The Distance from Me to You (23 page)

His face looked different, more vulnerable. She reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him steady. “Sam,” she said. “Let's save the confessions for later. Okay? Let's make them when we're in a hospital, and you're doped up on painkillers with a cast on that ankle, and we've got a roof over our heads and eighty more years ahead of us.”

She stopped short of saying,
Don't act like this is your deathbed. Because I won't let it be.

“Mack,” he said. “Haven't you wanted to ask what happened to my mother?”

“I was waiting for you to tell me.”

“She was cleaning this lady's house, she did that sometimes when she could get the work. And she came across a cabinet with all these pills, anxiety meds, Valium and Ativan and Xanax. She carried them down to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water and swallowed every last pill. She threw the bottles away and rinsed out the glass—she was always considerate about little details like that. She didn't like to leave
messes for other people. Then she walked out of that house, I guess so nobody would find her in time to save her. She walked into the woods and lay down under a Kentucky coffee tree. And I guess all the anxiety went away.”

McKenna's hand held on to his shoulder.

“I was fourteen,” Sam finished.

McKenna lay down next to him, pulling the tarp back over them. She didn't say anything—everything she could think of felt too trite, too much like something she'd heard other people say. So she just held him.

After a while she finally said, “Sam? I'm going to tell you I'm sorry about what happened to your mom when I know we're safe. But for now? No more confessions. No more energy spent on anything except getting out of here.”

“There
is
no way out. Not for me. I can barely move. I definitely can't walk. And I won't drag you down with me.”

“Well, then you better try harder. Because I'm not leaving without you.”

“I shouldn't have called out to you,” Sam said. “I was so freaking delirious. Otherwise, I wouldn't have.”

“Well, I'm happy for delirium, then,” McKenna said. She pushed the tarp off him. “We're both walking out of these woods.”

Sam sat up. He carefully moved his legs, wincing again from the pain. McKenna gave him a couple more ibuprofen, hoping they wouldn't upset his stomach. She found some thick sticks and fashioned a makeshift splint, using liberal amounts
of Sam's duct tape. They ate the last of the awful salmon jerky, had a few more sips of water, and got to their feet.

“I'll get you up this cliff first,” McKenna said. “Then I'll come back for the pack.”

“I hate this, Mack,” he said. “I want to be the one helping you.”

“So you wish my ankle were broken?”

“No,” he said. “Though you have to admit, it would be easier for me to carry you than vice versa.”

McKenna frowned and draped his arm around her. Sam almost laughed. “I'm not saying you're not superwoman. If you've proved anything, it's that you are. But I still don't think you can piggyback me up there.”

He was right. Just testing the smallest bit of weight he'd allow her, she quickly realized she couldn't carry him at all. She might be able to support him if they were walking, but not while scaling a wall.

“Here,” she said. “You do it without using that ankle. I'll be right below you, to spot you where you need it.”

They made their way up slowly, McKenna just below Sam; twice he slid down and automatically used both legs to stop himself, crying out in pain. But finally they got out of the little ravine. They stood at the top of the ledge, panting, each taking a tiny sip of sustaining water. Then McKenna shimmied back down to get the pack.

“I'm just going to slow you down,” he said when she returned.

“Stop it.”

“I'm going to kill whatever chance you have of getting out of here. Which is the same thing as killing you.”

“Shut up.”

“But—”

“Shut
up
. First,
you're
always leaving. Now you want to make
me
leave.”

“Mack, I—”

“No. We're in this together. Whatever happens, we stick together. I'm not leaving you ever again. Got it?”

“Got it,” Sam said, but he didn't sound happy about it.

“I'm going to go look for a walking stick. If you use me on one side, and the stick on the other, maybe you can walk without putting weight on the ankle.”

“Which will have us moving at the rate of an inchworm.”

“It will if that's your attitude.” McKenna was trying to use the stern voice her track coach used when spirits were lagging. But just as Sam's voice, trying to be wry and realistic, was tinged with something past despair, so was her own with the sound of rising panic.

And hopelessness.

Yesterday she'd had a goal: to find Sam. That first goal achieved, her goal had become getting him warm and then out of his little ditch.

The next goal seemed impossible. They hadn't been able to do anything but walk in circles when they were both well. Now Sam was badly crippled and they were both starving. Just
finding water would be a challenge, let alone getting back to the trail.

And worst of all: nobody would be looking for them because nobody knew they were lost. Nobody
would
know they were lost, not for another month or more, when she didn't show up in Georgia. And even then: How would anyone know where she'd gone off the trail? Walden had seen her leave, but she was pretty sure he wouldn't wait around to see if she came back. And at this point she wasn't completely confident she hadn't hallucinated him. She'd never signed the trail registry. Even now, in this desperate moment, Courtney could be sending her parents a cheerful text, telling them everything was fine and dandy. They might still be getting those texts as her corpse rotted, as her skin and bones were bleached and battered by sun and rain, and eventually covered up by the year's first snowstorms.

