The Distance Between Lost and Found (25 page)

It's been waiting for this moment. For her.

She steps over a rotting tree stump and just like that, she's standing on the trail. She closes her eyes and thinks,
I'm going home. We're going home
. There's a thickness in her throat, a pounding in her chest that's more than just the uphill climb. It's also that she didn't quite believe there was a trail until she reached it. Like maybe it was a mirage, or wishful thinking on Jonah's part. Like maybe it would have vanished overnight.

But which way to go? Which way leads to civilization? To help?

Hallelujah looks right and left, assessing. Even though she's fairly high up, she can't see anything but trees and mountains, on and on and on. This bit of trail doesn't look like the one they took on Monday, but who's to say she remembers every foot and feature of their path? It could be the same trail. Or they could have fumbled through the woods, driven by rain and hunger and thirst and those imagined orange jackets, in completely the opposite direction.

For all she knows, they could be in North Carolina.

But she has to make a decision, has to get started, and so she turns right. The trail will curve and wind, she knows, but she will begin by going right.

She walks, using her crutch to swing herself along. She gets up good momentum. Despite the wobbly feeling in her legs. Despite her ankle, which is throbbing again. Despite her growling stomach, which knows that it's past breakfast time.

She's on the move. And the path does twist and turn a little, though for now it stays fairly flat. Small hills that feel easy after the hiking she's done. Weak as she is, she's stronger than before.

And yet the farther she walks away from Jonah and Rachel, the worse she feels. She's left them defenseless. What if the bear comes back? Or something else? What if Rachel gets sicker? What if Jonah's leg gets infected? What if it's already infected? She should be there. They should be together.

But she's also their only hope at this point. Clearly, the rescue squad isn't going to just stumble upon them. It's their fifth day lost.

Even as she tells herself,
Forward, forward, forward
, something deep in her gut wants to go back. Or at least to look, to see if she can still see their campsite.

She doesn't look back. She moves.

H
OURS PASS
. T
HE SUN SHIFTS IN THE SKY
. S
HE HIKES UP
and down and around. Her stomach aches and burns and then shrinks, empty and resentful. She trips over exposed roots, over rocks, over her own feet. The swimsuit bandage catches on brambles and twigs, pulling painfully. She tears the skin on her palms grabbing at branches to stay on her feet. The cut from the flint starts bleeding again.

She sees no one. Just woods and woods and woods.

Once, she hears a helicopter. But it's far away. A sound echoing from mountainside to mountainside. She hears it, and then it's gone.

By the time the sun is directly overhead, she's sweating. She wishes she wasn't, because she doesn't have any water, doesn't see any water anywhere nearby, but her body is following its own rules now. It's all she can do to keep picking her feet up and putting them down, inch by inch.

She stops on an overlook to catch her breath. Not to sit down; she might not get up again. To breathe. And to look at the view. Look for signs. She scans the landscape below her, remembering that flash of orange two days ago. Now: nothing.

All at once, she's hit by how alone she is. Before,
they
were alone. Together. Now,
she
is one small speck in this giant mountain range, completely and totally by herself.

The air pulls away, leaving her gasping. The silence roars at her.

She staggers back from the overlook edge, eyes filling with tears. She turns onto the trail. She pushes forward.

She's alone. More alone than she's ever been. It's just her and the trees closing in and the sun beating down. The branches block her path, holding her back. The birds are laughing at her. The ground drops out from under her with no warning, and she stumbles. There's no one to catch her. She falls hard. She lies still for a moment, gasping, feeling pain and fear and hunger and panic roll across her in waves. Then she uses the nearest tree to pull herself back to her feet. She has to keep moving. No one else can help her do this. It's all up to her.

Her mind drifts to everything that led her here. She remembers the whispers. Friends turning away. Friends she pushed away. She remembers choir with Jonah. Singing with him, and then without him, and then not at all. She remembers talking to God. Pleading with him. And then feeling him at such a distance. She remembers her first kiss and the kisses that came after. And she remembers the perfect moments. Laughter and music. Once, she had the ability to be effortlessly happy. One day, maybe, she'll be effortlessly happy again.

