The Distance from Me to You (22 page)

Finally something bit, but when he pulled it out, it was a tiny trout. If a ranger had come along, he would have written him a handful of tickets—for fishing out of season and without a license, for keeping an undersized fish. Which would have been fine with Sam because then the ranger could lead them to safety, and Sam wouldn't pay the tickets anyway.

It had to be close to noon by now, so one undersized trout would have to do. He'd already left McKenna alone too long; she'd be getting antsy and worried. Sam killed the fish with a knife through the eye. He'd always thought it was mean the way his father and brother would let the fish flop and gasp their way to death, drowning in oxygen.

The last tree he'd marked had been about ten paces back. The question was, from which direction, exactly, had he taken those paces? The trees surrounding the stream looked more alike than he wanted to admit.

Over there—that tulip tree, he was sure he'd walked right past it. He hooked the fish to his pocket and headed that way. Three or four trees down, a magnolia, he'd made one of his etches there, he was sure of it.

Time ticked by. He walked from tree to tree. Here! He was sure he'd made the mark on this oak, a piece of bark freshly shaved, revealing pale white wood underneath. But when he walked in the direction he was sure he'd come from, noting the sun's position in the sky, he realized the mark might have been
natural, made by a squirrel or woodpecker. He should have thought of a more distinctive way to mark the trees, something more clearly man-made.

“McKenna?” he called, hoping he was closer than he realized. All he heard in reply was a rustle, some little rodent running away. The air was cold but Sam brushed a clammy film of sweat off his forehead. He should have taken another drink of water from that stream. Noticing a patch of edible violets, he ate a handful, then pocketed a few more handfuls to give to McKenna along with the fish. Not much of a breakfast, but still a breakfast—with protein even—to keep them going until they could find their campsite.

He wondered: How long would she wait for him? Sitting tight, being still, was not her specialty. It wouldn't take her long to decide he was lost and come looking for him.

After what seemed like a few hours, he decided to scrap the plan of finding his way back to where they'd slept. No way McKenna would still be there. By now she'd have marched off in full rescue mode. Picturing it made him smile a little. He'd do what she was doing—try to find his way back to their first campsite with the fire pit. They'd either meet up there or bump into each other on the way.

Turning around in the right direction—he was sure of it now—he set out walking, feeling bad that McKenna was stuck carrying the pack, and also wishing they hadn't lost that second water bottle.

Every once in a while he'd call out, “Mack!” but it was so
depressing not hearing any reply that before long he stopped. He found an ash berry tree and ate a few handfuls, but that, along with the flowers, only made him hungrier. If he hadn't eaten anything, his body would have clicked into that mode of no expectation, which he was pretty familiar with by now. But the thin flora opened up his stomach to the idea of food without doing much to satisfy it. He wouldn't eat the fish, though, he was saving that for McKenna, and anyway he had no way to start a fire. He went ahead and ate the berries, since he was pretty sure she didn't like them anyway. Then he continued walking. He'd find McKenna by late afternoon, and they'd eat the fish together.

• • •

Sound travels strangely through forests, with rock walls and trees of varying heights. Sam thought he heard McKenna's voice, but when he called back, he didn't get an answer. Either the wind was carrying sound in his direction but not vice versa, or he wanted to hear her voice so badly that he thought he had.

By the time the sun sank to late-afternoon level, the fish had started to stink. Sam sat down on a fallen log and pulled it off the hook to examine it. His head was dizzy with dehydration. His hunger had reached the bearable point where his body was tamping down the sensation, but he knew he was going to have a hard time continuing on without any calories. This did not make the idea of a raw trout any more appealing, but he took out his knife and cut into it, picking out flaky pieces of flesh and downing it like pills, not chewing, just trying to get the
protein into his body. Directly across from where he sat there was a small ring of mushrooms growing out of the dirt, yellow mushrooms with little brown flecks. He thought they might be blushers. The caps were a little small, but maybe that was because of the altitude. Sam threw what was left of the raw, semi-rancid fish aside and plucked a couple mushrooms from the dirt. He'd only eat a couple, enough to keep him going.