And Sam? He'd been gone since last spring and no one had come searching yet.

“Hey,” Sam said. He must have noticed she wasn't looking for a walking stick, just standing there, not moving.

“Yeah?”

“‘I came to the woods deliberately. So when I died, I wouldn't think that I'd never lived.'”

McKenna blinked at him. That was Thoreau, Sam's own version of the first lines of
Walden
. Much as this moved her, she would not cry.

“Is that how it goes?” Sam said.

“Kind of.”

She thought of the book, the words that had started it all, waiting for her back at their campsite. Along with “Her Favorite Story,” about John Smith, who'd survived, and the man who'd failed to save his dying lover.

“Tell me how it goes,” Sam said in a slow, coaxing voice. She recognized what he wanted, which was not to keep himself alive, but to make sure she lived.

“I will,” she said. “When we get back to the book. I'll read it to you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

And McKenna walked a little ways searching for a stick long enough for Sam to lean on and thick enough to bear his weight, all the while making sure she didn't go far enough to lose sight of him.

• • •

In Abelard, Connecticut, her mom had a better idea than McKenna realized of where she was. Since finding out McKenna was hiking alone, she hadn't been waiting for the credit card statements, but rather monitoring the card online every night after dinner. Charges became like smoke signals. She'd see that McKenna had spent thirty dollars at a grocery store. Forty dollars at a restaurant. Fifty dollars at someplace called Turn the Page. When Quinn saw a charge, she would Google map the town, clicking on the + sign again and again, as if she could zoom in directly to where McKenna was, see her walking
along the sidewalk. In her classes, she had lectured vehemently against NSA and drone technology, but now she thought she'd gladly send an army of drones to follow McKenna, keep tabs on her, keep her safe.

She often found herself trying to analyze the charges with Jerry. “Forty dollars seems like a lot at a diner,” she'd say. “Maybe she met a friend. Maybe she's not alone.”

“Maybe,” Jerry would say. He had become infuriatingly Zen about the whole thing, refusing to worry. Or at least refusing to admit he was worried.

But now she was more worried than ever. There hadn't been a charge in over a week, not since McKenna had taken out two hundred dollars in cash in some North Carolina town.

“Doesn't really mean anything,” Jerry said when she couldn't keep quiet about it any longer. “When I was on the trail, two hundred dollars would have lasted me the whole summer.”

“Yes, honey. But that was thirty years ago.” If he mentioned his time on the trail one more time, she might have to kill him.

“Listen,” he said. “She's a smart girl. Resourceful. And she's all grown up. We're just going to have to trust that she can take care of herself.”

More than a thousand
miles away from home, night had fallen. On a low tree branch, not two feet away from where McKenna had stopped short, eyes were reflecting what little light the stars offered. Sam stumbled against her, muttering, as if he'd already drifted to sleep on his feet. They'd managed to walk all day with Sam leaning on her, hopping forward while he braced his other side with the walking stick. Half Sam's weight plus the weight of his pack had McKenna longing for the relative ease of her giant red pack, stuffed to capacity.

The movement was so awkward, the weight so heavy on her muscles and bones. Plus she had no idea if they were making any progress or getting any closer to finding people. She knew the smartest thing to do when you're lost is sit down in one spot and wait to be found. But since nobody knew they were lost, that would just be waiting to die. As it was, by the time it got dark, McKenna felt like they were
walking
to die, continuing forward until they would both collapse in a lifeless heap.

She didn't say any of this to Sam, but she could feel his own resignation as he leaned on her. He had already given up. He
was only moving forward for her. And now they were moving through the dark.

“I wish we could find the lake again,” McKenna said. Then worried this sounded like an accusation, since it was his calling out that had led her away from the lake.

Sam hadn't said a word in hours, since they'd filled up the water bottle in a muddy puddle that morning, so she kept talking. They had to trust that the iodine tablets would do their work on the silt and debris, taking sips as rarely as possible. For hours, she'd been sure they were moving back in the direction of the lake, but if that were true, they would be there by now.

In the dark she wasn't sure of anything. The pair of eyes shining back at her could be an owl or a bobcat. She took a step forward and heard a low growl, polite enough to warn her.

What are you doing here? Crossing into my territory,
snarled the animal. Definitely not an owl.

