Chapter 18 Eden
Eighteen
Eden
I blow my bangs out of my face and stare again at the compass. “I thought she said west-northwest.” I look around us—it’s
just thick woods in every direction. No path in sight. “But what’s the difference between that and northwest-north?”
“There is no northwest-north,” Leo says with a laugh.
“Fine, Directional Genius, then you lead us,” I say, handing the compass back to him.
“It’s about damn time,” he sings to the rhythm of the Lizzo song.
I roll my eyes. “I thought you said there was no karaoke in Boundless Horizons.”
“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”
I look at him, his big dimples. Despite how hot he got since middle school, one thing hasn’t changed. “You are such a dork.”
He does a really embarrassing shimmy. “You love it.”
“Please never do that move again.”
He shimmies again. “I can’t be stopped.”
I can’t help it, I laugh. “Lost in the woods with a bad dancer. This is how it ends.”
“Don’t be morbid,” Leo says. “Now that I’m in charge, we will definitely survive.”
“Unless I die of residual embarrassment.”
“I’d resuscitate you. Sorry. You’re stuck with me,” he says.
“You know CPR?” I feel warmth creeping underneath my skin as I unwillingly picture Leo giving me mouth-to-mouth. Relax, brain. Sheesh.
He shrugs. “No, but I’ve given the Heimlich before, so.”
I laugh again. “I’ll keep that in mind in case I choke on an acorn out here.”
But my laughter fades as I look around us. Leo is confidently marching through the woods in a slightly uphill direction, but
I still can’t make out any familiar path. There are no painted rocks, no signs, and no voices in the distance.
Somehow, we’ve made it to the Friday camping trip. Since we decided to have a truce at the start of the week, Leo and I have
been getting along okay. I’m surprised to find that despite all the unresolved confusion and drama of our past, there actually
are the seeds of a real friendship here. I’ve stopped focusing so much on resenting his past behavior, which means that I’m beginning
to see the ways we’ve both matured since then.
Not that there’s anything mature about his silly dance moves.
But he’s not trying so hard to prove his superiority or mansplain basic things to me; we may joke about it, but he’s actually been patient—when I got tangled in the tent cords during our practice setup; when I got tangled in the harness during the rock-climbing excursion; when I got tangled in a bunch of weeds during the site-clearing session.
As it turns out, I have a real gift for getting tangled in things.
And his teasing comments no longer sound condescending and irritable—now it all just seems familiar, comfortable. Like the
teasing between, well, friends.
Which is, I guess, what we’re becoming.
Maybe that’s all we were ever meant to be.
“Leo, can I see the map again?” I call out, jogging to catch up with him.
Before we all departed this morning, each group got an individualized map, supposedly leading us to different camping sites.
We’ll be completely on our own to do all the site clearing and set up our tents, cooking stoves, sleeping bags, bear canisters,
et cetera. None of the campsites are visible to each other—so that we’re really alone in the woods—but JJ says we’re all in
earshot of her whistle. Which gave me some relief at first.
But now we’ve been hiking with our extremely heavy gear packs for hours, and there hasn’t been a single sound of another hiker or whistle or any indication whatsoever
of human life. It’s starting to feel eerie.
Leo hands me the map without slowing down, and I stare at it, turning it around as if maybe from a different angle it’ll make more sense.
“The thing is,” I say, huffing to keep up.
“The map makes it look like we’ll be camping really close to the spot where the river and lake meet up.
But . . .” I huff some more. “But that would mean we should be hiking downhill from here, not up, right?”
Leo shakes his head. “Nah, this is the way. We have to get over the ridge and then the river’s on the other side. Even if
we’ve overshot the trail a little bit, once we can hear and see the river, we just have to turn right and follow it the rest
of the way.”
He says this with such calm confidence. I should just relax and let him lead; this is what he’s good at, after all.
But another hour goes by, and then another, and I’m starting to get really tired. “Leo, can we stop for a snack?”
He looks up at the sky. “We’re supposed to make it to the site before dusk.”
“We must be getting close by now, right? I don’t see the river anywhere.”
He stops walking and looks around. “I know, it’s strange. We should have hit it by now.”
“Really? When should we have gotten to the river? Is it possible we overshot it somehow?”
He wrinkles his forehead, staring at the map. “Like at least an hour ago.”
