One Was Lost(7)

The ground slopes downhill, and there’s a rock under my left shoulder, but when we turn on the lantern and split our coveted candy, it feels a little better. Not great, but all right. We try our phones next, pulling them out of the plastic bags Mr. Walker passed out with the ponchos.

“They make fine nightlights,” I say, lamenting the No Signal indicator in the corner of my screen.

“I can use my calculator…or my camera,” Emily says.

I smirk. “Memories we’ll always treasure.”

Emily gives the smallest smile and then rolls away, curling into a tiny ball in her sleeping bag. For a second, I see a flash of her slim shoulder and four shadowy bruises on the back of her arm. My stomach tightens as I think about her fear over the broken string earlier. Because those bruises are too old to have happened out here.

As if she feels me watching, Emily slips her arm inside her bag. I see nothing but black hair and the obvious hint that she’s done talking. Just like the last two nights, the silence swells in the tent until I’m sure the canvas walls will burst. There’s cricket song and night noises, but I’ve never been a good sleeper. Not since Mom left. At home, Dad would be in the living room, reading and eating hummus, and eventually the munching and page-flipping would lull me off to dreamland. But not here.

Here, I leave the lantern on and stare at the stained tent ceiling, sticky and cold and sick to death of this SLEM trip.

Senior Life Experience Mission, my foot. I start coming up with new words to fit the acronym in my mind. See Life Endless Monsoon. Sinister Lucas Enjoys Mischief. So Long, Enjoyable Moments.

I sigh and turn off the lantern. I don’t think tomorrow can be worse.

But I’m wrong.





Chapter 3


I wake up warm. No, not warm—hot. I stretch like a cat, rolling over in my sleeping bag. My eyes flutter just enough to peek at a sunbeam gleaming in from the open tent flap. Wait, why isn’t that closed?

I open my eyes for real, and my head swims. Pounds.

I rub a hand over my face and try to sit up. I fail, going down in a heap, that same dull ache throbbing behind my temples. I lick my lips. My mouth is a wad of sand-coated cotton.

Am I dehydrated? Is that possible? I wonder what time it is because I’m roasting in here.

I look over, expecting Emily to be gone since the flap is open, but she’s still in her bag, sawing logs. Figures. She probably ran out to pee and forgot to zip us back in, which means a parade of spiders could’ve crawled into our mouths while we slept. Tasty.

Or maybe Mr. Walker just opened it, trying to wake us up. We obviously overslept. It’s usually freezing in the morning, but the back of my neck is sticky with sweat. I crawl toward the entrance, looking for the telltale stripes on my backpack—where is it? Tell me I didn’t leave it out there in the rain! I fumble on my boots without socks and stand, but the world tilts dangerously. I clutch the side of the open door, my stomach rolling in warning.

Whoa. What the crap is going on with me?

My brain feels fuzzy in the sunlight outside. Even foggy-headed and eyes watering in the sudden brightness, I can tell it’s not morning. I think it’s late afternoon, and it looks like a gorgeous day. Blue sky, birds singing, the soft whisper of leaves shifting high in the trees above.

I squint up at the sun overhead. How did we sleep this late? My vision finally slides into focus, and I look around, seeing a trail of stuff between two of the tents. Is that clothes? Was there a bear?

My heart leaps into my throat, sits on the back of my dry, swollen tongue. Something’s not right. I spot Jude on the other side of his tent. His curly head is ducked. He’s hunched over, heaving. Oh. Oh.

I look away from where he’s being sick in the bushes and grab my own churning gut. OK, time to find Mr. Walker. A pile of stuff stops me short.

That wasn’t there last night.

We wouldn’t have missed this heap of… My eyes try to pick apart pieces that don’t make any sense. Straps and ripped cloth and papers and bits of plastic and glass. I spot a Broadway keychain dangling off a torn bit of striped canvas.

That’s my keychain. I take a breath, but it gets stuck halfway in.

Wait—wait—

I stagger over on wooden legs and look down at the keychain. That’s my bag. Or what’s left of it. It’s empty, cut into ribbons of canvas and broken straps. And those plastic and metal bits aren’t bits. They’re phones. Our phones. This is our stuff.

Someone swears, and I turn around, seeing Lucas sitting outside his tent. He’s pulling a shirt on and looking as sweaty and miserable as I feel. When his head emerges from the neck hole, he meets my eyes. I don’t know the expression he’s wearing, but it scares me. Everything I see scares me right now.

I scan the whole camp, torn up and empty and just…destroyed. This wasn’t a bear. Someone was here. We were sleeping, and they were in our camp. My backpack was in my tent.

Oh God.

Someone was in my tent.

My heart trips itself and then races. I can feel every beat in my head, my pulse counted out in beats of pain behind my eyes.

Mr. Walker. We need—

“Mr. Walker?” My voice cracks and crumbles like dead leaves. I swallow hard and try again. “Mr. Walker!”

This time, I’m louder because his tent flap is closed. I don’t know if he’ll hear. Jude stumbles back toward his tent, then sinks to his knees. He’s shaking all over, one earbud dangling halfway down his T-shirt, the other still in his ear. I can see the cord isn’t plugged into anything. His phone is gone.