About half an hour later, as he tried to figure out what he'd actually eaten, his brain wasn't making the right connections. Trees started multiplying.

“Who the hell put so many trees in this forest?” he said out loud, and then laughed. He tried to lean against one, but it turned out to be the one damned spot for miles without a tree. He stumbled, crashing sideways. When he hit the ground, he heard it, very clearly this time:

“SAM, YOU IMPULSIVE ASS!”

He knew he was out of it enough to hallucinate McKenna's voice. But he probably wouldn't hallucinate the
impulsive ass
part.

“Mack,” he yelled, but the voice that came out of his dry throat was a sad little squawk. His stomach churned. Suddenly, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get to his feet. When he opened his mouth to try again, instead of McKenna's name, out came a steady gush of vomit. He turned onto his hands and knees, retching, until his body had completely emptied. Then he crawled a few feet away and collapsed face-first into the dirt.

Time had done a funny slide. He couldn't tell how long he'd been out here. It was both good and bad that he'd puked, getting rid of the poison, but also getting rid of any nourishment, any fluids. He felt bone-dry. He was exhausted and depleted. He needed to get up.

The mushrooms may have left his body, but they hadn't quite let go of his brain. The sun widened and narrowed through the trees. He imagined it jeering at him. A big joke.

For the first time in his life, something mattered, and Sam had managed to screw it up so royally. If McKenna were here she would point out how well he'd done all those months on the trail, and now that he'd gone off it, everything was going to hell. But it wasn't McKenna, it was the sun that went ahead and scolded him.

“You thought you were invincible,” the sun said. “You thought the rules didn't apply to you. You thought you were smarter than the whole damn world.”

“I'm sorry,” Sam whispered, and when he passed out, it felt like falling straight through the earth, letting it close on top of him, covering him up forever.

• • •

Later—he wasn't sure how much later—Sam opened his eyes to flatter light and a clearer head. He took a moment to blink up into the trees, feeling relieved that he was still alive, and then dismayed at everything he would have to do to stay that way. He was so tired.

Still, he got to his feet and did the only thing he could think
of. He started walking. He thought about calling out to McKenna again, but remembering the earlier croak of his voice, he decided to preserve his energy until he knew she was close by.

Sam himself was wrecked. And yet his body moved, doing what it had been doing for so many months now, moving forward. Sam thought that if his heart stopped beating right here, his body would keep walking, one foot after the other, until his flesh decayed, peeling off his bones, his skeleton continuing its never-ending march.

Jeez,
he thought.
You're turning into one of your own damn ghost stories.

Paying attention to the darkening sky and the dropping temperature, Sam waited until the last possible moment to untie the wool jacket from his waist and button it to his chin. He wished he'd taken McKenna up on her offer to buy him a hat. Not to mention boots—the duct tape was flapping on the ground as he walked. He wished a lot of things, none of which would do him any good as the sky got dark.

“Mack!” he finally called out. The sound of her voice was the only thing that could convince him to keep moving. The sky was so damned dark, no houses, no electric lights anywhere to light it up. He started to sink to the ground again, he would just lie down for a quick nap and hopefully not freeze to death.

And then he heard it again.
“Sam! Are you out there?”

He scrambled to his feet. Damn. McKenna needed to yell again. Didn't she know that? Once for him to hear. Then again for him to figure out the direction she was calling from.

“MACK!” he yelled.
“Mack, is that you?”

No answer. He walked a few feet forward in the dark, planning on calling out again, but before he could gather his voice, he was plunging downward. So instead of saying
Mack
, he just kind of screamed, his back scraping against rocks and roots. He couldn't tell how far the drop was.

He landed with a horrible
pop
—the noise a snapping branch would make, except in this case the snapping was somewhere inside his body, in the vicinity of his ankle.

She must have heard him.
“Sam!”
This time it rang out, clear and definite.

