Alone in the Woods Read online

  Then I went to camp.

  Three

  There is no such thing as “sleeping in” at the cabin. For starters, half the windows don’t have any coverings, and the ones that do only have faded, gauzy curtains that my grandma stitched together way back in the day. So when the sun wakes up at sixish, we do too.

  But we had a good reason to be up early the next morning. My dad had this idea that we should all go on a trip down the Wolf River, like he and his brothers used to do when they were kids. My mom vetoed the idea of whitewater rafting because the boys aren’t big enough. But she found a place that does easy three-hour tubing trips along a pretty gentle section of the river. The coolest part is that it’s a stretch where the Wolf flows through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Well, technically there are two separate forests, the Chequamegon and the Nicolet, and they’re actually miles and miles apart. But at some point the US Forest Service merged their management, so now they share the official name. Last year, I did my TAG project on the national forest, so I kind of nerd out about it.

  The Nicolet is home to all kinds of cool plants and wildlife—deer, moose, bobcats, bears, river otters, elk, and even wolves. (I mean, it was named the Wolf River for a reason.) I’ve never seen a wolf in the wild, and that’s one of my life goals. Someday, when I’m a naturalist or biologist, I’d love to study wolves. They’re really misunderstood—people think of them as these awful, dangerous predators thanks to them being portrayed as the villains in tons of fairy and folktales, but in real life, they’re not like that. Wolves are generally afraid of people and rarely attack or hurt them, and they only hunt what they need for food. To put it in perspective, dogs that people keep as pets cause far more injuries each year. But nobody uses that as an excuse to hunt them till they’re endangered.

  The website for the tubing trip said that while we leisurely float along the river in our flotilla of inner tubes, we can expect to spot some of the forest’s wildlife along the banks. Which was super exciting. And after the first day of vacation being such a letdown, I really needed something to look forward to.

  I shuffled into the tiny galley kitchen, where the coffeemaker was already gurgling and a bunch of bagels were laid out on the counter next to all the fruit we’d picked up at a farm stand. Lucy was perched on a stool, reading. I could hear Mateo and Nolan thudding around on the patio. Our parents were spread out in the living room, slurping from chipped mugs and enjoying the view to the lake. Even Tampoco was up, stretching out in a morning sunbeam on the worn wooden floor. Alex was nowhere to be found.

  Lucy put down her book and smiled at me. She patted the worn wooden stool next to her. “Get something to eat, then come sit with me.”

  I grabbed a knife to spread a thick layer of peanut butter on a blueberry bagel. I smushed a bunch of strawberry slices on top: DIY jelly for a PB&J. Lucy was watching me the whole time. Her sympathetic smile never wavered.

  Please don’t say anything about Alex sleeping in your room and not up in the aerie last night.

  “I wanted to tell you,” Lucy started, her voice sounding awfully similar to a guidance counselor’s in its careful, empathetic tone. “That whatever’s going on with you and Alex, it’s probably a blip. She’s just, you know, a little enraptured with Laura Longbottom right now.” She wrinkled her nose, to remind me that she didn’t see the appeal, either. Sometimes I felt that Lucy and I were more alike than Alex and I were, and if Lucy were four years younger, we’d be best friends instead.

  I didn’t really want to talk about what was going on, though, and especially not about Laura, so I just nodded and took a huge bite of my peanut butter bagelwich.

  Carmen saved me by calling from the living room, “Is Alex out of bed yet?” Then she glanced over to the kitchen, saw me at the breakfast nook with Lucy, and smiled. “Oh! I see Joss, so there’s my answer.”

  I felt my cheeks start to burn. Alex and I had been inseparable since we were five. “A package deal,” as my dad liked to say. We basically shared a circadian rhythm. It was normal to assume that if one of us was up, so was the other.

  “Um, I’m not sure what Alex’s deal is…” I eventually said. This was uncharted water, for everyone.

  Lucy stepped in to save me. “Alex bunked with me last night because I demanded sister time.”

  “Oh!” Carmen let out a small, embarrassed laugh. “Okay, I’ll go wake her. We should get a move on.”

