Out of the Woods

Chapter Seven

Seven

I’ve applied enough mosquito repellent to catch on fire if someone lights a cigarette four towns over, but the fuckers are still after me. The terrain is muddy, dense, and wet. So, while we suffer—the bugs are thriving. We’re halfway, according to Phil’s enthusiastic updates, and I’m happy to report Yvonne put appropriate footwear on prior to our departure and is no longer raw-dogging the mud.

The hike isn’t so bad when we’re all making light conversation, but thus far, the group has mostly moved in silence—concentrated on not slipping or getting stuck in the mud.

“What do you do for fun?” I ask Maggie, or whoever else is listening, as the path narrows between overgrown trees. It’s not my best conversational cue, sure, but my body is currently pumping all my blood and oxygen into my legs, depriving my brain.

“Oh, uh…” She’s caught off guard, but her pleasant tone tells me she doesn’t mind making small talk. “I like to paint,” Maggie responds softly, as if it’s something she doesn’t discuss often.

I hold tightly onto my pack, hopping over a puddle. “Really?” I ask, out of breath. “That’s great. What sort of things do you paint?”

“Oh, just this and that…Scenery, mostly.”

“I bet she’s incredible,” I say, looking over my shoulder to Phil, egging him on.

“She won’t let me see any of it,” he answers, his happy expression unwavering. “I’ve yet to snoop, but…” Phil groans, walking up a steep patch of rocks. “If I do, I’ll report back.”

“Secret hobby,” I say mischievously, smirking at Caleb as he holds out a hand to help me over a fallen branch. “You’d know something about that.”

“Oooooh,” Kieran says from up ahead. “What did he do?”

Caleb shakes his head, grinning. “Sarah likes to tease me for playing Dungeons and Dragons.”

“He told me he was going to the gym but I caught him playing at my best friend’s house with her partner and a gaggle of dorks.”

Caleb sighs, looking forlorn at the path ahead. “I wish I had been going to the gym…”

“What is Dungeons and Dragons?” Jai stops, waiting for us to catch up to him. “Is that some sort of kink thing?” he says lowly, tilting his chin down to conceal his voice.

“Even I know what Dungeons and Dragons is,” Libby says loudly from up front. I hear my mother’s voice in my head say, “Oh! She speaks!” in that teasingly affectionate cadence that she’d use when I’d been moping around our house or giving her the silent treatment. I resist repeating it out loud.

Caleb perks up. “Do you play?” he asks her enthusiastically.

Libby stops, slowly turns over her shoulder, and looks him up and down with nothing less than disgust. “No…obviously.”

I push my lips together, fighting a laugh as she twists back around and continues walking on.

“That was humbling,” Caleb says, forcing my laugh to spill free. He looks at me with humored annoyance then up to the sky, his tongue pushing against the inside of his mouth as he smirks. “Guess I shouldn’t tell her about Glinera, then?”

I gasp. “You wouldn’t dare!” Glinera is the name of the two-headed witch Win and I created to join Bo and Caleb’s campaign last year. We were only three sessions deep before Caleb, Bo, and all their friends voted unanimously to kick us out for inappropriate behavior. Allegedly, we made the group uncomfortable with our sexual innuendos and double entendres. I maintain that they just felt intimidated by our superior role-playing abilities and unmatched creativity.

“Well, that depends…. Do you have more anecdotes to tell the class?” he asks, his eyes piercing mine. “Or will you behave?”

I readjust my backpack, stretching my neck. “I’ll behave,” I grumble, throwing a suggestive side-glance his way.

—

We continued making polite conversation for the following hour with our hike-mates, swapping small pieces of information with one another. I learned that Phil and Maggie both work at the same high school, that Phil is nearing retirement, and Maggie isn’t too far behind him. They were both previously married but have been together for almost twenty years. He teaches gym and coaches the basketball team—which just won some sort of provincial championship—and she’s the school’s librarian.

I didn’t get much of a chance to chat with Jai, as he seemed to be catching up with Yvonne ahead of us all, but I did get to briefly talk with Nina. She’s an aspiring stage actress and just moved back home to Toronto after studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. She’s only twenty-three but is used to being mistaken for older due to her unwavering confidence, height, and beauty. She didn’t actually say that last part, it’s purely speculative.

She and Jai met through a mutual friend, and bonded over their love for the UK, theater, and appreciation of Canada’s recreational marijuana laws, evidently. Her exact words were, “We shared a joint and a cab and the rest is history.”

