Alone in the Woods Read online

  Several layers of Swiss cheese prevented something from going wrong on our families’ low-key, scenic float down the Wolf River:

  • We were on a calm section of the river with barely any rapids.

  • The tubes were all intact and fully inflated.

  • We were all wearing life vests.

  • Our inner tubes were tied together so nobody could drift away.

  • If we did get separated somehow, our parents, Lucy, and Alex all had phones.

  • Lucy was keeping an eye on Alex and me.

  Pretty quickly, though, our slices of Swiss cheese showed their holes. As soon as we were away from the guide, Alex unsnapped her life vest and flung it into the bottom of the tube.

  “You’re supposed to keep that on,” I said, toying with the strap dangling from my waist. I didn’t exactly blame Alex—the vests were scratchy and smelled vaguely of fish. Which made sense, considering how often they were dunked in river water.

  “No way. It stinks and looks super dorky.”

  “Alex, there is literally nobody around to see or smell,” I said, exasperated. “Except our families, and they’ve all seen you in footie pajamas.”

  “There’s nobody to witness my dorkvest—until I post photos.” Alex shook her head at me in a way that said duh. “Not like there’s any reception. How do people even live up here? Must be so boring.”

  I glanced around us. The Wolf River flowed smoothly through a deep, dense old-growth forest, with tall trees lining its banks like watchers at a parade. The leaves and needles formed a patchwork of green, every shade imaginable. The water was more silver-brown than blue—and with the bubbly froth from the current, it reminded me of soda. Birds flitted across the canyon of treetops. It was a truly brilliant blue-sky day, and the forest was one of the prettiest environments I’d ever been in—it felt like we were sitting inside of a screensaver image. Who wouldn’t want to live up here and get to experience natural beauty like this all the time? I didn’t tell that to Alex, though.

  After sneaking a glance at the front of our tube flotilla to make sure that her mother wasn’t paying attention to us, Alex whipped her cover-up over her head and balled it up in her tote bag. She didn’t seal the Ziploc over it, which made the dry bag sort of purposeless, but I kept my mouth shut. In her teeny bikini, she held up her phone and started checking her angles. “Could you move a little that way?” She pointed, and I scooted left. “More,” she said.

  I guess she wanted to make sure I wasn’t in the frame.

  I dipped my hand in the river, the chilly current massaging my palm. I tried to let the water wash away how annoyed I was feeling. I glanced down at my swimsuit, faded and kind of stretched out in the butt. But I was still comfortable in it. I couldn’t imagine wearing something as skimpy as what Alex had on. It seemed impossible to actually swim in that without a bikini fail. I’d be nervous the whole time. I let out a little sigh and tried to focus on the nature around us. But it was hard, especially with Alex jostling the tube to take her selfies. We kept bumping into Lucy’s tube because of it.

  “Hey! Can you guys stop it? Some of us are trying to read,” Lucy grumbled, dropping her book to her lap and scowling at Alex. “Oh my God, are you really wearing that? Does Mom know?” Lucy turned toward the rest of the group and raised her hand to wave.

  “Shh! Don’t get her attention. Once I take some pictures, I’m putting the cover-up and vest back on.”

  Lucy paused. “I won’t tell Mom if you stop bumping into me.”

  “I’m not doing that on purpose—it’s because we’re tied together.” Alex grabbed the piece of thick, waxy rope that connected us with one loose knot. She easily untwisted it, and with one last push away from Lucy’s tube, she set us free. “Happy?”

  Lucy picked up her book again. “Yes.” She readjusted her sunglasses and settled back into her reading position.

  “I’m not sure we’re supposed to be untethered,” I said quietly, marveling at how quickly Lucy’s tube had drifted from ours. Even if I stretched out my arm and hung halfway off the tube, I couldn’t have reconnected us.

  “Relax, Jocelyn. Where exactly could we get lost? This isn’t, like, the Amazon.”

  I supposed Alex was right.

