Wild About You

Chapter Three

I whirl around to face Finn, whose eyes are trained on the luggage tag in my hands. Another quiet but definitely displeased rumble comes out as he lets his eyes fall closed.

“Did…did you just growl at me?” I ask with a disbelieving laugh as I set my free hand on my hip.

His expression stays stony as his eyes blink open. “We’re teammates.”

“Yeah, I gathered that from context clues and upset animal noises. Why is that such a problem for you?”

He sighs as if I’m the one acting like a nonverbal toddler here. “It’s not. I just…”

“Think girls have cooties,” I supply at the same time he says, “Don’t think we’re a good match.”

I nod in mock understanding. “Because of the cooties.”

Finn’s face somehow gets even more stern. “Come on, let’s be adults about this. You can’t tell me you think we’ll be compatible as teammates.”

Whatever fragile hope I had left—of pairing with a partner who’d become my friend, making this experience a departure from the series of letdowns in my life recently, having some fun—shatters in my chest. But just as quickly, I imagine sweeping away the broken pieces. Using them to construct something new and stronger, a wall of stubborn positivity. His bad attitude isn’t gonna be contagious.

“What I can tell you, Finn, is I don’t know you, and you sure as hell don’t know me. Some of us reserve judgment—or at least keep the growling to ourselves—until that’s no longer the case.”

No need for him to know my recent uncharitable thoughts about Enemi. But she was uncharitable to me first! What is with these people?

Finn runs a hand down his face and blows out a tired breath. “Right. Well, that’s that, then.”

He turns and walks off toward the spot where he left his stuff earlier, presumably to start transferring it to his new pack. I stay where I am, marveling at his ability to use five one-syllable words in a row to say nothing at all.

My irritation from earlier returns. I wish it was only anger that I felt. Anger I can deal with. But the buzzing in my body and mind intensifies, leaning more toward the anxious kind than the excited. It’s like a stage light that won’t stop flickering, growing harder to ignore the longer I try to pretend nothing is wrong. No matter what I do, I can’t shake it off completely.

The anxiety is not new to me, but the label is. I’d felt almost cheated when I finally worked up the nerve to go to student health services to get checked out. The physical symptoms had been building up bit by bit since shortly after I started at Oliver—hands shaking too much to take notes with pen and paper, migraines and stomachaches taking me out of commission for entire days. I didn’t connect them to the racing thoughts, these worries and fears and what-ifs on constant loop in my mind, up until the doctor was handing me a brochure about generalized anxiety disorder and advising me on finding a therapist. You mean this is all in my head? I’d wanted to shout. I didn’t have time to deal with it, not with classes, homework, my part-time job at Body Wonderland that seemed to take up every free hour but that I desperately needed for money. I’m independent, strong, and capable, and have always handled my own shit. So I taught myself meditation and yoga with YouTube videos in my cramped dorm room, loaded up on essential oils for relieving stress and helping sleep with my Body Wonderland employee discount, and mainlined romance novels like they’re water to get me out of my own head.

Sometimes it even worked.

School didn’t get any better, to the point that I lost my biggest merit scholarship when I didn’t make the GPA requirement, but that doesn’t mean it never will. I haven’t told anyone about my biggest reason for being here—my dire financial straits and how they got that way in the first place. As far as Reese and our other best friend, Clara, know, this is cool, fun Natalie, embarking on a cool, fun adventure to cap off an easy-breezy freshman year. To my parents, it’s just another dumb decision in a long line of them on my part.

I still have hope that I can figure this condition out, master the never-ending buzzing and quiet the thought spirals, become kick-ass, in-control Natalie again. And I absolutely have to do it while I’m on Wild Adventures.

I don’t know what the alternative is.

“Co-EdVenturers!” Burke Forrester’s voice calls out, and I jump at the intrusion on my wandering thoughts. “Have we all found our teammates?”