McKenna tightened her grip on Sam and pivoted him around, crashing through trees in the opposite direction. She knew they needed to stop soon or she'd risk breaking an ankle, too. Or worse, she thought, remembering how close she'd slept to the drop-off by the lake. But she wanted to at least find a break in the trees, an overhang or a soft spot to lay down the tarp. A barrier between him and the cold ground would protect Sam from another bout of hypothermia.

“This would be an excellent moment for one of your spirit stories,” McKenna said. She didn't expect him to say anything, wasn't sure he'd ever say anything again.

But then he did speak. Or rather, he made a croaking sound as if it had been years since he last spoke instead of hours.

“Look,” Sam said.

McKenna stopped. Her eyes should have been accustomed to the dark by now, but she was so exhausted. Everything was a blur of branches and shadows and leaves. If McKenna lived to get out of here, she would never buy another pine scented product in her life.

“Oh.” She gasped, realizing what stood before them.

It wasn't a stand of low trees, but a house made out of logs built into a rock wall, with a patch of grass growing on its roof. For a moment McKenna felt a surge of hope that someone might be living inside, someone who could help them.

She placed her palm at the small of Sam's back to make sure he was steady, then she stepped forward to poke her head through the doorway.

“Hello?” she called, though she could see it was empty.

She leaned against the hut's wall. The wood felt so cold and hard, as if it had petrified thousands of years ago.

“The Nunnehi,” Sam said, sounding clearer this time. “This must be one of their houses.”

“It can't be,” McKenna said. “The Nunnehi aren't real, remember?”

The structure looked perfectly real, though. McKenna dropped her pack, then went to help Sam inside. In the distance, coyotes had started their nightly bash, yipping and howling, no doubt beside some body of water McKenna and Sam
hadn't managed to find. As Sam sat against a corner of the wall, McKenna spread out the tarp.

He let out a low groan, and she searched in her pack for the ibuprofen. She shook the bottle—not many pills left. Still, she gave him four, hoping it would eat into the pain enough for him to sleep. Pulling off his sneakers, she didn't try to examine his ankle. It felt taut in her hand, and bigger than it had this morning.

“It's like he sent us in this direction,” McKenna said. “That bobcat.”

“What bobcat?”

Sam must not have seen, and she hadn't told him. Her mind was fogging with exhaustion. For a moment she felt like this hut was just a figment of her imagination, that they were really still stumbling through the woods. Or maybe they were lying at the bottom of a ravine, unconscious. Maybe they were already dead, and this was just the last electrical activity of McKenna's brain, a final moment after her heart had already stopped.

She touched the cool wall again to reassure herself, then she pressed her hand to Sam's chest, his heart beating audibly from exertion, and maybe excitement, too, at discovering this place. It was real. They were both alive.

She took a sip of muddy water, then handed the bottle to Sam. He took a conservative sip. Maybe it was better that the water tasted so gross and muddy, it kept them from glugging it down the way they wanted to. Her eyes had adjusted enough to see Sam's lips, as cracked and dry as her own. Through the
awkward hobbling and stumbling of the day, neither had peed, not once, and now that they'd stopped, McKenna still didn't need to. Dehydration was settling in, their bodies clinging to every last drop of moisture.

Sam dragged himself onto the tarp. McKenna knew she should help but she was so tired. She thought she might fall asleep right there against the cool wall. Her body ached in places she hadn't known existed; it took every ounce of strength she had not to finish the ibuprofen herself.

“Sam, you have to eat something.”

She pulled out the last bit of food they had, their last PowerBar, twisting it in half, then quarters, then eighths. She put an eighth in her mouth, and held another out for Sam. He was muttering, maybe already asleep. She crawled over and pushed the food into his mouth. As he chewed, thankfully, McKenna pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. He felt warm and clammy.

She lay down next to him and rolled the leftover piece of tarp over them both. That tiny bite of food had only made her stomach come alive, gnawing with hunger, pleading for more. She sat up and took another sip of silty water, making herself stop so there would be some left in the morning. When she'd purified this water, there'd only been five iodine tablets left, but the water had been so murky, she'd had to use two of them. If she only used one from here on out, that would mean they had three bottles of water left. And that was only if they were lucky enough to find another water source.

“Whoever built this place, they wouldn't have built it far from water. Right?” she said, thinking out loud.

Sam jerked, a painful spasm. “Spirits don't need water,” he croaked.

McKenna closed her eyes, willing herself not to argue with him. She imagined Sam and his brother in the woods listening to the ghost stories their mother told them, their eyes wide.

It was only fun to feel afraid when you knew you were safe.

But the Nunnehi. They restored lost travelers.
If you're going to show up,
McKenna silently told the Nunnehi,
now would be an excellent time.

Her bones hurt. She closed her eyes and listened to the coyotes, trying to hear the music of water behind their howls. Against her eyelids the animals danced and played, as a roaring waterfall crashed around them. Of course that waterfall wasn't for humans. Only coyotes and bobcats and bears.