  By then, the sun was blazing. I unzipped my backpack and took out my sunscreen to reapply. When I offered it to Alex, she looked like I’d just offered her a lutefisk-flavored fluoride treatment at the dentist. “I don’t want to mess up my makeup.” After I’d recoated my arms and legs and made a thick triangle of chalky goop covering my nose, I pulled out the binocs. Then I sealed my backpack in the dry bag.

  I fiddled with the dials on the binoculars, setting them so what I could see wasn’t wobbly and blurry and I could check out the deciduous trees growing along the other side of the river. When I was doing my Nicolet Forest project, I learned about a kind of special apple tree that first grew along the banks. “Did you know the Wolf River apple tree grows fruit that is abnormally big? Like, each individual apple can weigh a whole pound.”

  Alex wasn’t listening but held out her phone, waving her arm through the air as she shifted and stretched, searching for a signal. Really? You can’t just put the phone away for three hours and pay attention to your surroundings…or me?

  “Yes!” she squealed, pumping her free fist in the air. “Two texts just came through! Finally.” She hunched over her phone and started typing madly. One of her swimsuit straps was already twisted, proving my point about bikini fails. We were sharing an inner tube—so close to each other our knees occasionally bumped—but it felt like we weren’t even on the same plane of existence. I made a silent wish that we’d drift into a “No Service” zone again, or that she’d at least run out of battery.

  I went back to scanning the rocky outcroppings and treetops, looking for signs of forest life. Like…a nest! “Alex! I think there’s great blue heron’s nest!” I pulled the binoculars from my face and held them out for her. “Take a look!”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” she said, waving me away with her left hand while furiously texting with the right.

  “Stuff like this is the whole reason why we’re here.” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice. She might as well have stayed in the cabin all day, huddled around the Wi-Fi router like it was a campfire.

  “Is it, though?” Alex said distractedly. “The reason I’m here is because my mom said I had to be.”

  I curled into my side of the tube. I swallowed hard, feeling a tightening and rawness in my throat that I knew meant I might start crying. But I hadn’t cried in front of her at registration day, and I certainly wasn’t going to now.

  Maybe Alex didn’t mean to hurt my feelings when she said stuff like that—implying that she was only hanging out with me by force. But it did hurt. A lot. This trip up north was supposed to fix things. We’d have fun together, like we’d had at the Walden end-of-the-year dance, and then she’d remember why we were—had been?—best friends in the first place. I knew I’d fallen a little behind Alex, in terms of all that social stuff. I just needed to convince her to give me time now to catch up. But I couldn’t do that if she never gave me a chance.

  Over on her side of the tube, Alex was giggling to herself. The constant upbeat chime of those text notifications pierced the peaceful nature soundtrack. I glanced ahead to see if Alex’s phone was bugging the rest of our group. They were alarmingly far downstream—probably because Nolan and Mateo were paddling to go faster.

  “Hey, we should try to catch up with everyone.” A bend in the river lay ahead, and for the first time we wouldn’t be able to see the rest of our tubing pod once they made that turn. Nobody had noticed that we weren’t linked up anymore because Lucy’s eyes weren’t on us but still fixed on her book and the boys were so rambunctious, all the parents were busy watching.

  Alex grunted in response.

  “
Seriously, help me paddle.” I set the binoculars on top of the dry bag so I could use both arms.

  Alex leaned over her side of the inner tube but not to help me. She’d flipped herself so the sun was on her back, bare except for those thin, twisted straps of magenta fabric. I could still see faint tan lines from her old racerback suit, identical to the one I was wearing. But they were so faded. A few more days in the sunshine with that bikini on, and they’d be erased. Which seemed significant, somehow.

  Meanwhile, our families approached the bend. The water was frothier there, like maybe a small set of rapids was churning it up. The river definitely moved faster after the turn—I could see the current’s forceful pull. The thick trees lining the banks had given way to granite-colored rock ledges.

  “Alex! Come on. Could you put down your phone for one minute?” I didn’t bother trying to hide the concern and frustration in my voice.

  “Chill, Jocelyn.” Her eyes stayed glued to her phone, its bottom resting against the rounded top of the tube. She muttered something to the screen. Wait, is she talking with someone? Laura?