Blowing out a shaky breath, I walk toward my day pack, knowing at least what I need to do in this moment. I unzip the top pocket and reach for my makeup bag, dipping both my hands inside so I can discreetly rub a lavender rollerball onto my wrists before closing it back up and transferring it to my new pack, starting to do the same with the rest of my belongings. While I’m at it, I bring one wrist up as if to scratch my nose, but really, I’m taking a deep inhale, followed by a long exhale and repeat. I’m calm. I’m unflappable. I’m in control.

Not of other people and how they’ll treat me, of course, but I can control how I react to them. I don’t have to get upset or hurt or let Finn or Enemi ruin my experience before it’s even started. I’ve got this.

“Co-EdVenturers!” Burke Forrester calls out, nearly making me drop the pile of my clean, unfolded underwear I’m repacking. “If all the teams want to circle up over here, you’ll each receive a map that will take you to your first challenge!”

I hurriedly finish the repacking job and swing my now even heavier new pack onto my shoulders before making my way to the group. I sidle up to Finn and bump him with my hip, my effort at a gesture of “Yeah, you’re being a dick to me, but I can be the bigger, friendlier person, bitch.” Unfortunately, he is the literal bigger person, so my hip hits him in the thigh. And since he was looking straight ahead and trying to pretend I don’t exist, it catches him off guard and he jumps away as if dodging a fatal blow. Is he a theater major too? Because the drama is unmatched.

“Seriously? It was a hip bump, not a crotch grope,” I whisper through clenched teeth as the other teams start to fill in around us. Cameras are capturing the whole thing, but I hope there’s enough other activity and chatter going on for us to avoid drawing much notice.

Not for his lack of trying.

He gives me a withering look, but his cheeks seem a shade pinker as he inches back toward his spot beside me. Is this a step in the right direction? Flustering him into speechlessness?

I don’t have time to consider it further before Burke Forrester is clapping his hands and speaking again. “All right, great job, everyone! So good to see our new teams find each other and really get this adventure going. Meena, it appears that you were unable to find a pack before they were all taken, meaning you and Cammie are working with half the supplies as everyone else tonight. But by no means should you count yourselves out! Today’s challenge will test all of your abilities to work with your new teammate, relying solely on each other to survive your first night in the wild.”

He scans our group with the cool self-assuredness of someone who knows he’s spending the night with a bed and indoor plumbing. “One of the most exciting parts of Wild Co-EdVentures is its unpredictability. Having all the right supplies tonight doesn’t mean anything, for example, if neither teammate knows how to use them. We’ve brought you all together as strangers, so I now urge you to do everything you can to get to know your partner, their strengths and weaknesses, and how those mesh with your own, in order to be most successful going forward. There’s no time to waste. With that said, are we ready for your first team challenge?”

There’s a chorus of woos and yeahs, and I cheer with them. At my side, Finn nods silently.

Burke grins. “That’s what I like to hear. In just a moment, I’ll hand out the maps for your first leg. These will get you to your team’s backcountry campsite, where further instructions for the night await. If you successfully complete your tasks and make it through the night, your team will receive a map to the next checkpoint. The last team to arrive at the checkpoint will be eliminated. Any questions?”

When the only answer he gets is the ambient sounds of the forest, Burke pulls a stack of envelopes from the inside of his puffer vest. “All right, then. I have your maps here.” He pauses, smirking. “What are you waiting for? Come and get ’em. Ready, set, adventure!”

“What do youthink about Team Finnatalie?”

While the question is meant for Finn, I pose it to the camera and our future viewers with a wide, open-mouthed smile, waving the fingers of my free hand around jazz hands–style. I’m walking through the woods behind my teammate, who holds the map we were given to our first campsite and seems to be looking down at it every thirty seconds or so, even though we’re walking most of the way on the clearly marked main trail.

“Team names don’t matter. No one uses them,” says Bad Mood Becky up there.

