The Distance from Me to You (10 page)

Her whole body ached. The skin on her face tingled with antiseptic and too much sun. She spread her sleeping bag on one of the empty platforms and crawled into it without even filling her stuff bag with clothes to make a pillow. If she hadn't broken down and checked her phone in the first place, she wouldn't have stoked the temptation that drove her to push it to the bottom of the bag and it might still be intact. Now it was gone. She was really on her own.

She tried to keep her mind firmly on the hike, and not let it veer off to other worries. Tomorrow she'd have less than a mile to go to reach the Success Trail to the west, and then she would cross her first state line, into New Hampshire. Had it only been this morning that she had woken up at the campground with the UNH girls and Sam? It seemed miles and days away. What McKenna thought about just before she fell asleep was the fact that she'd been face-to-face with a bear, deep in the woods. Looked into its eyes and breathed in. If she could do that, she could do anything. A smile played on her lips, staying with her until she fell asleep.

• • •

What McKenna didn't know: Sam had been right behind her for most of the day, stopping when he got too close, and letting her stay just ahead of him. It was one thing to get invited by a group of girls, another to shadow a girl on her own. They barely knew each other, and though she'd acted cool about the Walden story, he realized now that it might have scared her. He didn't want to scare her even more by seeming like he was following her. He noted that she hadn't signed the trail register—a move he approved of.

Sam had heard the whole bear episode loud and clear, though he didn't know it was a bear that spooked her. He just heard McKenna scrambling desperately up the embankment, then heard her tumble down, followed by her calmer walk uphill.

Sam hung back, waiting to make sure she returned to the trail. He kept her huge red pack in his sights—like a flare signal—watching it bop through the trees. McKenna's gait was slower, a little uneven when she got back on the trail, but nothing to indicate any serious injury. From where he stood, he could hear a stream gurgling below. He walked down to the stream and sunk his drop line baited with a little piece of bacon he'd saved from breakfast. In half an hour he had a nice stack, three little brook trout. He strung them together and tied them to the outside of his pack.

Sam was pretty sure there was a shelter up ahead; since it was getting close to dark and McKenna had just had that spill,
he guessed she'd stop and camp there. It would be the perfect place for him to camp, too, and maybe she'd want to share his fish. But what if there wasn't anyone else there? Wouldn't it be kind of weird and awkward?

They were two people, walking two thousand miles in the same direction. Bound to run into each other again. But for tonight, Sam figured he'd let her have the place to herself. He would rather lay his sleeping bag down at the first outcropping of rocks and build a fire to roast his trout. The heat of the day had started to burn off, a good breeze coming up as he gained elevation. It was one of those nights when it was especially good to be outside. To be alone on the trail.

It was a good thing
McKenna smashed her phone just
after
a text had been sent to her parents. Over the next few days she worked hard to cover the miles to the next public phone at the summit of Mount Washington, the second highest peak on the entire Appalachian Trail, and not exactly an easy stretch to hustle through. It seemed to McKenna the blazes on this section were fewer and farther apart. Luckily the good weather and the weekend brought a lot of fellow hikers and campers to the trail. She made a point of checking in with everyone she passed, making sure she was headed in the right direction. When she finally reached the Summit House, she was exhausted and covered in sweat. The ground under her feet—above the tree line—was rocky. It was weird to see a parking lot, complete with cars that had made the trip up the serpentine road, but she walked past them, dumping her pack on the ground and looking out at the Presidential Range, green this time of year, and towering in endless, looming rows. How funny to face this wild expanse in one direction, and then turn around and head to a snack bar, where she bought herself
French fries, asking for her change in quarters. Then she used the pay phone to call Courtney.

Of course Courtney didn't answer the unfamiliar number, which was just as well, since McKenna had only enough change for a minute or so. The pay phone's number was printed on the front, so McKenna recited it in her voice mail and told Courtney to call back right away. “It's an emergency,” McKenna said.

Two minutes ticked by. McKenna waited, munching on French fries, closing her eyes with each amazingly salty bite. When the phone finally rang, it was so loud that she jumped.

“Courtney?”

“McKenna! Where are you?”

It was so odd hearing her best friend's voice after so long. Even though she'd been hiking for weeks, McKenna had barely put a dent in her total trail mileage. The New England stretch, with all the mountains, was the most slow-going of the AT and so much time had passed that already the most normal things in her life had become completely exotic.

“I'm at the summit of Mount Washington.”

“Wow. How is it going?”

