The New Wild (2 page)

Jessica looks slightly taken aback. “Xander, is this
true?”

He tips his head back and rolls his eyes, and I swear
he says the C-word under his breath, though I can barely hear it.

“Give me your phone,” Jessica says.

Begrudgingly, Xander hands it over. He’s used an app
to position a picture of Sarah’s face over a buxom porn shot. It’s disgusting
and disturbing and Jessica hauls him to the office on the spot. We’re seething,
and Sarah’s understandably very shaken up. I hope he’ll be kicked out.

I knew I was right that something was off with this
guy. The girl and boy campers always tease each other and play pranks, but at
the end of the day, it’s usually harmless. After only a few hours, Xander’s
impressed the guys with his cruelty, and now they think it’s funny. I vow then
and there to hate him for the rest of my days.

In the
morning, we’re still rattled by the photo bullshit, but May is so excited to
head out on the Senior Slog that she’s bouncing off the walls. The trip is
supposed to be shrouded in secrecy. All we’re told is that the girls hike to
Lake Astor and the boys to the Kanselon River. But May says that two years ago,
her older sister had the time of her life. She can’t help but recount the trip
for us in hushed whispers
—
how the girls danced to an R&B mix on the moonlit beach,
worked on their tans on their lake floaties, and even wrote inspirational emails
to their future selves that would be delivered to them at their ten-year Camp
Astor reunion. Without all the boys around, the girls were free to do whatever
they wanted. They could sit around the water and watch chick flicks on their tablets
for all anyone cared. She’d loved it, and May convinced us we’d love it just as
much. I mean, we haven’t even left yet, and she’s about to burst.

We throw our gear into our bags.
Astor loans us a bunch of the latest camping equipment at the start of the
season—ultra-light solo tents, sleeping bags, headlamps, and portable
cook stoves. It takes a while to get our stuff packed up, but eventually, the
girls in our cabin are ready. We head to the clearing where the boys are
already assembled. All together we’re a motley crew, our backpacks piled five
feet high in a barricade of sorts. We’re all surprised to see that not only is Xander
still here, but he’s clearly been allowed to come after last night’s display. There
he is, standing with his newfound cronies, laughing. Every so often, they turn
to give us all the side eye. They’re definitely laughing about us. May and
Sarah eye me uneasily. In the morning light, Xander’s eyes are jade green and
glinting, but there’s mischief in them, too. He won’t stop looking at me. At
the three of us. My heart quickens. What a dick.

The girls and I race to the
bathroom, half because we need to pee and half to get out of his line of
vision. When we get back to the clearing, Xander is hovering over our pile of
backpacks. When he sees us, he saunters quickly back to his boys. I wonder if
he was going through our bags and am about to go confront him, but the leaders arrive
and are raring to go.

“Good morning,” Brittany coos.
“Welcome to the Senior Slog. It’s going to be a great trip. I hope you packed
everything you need.”

“And then some,” I hear Xander
whisper before he and his dudes bust up, cackling. Their eyes are shifty,
flitting all over, but every so often Xander’s land on mine. The boys leave
first, and as he picks up his bag, he looks deeply into my eyes and holds the
gaze a few seconds too long. Uh oh. His stare gives me a funny feeling in the
pit of my stomach.

He walks over to us.

“I was told I have to say sorry
for last night, so here,” Xander says, raising his hand toward Sarah for a
handshake.

She looks a little taken aback,
but shakes his palm, and he turns to walk away.

“So where’s the apology?” I ask.

Sarah looks at me, mortified, her
eyes pleading. But I’m not about to let it go. Xander looks into my eyes with a
look of pure loathing. “Sorry,” he says, with more attitude than I would have
thought possible for one word to have. “Good luck, girls,” he mumbles sarcastically
before strutting back over to the boys.

“Jesus,” May says under her
breath. “What a tool.”

I shake my head in disgust. Sarah
just sighs.

Across the way, Xander and the
rest of the boys walk the shaded path leading to the Kanselon River. Before they
round the bend, Xander turns his head our way. He looks straight at me, and I
glare right back. He stares for a few seconds and then turns and heads on his
way.

