Chapter Forty-One
Anything at all would be better than realizing I’ve burst through the tree line only to find the lake. I’m back at the lake.
Now I really lose my shit.
I crumple to the ground, vaguely registering the rocks digging into my knees.
Sobs wrack my wrecked body. How could this be?
How could I have walked for hours and gotten nowhere?
The light is fading, my body is on the verge of breaking down completely, and I’m dizzy from hunger.
I’m alone and I’m scared, and I just don’t know if I can keep going.
Why did I think I could do this? Why did anyone think I could do this?
It is the most ridiculous, idiotic idea I’ve ever heard, to put the lives of ten people in my stupid fucking hands.
Me! I can’t even walk a straight line! I’m going to die and Kei’s going to die and Sue-Ellen’s going to die and Harmony and Damian and everyone—they’re all going to die because I’m such a stupid piece of shit.
“I’m sorry,” I wail, to nobody, over and over again.
Maybe if I put it into the wind my friends back at the camp will breathe it in.
It will be cold comfort as they lie dying from starvation, but it’s something.
Maybe as Kei’s organs shut down from lack of insulin, or as Sue-Ellen gasps her last breath through her cracked and bleeding lips, maybe they will sense my regret. I have so many regrets.
I breathe in. Out. In. Out.
I think of my mom. How much she needs me. How much everyone needs me right now.
I am not going to die here.
It starts as a small, defiant voice in the back of my head.
But then it gets louder. I am not going to die here.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to focus.
What do I know? Fuck, I don’t know anything.
Going west got me and Kei out of the woods last time, but who knows which way I need to go now.
But if I keep going in one direction, I’m bound to find something.
I look around for a stick. I drive it into the ground.
The light is dim but it’s enough to produce a faint shadow.
I mark its position with a rock, and then I sit back and wait.
My eyes are heavy, but I don’t dare close them.
Staying still feels like wasting time, so I count to five hundred.
The shadow hasn’t moved enough, so I count to five hundred again.
One thousand seconds later, there has been enough movement for me to discern which way is west.
And so I will go west.
I’ve already proven I can’t walk a straight line, so how do I make sure I keep heading west?
I fix my gaze on one tree directly in front of me in the near distance.
I walk toward it, my eyes never leaving it.
When I get to it, I pick another tree, directly in line with it, but not too far away, and I walk toward that tree.
When I get there, I find my next tree, and I walk a straight line to that one.
It becomes meditative, just moving from one tree to the next, fixing my sight on one unmoving point and letting it be the only thing that exists in my world.
I don’t think of anything else—the only thing that matters is the next tree.
I’m vaguely aware that it’s getting dark, as it’s becoming harder to make out the next tree, but I can’t—I cannot—acknowledge the fact that I’m alone in the woods in the dark.
The thought appears at the edge of my consciousness, but I swat it away like a mosquito.
Of which there are plenty, feasting on my blood.
But I ignore them. It’s just me and the trees, nothing else.
Just get to the next tree. Then the next one.
And the next one. And the next one. I will keep walking to the next tree until it brings me to a person or a road or something.
I will get out of here. One tree at a time.
After hundreds of trees, I can feel my energy flagging.
My feet drag as I force them to follow one another.
My skin feels too tight for my body, burning hot, but I am also shivering from the chill of the night air.
A headache pounds behind my eyes. I’m done.
I can’t go any further. I stumble, drop to my knees.
I hug my legs into my torso, blowing my hot breath on them to warm myself.
I put my head on my knees. I’m just so tired, so weary. Am I closer to being found? Or am I wandering deeper and deeper into the Canadian wilderness?
There is a buzzing sound by my ear. I swat my hand around, and when it makes contact with the offending insect, it occurs to me, from the size and the weight of the thing, that it’s not a mosquito, but it’s not until it stings my cheek that I realize it is a wasp.
But the buzzing doesn’t go away. In fact, it gets louder. I peer in the dim light, but I can’t find the source. Am I having some sort of auditory hallucination? Is it just the white noise of the woods?
And then I notice that the forest floor around me is at a rolling boil, and that this is not a trick of the eye, but rather a whole carpet of wasps, whose nest I have obviously disturbed, and let me tell you, they are not happy about it.
My hands and feet are peppered with stings as I push myself up and start to run. I run wildly, flailing my arms around my head. The wasps surround me, an undulating cloud, stinging me wherever they can make contact, tattooing my body with hot rings of pain.
I scream, in agony, in frustration, in defiance, but when I get stung on the roof of my mouth, I learn to clamp my lips shut.
My left eye is starting to swell, and between that and the impending darkness, it’s harder and harder to see.
I’m pretty sure I’m no longer going west, as I’m flinging myself in whatever direction I think will help me bamboozle the wasps.
It’s a recipe for disaster, really, but it still takes me by surprise when my foot doesn’t connect with the ground when I feel it should.
When I realize there is no ground beneath my feet at all.