“It's great.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” McKenna said, working to sound insistent rather than annoyed. If Courtney hadn't sounded so dubious, she might have filled her in on the impossible first day, and the way she woke up every morning so stiff she wasn't sure she'd be able to walk at all, let alone carry a huge pack. The way hiking
up a mountain left your muscles so sore that it was actually more painful to walk down (which she had to look forward to the next day). Strangest of all, she didn't feel like telling Courtney that Brendan had broken up with her. She wondered if she already knew.

“Listen,” McKenna said instead, getting down to business. “My phone broke.”

On the other end, Courtney gave a little gasp, as if McKenna had told her a lung had collapsed. McKenna forged through the horror, telling Courtney she needed her to text her parents in the morning, and to explain that McKenna's phone had died and that from now on Courtney would be sending the check-in texts.

“Every Wednesday and Friday before dark,” McKenna said.

“But won't you get a new one?”

“Courtney. I'm in the middle of nowhere,” McKenna said, even though this had been her original plan: to get off the trail at the first town that seemed big enough to have a Verizon store. She was pretty sure the phone was insured. But seriously, what had her phone done for her so far? It wasn't like dialing 911 was going to help her on the trail, she had only fiddled with the compass, and she hadn't checked the GPS once. Truthfully it was so hard to battle the temptation to check messages or go online, and when she had, she'd received the one piece of news that managed to distract and deflate her. Without her phone, she was a girl who was climbing mountains and facing down black bears. With her phone, she was a girl whose boyfriend
was breaking up with her. And after all: like the rest of the world, she was going to spend the rest of her life on the grid. The broken phone was a gift and she planned to accept it.

“What do I say when I text them?” Courtney asked.

“Well, tell them my phone broke. Then after that first text, just say that we're safe, everything's fine, and tell them where we are. You'll have to fake that part. Do you still have a guidebook?”

“I can look online.” They had both joined the AT website back in January. “The interactive map's pretty good.”

Inwardly, McKenna laughed, knowing now that no interactive map could prepare you. “Thanks,” she told Courtney. “How's everything going there?”

Courtney burst into a happy ramble, mostly about Jay and the series of graduation parties their friends were having. The ramble was suspiciously empty of Brendan, so McKenna figured she must know. Maybe he was with a new girl. She willed herself not to ask, just stood with the old-fashioned phone pressed to her ear, listening to news from a million miles away. How weird that every step she took brought her closer to her hometown when it felt like she was walking farther and farther away, to a place deeper inside herself.

• • •

The next day, hiking up Mount Franklin, McKenna heard the persistent trill of a towhee. In fact it was a little too persistent. And a little too perfect, sounding exactly the same every time, with no variation. She hadn't seen Sam since the morning
she'd given him the book, and would've guessed he was miles ahead of her by now.

Sweat dripped off her forehead. This morning it had been freezing, and she still wore her fleece jacket, long-sleeved T-shirt, and Gramicci pants. She stopped to take off her jacket and quickly traded the long-sleeved T-shirt for a short-sleeved one. Then she yelled down the trail.

“That's a towhee! Give me a harder one!”

A short pause. She imagined Sam leafing through the book, looking for a bird he didn't recognize. And then the pause got longer, so McKenna thought maybe she was going crazy and it really
was
just a very vocal and precise bird, following her. But then came the distinctive, slightly alarming cough of a barred owl, not something you'd hear on a mountain in the middle of the day.

“Barred owl!” she yelled back, but just as the second word was out of her mouth, he came around the curve in the trail.

“Barred owl,” she said again, more quietly, and they both laughed.

“Here,” Sam said, handing her the book. “Quiz me. I've been studying.”

McKenna took the book. “Hello to you, too,” she said.

“Seriously,” he said, still not bothering with a greeting. “Pick one. Anywhere in the book.”

She flipped through and pressed the button next to the cardinal.

“No, no,” he said. “I could've got that one before I even had the book. Choose a hard one.”

McKenna flipped through with her eyes closed, then felt for the nearest button. The thin, whistly notes of what she thought was a prairie warbler sang out.

“Cedar waxwing,” Sam said. She opened her eyes. He was right.

“You've gotten good,” she said, handing back the book.

“You don't want it?”

“No, you're having fun with it.” She could tell he was glad she didn't want it back.

They walked a little ways together.

“You know,” Sam said, “I was worried that I scared you. With that story about Walden.”

“What am I, eight years old?” McKenna said. “Scared by a ghost story? No way.”

They came to a section of the trail that was too narrow for them to walk side by side, so Sam went a few paces ahead. McKenna could see him shrug under the weight of his pack. “Some people get scared,” he said.