Because now, everything is different. The five days she's been out here are a lifetime. Before is a memory. Before that—barely a dream. Now, there's only ahead. One foot in front of the other. This trail will lead somewhere. It has to.

She wipes her forearm across her face, feels tears and snot smear across the sleeve of her jacket. She blinks a few times, and her vision goes from cloudy to clear.

She used to think alone was the answer. Alone would stop the whispers and the taunts. Alone couldn't get her into any more trouble. Alone meant not getting hurt. Now, she'd give anything to see another human being. To hear someone call her name.

She settles for listening to her own voice. “Hello,” she says aloud. Or tries to say. It's more of a hiss. Her throat is scratched raw. Her mouth is so dry. She licks her lips, trying to produce some spit. She thinks of food. Of hamburgers and grits and gravy and French fries and the world's biggest, freshest garden salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. And chocolate cake for dessert. Her mouth moistens, and she quickly swishes it around, washes it down her raw throat. “Hello!” she says again, louder.

She starts talking. She doesn't think about what she's saying. She only needs the sounds. Needs distraction. Needs to feel less alone.

“It's just past lunchtime, and—I guess you can't really call it lunchtime without lunch, so I'll say it's just past noon. It's a beautiful day to be lost in the woods. The sun is shining and the birds are chirping. . . .”

She goes on and on. She tells the woods everything that happened between Monday morning and this moment. And it actually helps. Time seems to pass faster. She feels like she's moving faster.

“So, what's going to happen between me and Jonah? Are we going to be together, or what?” She pauses, creating suspense. Then lets the air out of the balloon with a slow whoosh. “I don't know. But I hope so. I do.” The more she thinks about the two of them together—dating—the more right it seems. They already know so much about each other. And there's so much more to know. She wants to know it.

“But I have all of that other stuff to deal with when we get home.” Handling Luke. Talking to her parents. And Sarah—she has to get in touch with Sarah. She has to apologize. She wants her friend back. “And I keep feeling like it's just like this with me and Jonah because we're in this mess, and we're all we've got out here. And that it might die as soon as we're home.”

That word—
die
—hits her like a brick. She wishes so much that she hadn't said it. Jonah is fine. Jonah was alive when she left him, and he'll be alive when the rescuers get to him. Rachel, too.

They will all be okay. Hallelujah will not accept anything less than everyone being okay.

She takes a few steps in silence. Trips over a branch in the trail and stumbles to stay upright, ankle singing its pain. Inhale, exhale.

She continues her conversation. “Jonah said he's liked me for more than a year. Which is crazy.” It really is. Even when he didn't want to like her, he liked her. “How could I not know? Why didn't he ever say anything? Before it all went wrong?”

Around another curve. The path is sloping gently downward. “So what happens if we get home and he starts hanging out with Luke again? What if he doesn't like me as much as he used to? As much as I . . . as I think I like him?” Another pause. “I guess . . . I guess that would mean it wasn't meant to be.”

That thought makes her sad. And angry.

And then she hears something that makes her forget everything else. A motor. Not like a helicopter—like a car. The sound is far away, and it's gone as soon as she realizes what it is.

Still, she starts running. Toward the sound. Toward the residue of the sound. Toward the memory of something already gone.

She can't move fast enough. She's too weak. Her feet drag. She loses her crutching rhythm. She's out of breath almost immediately. Not just a little out of breath—gasping, wheezing, choking out of breath. She gets a stabbing pain in her right side, so sharp she drops to her knees. She gulps in air. Sweat pours down her face into her mouth. She lets it. The salt tastes good.

She's seeing spots. She drops her head below her heart. Closes her eyes. Lets everything settle. Her head throbs. She hears the birds and the wind and everything else louder and softer, louder and softer.