I give the camera a good-natured—as far as I want viewers to know, anyway—eye roll. “Viewers use them! People will hashtag it and stuff as they watch.” I gasp as something occurs to me. “Our fans can call themselves Finnatalics!”

There’s a beat of silence as Finn takes in this stroke of genius, and I turn the camera forward to watch the back of his head for a while. This is the view it’s been getting from its holster on my new pack for most of the hike, as our cameras are supposed to stay rolling from when we wake up until we go to sleep, except for our allotted ten minutes per hour of privacy when we get to shut them off. I’m glad the holsters exist, so it’s not entirely on us to be amateur cinematographers. But it’s also quickly become clear that if I want any footage of myself on the trail, I can’t count on Finn’s backpack cam to capture it.

“Why not just…Finnatics?” he asks, and I can hear the reluctance to engage with me in his voice.

I smile to myself. Wearing him down already! “Because, Finn, that’s already a word and also it only noticeably uses your name. I’m not even part of the picture anymore.”

“Wouldn’t that be unfortunate,” he murmurs almost too softly for me to hear.

Oookay, not worn down.“That’s it,” I sigh frustratedly, fitting the camera back into its home at my shoulder. I briefly wonder if I should be using my off-camera ten minutes, but find I’m too irritated to care whether I’m about to make myself The Drama of this episode. “First Team Finnatalie meeting commencing now.”

Finn glances at me warily over his shoulder. “I didn’t agree to that name.”

“It was an executive decision.” I wave the statement away.

“Oh, are you the executive of this team?”

“I don’t know, Finn, is a fake important title what it would take for you to give me an ounce of kindness?”

Shocking my sweat-wicking socks off, he stops, then turns around, looking more confused than chastened. “I haven’t been unkind.”

That gets a laugh out of me. “I don’t think there’s a kind way to tell someone you think they’re gonna be a shitty teammate.”

He takes a step in my direction. “Hey, I didn’t say you’d be—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, an incompatible one.”

“Well, do you really disagree?” He’s stepped in again, and I have too, and we’re so close I’m surprised I can’t feel the steam coming out of his ears, nose, probably eye sockets too. I notice, entirely against my will, that his eyes are a deep, dark chocolatey brown.

I throw my hands out to my sides, trying to hold on to my ire. “I don’t know! I guess on principle, I’m incompatible with anyone who dislikes me so quickly for no reason. Tell me, who would you consider a compatible teammate?”

His frown intensifies and he crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t know!” he echoes me. “Someone more…serious about being here.”

The words land like a gut punch. I mean, I knew. I’m aware that’s how people perceive me a lot of the time. But he doesn’t have a clue how much being here means to me, how much I have riding on it. And I shouldn’t have to tell him just to prove I’m “serious” enough.

My face must show the way the insult hit, because Finn seems to deflate a little. He brings his fingers up to the wrinkled lines of his forehead and massages. “We’re wasting time.” Right as he says it, I hear softly tromping footsteps approach, and a team of two guys passes us, giving awkward, no-hard-feelings-but-we’re-passing-you smiles as they go. All the teams have slightly different off-trail destinations on our maps, and while we left the first checkpoint at the same time, we’ve naturally spread out while hiking at different speeds. Due to my partner’s, ahem, tenacity, our team has stayed ahead of most others. Finn is clearly itching to get a move on and keep that lead, but he waits until the others are out of earshot to continue more quietly, “I don’t dislike you. Can we just find our way to the challenge, please?”

I want to spit, but instead I push past him and walk onward, snatching the map from his hands as I go. “I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m knee-deep in a challenge already,” I mutter.

We don’t speak for a while after that. Still, I barely have time to say friendly hellos to the other hikers we pass, going both directions, even though I want to stop and ask everyone how much of the trail they’ve done, where they’re from, and how they got here—you know, the basics. Finn is keeping a punishing pace, and we’re not exactly on level ground. I can feel my feet shifting in their new trappings, all-important sweat-wicking socks and ankle-stabilizing hiking boots that cost most of my last paycheck. The sales guy assured me these were the most comfortable and secure option on the market, and when I tried them on and walked up and down the store’s fake mountain incline, I believed him. But I’ve owned enough shoes in my life to know that no matter how comfy, most need breaking in—which I didn’t have time for. Hopefully somewhere in my fancy new pack there are Band-Aids.