“Not me,” she told him. “That's my claim to fame in my family. I'm unscareable. Always have been. Even when I was little.”

He stopped and looked back at her with a wolfish but very appealing grin. “Yeah?” he said. “I guess I'll have to think of some more stories for you.”

“You can't scare me, I promise.”

His smile widened, then he turned and continued walking.

They went on in silence for a while, until McKenna got hungry. The sun was high, moving into afternoon.

“Want lunch?” she asked. “I've got some jerky and PowerBars.”

“No, I'm good,” Sam said. “I want to make it to the shelter early. My tent's not the most waterproof, and it looks like rain.”

“Okay,” she said. “See you.”

“Yeah. See you around, Mackenzie.”

She could tell from his grin he knew perfectly well that wasn't her name. Still, she said, “McKenna.”

“Right. See you around.”

She sat down on a flat rock, watching him go, wondering how he'd managed to make it so far with a “not-the-most-waterproof” tent. Then she remembered that some people, thru hikers even, didn't bring tents at all, only stopped in shelters.

He must know what he's doing, she thought, almost as if to comfort herself. And then wondered why she'd think to worry about him in the first place.

• • •

Without her phone to tell her the time, and with the elimination of required check-ins with her parents, McKenna quickly began to lose track of the days. She stopped thinking of the days in terms of numbers and more by chunks of daylight and temperature. Hiking through the White Mountains was like it had been in Maine, hiking through the seasons, the climate
varying wildly at different times of day and different altitudes. Mornings, she would wake up freezing, her breath visible, only to be pouring sweat by lunchtime. She could tell the approximate day by the level of traffic on the trail—something she guessed would become more dramatic as summer drew to a close, perhaps tapering off altogether as she moved south with the birds and the warm weather. Every once in a while she would hear a particularly loud and perfect birdsong, and would call out the name of the bird. But so far, Sam hadn't answered.

She wasn't exactly sure how much time passed between chatting about birds with Sam on the trail and crossing the border from New Hampshire into Vermont. She felt positively giddy as she did so; she had read in one book that New Hampshire and Maine constituted only 20 percent of the mileage on the AT but 80 percent of the work. Not that she thought the coming months would be easy—it would get colder and lonelier as the summer crowds dispersed, with fewer invitations like the one she'd received last night from a family with young kids to share hot dogs at the Happy Hill Shelter.

Approaching the Joe Ranger Road, McKenna saw a group of guys in a parked pickup truck. She noted the orange caps and camouflage, though it wasn't hunting season, and felt an involuntary nervous flutter in her gut.

She nodded at the men as she passed, taking mental note of her whistle and pepper spray hanging within easy reach on her pack. For all everyone had worried about her, she had not yet felt remotely threatened by any of the men she'd encountered
on the trail. They'd all been concerned dads, or friendly buddies like the guys who'd spiked her and Brendan's sodas, or Sam. One benefit of being a girl on her own: nobody was afraid of her. Everybody was instantly friendly, willing to share food and offer help, even when she didn't need it.

But something about these guys, maybe just the fact that they were sitting in a truck observing her, made her uneasy. She didn't realize how uneasy until she'd crossed the road, back to what she considered the safety of the trail. As always, she ignored the trail ledger, walking right by it.

“Hey,” a voice called to her a few minutes later.

McKenna turned back to see the three guys walking toward her. Two of them had dark hair and were short and stocky. The bald one was tall and lean. She guessed they were all in their early thirties.

“Hi,” she said.

What she really wanted to do was ignore them and keep walking. But of course that would feel so rude, it would almost be like baiting them. Which was exactly what they were relying on. It always bugged McKenna, how intrusive people counted on her good manners to get her talking to them.

“You forgot to sign the trail book,” the tall one said. He pointed backward at the ledger, like he was helping her out.

“Oh. Well, I'm not going far. Just a day hike.”

“That's a big pack for a day hike,” he said.

Apparently he was the only one who talked, which made the other two, staring at her unblinkingly, seem more ominous,
like pit bulls flanking their owner. McKenna regretted the obvious lie and concentrated on not blushing. And for the first time, she also regretted not having Norton with her. These guys would probably have left her alone if she had that big snarly dog.

“Well,” McKenna said. “I'll see you guys. I'm headed that way.”

“Wait,” the tall one said, jogging after her, and McKenna reluctantly stopped again, turning toward him, aiming for the right level of non-antagonizing irritation. “You look like you been walking a long way. Want to come on into town with us? Have some dinner? Hang out?”