Okay. No more running. No more running
.

But she's close. She can feel it.

She gets to her feet. The stitch in her side twinges as she straightens up. She puts a hand there, presses in, willing the cramp to go away. It doesn't. She feels it in every inhale and exhale.

She walks. Downhill. Carefully. As fast as she dares.

The ground in front of her blurs. She blinks a few times, but the world doesn't come back into focus. It's like she's underwater.

She starts to feel like she's being propelled by invisible hands. Like she's no longer doing the walking herself. Her limbs just move.

She's lost her train of thought. All she can think is,
Help help help help
.

She hikes toward it.

T
HE FIRST THING SHE REGISTERS IS THE SPACE OPENING UP
around her. The trees pulling away. Next, it's how the ground feels different beneath her feet.

Gravel. Packed gravel. With small grooves worn into it on either side.

The gravel area is maybe ten feet across. Maybe more.

It stretches off into the distance, right and left.

A road.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, afraid to believe. Then she turns and sees a brown wooden sign marking the Hannah Mountain Trail. The trail she just walked. It crosses a road. This is real.

A road means cars. Cars mean people. People mean help.

Hallelujah lets out a whoop that quickly turns into a hacking cough. For a second, she can't breathe at all. When the fit subsides, she takes in a few deep gulps of air to compensate.

A road. All she has to do is pick which way to go.

To her right, the road stretches invitingly downhill. It goes uphill to the left. Downhill would be easier. But her gut is saying,
Go up
.

She turns left. It's a guess. She knows it's a guess. And she knows she'll wear out faster this way. But it feels right. Those invisible hands have turned her shoulders and she's walking, before she has time to change her mind.

Walking on gravel is different from walking on a dirt trail. It's also different from climbing through brush and over downed trees and pulling herself along on hands and knees. The gravel shifts around beneath her feet as she drags them. It makes a scraping noise that grates on her ears. She feels it in her teeth.

It only takes a few steps for her to need to hear something else. Anything else.

And then she knows: she needs to sing. The feeling hits her so hard she can't breathe for a second. The need knocks the wind out of her.

She's going to sing. She
has
to sing.

She doesn't let herself think beyond that. She takes a deep breath. Opens her mouth. Launches into the first song that enters her head: “O Holy Night.”

She gets the first few lines out, laughing a little. At this choice: a Christmas carol, in April, a song about a holy night, with the sun shining down. But she doesn't stop. She finishes the whole thing, even though the high notes are nothing more than scratching breath in her throat.

The song reminds her of Jonah. Of what she's walking for.

And thinking of Jonah reminds her of the last song he sang to her, before everything happened with Luke: “Friends in Low Places.” So she switches gears abruptly and starts wailing that song's chorus.

Then she moves into a few of the songs from the mix he made her at the start of ninth grade. A little country, a little classic rock. When she doesn't remember all the words, she hums, keeping time with her feet, until she can pick up again.

She sings, though her tongue feels like a log in her mouth and her raw throat aches. She sounds terrible, and feels terrible, and yet sounds and feels amazing. Because she is alive and she is singing and she
will
find help and she
will
get rescuers to Jonah and Rachel and it
will
be today.

The last song on Jonah's first mix was a country version of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah.” She starts that one before realizing it's too slow, too sad, for this moment. She needs something up-tempo. Powerful music. A battle cry.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” pops into her head, which makes her laugh again. But she decides to go for it. She starts the first verse, imagining a full orchestra backing her up. When she comes to the chorus's “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” she hesitates. For a second, all she can see is Luke's face as he moans her name. His hands rubbing up and down his body, mocking her.

And then she pushes those thoughts aside and sings out the line. She feels a thrill. It feels good. The next time her name comes up, she doesn't hesitate at all. She sings it at the top of her nonexistent voice. When the verses are done, she repeats the chorus, over and over. Her feet and her crutch, gravel-scraping, are all the percussion she needs.