I try to just push forward, not letting Finn get too far ahead of me. Lest he think I’m not taking the whole walking thing seriously. It isn’t easy, though, and I’m breathing heavily by the time we come upon a stunning overlook.

“Holy…” I pant out as I stumble to a stop, unsure what kind of blasphemy is worthy of this view. A few yards ahead, Finn pauses to take a look, too. I feel him glance my way while I continue to look out over the rolling ridges and mountains spread out before us, everything green and tree-covered as far as the eye can see.

A sense of awe I don’t often feel sweeps over me. It’s reminiscent of my first time seeing a stage show—the first time I can remember, at least, though I know Granny Star took me even before then. We sat in the very back, deep in the shadows where we couldn’t possibly have been seen from the stage, but it felt like the performers were singing and acting their hearts out just for me. It’s like I knew right then, in my too-earnest, too-hopeful little preschooler heart, that my life would never be the same.

I don’t think this is the day I change my entire life path to be a naturalist or anything like that. But I feel the awe. The Oh, shit, has this all been here all along? Just waiting for me to find it? The sense of witnessing something so much greater than myself, and understanding that it can change everything for me, if I let it.

Of course, it also makes me think of my grandma. Yet again. What is this, the sixth time today? That’s about five more than I’ll normally allow. My Granny Star moments are usually limited to when I see my tattoo in the mirror—the one on my ribs that I got in an impulsive moment the summer after she died, with a shitty fake ID so my parents never had to know. It’s an outline of a star and a heart interlocked, like she drew at the end of her signature. The brief physical pain of getting it was a welcome distraction from the deep, lingering emotional wound. The one that, if I’m honest with myself, has never really healed.

Which is why I try my damnedest to ignore it. But I should’ve known that would be hard to do, from the moment I learned we’d be in the Smokies on the AT. Not exactly in her hometown, but awfully close. It doesn’t take a psychologist to anticipate this might dredge some shit up. My eyes struggle not to water against wind and emotion, but it’s my partner’s gruff voice that pulls me out of my feelings.

“You need water,” Finn says. It isn’t a question, and when I think about it for a moment, I realize he’s not wrong.

“Do we have that?” My voice is embarrassingly breathless. I mean, I shouldn’t be embarrassed—I’ve been half running up a mountain. If only my teammate didn’t sound cool as can be.

When I look at him, he’s already lowered his pack to the ground and started digging through it. I take a few steps closer and he pulls out a metal water bottle, immediately passing it over to me. The heft of it tells me it’s full, and when I crack it open and take a sip, it’s amazingly, magically cold.

I finish a long series of gulps with a gasp. “God, that’s good. Did they put a little something extra in there?”

Finn gives me a dry look, and I think he could use a sip of the good stuff too. “No. You’re just dehydrated, and probably need food. Here.”

I try not to let my surprise show at all this…caregiving. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be held responsible if I fall off a mountain or something. After a little more rustling in his pack, he hands over a pouch of trail mix.

“Wow,” I say as I accept it. “How on-brand.”

He grunts. “Hurry up and eat so we can keep going.”

Well, the caregiving was nice while it lasted. While I munch on clusters of nuts, dried berries, and MM’s, Finn extracts his own snack, a protein bar, then shuffles some things around in his pack before closing it up and shouldering it on. He backs away from the view to go stand on the trail again. Giving off such patient vibes. Such subtlety.

Only the trees can see my eye roll while I finish my snack and drink more water, and afterward, I’m significantly re-energized. Annoying that he was right.