  “Want me to play ‘Taps’?” Nolan asked.

  Mateo held up a bugle, which they must’ve found in the den. There’s all kinds of random stuff squirreled away in the cabin.

  “That’s typically a song for dusk, but maybe also an appropriate punishment for being the last one up,” Alex’s dad said with a grin.

  The boys scrambled up the staircase, and seconds later, I heard the bugle make a great and terrible honk, followed by Alex shrieking. I’m a little ashamed to admit that for the first time that morning, I smiled.

  * * *

  We drove about an hour southeast to get to the starting point of the tubing trip. The winding roads were hemmed in by tall stands of conifers, and yellow wildflowers blanketed the ground, making everything green and gold. It always felt so different from driving around Madison, which is a small city with traffic and billboards and museums and shopping centers galore. Up north, you can go miles and miles and see not much but signs for Pine Tree Road (every little community seems to have one). Places whose names are in bold print on the state highway map—which normally means they’re bigger, like a real town—turn out to have only a gas station, a tavern, and maybe a church or a VFW post. All of which probably sell fishing tackle. It’s a whole other world in the Northwoods. I kind of like the wildness of it all. Especially with the spotty cell reception, it feels like time travel.

  Even though we’d unloaded all our stuff yesterday, the cars somehow still felt crammed. Maybe it’s because I was riding with the Benavideses this time, wedged in the back seat between Alex and Lucy. Some roads were bumpy, and my stomach churned with the early stages of carsickness. Alex’s new body spray wasn’t helping. It smelled like she’d bathed in vat of sugary mango smoothie.

  Just wait until the mosquitoes and flies along the river got a whiff of that.

  After spending the night alone up in the aerie, my feelings toward Alex had begun to curdle, like old milk poured unsuspectingly into hot tea. Till now, the only person I’d been truly angry with was Laura, who I viewed sort of like a kidnapper. She’d taken Alex hostage at their camp, maybe even against her will, and Alex couldn’t be blamed if now she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

  But up north, Laura was nowhere to be seen—except in endless texts on Alex’s phone—and yet my best friend was still acting like a stranger.

  I kept shifting in my seat, tugging to adjust the straps of my suit. I was wearing it plus a pair of thin athletic shorts. I was also wearing water shoes. As much as I love splashing around in rivers and lakes, I do not love how underwater plants and weeds feel on bare feet. They’re slimy, and at first brush, I always think I’ve encountered an eel. Like my suit, the water shoes were slightly too tight. That was sort of my trend of the summer: wearing things I’d outgrown. Partly because I’d had a growth spurt and partly because money was still too tight for Mom to take me shopping for a bunch of new clothes. I didn’t really care, except for how I noticed Alex side-eyeing my outfits sometimes. I tried to remember if she’d done that at all last year at Walden, or if it had just started after she came home from camp. Her obsession with fashion had definitely gone to the next level since then. It made me second-guess what I was wearing. Or, more accurately, whether I should care more about what I was wearing.

  For the tubing trip, Alex had on the same teeny bikini that she’d worn to the pool party. I was curious to see the reaction from her mom when Alex took off her fancy cover-up. And instead of water shoes, Alex wore a thin pair
of fuchsia flip-flops that loudly slapped with each step. It was the kind of outfit that maybe made sense for a pool day but not one spent being active in nature.

  We got to the tubing outfitter late because the GPS in the Benavideses’ car took us down the wrong Pine Tree Road—twice. It had been a busy morning, apparently, because two groups had already gone out ahead of us on the river. So the tubing people were down to their last seven tubes.

  “That’s totally fine, some of us can double up,” my mom said, turning to assess our group. “It’ll certainly be easier to keep track of Nolan and Mateo if they’re in one tube instead of two. And also—”

  Before she could finish, I burst out, “Alex and I can share.”

  “Great!” Mom turned back to the guide, who began pulling the tubes down from a big rack, bouncing them against the ground to make sure they were properly inflated.

