The Distance Between Lost and Found (22 page)

Jonah's whole body is tense. “Oh man,” he says. “Oh geez.”

“You know,” Hallelujah says, trying to sound light, like she's not on the verge of tears, “there are probably times when it's okay to curse. Like now.”

“Just wrap it.” Jonah's voice is tight. “Please.”

“We have to lift your knee up. . . .” Rachel fades off. “Hal, are you ready?”

“One second.” Hallelujah rips Jonah's T-shirt into long, wide strips. She holds them out. “Okay.”

Rachel takes them. “Okay. You lift, I'll wrap.”

Hallelujah nods. She slides her hands under Jonah's leg, one above the cut and one below. His skin is wet, and she doesn't know if it's creek water or blood, but it makes her heart beat faster and her stomach turn. She gulps and lifts Jonah's leg a few inches off the ground. Rachel presses a strip of T-shirt against the top of the cut.

Jonah inhales sharply. His hand grabs at Hallelujah's tank top, pulls at the fabric, squeezes tight.

Rachel begins wrapping his leg. Jonah's breath is coming in short bursts, in and out through his nose like his mouth is clamped shut. Then, all at once, he relaxes. His whole body goes limp.

“Jonah?” Hallelujah feels a wave of panic, but when she sets his foot down and holds her hand over his face, she feels breath. He's just passed out.

Rachel looks at her, hands frozen midwrap.

“He's breathing,” Hallelujah whispers.

Rachel starts wrapping again. In the last bit of light, Hallelujah can see that she's crying, her tears landing on the dark spots that already stain Jonah's white bandage. “There,” she says a second later. She's tucked the ends in tight.

A chilly breeze brushes Hallelujah's shoulders, giving her goosebumps. “He found a campsite,” she says.

“I heard.”

“We have to get him up. We have to get there.”

“I don't know if I can—” Rachel stops. She breathes in, long and slow, and out again. “Let's go,” she says.

“Jonah.” Hallelujah shakes his shoulder. He moans. “Jonah. It's time to move.” He doesn't open his eyes, so she climbs carefully over his legs to his other side. “Let's sit him up. On three.” She slides her hands under his shoulder and back. Rachel does the same. “One, two, three.” They lift, straining a little because he's dead weight—Hallelujah suddenly hates that phrase, “dead weight”—but they get him to a seated position.

His chin hits his chest, lolling. But then his head snaps back up. He looks around wildly, like he doesn't know where he is. Then his eyes focus. He sees Rachel and Hallelujah. He sees his leg. He looks away from it quickly.

“We need to find the campsite,” Hallelujah tells him. “Before it's totally dark.”

“Right.”

Hallelujah rolls onto her hands and knees, and slowly, painfully stands upright. She balances on her good leg, holding her left foot just off the ground. She extends a hand to Jonah.

He looks at her hand. He looks down at her ankle, wrapped in its filthy pink bandage. His face crumples, just for a second, but then he pulls it together. He takes her hand. Puts his other hand on Rachel's shoulder. Brings in his left leg so the foot is flat on the ground. And then he pulls and he pushes and with a deep grunt, he stands. He wobbles. Hallelujah wobbles too. But they're both upright.

Rachel scrambles to her feet. She looks from Hallelujah to Jonah, eyes wide. They're both bigger than her, Jonah by a lot. They're both down to one good leg. “I—I don't know if I—” She sounds scared and exhausted and ashamed and like she's about to give up. “How are we gonna do this?”

“We hold each other up,” Jonah says grimly. “Rachel, you're in the middle. Hallie's on your left.” They line up. Rachel's small enough that she can wrap her arms around their waists. Jonah's left arm stretches across Rachel's shoulders; his hand rests on Hallelujah's back. He gives her shoulder a squeeze that is either meant to reassure her or is a reflex, a reaction to the pain that must be rolling through him.

They move even more slowly than Hallelujah and Rachel did earlier. Because of the dark. Because of the pain. Because they're so weak and tired.

But the moon comes out to help. It reflects in the creek and peers through the tree branches above. It helps them see the obstacles in their path. And it illuminates the strip of white T-shirt Jonah tied to a forked tree to show them where to turn.

They don't stop to catch their breath. They veer right.