“Mack,” Sam said, the sound pitiful. Maybe he could've mustered it, if he really tried, but he didn't want to draw her toward him and bring her tumbling down the same rocky incline. Stay where you are, Mack, he thought. Don't risk your life searching for me. I'm fine right where I am.

As if he'd summoned them, a pack of coyotes picked up from somewhere in the woods, their yips rising over one another's and up toward the moon. McKenna would hear them and think she'd imagined his voice. She'd be tired, her mind playing tricks on her.

And then the pain moved from his ankle to shoot through his whole body, taking over, leaving no room for other thoughts or even worry. For the second time that long and horrible day, Sam passed out cold.

McKenna woke up
floating above a clear, wide lake. Her first impression, when she opened her eyes, was that she was right on the verge of plunging out of the sky and into the water.

She sat up and scrambled back. In the dark of both the starless night and her own exhaustion, she'd apparently decided to sleep right on the edge of a cliff. She had put on her cap and pulled on Sam's sweater, all at the edge of a thousand-foot drop-off, jagged shale cliffs leading down to the water. Sam's pack sat at the edge, too, leaning forward a bit, like it was about to take a swan dive. It would have been a gorgeous and panoramic view to wake up to, if it hadn't come with the realization that all night long, she'd been sleeping so close to a literal edge. Maybe she'd started out a few feet away and rolled closer as she slept (she couldn't believe that even in her depleted state, she wouldn't have sensed that gaping cavern). If she hadn't woken up at just that moment, she might have taken the final roll.

What would it have felt like, waking up in midair? Falling, falling, falling, to the freezing water below.

Probably it would have felt a lot like yesterday. The knowledge, grim and terrifying, that she could very well die.

It was barely after dawn, a fine mist of dampness covering everything. Her nose and cheeks felt cold and stiff, and she could see her breath. Hugging herself in Sam's sweater, she wondered how he'd fared without it. At least he'd taken his wool coat. She imagined the tips of his ears, bright red, maybe even frostbitten.

No, that was dramatic. It was cold in the mountains, definitely, but not yet near freezing. Dire as their situation seemed, they were lucky in some respects. A few weeks later, and they might have been caught in a snowstorm instead of a downpour. There might really have been no way to survive, alone out in the elements, without even each other to cling to.

Part of surviving would be facing these, the lucky aspects, recognizing the things that would help her continue to move forward. For example: the lake! Wasn't the lake a landmark? Two days ago, she and Sam had picnicked by its edge. She might not have her compass, or know how to use it. But if McKenna was facing the lake, she was sure they had come here from the right. Unless they'd managed to walk all the way to the other side of it?

She had no way of knowing if she was sitting anywhere close to the place where they'd been. The edge of the lake could span miles. McKenna took a sip of water, deciding to save what little food she had left. Her stomach had stopped expecting food anyway, and eating something now could just make things worse. The last thing she needed was for one morsel to set off
mad cravings, fantasies of cheeseburgers and pancakes, great piles of spaghetti and cold bottles of Coca-Cola.

She took off the sweater, which she'd worn over her fleece jacket, and stuffed it into the pack. The very real possibility that Sam could be dead washed over her, so shocking that she couldn't even manage to be afraid.

What should I do?
she asked herself, heading in the direction they
might
have come from in the first place. Should she look for Sam? Or should she try to find her way back to the tent, and go for help? Even if she found the tent, she wasn't confident she could make her way back to the trail. And even if she did make her way back, it could be hours before she ran into anyone, or managed to find her way to the nearest outpost in her current state.

In her mind she heard it, the
crack
of her phone as she'd slid down that embankment. What an idiot she'd been not to get a new one. But then, looking around at the thick layers of trees and peaks, she realized there was a good chance she was in one of the few places left on earth where she wouldn't get reception. The real idiocy had been in coming off the trail in the first place.