Kieran and Henry kept to themselves, mostly. They smuggled in a set of wireless headphones with a solar-panel charger and they’re using an old iPod to listen to music together. We should have thought of that. This steep climb would be a lot better if I had music drowning out the embarrassingly loud sound of my breathing.

As we near the end of today’s hike, spirits are clearly dwindling. We’re all tired, cranky, and covered in sweat and muck.

“How much farther?” I call out, between gulps of water from my bright-pink bottle.

“About three minutes, then we’ll just need to set up camp,” Helen says, turning around and smiling broadly. I fight the urge to glare back at her.

“My legs feel like jelly,” I whine.

“It’ll be worse tomorrow,” Maggie says. “Make sure you stretch tonight before bed, or you’ll have awful cramps.”

“Oh my god,” I whimper. “I forgot that we had to do this again tomorrow.”

Maggie laughs, but it’s tired and breathy. “C’mon, you can’t let us old folks outlast you.”

Caleb has his head down, his shoulders hunched forward, and he’s been eerily quiet. I decide to leave him to whatever dissociative survival mode he’s fallen into. About an hour ago I began pretending I was in a fantasy novel, and this was my unlikely band of heroes on a righteous quest. But then my imagination got away from me and I almost made myself cry thinking about the love interest I lost in the war two years prior, who I’d sworn to avenge, so I had to come back to reality.

“Phil, hype me up,” I request, locking my bottle to my pack with a carabiner. “It’s the ninth quarter and we need one more point to win the game, c’mon.”

“Pretty impressive that you’re playing nine quarters.”

“Prior to today the only physical activity I’ve partook in—is that a word?— whatever— I don’t exercise. I don’t know a single thing about sports. Please, humor me.”

Phil laughs at my obvious desperation. “I usually tell my players to visualize themselves after the final buzzer, celebrating their win. So, imagine yourself at camp, changed into clean clothes, sitting next to a lovely campfire.”

“Aah,” I say, elongating the word, “bliss.”

“After today it will feel like heaven,” Maggie says, wiping sweat off her brow with a cloth discreetly handed to her by her husband.

“Just up ahead!” Yvonne says, spinning to speak to all of us from the top of a small incline, the light shining through the linen of her clothes as she practically twirls. “It’s all ready for us!”

“What’s all ready?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” Maggie says, smiling widely.

“Another surprise,” Caleb grumbles. “Whoop-ee,” he adds.

“Don’t worry mate,” Jai speaking over his shoulder. “It’s a good one this time.”

“How much are you loving him calling you mate?” I ask quietly, leaning toward my husband.

He laughs, though it doesn’t mask his tiredness. “ Iloveitsomuch, ” he says in one jumbled, whispered sequence. “I think I’ll have to insist that Bo call me mate when we get back.”

“Oh, you’ll make him jealous if you tell him that you met someone new.”

“What can I say?” Caleb breathes heavily as he finds his footing on a rock, then hoists himself up the final part of the path. “I’m a sucker for an accent,” he whispers, grunting as he pulls me up after him by my hand.

Once over the ledge, the campsite is in view. I breathe a sigh of relief as Kieran and Henry lower themselves to the base of a tree, stretching their legs out in front of them. Jai and Nina have seemingly made up, sharing a quick kiss as they drop their bags to the ground.

“We did it,” Caleb says, presenting his hand for a high five.

“We did it,” I repeat, shuffling my bag off my back and letting it hit the ground behind me before meeting my palm with his.

Phil clasps my shoulder. “Good job, rookie,” he says, walking toward Yvonne and Helen and… oh my god…“ Yes,” I say, falling to my knees dramatically at the sight before me.

There’s a picnic. A luxurious one at that. There’s a low table with a white linen tablecloth covered in delicious-looking sandwiches, meats, cheeses, and anything else that you could possibly want after a long day, surrounded by colorful floor cushions. They must have sent someone ahead to prepare this.

“Night one comes with real food,” Maggie says, stopping next to us as I move to stand. “But it’s only what you packed from home after this,” she warns.

“Picture time,” Jai says, pointing a small film camera toward us. “Get in there, Nina. I want one of all our first timers,” he adds, gently pushing her our way. She squats in front of Caleb and me, presenting two thumbs - up. Caleb wraps his arm around me, and though I’m not so pleasantly greeted by the smell of him, I still lean into him and smile proudly, putting my two fingers up like bunny ears behind Nina’s head.

“Perfect, just like that and…” click, “got it. Well done you three.”

We survived the first hike.

Now, the real work can begin.