Uphill is even harder. In addition to a throbbing ankle, Hallelujah now has burning thighs, burning shoulders, burning lungs. Her vision narrows until all she can see is what's right in front of her. Where she's stepping next.

There's an owl overhead, not far away. Its calling is rhythmic. Calm. And she hears the flapping of wings and a staccato birdcall and the chirping of crickets and some kind of buzzing. She lets the night music fill her head, blocking out Rachel's panting and sobbing and Jonah's groans and gasps of pain.

They climb. Hallelujah's heart feels like it's about to explode.

She can see a little plateau, lit by moonlight, not too far ahead. Just a few more feet up.
Please let that be the campsite
, she thinks. Prays.
Please let that be it. Please
.

And then they're over the ledge. They're there.

Rachel drops to the ground immediately, crying and shaking. Jonah grabs for Hallelujah like he might drop too. She leans in, her good leg against his good leg, pain and fear forgotten, just for an instant.

It's an honest-to-God campsite. With a proper fire pit. A few logs cut in half longways for seating. A flat dirt area with holes around the perimeter that must've been made by tent stakes.

The trail—a trail, who knows what trail, who cares—can't be far away.

“You did it,” she whispers to Jonah.

“Not yet,” he whispers back. But she can hear the hope in his voice.

Hope bubbles up inside her, too. It feels strange and foolish and fragile, given everything that's happened and that could still happen. But it's there.

She hopes.

J
ONAH LOWERS HIMSELF TO THE GROUND, BACK AGAINST
one of the log benches. Hallelujah sinks to the ground beside him. She's pretty sure she's never been this tired. She's so tired she's shaking almost as much as Rachel was last night.

“You don't have another shirt, do you?” Jonah asks.

Hallelujah is startled. She'd actually forgotten that Jonah is shirtless. But now that she remembers, she's not sure how she could have paid attention to anything else. She can see his skin and his muscles and—no, it's too dark to see his muscles. She's imagining them. But she's arm to bare arm with him and she's—she's staring. Oh no.

Rachel rescues her. “I think I'm wearing them all.”

“Oh.” Jonah is quiet for a second. “I lost my jacket in the water.”

“We saw it,” Rachel says.

Another few moments of silence. Jonah wraps his arms across his chest, rubbing his palms up and down on the opposite biceps.

“Here.” Rachel crawls over, takes off her jacket, and peels off Hallelujah's extra T-shirt. She hands it over to Jonah, then zips her jacket back up again, tight.

“Thanks,” he says. His teeth are starting to chatter, and the chattering is mixed with pained gasps, like each tremor pulls at the gash in his leg. He quickly puts the shirt on. “So can you two build a fire?”

Hallelujah's house doesn't have a working fireplace. It's the spot where her mom arranges plants in decorative flowerpots. “I don't know how,” she says, staring into the empty fire pit.

“I don't either,” Rachel says.

“Neither did I, before this week.”

Rachel gapes at him. “But you said you were a Boy Scout.”

“Yeah, but it's been a couple years since I tried to build a fire without a match or a lighter. I figured I could do it now, because I had to. And I was pretty relieved when that first fire caught and I didn't burn down the forest.”

“What about that flint you have?” Rachel's leaning into Hallelujah like Hallelujah herself is giving off warmth. “You carry around a fire-starting tool? Just in case?”

Now Jonah sighs. “My dad gave that to me. Before this trip.” He puts on a deeper, dad voice. “‘I'm proud of you, son. You have a good time out there. God loves you, and your mother and I do too.'” He goes back to his normal voice. “Guess he thought it was outdoorsy. Manly. Maybe he meant for it to, I don't know, spark the flame of God inside me.”

Rachel lets out a tiny noise that is almost a laugh.

Hallelujah is just sad. Before she left for this trip, her dad gave her a lecture on listening to the chaperones and staying on the girls' side of the lodge and staying out of trouble. Her mom said, “Bill, she knows.” And then, “Have fun, Hallelujah.” Which was nice, and surprising, even if it proved how out of touch her mom was with her life. She'd thought that was going to be it, but right before she got in the van with Luke, Brad, Jonah, and the others from their church, both parents had hugged her and said they would be praying for her to be safe.

She hopes they're still praying.