McKenna walked on. This walking wasn't like on the trail, where you knew you were taking down miles, heading toward a specific destination. Another surge of fury toward Sam rose up inside her, but was immediately tamped down by the sight of something amazing, a stream. Maybe the same one she'd found yesterday. Or maybe the one she and Sam had stopped
at on their way here. The uniformity of forest made it so hard to find your way. But she reminded herself of her plan, to recognize blessings when they appeared. She glugged down the rest of her water and knelt to refill the bottle, diligently plopping in two iodine tablets and tightening the lid.

“Sam,” she called out, just for the hell of it, her voice barely rising. She'd called in vain so many times yesterday she didn't believe he was even out there anymore. For the first time it occurred to her: Sam might not even be lost. Maybe he'd figured out the way back to her tent and was waiting for her there. Or maybe he'd arrived at the campsite, taken what he needed, and headed back to the trail.

Even as these bitter thoughts formed, McKenna dismissed them. Sam might have his issues, sure. But she knew the person she loved wasn't a figment of her imagination. The person she'd spent the past months with would never desert her so cruelly. Because he loved her. She knew he did.

“Mack!”

She heard it. Not
maybe
heard it, like yesterday. But she
heard
it, the voice calling out.

“Sam!”
she yelled.
“Sam?”

“Mack!”
came the voice again. It sounded loud and strained, a last-ditch effort, a final exertion of energy.
“Mack!”

Any tiredness disappeared. She ran in the direction of the sound.

SAM.

MACK.

SAM.

MACK.

McKenna found herself at the edge of a sharp incline, a ten-foot wall of rock that would have been nothing for either of them in the daytime.

There at the bottom, in a pathetic heap, lay Sam.

Her mother always said that McKenna never got scared. But if she was honest with herself, way back when she sat in the Student Union with Courtney and decided to do this hike alone, she had felt scared. She'd felt scared when she knew she was falling in love with Sam. And she'd felt scared ever since they'd been lost out here, realizing that they could die if they didn't find their way back. She'd never been more scared in her life than yesterday, when she'd woken up to find Sam gone.

But none of that compared to how she felt right now, at the sight of Sam at the bottom of this drop-off. His face was white and he was shivering. His lips were colorless and cracked, with red sores starting to break through. He looked like he'd lost twenty pounds since she'd last seen him, only thirty-six hours ago. He looked like he could die right here in front of her.

He must have stumbled down it in the dark. She had to get to him. She leaned forward and slid the pack ahead of her, then crab-walked down carefully, bracing herself with her feet and the palms of her hands.

“That was impressive,” Sam croaked when she reached him.

McKenna swallowed her fear—terror, really—because it wouldn't do them any good. She pulled her hat onto his head.
Then she raised her water bottle to his lips. Sam drank more deeply than she'd ever seen, glugging it down in such fierce pulls she worried he'd drain the entire thing, or that he'd drink too much and heave. Gently, she pulled it away from him. The sour scent of vomit clung to him. She put her hand against the side of his face. It felt like a sheet of ice.

“Sam,” she said. “What the hell happened?”

“Wanted to get you some food. Didn't you see my note?”

“Note? How could you have left a note?”

“In the dirt. Right by your head. So you couldn't miss it.”

He was shivering so hard, teeth chattering, like the warmth gathering with the morning sun couldn't reach him. McKenna pulled off her jacket. The faculty adviser from their hiking club had always told them the only way to warm up someone who had hypothermia was skin-on-skin. Her body was the warmest thing around. But she couldn't bear the thought of having to expose him before the warmth would work.

“Look,” she said. “I'm going to take your clothes off.”

“Do you really think this is the time?”

“Very funny.” She untied his shoes, those ridiculous damn sneakers, working off the duct tape and what was left of the canvas. His bare feet were full of so many blisters on blisters, she wondered how he'd been walking. “Once we get you warmed up we can figure out a way to hike out of here. Sam. Jeez.”

In her hand, his ankle, so many colors she couldn't count them, and looking three times its regular size, the ankle bone not visible.

