Chapter 40 Charlie
CHARLIE
I joined the softball team! Bennett’s been working with me and Rosie to improve our skills.
It’s way more fun than I imagined it would be.
He says I’m a natural. Greg came down to our practice, and now he’s saying he wants to join the team too.
And insisting he can teach me how to play.
I’d rather Bennett still teach me and Rosie, though.
It’s just so much fun! It reminds me of outings with my mom and dad when I was little—joking, playing around, being silly. Like being part of a real family again.
My head and body ached. My throat burned. My eyelids felt like sandpaper as they scratched over my eyes with every painful blink.
Sunlight streamed into the cave, illuminating the small space. It still hadn’t rained, which felt like a small miracle, but ominous clouds loomed in the distance.
How in the world was Bennett going to find me?
If they’d given him a map, he would have found me by now. I was several miles from our campsite, but not so far it would take days to get to me if he knew the exact path to follow. At least, I didn’t think so.
That meant he was either following clues of some sort or tracking me.
Last night, I had let myself get lost in my anxiety. If I didn’t stay busy that was absolutely going to happen to me again today. My fire had died out in the night, so I needed to something bigger and more sustainable.
I had to plan for another night here, which meant more moss to cover me. I’d slept fitfully, chilled all night long, but I’d been too scared to go look for bark or moss in the dark. My stomach growled, but I had no tools to hunt for food, and I was deep inland, which meant fishing by hand was out.
Also, I needed to find a way to let Bennett know where I was.
I could make a huge fire to smoke-signal him, but I didn’t think he’d see it if he was in the dense foliage of the forest. And I might accidentally initiate a rescue mission among the crew or some locals.
But there had to be something I could try. My gaze snagged on the paracord they’d used to tie me up. And a seed of an idea began to take root.
Iworked tirelessly to prepare for another night of sleeping in the cave. I was on my hands and knees, packing the moss together in an approximation of a bed.
A thorough search of the backpack yielded a pocket filled with jerky and dried fruit. I took only a few pieces. I needed to ration it out. I had no idea how long I’d be out here for, but I had to assume it could be at least another day.
Or longer, if Bennett’s already taken the money and gone home… and I’m just sitting here, waiting for him like a pathetic loser.
I pressed my hands to the moss and hung my head low, breathing through the panic. I had to trust Bennett. It took several heartbeats for me to believe it again.
“Why are you so mean?” I asked myself. I was going to look crazy for the cameras, but I didn’t care anymore. “You make up outcomes and scenarios that are always so awful. And you think you’re trying to protect me, but it’s hurting my feelings.”
It felt good to say the words out loud. To hear my own voice.
“I think I’m worth coming to find,” I tried saying, just to see how it would sound. I almost believed it, even.
“I am worth coming to find,” I tried again, a little louder this time. “I am worth the effort to love.”
As if a dam had sprung a leak, the words flowed a little easier this time. A powerful, heady feeling raced through my veins. But the words still weren’t quite right.
I stepped outside of the cave and shouted again, as loud as I could, into the forest. “I am worth coming to find! I am easy to love!”
Almost… there… I needed a little more courage. I inhaled deeply.
“I deserve happiness! I deserve love!”
Whoa. I set my hand against the outside wall of the cave, my breath coming hard as a part of my soul clicked into place. Why was it so hard to believe those things were meant for everyone else, but not for me?
I yelled the words over and over until they became cemented between the bricks of my self. Until my throat ached and my eyes stung and my voice cracked, but a fizzy lightness floated in my brain.
My words were absorbed into the woods. Into the bushes and rocks and flowers. The squirrels fled up their trees. And if any bears were close, they wisely stayed distant.
“This is all true,” I whispered, like a judge pounding her gavel in final judgment. A gust of wind blew past me, swirling leaves in curling waves, dancing across my skin and hair. A playful agreement.
I tilted my head up to the sky and stretched my arms to my sides. I filled my lungs with fresh mountain air and twirled in a circle.
Iworked hard all day, mostly away from the cave, and when I finally came back as it was getting dark, I heard a sound that made me pause. A high-pitched trilling.
The sound stopped, then began again a few moments later. The SAT phone.
I anxiously upended the bag and answered it. “Hello?” I said, my voice urgent, but raspy and raw from yelling.
“Charlotte? It’s me.”