Jonah shifts to lean back a little farther, moaning as he does. “Holy heck, my leg hurts,” he says, still with that strained, forced lightness.

Again, Hallelujah mimics his tone. “‘Holy heck'? That's cutting it close.”

“I have a gash in my leg the size of the Mississippi. I can say whatever I want.”

Hallelujah closes her eyes for a second, but sees a picture of her parents crying inside her eyelids. She opens her eyes again. It's just as dark. “I'm going to see about that fire,” she says. “Rachel?” But Rachel's dozing off, and Hallelujah can't bear to wake her back up, so she slides her shoulder carefully out from under Rachel's head and moves away. Rachel collapses into Jonah's side, and he winces but shakes it off.

“Just look for dry wood,” he says. “Twigs. Even dry leaves.” Jonah keeps instructing her as she slowly circles the campsite on hands and knees, gathering materials. It takes a while to find wood that's dry enough to light, but she eventually has a small pile in the fire pit. Then, with great ceremony, Jonah hands her his flint and steel. “Strike it like this,” he says, demonstrating.

She takes it with shaking hands, shifting to sit on the ground with her left leg out to one side. She strikes. And strikes. Just about the time she's ready to give up, to let them all freeze to death, she gets a spark.

“Jonah!” She's so excited she almost drops the flint.

“Okay, blow on it. Gently! Get some of those leaves to light.”

She purses her lips and blows, just a little. The sparks jump and multiply. And then: flames. Flames!

Once the fire's going, it spreads to the rest of the fire pit pretty quickly. Hallelujah watches the flames dance. She almost feels like dancing herself.

“Nice work,” Jonah says. She tosses the flint to him and he catches it in one hand. “Maybe get a little more wood? If you can?”

“I can.” She made fire out of nothing. She can take a little more pain. She gets up and limps around, scanning the area. She gathers more wood. Sets it by the fire pit. The work distracts her from the coldness of the air, from the knife in her ankle, from the fact that her stomach has just realized, again, that they have no food for dinner. Nothing. Not even a single dandelion.

Jonah must be thinking about that too. “You got any water?” he asks. He's been watching her work. She could feel his eyes on her as she piled up sticks and leaves.

Hallelujah turns, seeing him through the flames. “In my backpack,” she says. “Two bottles of rain.”

“Great,” Jonah says, already rummaging through her bag. He pulls out his water bottle, unscrews it, takes a single, long swig.

Hallelujah has run out of jobs to do. Her fire-starting adrenaline is fading. She stands still for a second, and her eyes meet Jonah's. He pats the ground next to him. And so she hobbles over. Sits. The exhaustion descends immediately.

“Want to get some sleep?” Jonah asks.

“I think I'll stay up a little longer,” Hallelujah says. As tired as she is, she wants to keep watch for a while. Jonah watched out for them the first few nights; it's her turn. Plus, they're in even worse shape than they were before. The less time they're all asleep—vulnerable to anything that might happen—the better. Or at least that's how it feels right now, with the night so dark and the trail home so tantalizingly close. “You can sleep,” she tells Jonah.

“Not sure how much I'll get. With this.” Jonah gestures at his leg. In the firelight, they both can see blood soaking through the thin T-shirt bandage. There's also a dark red stain on his shorts leg. Jonah flinches and looks up at the sky, taking a few wavering breaths. “Wish I had my coat,” he says. “It'd be awesome to cover that up. So I didn't have to look at it.”

“Just close your eyes,” Hallelujah says gently. “Try to rest.”

Jonah nods a few times, still looking up at the moon. When he looks down, it's at Hallelujah. He's holding it together. Barely. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” she answers. “Anything.”

“Can you—I mean, will you—please—” He gulps. She actually sees his Adam's apple go up and down. “It really hurts, Hallie.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I wish I could do something.”

“Can you, maybe, just hold on to me for a little while? Till I fall asleep?” He looks away, like he's ashamed to ask.

Hallelujah hesitates. She held Rachel earlier. It's not any different. It really isn't. She tries not to think about Jonah's arms around her. How that would feel. If she does this, it has nothing to do with how he feels about her. Or how she feels about him.

“Hallie?” Jonah's voice is just a breath. “You don't have to. Don't feel like—I mean, I'm fine. Don't worry about it.”