Walking up beside him, I hold out the bottle like a stainless steel olive branch. “Thank you. I did need that,” I admit. He only turns and stomps back down the trail, which I guess I prefer to a smug I-told-you-so.

I have no concept of distance or time after that, my thoughts meandering far more than the path. We only stop once more, when it begins to drizzle a little and I want to dig out my rain jacket from the depths of my pack. But after working up such a sweat earlier, I realize the feeling of the rain on my skin is more refreshing than I expected, and I end up carrying my jacket in my hands in case it starts to pour harder.

I take in all the trees and wildflowers around me, their leaves and petals sparkling with raindrops, and wish I knew enough about plants to identify any of them. My fingers itch to do a Google search and any number of other time-wasting things on my phone, but it’s locked away in a production van somewhere. In exchange for our personal devices, which would be useless in a lot of remote areas with no service anyway, we got the classic Wild Adventures satellite phones. They look like a sturdier version of a toy cell phone I had as a kid, a brick of hard plastic with only a few buttons and a chunky antenna. One number can be used to speak to a producer in an emergency, one will send them our exact GPS location, and I assume the others are there because they don’t make phones with only two buttons. I hope I never need to use this thing in an emergency, and maybe more importantly, that Finn doesn’t need to on my behalf.

That cheery thought is interrupted by the man in question pointing off the trail to the right. “I think that’s the marking where we turn and go northeast three hundred paces.”

He holds the map up to show me the small red flag drawn on it, and the similar red flag hanging from a tree branch beside the trail.

“Looks legit to me,” I agree, glancing briefly toward the brightening sky above. The rain is tapering off, which feels like such convenient timing, I’d swear the Wild Adventures producers could control weather patterns.

Feeling like I’m acting out a goofy pirate treasure hunt scene, I count my “paces” behind Finn, who I scarcely hear counting his under his breath. When I haven’t quite reached three hundred, he stops abruptly. I walk straight into his back.

“Ouch,” I whine, rubbing at my forehead where it hit his pack. I’ll probably have the imprint of a zipper scarred onto me. Finn doesn’t even seem to hear, though, before he’s walking into a clearing where an orange envelope hangs from a tree.

Everyone’s map is taking them to a different spot off the main trail, where I imagine they’ll find their own orange envelopes with further instructions. Excitement hitting me, I skip forward to Finn’s side as he plucks ours from the low branch, and I pull out my GoPro again to make sure I’m getting good footage of our envelope-opening.

“We found the campsite!” I cheer, pointing the camera at the envelope, then doing a quick sweep of the clearing around us. I use the hand not filming to help my pack slide down off my shoulders onto the ground. Immediately, my body feels two feet taller, like I can stand to my full height again unencumbered. I also feel forty pounds lighter, for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t be surprised to open that thing up and find a bunch of bricks.

Finn pulls a piece of paper from the envelope and his eyes track over it, reading silently until I clear my throat and look pointedly at the camera I have trained on him. He grimaces—clearly the camera/filming part of this whole deal is an afterthought for him, as is the fact that he has a partner who wants to know what we’re doing—but then reads aloud.

“?‘Challenge One: Fire, Food, and Friendship. Co-EdVenturers, today you’ll try your hand at the basics of Appalachian Trail life while learning to work with your new teammate. To survive on the trail…yeah yeah, enough provisions, safe camp cooking…” He mumbles the last part, trailing off as his eyes dart farther down the page.

I clear my throat. “Whole thing, out loud please. Skip nothing.”

He gives me a quick, narrow-eyed glower, but his gaze jumps back up to the top and he resumes reading. “?‘To survive on the trail, hikers must put careful thought into what they pack. They need enough food and other provisions to get by, but not so much as to put excessive strain on their bodies when carrying it. We’ve given you a randomly allocated set of provisions in each pack. Using what you have and what you’re able to source from your natural surroundings, you and your partner will need to complete the following tasks: One, build a fire in your campsite’s firepit. Two, prepare a dinner out of the food supplied to you. Three, clean your food prep area and dispose of trash safely and appropriately. Four, build a shelter that will protect both team members from the elements overnight.

