The Distance from Me to You (21 page)

Sam couldn't sleep
, and not just because it was so cold. He'd taken off his wet T-shirt and wrapped up himself and McKenna in his wool jacket. She slept on his chest, even though she'd been almost too pissed to look at him. Her forehead felt cool, but when he reached under her shirt to check, the skin on her back was warm. She was sleeping so soundly. Maybe that was what happened when you grew up in a house where you knew you were safe. You learned how to sleep. Or else maybe it was just that her conscience was clear. Unlike Sam's.

He knew this was all his fault. He had walked off the trail and dragged McKenna along with him, even though she knew better. He'd treated her like she was being a priss. He'd teased and goaded her into doing what might just lead to their death.

He had seen it in her eyes, a kind of panic, even though she didn't
really
believe they might die out here. Why should she believe in something like that, her own mortality? Not only had McKenna lived in the kind of world Sam could hardly even imagine, with safety nets made of money and love. But she'd always followed her very carefully thought-out plans. Danger
was something that didn't exist for her. It was just something abstract that you had to avoid, not something that was
real
.

But the thing was: out here, this time of year, with so little food and possibly no water (unless they could find a pure source—since they no longer had the filter and only a limited number of iodine tablets), they would have to get back to the trail, or they could die—of dehydration, starvation, exposure.

They could die.

Sam almost didn't care, he definitely wouldn't care if he were alone. But he couldn't stand the thought of bringing McKenna down with him.

Very carefully, he moved his arm out from under her, and laid her onto the tarp. The first shreds of dawn reached up above the trees. He might not be going to college, but he'd had high school English, he knew about the rosy-fingered dawn, and it had never looked more like fingers to him than this morning. The knobby shafts of pink light would have been beautiful if he hadn't been so scared. Where were those lost traveler spirits when you needed them?

He looked through his pack for the fishing line and a couple scraps of jerky. If he could find a stream, maybe he could catch a few trout for breakfast. While he was at it, he'd keep his eyes out for a way back to the trail. It would be better to lose all their stuff than to wander in circles searching for it. He dug his knife out of the front of his pack. It wasn't white paint, but he could still make notches in the trees to work as blazes.

Back at their old campsite, in McKenna's giant red pack,
she had pens and the leather-bound journal that he knew she hadn't written more than a few words in. But they hadn't brought those with them yesterday. So Sam picked up a stick and wrote in the dirt to the right of McKenna's head, large letters so she'd see them as soon as she opened her eyes:
WENT FISHING. WAIT HERE
.

He left the pack, the food, the water. Several steps away, he made his first notch in a tree. Maybe his spirit hadn't been broken just yet, because setting off with the hopes of waking her up with a string of fresh fish made him smile. “Hey, Mack,” he'd say. “I found the way back to our campsite. But first I'm going to make breakfast.”

The relief he pictured on her face was more than enough to keep him going.

• • •

McKenna bolted awake an hour later. She looked straight ahead, and then around. She didn't look at the ground next to her.

“Sam?” she called.

The trees answered with stillness, no wind, no leftover raindrops, not even that damned towhee. Even the birds were smart enough to stay out of this part of the forest. She jumped to her feet, kicking the tarp sideways so that it half covered, half erased Sam's note in the dirt.

“Sam?
SAM,
you idiot!
”

If a girl screams for her boyfriend in the forest and nobody hears, is he a complete jerk? Is she certifiably insane, certifiably moronic for ever having listened to a single word he said?

McKenna squatted down on the tarp and put her head in her hands. Way back in June, sitting in the Whitworth Student Union with Courtney, she'd talked herself into the idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail alone. And she
had
hiked it alone, all the way through New England. And then she'd hiked it with Sam. The two of them climbing up and down mountains together. A couple on a camping trip: much more like what people would expect than a girl walking alone. But for McKenna, the road with Sam was the road less traveled.

And look where it had led.

She took her head off her arms and shook it, hard. Panicking wouldn't help. Falling into despair wouldn't help. Her stomach was past rumbling, it just gaped with a crampy pain. At least before performing his standard disappearing act, Sam had left her with his pack and some supplies. As she rooted through, she found herself worrying about him. He hadn't taken any food or the water bottle. She wondered if his clothes from yesterday had dried.

McKenna took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Even though the last thing they'd done last night was fight, she shouldn't jump to conclusions. He'd left his things behind, hadn't he? Including the water bottle? He couldn't be so angry that he was willing to undertake a suicide mission. Maybe if she sat tight and waited, he would come walking back through those trees.

She pulled out the packet of salmon jerky and ate two pieces, though she could easily have devoured the last of it, despite the
awful fishiness. She took a few careful sips of water because who knew how long it would take to find another source.

After just enough food to make her realize how completely ravenous she was, she lay back on the tarp, closed her eyes, and waited.

And waited. And waited. And waited some more.

She couldn't bear it—the way the sun was rising, and how she was unable to do the only thing that ever made her feel better: move.

Sam didn't seem to be coming back, though hours passed. Maybe he was lost. Maybe he had deserted her. Either way, she couldn't sit here for the rest of her life, or the rest of her life could be considerably shortened.

Gathering up her things, she forced herself away from fear and toward determination.
I will see my family again. I will get back to the trail and walk the rest of the way to Georgia.