  I was churning up inside, just like the rapids ahead. I glared at Alex, willing her to face me and see that I was upset. Willing her to care. She kept staring at her phone, fingers dancing across the keypad. Chime, chime, chime. If I heard one more notification, I would implode.

  Chime.

  I didn’t implode, but the pressure building inside me had to go somewhere. So I slammed down my fist and bounced the tube. On purpose.

  Alex

  Spanish Camp

  I was wrong. I did know someone at camp: Laura Longbottom. Although I didn’t know her know her. We’d gone to school together since third grade, I think, or whenever her family had moved to Madison. But we’d never been friends. Or even very friendly. In fifth grade, a substitute had butchered my full name—Alejandra Benavides—reading the attendance sheet, and even though I quickly corrected her to call me Alex, Laura had giggled and started calling me Alej, like “A ledge,” after that. For a few days, everybody else in our class did too. You’d think someone with the last name Longbottom would have, like, an awareness of making fun of people’s names, but apparently back then Laura hadn’t been coded for empathy.

  I saw her right when I got off the bus, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved to have one familiar face in the sea of campers or to be afraid that she’d get all these kids to call me “A ledge” too. So I avoided her, making sure to get in the farthest-away check-in line. I kept glancing around, trying to spot her signature high ponytail, so I could steer clear.

  When I finally dragged my bags to Cabin Ronda (all the cabins were named for Spanish towns), I stumbled through the doorway and saw it. That high pony. Laura was sitting cross-legged on a bed, and the only empty one left was right next to hers. I sucked in a deep breath, for strength.

  But Laura’s eyes brightened as she looked up to see me, nervous and tired, standing in front of her. “Alex!” She jumped off the squeaky bed and tackle-hugged me. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. And, oh my God, we’re in the same cabin!” It took me a second to free an arm to tentatively hug her back. She squeezed me tight, and all I could think about was how gross-sweaty I must be, and that my breath probably still smelled like the cheese curls I’d been munching on during the bus ride.

  “But what are you doing here? Don’t you, like, know Spanish?”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, as I untangled myself from her hug and started dumping all my stuff next to my bed. “Why, because my name is Spanish? I was born at Meriter Hospital, Laura. In Madison. My parents were born in Wisconsin too.” Wait until I tell Joss about this. Imagining her shaking her head was comforting.

  Laura’s face flushed. Which almost made me feel bad, except for the fact that she’d been the one to make an insensitive comment. I simply hadn’t let it slide. “Sorry—I didn’t mean it that way, Alex. I just, you know… I thought you were good at Spanish…definitely better than me.” She trailed off into an awkward silence. I softened. Learning languages is hard, at least for me. That’s why I was at this camp. It was kind of nice if she actually thought I was good at it. “Anyway. Do you need help unpacking?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.” Laura seemed sincere. And now we were going to be in close quarters—literally—for the next two weeks. Ronda was the smallest cabin at Tierra de los Lagos, with only six girls assigned to it. I paused next to her for a second, scratching at what I knew would not be my only mosquito bite. I remembered watching Laura shine on the dance floor at Walden. For the most part, I’d always felt invisible to popular girls like her. Now here Laura was, helping me pull the stiff sheets across my camp bed and rooting through a bag that had two weeks’ worth of my underwear in it. Life is weird.

  * * *

  If you’d asked me, when I first got there, how I expected to feel on the last day of camp, I would’ve said super happy. Thrilled. Over-the-moon. Instead, I was sitting on my bed, clinging to Laura and the four other Cabin Ronda chicas. We were all ugly-crying.

  “¡No quiero salir!” My Spanish had improved a bit over the two weeks, even though I had spent very little time actually working on it. That was mostly because of Laura.

  “Text me as soon as you get home, okay, Lexie?”

  That was Laura’s new nickname for me. Much better than “A ledge,” which she’d actually apologized for, the night we totally bonded at the campfire.