• • •

Shafts of light came leaking into the hut too soon, unwelcome. McKenna woke to a stab of fear at the prospect of another day, not knowing how she'd get through it. The first thing she did was reach over and touch Sam to make sure he was still breathing. She had no idea how she'd keep him going until the next nightfall.

Had it really been just four days since they'd wandered off the trail? It felt like a thousand years ago.

She sat up. Footsteps, distinct and definite. The sound of another creature approaching. Maybe it was a hiker, with an
iPhone and GPS. Or maybe even a ranger? As McKenna's excitement rose, she jumped out from under the tarp and tried to peer through the slats of petrified branches. Just as fast as it had leaped, her heart sank as she heard distinctly nonhuman snuffling. Whatever was out there, it panted and huffed and snorted, using its nose as guide.

“Oh no,” she whispered, and then bit her tongue. A person might not have heard her at that decibel level, but an animal might. A bear might have already smelled the chocolate peanut butter PowerBar that sat unwrapped at the other end of the hut. McKenna thought about throwing it through the doorway so it could take it and amble off.

But it was their very last morsel of food, and she wouldn't part with it so willingly to any creature other than a bear. If it was a coyote, she could possibly scare it off using Sam's walking stick. Even if it was the bobcat from last night (though if it were, it was likely rabid, as they didn't stir in the daylight), McKenna thought she would be brave enough to challenge it.

She got onto her hands and knees and crawled to the doorway. The animal was getting closer, its huffs and puffs louder. McKenna picked up Sam's stick, but didn't have a chance to decide whether to wield it like a club over her head or like a spear by her side ready to stab. Before she knew it, the animal was in the hut with them: a furry brown head, gleaming white teeth, huge brown eyes, and a goofy, doggy grin.

“Hank!” McKenna yelled, and threw her arms around the dog's neck.

• • •

Sam watched McKenna through bleary eyes. You'd think that dog had shown up from AAA, with a cell phone, a gallon of water, and a five-course meal. That stupid dog, a fat tick swollen above its eye. Not only could it
not
do anything for them, it would probably expect a can of Iams and a handful of beef jerky.

The thought of food—any food—would have been painful if Sam's ankle hadn't been throbbing so badly that the pain wasn't just in his ankle, but in his whole body.

“Hey,” he said, not even recognizing his own voice. “Mack. Any more Advil?”

She moved away from the dog, but just a little, her hands still on his back like he might vanish if she let go.

“Is the pain really bad?” she asked.

“It's pretty bad,” he admitted.

McKenna pulled out the ibuprofen. As the bottle shook, she looked at Sam. He didn't say anything. She had to know that he knew they were running out of everything. He wished she didn't feel like she had to protect him.

“Here,” she said, pressing three pills into his hand instead of four.

The dog stood in the archway wagging his lopsided tail. His muzzle looked wet, water dripping off.

“Mack,” Sam said, jutting his chin toward the dog. “Hank. Looks like he just had water.”

McKenna looked at Hank. The little hut was so small, she barely had to reach out to touch his mouth.

“Hank,” she commanded, like he was Lassie. “Where is the water? Hank, take me to water.”

The dog just stared at her, kind of grinning, wagging his tail and waiting for her to feed him.

“The water must be close,” Sam said. “If you scout around a little.” He saw her hesitate, not wanting to leave him. “I'm so thirsty, Mack. And I can't drink any more of that mud. I just can't.”

The look he'd come to know so well came over her face. Determination. Like she was standing on the starting line at some high school track meet. Sam wished he could close his eyes and will her back in time, a thousand eyes on her perched on the blocks, safe and sound.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll look around a little. But I won't go anywhere I can't see the hut.”

“Okay,” Sam said. She ducked outside and he lay back, panting, wishing he'd asked for a sip of what water they had left. The only thing Sam had to be glad for was that at this point he was the only one who seemed to know they were doomed.

• • •

It didn't take long for McKenna to come back with the bottle of water, all cleaned out, the water inside clear and perfect. Sam noticed she only dropped one iodine tablet in. Of course they were running low on those, too.

“Here,” she said, ripping off another tiny piece of PowerBar and handing it to him. He ate it, though at this point there
didn't seem much purpose to it, either rationing such a small amount of food, or eating at all. Part of Sam wanted not to eat or drink, to just give up and be done with it. Done with walking, done with trying, done with everything. He swallowed the cardboard morsel and lay back. Out of the corner of his eye he could see McKenna checking her watch, waiting for the water. He must have drifted off, because it didn't seem like any time had passed before she was putting her hand under his neck, lifting the bottle to his lips.