In the widest stretch of dirt leading off between the trees, the closest thing to a path, McKenna could see Sam's footprints. She set off to follow them. At some point, the footprints stopped; they didn't disappear, just tapered off, blending into a confusing assortment of other footprints. For a moment, the multiple prints comforted McKenna—this must be a part of the woods where other people had walked—but she quickly realized they probably belonged to her and Sam from yesterday. They must have been going in circles, like those kids in
The Blair Witch Project
. Courtney had made McKenna watch that movie, and McKenna had rebelled against the blatant
attempts to terrify her, refusing to lose a wink of sleep remembering the over-the-top images. Now, five years after watching it, she finally felt afraid. What could be worse than walking in circles through the woods, trapped, never finding your way out? She wondered if that movie had taken place in the Smoky Mountains.

She stopped, shrugged off Sam's pack, and took a very tiny sip of water. The loss of the other water bottle and filter was brutal. Thank God she had the iodine tablets, but they would only help if she found a new source. Having only one bottle meant she would have to find a new source every thirty-four ounces. She remembered laying all her gear out on her bed back at home, surveying it with Lucy. The giant water jug she'd filled and then pronounced too heavy to carry. Of course she'd been right, there was no way she'd have made it this far with all those gallons. But just now, the tiniest bit of water wetting her dry lips, she remembered how carelessly she had glugged all that water into her bathtub, the sound it made, and the bubbles that formed under the collapsible plastic. To live in a world with a roof, always a few steps away from a faucet, seemed like a luxury only found in dreams.

“Sam!” she called at the top of her lungs. The sound bounced back to her in an almost echo, the forest especially still after such a loud noise. Nothing.

“SAM, YOU IMPULSIVE ASS! ARE YOU OUT THERE?”

More of nothing, just nothing, not even creatures rumbling behind the trees. It made her feel something too close
to despair to think about her house, or her family. Or even Sam. So instead she decided to think about the stuff she
had
brought along, the stuff she'd carried all this way and left at the campsite yesterday. Her Keen sandals, her worse-for-wear-but-still-cute skort, the compass she hadn't learned how to use, the bird book, the copies of
Walden
and
The Ice at the Bottom of the World
. Her cookstove and pot, plus her gloves and her cash and the Visa whose bills went to her parents. The stuff of survival. In her mind, she apologized to every last item, swearing with grim determination that she'd get back to it.

“Compass, Keens, books,” she muttered as a sort of mantra, walking furiously, the second-nature rhythm of one foot after the other. “I will get back to you.”

• • •

But hours later, exhausted, the sun breaking her heart as it started its trip to the other side of the world, McKenna didn't know if she'd made any progress at all. The patterns of trees and branches, the lack of a path, the trunks of trees: it all looked the same. When she
could
see through the trees, it was only layer upon layer of lush mountains that would have been beautiful if they hadn't represented an endless expanse for her to stay lost in.

The campsite could be steps away or it could be miles. If she had that compass now, she would definitely figure out how to use it. She imagined it in the palm of her hand, the gorgeous brass weight of it, pointing her back to the trail.

She refused to think about Sam, in his duct-taped sneakers, without water. Wasn't that his own doing?

The only high point of the day came when she found a stream. In that moment she'd experienced something like joy, downing what was left in her bottle and then filling it back up. The water looked so clear and felt so cold, she was almost tempted not to waste iodine tablets. She thought that was something Sam would do, she could almost hear his voice next to her, making fun of her for thinking such precautions were worth bothering with.
You're going to die of thirst waiting for the pills to work.

She plunked the tablets into the bottle defiantly, then rested for thirty minutes, grateful for the one bit of technology she had left: her watch. Then she drank long and deep, replenishing herself before dipping the bottle again, filling it to the brim, and adding two more tablets.

• • •

Hours later, the sun had made its final bow, and McKenna trudged on in darkness. She heard an owl in the distance, and stumbled over a tree root, landing in the dirt, catching herself with her hands and scraping her palms. Sitting up on her knees, she gave it one last try for the day.

“Sam!” she yelled.
“Sam! Are you out there?”

The forest answered with that same infuriating stillness, the birds all gone to bed, the crickets and frogs all gone for the winter. McKenna pulled her cap down over her ears, and
reached for the sweater Sam had left behind, not bothering with the tarp or food, but forcing herself to take a few swallows of water before closing her eyes. Sleep rushed in at a remarkable pace, the full force of her mental and physical exhaustion taking over.

Then, from somewhere off in the distance, a sound. Almost like a voice, like someone calling out. She sat up and listened, waiting for it to come again.

“Sam!” she called into the darkness. And then, from her diaphragm, as loud as she could: “SAM!”

Nothing. It must have been her imagination. Or the owl. She lay back down and fell into a dead sleep almost before her head hit the cold, hard ground.

• • •

Twelve hours earlier: Sam sauntered away from where McKenna lay sleeping. Every ten feet or so, he stopped to mark a tree. If felt like something McKenna would do, taking precautions. It took him longer than he thought it would to find water; by the time he reached the mountain stream, the sun was high in the sky. He peeled off his wool coat and knelt down, cupping his hands and slurping the water, then splashing it onto his face before drinking more. It tasted cold and perfect and clean. Then he baited his hook and dropped the fishing line. Much as he'd enjoyed the water's temperature, now he hoped it wasn't too cold for the fish.

As he waited for a bite, he imagined McKenna, who must be awake by now. Maybe she'd be making a fire, confident
he'd be bringing back breakfast. He tried to remember if they'd brought matches with them when they left their campsite.