“?‘You may want to sit down with your partner and assess your provisions before you begin, working together to complete the tasks as best you can while making note of what you are lacking. At the next checkpoint, you will get the chance to barter supplies with other teams and offload anything you feel you don’t need. You will also be able to “shop” our Wild Co-EdVentures food stores and restock on food at every checkpoint.

“?‘As you work through these tasks, spend some time getting to know your teammate. Your team bond will directly impact your performance on Wild Co-EdVentures, as you must rely on each other to survive and thrive. Do not waste any opportunity to nurture this important relationship. If your footage from tonight shows you have successfully completed all tasks, a crew will be by in the morning to deliver your go time and your map to the next checkpoint. Good luck!’?”

I just imagine the last part was written with an exclamation point; Finn gives it no inflection to suggest as much.

“Woo, here we go! Fire, food, and friendship, three of my favorite fs around. Along with Finn, of course!” I turn the camera on myself with an exaggerated grin. “What do you say, partner? Should we see what’s in these packs?”

I unzip my pack’s top pocket and feel around it for the small, flexible tripod they gave each of us for filming when we’re not hiking. With that in hand, I begin circling the clearing until I find a level-ish, clear-ish spot on the ground, then mount the camera there.

When I turn back to grab the rest of my stuff, Finn is gingerly removing his own pack, watching me as skeptically as ever. “You’re really into the camera stuff.”

I blink up at him. “You mean the filming for the show that’s our entire reason for being here?” I shrug, finding a nice log in the middle of the campsite and dragging my pack that way so I can sit down and sort through it. “I guess I am. Someone’s got to be, right? You can always tell as the viewer when teams aren’t really into being on camera. They’re just not as fun to watch. Haven’t you ever seen Wild Adventures?”

He moves to sit a few feet away, dragging his pack there too. “Of course I have. I guess I just care more about the challenges than all the extra stuff, explaining what I’m doing, making one-sided small talk with a lens. It feels awkward filming myself.”

“For me, it’s all the extra stuff that helps me get to know a team and makes me want to root for them to win challenges. If, you know, they’re doing more than just throwing moody looks at the camera.”

He throws one of said moody looks my way before yanking open the top zipper on his pack and starting to pull things out. I do the same, and over the next few minutes, we arrange everything aside from our clothes and toiletries on the ground in front of us. And damn, can they fit a lot into two backpacks. The ache in my back worsens just from looking at all that I’ve been carrying the whole day without realizing it.

Between us, we could fill a pantry with dehydrated meals, protein bars, and packets of granola and trail mix. There’s this rubber bag-and-tube contraption that Finn explains is a water filtration system, and two water bottles, one of which I’ve already half emptied. I remember a piece in the orientation materials about staying hydrated and not rationing water more than necessary, as production staff can change out your empty water bottles for full ones at each checkpoint or be paged from the sat phones to bring water in an emergency. There’s bear spray, an airtight bear canister to hold our food and anything with a scent that could draw animals, two sleeping bags, one sleeping pad—another thing Finn had to explain, but is apparently like a mini air mattress—a hammock, a multitool, a tiny gas stove that we can use when we haven’t been explicitly instructed to cook our food over a campfire, matches, toilet paper, plastic bags, Band-Aids, hand sanitizer, and more. To me, an inexperienced camper, it seems like we have just about all we could need. But…

“There’s only one tent,” Finn says, echoing the thought that just occurred to me. It was in his pack. Somehow, this feels like a shortcoming on my part, like I should have randomly selected a better equipped backpack. But what can I do about it now?

“Guess we’ll have to get cozy,” I answer, trying to sound optimistic even as it becomes more difficult with each minute I spend with this guy.

He stands and starts to walk away, but not far enough that I don’t hear his quiet groan.