“I think it's broken,” he said, his voice small.

McKenna dug through her pack—Sam's pack, really—she wished she had one of those instant ice packs, sitting useless back in her tent. She was sure she'd thrown in some ibuprofen. Finding it, she tamped out four pills and pressed them into Sam's mouth, giving him just enough water to get them down. Again, he tried to drink hungrily, an uncontrollable glugging, like he'd die if he couldn't get as much water into his body as possible. McKenna wondered if he'd had anything to drink at all since she'd last seen him.

But questions could come later. Right now she had to warm him up. She stripped off the rest of his clothes and piled the sweater and two coats on top of him. Then she covered him with the tarp and stripped off her own clothes and climbed under everything with him, pressing her body—the exact right temperature a body should be—against his. Sam shivered against her, she could feel his teeth against her neck, chattering, his body becoming violent as his temperature rose. She wrapped her arms around him and held him as tightly as she could.

Desperate as she felt, she continued to feel thankful for small pieces of good luck. She had managed to stay warm last night, and had carried that warmth with her to Sam. After half an hour or so she could feel his body calming, warming against her own. The sky above their heads was blue and clear, no clouds, no threat of rain.

She had found Sam. He was alive, and so was she. Not only
that, but he hadn't wandered off and left her. At least not on purpose.

It was hard to say how much time passed. Enough for the sun to broaden, its rays reaching down and warming the top of her head—she pulled her cap off Sam so he could feel it, too. He lay still now, the shivering having subsided. His eyes were tightly closed but she couldn't tell if he was sleeping or reveling in the sensation of being warm again or trying to block out what must be massive pain from that mangled ankle. The tiniest bit of color had come back to his face. He still looked pale, but his skin looked fluid again, as if those sheets of ice had melted. She pressed her hand against his cheek, imagining that she could feel blood pulsing underneath her palm, moving through his veins. She kissed him and his eyelashes parted, allowing her to see that burst of color, the pale but vivid blue, brighter than the clear sky.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” And then he kissed her back, his lips still dry but already mending. McKenna felt a surge of hope. They were so strong from these months on the trail. And they were young. Everything about them would regenerate quickly. They would bounce back. Every part of Sam would mend, just as his lips were mending. Their bodies pressed together for warmth and comfort. But also for love.

“I love you,” she told him.

“I love you, too. I'm sorry. That was the most boneheaded
thing I've ever done, walking off like that. And I've done a lot of boneheaded things.”

“No. It's okay. You wanted to get food. You weren't thinking straight. You meant well.”

“Right, good intentions. That means we're on our way to hell, right?”

The warmth that had been gathering so consistently in her chest chilled for an instant. Then she said, “Sam. This is no time for pessimism. Pessimism could get us killed.”

“I'm not being pessimistic,” he said. “I'm being realistic.”

“A realist is just a pessimist who thinks he's right.”

“Who said that?”

“Me. Right now.”

“Yeah, well.” Sam winced, as if he'd moved the wrong way. McKenna had never broken a bone in her life, so she couldn't imagine how painful that ankle must feel. “That's very smart of you to say, but it doesn't mean we're not screwed.”

McKenna climbed out from under the tarp and put all her clothes back on except for her jacket, which she stuffed into her pack. Sam sat up, too. He cut the right leg of his jeans with his knife, making room for the swollen ankle, and pulled them on. When they were both dressed again, McKenna put her hat back onto Sam's head.

“My dad always says the most important thing to keep warm is your head,” she said.

“You know what? My dad used to say that, too.”

McKenna sat next to him, offered a sip of water. This was
the closest thing to nice she'd ever heard him say about his dad.

“He wasn't always so bad,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “You know how I told you my mom took us camping? Well, way back in the early days when we were little, my dad used to take us camping, too. I mean, we'd go as a family. You know how I kept telling you all the things I learned from the Boy Scouts? Well, I was never a Boy Scout, Mack. I learned all that stuff from my dad.”