out for us?”

She wants to take it back immediately. She waits for him to laugh. To make fun of her.

But he doesn't. He just says, “I sure hope he is.” And he doesn't say it like he's being sarcastic.

Which gives Hallelujah the courage to ask, “Do you ever, you know, feel God?” She cringes. It sounds so . . . earnest. Like something her parents would say. Or Luke's dad, from the pulpit. She tries again. “I mean, in church they say we should be trying to feel God's presence. Look for signs that he's there. So—do you feel it?”

“Do I feel God?” Jonah repeats. He pulls his long legs up and leans forward to rest his chin on his knees. “Maybe?” He pauses, frowning a little. “I guess I don't know what God is supposed to feel like. And sometimes things go really great and sometimes they don't, and sometimes you get something you pray for and sometimes you don't, but it's not like I feel this
feeling
like ‘God is here with me right now.'”

“Do you still believe he is? Even if you can't feel it?”

“Yeah, sure.” He says it quickly, easily, with a shrug. “Why?”

Hallelujah looks down at her hands. “I used to feel something, I don't know, bigger than me. Especially when I was singing. I would get this sense of being in the right place, doing what I was supposed to be doing. This sense that everything was aligned just right. And when I'd feel that, I thought maybe I was feeling God.”

Jonah nudges her with his shoulder. “Thought?” he says softly. “Not ‘think'?”

“I haven't felt that way in a while.”

The words
since Luke
hover between them.

Jonah pushes them aside. “But you feel it now? Or, you felt it a minute ago?”

“Maybe. Yeah.”

They're both quiet for a second. Then Jonah says, “So do you think there's some kind of plan? To us being out here? Not rescued yet?”

“I don't know. Do you?”

“No idea. But if there is a plan, I hope he gets to the point soon. How's that?”

Hallelujah looks at Jonah and sees him smiling. He looks hopeful. She can't help but smile back. “Me too.”