“An hour ago?! Leo, we’ve been potentially marching off course for over an hour and you didn’t say anything?!”
He scrunches his brow. “I mean, I didn’t think we were going off course, exactly. I kept figuring it was just a little off from the map.”
Instantly, my calm and trust vanish. “You figured, huh. But you didn’t tell me that. We could have discussed it. I told you uphill felt wrong. What if we’ve been going in the completely wrong direction this whole time? Do you even know where
we are?”
JJ said all the camping sites are within the same three-mile radius. But given how long we’ve been hiking, it’s possible we’re
not even remotely within range. And we weren’t allowed to bring phones with us, which means we have no way of letting the
group know we’ve gone off course.
Suddenly the insects sound so much louder. The leaves that had been swaying in a slight breeze are now swishing angrily, the
wind picking up speed. And when I glimpse the sky between the thick branches overhead, it looks distinctly less blue by the
minute.
I try to keep the growing worry from pounding through my chest, but it’s right there at the ready. I do not like this. I do not like being lost and alone in the woods.
Lost and alone in the woods with Leo.
“We need to start retracing our steps immediately,” I insist, though even as I say it, I realize with dismay that it’s nearly
impossible to tell which way we came from. “You’re the Boy Scout; you should know what to do,” I tell him, attempting to sound
more confident than I feel.
“The first thing to do is not panic,” Leo says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just nature, remember?”
“Nature, which is full of bears, insects, and poisonous plants.”
“When have we encountered any signs of bears in these entire two weeks, Eden?”
I shrug. “We know they come out after dusk.”
“This would have been true whether we had found the campsite or not,” he points out, but I’m latched on to his phrasing. Whether we had found . . .
“Are you saying you don’t think we’re going to ever find the site?” I can hear my voice rising an octave.
He glances up at the sky. I’m not wrong—it is getting darker. Only subtly, but still. After two weeks of these hikes, with no phone to tell the time, I recognize the telltale
signs of afternoon waning into evening. And that is most definitely happening right now.
“Eden, relax. We’re gonna be fine. Either we’ll get to the campsite on the map, or we’ll make our own. No big deal. We have
everything we need. Just trust me, okay?”
I snort. “Sure. That’s always worked out for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“No, it’s not nothing. I thought we were friends. You can be real with me,” Leo insists, his head quirked slightly to the
side.
“Real with you? Fine—I’ve trusted you in the past and that backfired,” I snap.
His eyebrows go up. “How so?”
“Well . . .” I clear my throat and take a breath.
“To put it bluntly, I trusted you completely when we were together. I was all in on you, even if I shouldn’t have been, and you totally turned on me.
So, like, forgive me if it isn’t second nature to put my entire life in your hands just because you say so. Okay, Leo? That real enough for you?”
He shakes his head. “I turned on you? Sure, whatever, Eden.”
He hitches his gear pack higher on his shoulders and starts walking downhill, in a direction I would say was southeast but
I really have no idea.
I race to catch up again. “Yes, Leo. You turned on me. How can you deny that? You broke up with me when I was at my complete
lowest. And you never once apologized. You never showed any regret. You never even looked back. You just walked off into the
sunset, while I had to pick up the pieces of my life.”
He stops and stares at me. “You’re going to blame me for how I reacted? You’re gonna tell me that I’m the one who can’t be trusted? Eden, that is actually making my brain hurt. You’re the one who can’t be trusted. Don’t get
things twisted.”
He keeps walking, but this time I don’t run to catch up. I’m too rooted to the ground. “Wow. Wow.” I truly can’t believe it.
And then it hits me.
“To this day, you still think I did it,” I say, almost more to myself than to him. Because I really can’t believe it. Can’t
believe that after all this time, Leo really thinks I hooked up with Becca Johnson’s older brother. That I cheated on him.
That I was this drunk party girl who not only went behind his back but enjoyed it, and thought I could get away with it.
I stare at his backpack as he marches farther ahead through the trees. He has a whole picture of me that isn’t even close to the truth.
I would race after him and defend myself, but you know what? I defended myself enough two years ago. I’m sick of having to
defend the truth, instead of just being believed.
And I’m even more sick of the power of this one stupid rumor. Because at the end of the day, even if I did get drunk on purpose and hook up with Becca’s gross older brother, why should anyone care this much? Shouldn’t a girl be able