  I sneaked a glance at Alex, to see if she seemed happy that we were going to be together all day. She was busy riffling through her bag. Then she pulled out a tiny jar and swiped more greasy lip stuff across her mouth, which was already glistening and pink, like she’d just eaten a full box of strawberry Popsicles.

  “This one should fit the two of you,” the guide said, rolling a big green tube toward me. It looked older than the rest, with a few marks and faded spots dotting its sides. I scooted forward to catch it. Because it was shaped like a humongous doughnut, I thought it would have a hole, but there was actually plastic in the middle. Good for keeping our legs out of the rocky river, I guessed.

  “How rough does the water get?” I asked, pushing my hair off my face.

  “The part you’re on, not real bad. Only a couple of baby falls, and the water is pretty low right now. Think more of a lazy river experience.” He motioned to my backpack at my feet. “That still might get splashed, though.”

  For a moment, I considered taking my bag back to the car, because would I really need all this stuff for a day drifting along the river? Maybe I had overpacked: two bug-spray wipes, an almost-used-up tube of sunscreen, one of the cabin’s thinner beach towels, my sweatshirt, a mini first aid kit, my grandma’s binoculars, and my camera. I still used an old-school digital camera because I wouldn’t get a real phone with a functioning camera until next year. Until then, if I needed a cell phone, Mom gave me a clunky old flip phone to carry around. It had been kind of an issue ever since Alex got really into her phone this year. Sometimes I think if she could’ve been sending me elaborate emoji sentences and gifs all summer long, she wouldn’t have needed constant contact with Laura. I did see why my parents were hesitant, though, because Alex had already broken her screen twice. The first time her parents paid to get a new phone, but after the second, she just had to live with one long crack zagging across the display.

  I knew Alex’s phone was full of pictures of her and Laura hanging out—at their camp, and later all around Madison, posing at sunset in the iconic chairs at the Union Terrace, celebrating a hole-in-one at Vitense mini golf, even sunbathing out in a paddleboat on Lake Wingra. I wanted to take some photos of her and me on this trip. So that meant bringing along my backpack.

  Also, I was willing to bet those bug-spray wipes would come in handy. The mean blackflies that hang out around water can be merciless.

  I shrugged to the guide. “Except for my camera, everything in my pack can dry.”

  “Hope the same is true for your friend,” he said, nodding toward Alex.

  A fashion magazine was sticking out of the top of her bag, which bulged with beauty products. She’d probably freak if all her lotions and potions got a drop of water on them.

  “We’ll find out.” I sighed.

  “Here,” he said, reaching for something on a shelf. “Take a dry bag, just in case.” He handed me an enormous ziplock bag that could fit both my backpack and Alex’s tote inside.

  Dragging or rolling our tubes, we followed the guide like ducklings to the water’s edge. He gave my parents instructions, some of which I overheard. There was a bridge about three hours downstream, which is where we would get out to be picked up. He gave my mom his cell number, in case there were any issues along the way. “Coverage isn’t great, though, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. But really, the only problem you might encounter is too much fun!” he said, grinning. I caught Alex cringing at his joke.

  Then the guide opened up a big plastic chest and pulled out life vests. They were the basic kind—three pieces of foam, or some floatie material, covered in yellow fabric and tethered to one another with thin straps that snapped around the wearer’s waist. “Everybody here can swim, right?” the guide asked.

  “Yes,” we chimed.

  “That’s great. But you’re still taking these out with you.”

  “Do we have to wear them?” Alex looked skeptical.

  Nick was wrestling Mateo into his vest. “Absolutely you do. Currents can be unpredictable.”

  The guide tossed Alex a dingy one. “We require that everyone under the age of eighteen wears a vest the whole time they’re on the water. Grown-ups, you can do what you want—but remember, you are role models.”

  Our parents nodded seriously. It’s funny and slightly disconcerting to see another grown-up telling them what to do.

  “This is ridiculous,” Alex mumbled. “It’s going to look so dorky in pictures.”

  I ignored her, tightening my straps.

