Chapter Twenty Two
TWENTY-TWO
For a moment, it’s hard to distinguish the voices.
Everyone is talking at once, and all at the same frantic, high-pitched register.
But Fran’s the one who actually wanders out of the clearing and snatches the cap from the low-hanging branch of a pine.
She brings it back and drops it in front of you on the ground.
At that, everyone goes silent. Because it’s definitely the hat.
His hat. Red with white mesh and a faint halo of sweat around the back and sides.
In the front, just above the bill, it clearly reads ADVENTURE CLUB.
You all stand in a circle around the cap like you’re praying over it. And maybe a few of you are.
“Okay,” says Will. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
You look at him, surprised by the hopeful half smile you find on his lips.
“Go on…,” says Fran.
“Well, we know now, right? It’s a test! He left us a clue. He’s making us work for it.”
Will is in his arrogant stance, the one where he crosses his arms to make his biceps look bigger.
“I mean … I guess it’s a possibility,” says Diana.
“Of course it’s a possibility!” says Will. “We just have to man up and complete these challenges. Then we can go home. It’s like Survivor!”
“Man up?” says Troy. “Is that still a thing?”
Diana looks around at the remnants of food scattered in your vicinity. No one has even gathered the scraps. You’ve barely had time to take in how quickly everything was devastated. How one mistake left you with nothing. Now this.
“But why a hat?” she says. “If he was going to leave a clue.”
“Why not?” says Will.
“Well, he barely took that thing off. It was practically a part of his head. Why not a note or something if this is all just a game? Why not a note that said, Watch out for bears?”
In the humidity, Diana’s dark curls are frizzing out, and without a hair tie she looks like she’s always lived in these woods. Like she might have a little gnome cabin on the other side of the lake.
“Yeah,” says Fran. “And what’s he doing anyway? Just, like, staying one step ahead of us and watching from the woods while animals rampage through our campsite? Somebody could have been killed. What kind of game is that?”
“It’s not a game,” says Troy.
He says it softly, but everyone hears him.
It’s possible he commands more attention now that he scared off the bear.
He’s still shirtless, and he stares down at the hat, his fist still clenched around your whisk.
He looks even skinnier than he did before, like a day or two without proper meals is enough to send him to the brink of starvation.
“Troy, dude. You’re the one who brought it up in the first place. We’re troubled teens. These things are messed up, right? This is all part of it.”
Troy sighs. You wait for him to get in Will’s face again.
But instead, he just reaches down and pulls something out of his pocket.
It takes a second for you to realize what it is.
It’s clear and a dark orange color. And when you finally see that it’s a pill bottle, you feel your mouth fall open.
Before anyone can ask a question, he says:
“I found it yesterday when we set up camp.”
He hands it to Fran, and when she turns it over, you can see her name there in tiny letters. FRANCES DEAL.
“Frances?” says Will.
“Up yours,” says Fran.
She holds the bottle upside down.
“It was already empty,” says Troy. “I promise.”
“Another clue,” says Will.
You let this sink in a moment.
“But then where are my pills?” says Fran. “It would really help to have them right now.”
Will starts pacing.
“How should I know? He moved them to another container. He threw them out!” says Will. “He’s trying to get you to go cold turkey.”
Will’s voice has gone up a full register, which is a little eerie, actually. And his face is turning pink. You close your eyes.
“One day. One hour. One minute,” you say.
Everyone turns toward you.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” says Troy. “Because it doesn’t mean something.”
You reach into your pocket and remove the piece of paper, still where you left it.
“I found it near the fire at our old site. I think he wrote it.”
“Jesus!” says Will. “Does anyone else have something to share? What’s wrong with you guys?!”
“I wasn’t sure it was his at first,” you say.
Fran stuffs her hands in the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie.
“It means something to me,” she says. “It means he’s losing it.
That’s what it means. Look, I know we probably shouldn’t use words like crazy, right?
Like, I’ve been called crazy, mostly by ex-girlfriends, but still.
We’re all alone out here, and our therapist is writing abstract poetry in the middle of the night.
What else am I supposed to do with that? ”
“It’s not poetry,” says Diana. “It’s a mantra.”
She reaches down slowly and scoops up the hat. Then she looks at the pill bottle. A story is forming, but for the moment, she’s the only one who knows it.
“What’s a mantra?” says Will.
“It’s just a sentence you repeat,” says Diana. “For meditation mostly. But people use them for a lot of reasons.”
She clears her throat.
“I know about them,” she says, “because my mom used one when she tried to get sober.”
Hearing the word mom come from Diana stops you cold.
You’ve only heard her mention her parents a handful of times, and if you ever asked a follow-up, she usually pretended not to hear it.
All you know is that she doesn’t talk about them and she lives with her grandmother.
And you’re not supposed to ask. She pauses a second now, maybe to make sure she’s actually willing to keep going.
“My parents were … addicts. Functional addicts for a while, and then not so much. My dad left. My mom tried to quit.”
She stops for a breath.
“The point is, she was at this meeting once when someone told her she should have a mantra. Something to repeat to keep her centered and focused and everything. She came home and had me help her choose one. I think, in the end, she picked ‘I am healing,’ but there were some others she read me. And that was one of them. The thing you said about the days and hours and minutes. Like just a minute of sobriety was supposed to be a victory. Mom didn’t like it.
Even a minute was too much pressure for her. ”
“So you think it’s, like, a sobriety thing for him?” says Fran.
“Maybe,” says Diana. “Probably.”
Troy is already muttering to himself. And when Fran asks him to speak up, he says:
“It’s not a game.”
Will is noticeably silent now. The whole Boundary Waters seems to have stopped moving, just to give you all a moment to come face-to-face with this.
“No,” says Diana. “It’s not.”
She throws the hat to the ground.
“He’s not coming back?” you say.
Diana shakes her head.
“And he’s using all our pills,” says Fran. She squeezes her empty bottle like an amulet.
“He can’t help it,” says Diana. “That’s the thing. I mean, it’s okay to be pissed at him. But, like, it’s not even him. My mom…”
Her eyes are red, but there are no tears. You wonder if she’s cried them all already. Maybe there aren’t any left for this.
“My mom loved me. She still loves me. But she couldn’t beat it. Some of her relapses were…”
You all wait for the next word. But it doesn’t come. Instead, she switches gears and says:
“He might be more scared than we are.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” says Troy.
But you all have a hunch that it is possible.
Because you know what it’s like to be so deep in a spiral that even the worst decisions seem reasonable.
And you know what it’s like to want something so badly, you’d do almost anything to get it.
How suddenly the most ridiculous thing can seem like a good idea.
Getting out of town. Taking a medical leave from school.
Signing up for something called “Adventure Therapy.”
“We have to find him,” says Troy. “There’s only so many pills he can take at once. If we find him, we’ll get something back, and we’ll make him take us to the drop.”
“Yeah,” says Will. “And we’ll beat his ass.”
“Well,” says Fran. “If this is any indication, he’s headed north. So maybe that means we’re on the right track.”
Suddenly, the cut on the back of your head pulses with pain, and you look around with blurred vision.
You’re not sure what you’re searching for.
A sign of Silas, running through the trees, spying on you from a distant hill.
But you don’t see him. All you see is trash.
Trash and an empty cooler that used to be filled with food.
Not long ago you had some and now you don’t.
You close your eyes. Somebody’s stomach growls.
It’s a loud noise, but you all pretend not to hear it.