  “I promise!” Our goodbye was kinda overdramatic, considering we were heading to the same place. We were separating for the drive only because Laura’s mom was picking her up, and I was on the list to take the bus back, and camp doesn’t allow you to change your travel plans without a parental signature. Still, I wondered if, once we were home in Madison, everything would be different.

  With our hands clasped, you couldn’t tell Laura’s fingers from mine—we’d painted our nails the same shade of shell pink, with contraband polish she’d sneaked into camp. (It hadn’t been on the approved toiletries list.) At first, I’d been worried about using the polish because it was against the rules. Same with using the real shampoo that Laura had also smuggled in—only lake-safe shampoo was allowed, this peppermint-y kind that barely sudses that they sell at the health food co-op on Willy Street in Madison. But I got over the worry because Laura didn’t seem concerned at all, and her attitude was sort of contagious. Or, not really contagious—it was like she walked around in this spotlight of good luck and good vibes only, and if you were walking next to her, then it was yours to bask in too.

  Laura had been just as popular at Tierra de los Lagos as she was back at Walden. And from the moment I walked into our cabin, I became her closest camp friend. So that meant that I, too, had been super popular. Can I be honest? Popularity felt great. It was as warm and bright and energizing as sunshine.

  When Joss and I would walk into the cafeteria at Walden, if we couldn’t make a beeline to a table with our friends Houa and Kate, we would find whichever looked the emptiest. We’d slide in with our trays, nodding hello to the quiet kids sitting at the other end. We’d never, ever plop down at the table in the center of the lunchroom where Laura and her friends sat, always laughing at whatever thing the boys across from them were doing to get their attention. If we were near their table, Jocelyn would watch them with disgust. “Don’t they know that plastic straws are terrible for the environment? And they’re just wasting them! Ugh, they’re so immature.” Were they, though? To me, they looked like they were just having fun. The straws already existed; it’s not like it mattered at this point whether they were used for their intended drinking purpose or to turn the paper wrappers into missiles. (Although Joss had a point about whether our school should switch to eco-friendly straws.) And hanging out with guys didn’t seem immature but the opposite. Grown-up. Cool. Why did Joss have to make me feel bad for wanting to be a part of that?

  At camp, I’d s
at at the cool table, giggling with Laura and ducking soggy french fries that Sanjay and Kelvin were flicking at us, while Laura whispered in my ear, “Oh my God, Kelvin totally has a crush on you!” A fry hit my cheek right then, but I didn’t care. In fact, after I looked up and caught Kelvin’s big brown eyes, I kind of wanted to save that fry forever. Someday I’ll be going through my memory box with my granddaughter, and I’ll pull out a petrified fry and be like, “This was the first fry your grandfather ever lobbed at my face, way back at Spanish camp.”

  That’s not a totally unrealistic flash-forward. At the end-of-camp party, Kelvin and I danced together three times, and one was a slow dance. He held my hand even after the song stopped. We’d exchanged email addresses and were going to friend and follow each other on everything, once we got our phones back from camp’s quarantine. He lived in Minneapolis, which is pretty far from Madison, but Laura kept saying how romantic long distance could be…

  Afterward, Laura and I had stayed up all night. First we packed up her stuff, then mine. She sprawled on my bed, handing me clothes from my drawer. She tossed a wad of turquoise at my head. “Okay, first order of business when we get back to Madison: Shopping. You need a bikini. No more one-pieces, okay?”

  I caught the swimsuit and ashamedly shoved it in my suitcase. My mom might be okay with a two-piece—I wasn’t doing swim team this summer, so I didn’t need a racing suit anymore. But she would definitely veto a skimpy one like Laura’s. “Absolutely,” I said. The thought of a shopping trip with Laura was super exciting.

  “But you can always borrow one of mine. Mi closet es tu closet!” Neither of us had learned the Spanish word for closet, which really seemed like an oversight considering how much we both loved clothes.

  My drawer was empty, so Laura moved on to all the junk I’d put on my bunk’s shelf. Most of it, I hadn’t touched since the first day. Like the pack of stationery, unopened, which she handed to me next.