  With the guide’s help, we waded into the water. Alex went ahead of me, shrieking when she made contact with the cold. She was still wearing her cover-up—it was going to come off once we were on the river, when our parents weren’t paying attention. The gauzy fabric swirled around her legs. She clambered onto the inner tube, huddling on top of the plastic ring.

  I stopped judging her shriek when I plunged into the river myself—it was way colder than the already-pretty-cold Buttercup Lake. “Yowza!”

  “Don’t worry! The sun will warm you right up,” the guide said cheerfully.

  I hoped he was right. I struggled to get into the slippery tube. It took me three tries to swing both of my legs up and inside the hole. The bottom of my backpack already had dipped into the water. Maybe using the dry bag was a good idea after all. Alex huddled on the opposite side of the tube, shivering.

  Everyone else had settled into their tubes and were hanging on to one another’s cords. The guide held on to Alex’s and mine. Looking at all of us bobbing in the gentle current, we were like a pod of sea otters. Our moms were in the lead, followed by Nolan and Mateo, and the dads completed the parental sandwich, which seemed like very smart thinking—penning in the boys. Lucy followed, her tube twirling aimlessly—she already had her book open on her lap. Alex and I were last.

  “And you’re off.” The guide let go of our tube, gave a gentle push, and slowly the current pulled our pod downstream and toward the middle of the river, where the water flowed faster. The guide and the tubing shack began fading into endless trees behind us. “Have a great time!” he hollered, with a wave.

  As the last of our group, I felt kind of like its envoy, so I waved goodbye to him. Alex didn’t join me. She was busy getting settled in the tube, wiggling around and trying to figure out where to position her tote bag so it didn’t get wet. “Am I going to have to balance this on my lap the whole time?” she grumbled.

  I shook my head. “The guide gave us this,” I said, holding out the big Ziploc. “A dry bag to seal our stuff inside.”

  She rolled her eyes, which was confusing because I was offering her a solution. “Remind me why is this better than just hanging at the lake?” She slid down the inner tube, and it made a farting noise. I laughed, and she rolled her eyes again.

  From ahead, her mom yelled back, “Lucy, keep an eye on the girls, please?”

  Lucy raised her arm and made a thumbs-up. “Okey-doke.” But she didn’t look up from her book.

  Alex continued to wrig
gle around and huff, but I leaned back against the warm plastic of the tube. My life vest functioned great as a neck pillow. I stared up at the cloudless blue sky, letting the sun kiss my face. The guide had been right: it was warming up already. I took a deep inhale, savoring the smell of the pine trees and fresh water. I wanted to soak in this moment, the start of our ride. Who knew where this little adventure was going to take Alex and me. Hopefully, back together.

  Four

  When an accident happens—something serious like a plane crash—experts like to talk about the “Swiss cheese model” to explain how it came to pass. Pretend the accident is failing a test. You do a lot to prevent that from happening: studying in the days leading up to it; getting a good night’s sleep beforehand; eating a brain-boosting breakfast the morning of; and making sure your pencils are pre-sharpened and you have an eraser that actually works, instead of one that just leaves messy smear marks on the paper. Those defenses are like layers of cheese, and when they stack up one on top of the other, no hazards can pass through their protective barrier. (The thing about this analogy that has never made sense to me is why random hazards are trying to fly through cheese. Oh well.) If you have a whole bunch of layers defending against something going wrong, it’s almost impossible it will, right? If you study, sleep, eat breakfast, and sharpen your pencils and check your eraser, you’re set up for testing success!

  Except: What if the layers of cheese are Swiss cheese, which everybody knows has holes. Little gaps and big ones: You studied the wrong section; maybe you had insomnia the night before; you overslept the day of and didn’t have time for a real breakfast; then your only pencil snapped midway through the test, and its eraser was too dry. One “hole” in a slice—a crummy, rushed breakfast—isn’t going to cause trouble because you still have the other layers of cheese stacked on that piece. But what if holes in all those layers of Swiss cheese perfectly line up—even for only one moment? No protective barrier. The accident happens. Unprepared, sleepy, hangry, and without a decent writing/erasing utensil, you flunk the test.