“What the eff was that about? Is
that what he calls flirting?” Sarah asks.

“No idea,” I say. “That guy’s such
a freak.”

“Seriously,” May sighs, “the cute
ones are always the worst.”

* * *

Brittany
leads us several miles along spindly ash trees, past a stump of an aspen with a
young version growing out of it—a nurse log, she tells me
—
toward Lake Astor. I
can’t help but notice how clear the air is. It’s crisp, like in the hours after
a rainstorm. Not a cloud in the sky.

After a while, the air becomes a
little unsavory. Something is emitting some funky fumes. I look around for
droppings or anything that could be the culprit. Suddenly nervous, I perform a
stealthy pit sniff, and to my relief, they’re still baby-powder fresh. It’s probably
some poor prey decaying along the trail, so I try to forget about it. But
still, I can’t seem to escape the noxious stench, and the more I walk, the
worse it gets.

May hustles to catch up to where
I’m walking, waving a daisy chain over her head. We’re not really supposed to
pick the flowers, but May can never resist, and it’s hard to be mad. As she
approaches me, her face melts from a grin to a disgusted cringe. “Girl,” she
says, cautiously, “what is with that
stank
?”
My fears are
confirmed. It’s coming from me. Could I have left a hunk of blue cheese in my
backpack from lunch? “Hold up!” I shout and kneel to open my bag with May
peering over my shoulder.

May shrieks. I gag and recoil.
Draped on top of all my equipment is the carcass of a freaking chipmunk. It
looks like it’s been dead for weeks. The sight and stench combined hit me like
a wall. A dead animal is touching my stuff.
A dead
animal
is
touching
my
stuff
. Sarah comes over, drawn by the commotion, furrows her brow,
and in a stately voice, says what we’re all thinking.

“That
dick
.”

Using big leaves and sticks, we clumsily
manage to get the corpse off my bag and fling the thing into a patch of tall
grass. Gone, but definitely not forgotten. I don’t even want to think about the
creeper-particles it left behind on my clothes. We finally reach the lake
six-odd miles later. Forest surrounds it on all sides, edging a pebble-and-gravel
beach. The water is pretty clear, and I can see slippery moss on all the stones
below the surface. Despite the gorgeous surroundings, I can’t get my mind off
the sickening prank. I immediately take my bag down to the water and start
washing out my belongings.

“I can’t believe what those
assholes did to me.”

“Oh,
come on
,” Sarah says.
“You know that wasn’t the group of them, Jackie. Be real. That was all Xander.
‘Good luck, girls’ he says. Effing jerk.”

May outright laughs. “Hey, he
likes you! This is like fourth grade all over again. Remember when guys used to
prank you on the playground?”

“He doesn’t like me, May. This
isn’t
fourth grade. My clothes still stink. I probably have to throw them out. Who
knows what kind of nasty-ass germs that thing was carrying? It’s not cute, it’s
just
mean
,” I say, my eyes pooling with tears.

“Don’t worry,” Sarah murmurs with
a smirk, “we’ll set that string bean straight so quick he won’t know what hit
him in his big, dumb peanut head.”

“Yeah!” May pipes up. “You don’t
mess with Astor’s finest.”

I manage a smile. I don’t know
what I’d do without these girls.

* * *

The sunset
is beautiful tonight—a radiant watercolor painting of coral and crimson
spread across the horizon and reflected in the lake. We eat a dinner of instant
soup around the campfire and watch the dusk fade to black. After a few s’mores,
Sarah and May join the girls in singing, but I’m so exhausted from the day’s
hellacious hike that I turn in for the night.

For a few minutes, I lay there in
my tent, thinking about Xander. What kind of sicko is he? I notice I can see a
few stars twinkling through the plastic windows above me. It makes me kind of
homesick. At home in Oregon, I have skylights over my bed. Mom put them in
after Dad died. She wanted him to watch over me as I slept. I take out my cellphone
and look at a few photos of our family from years ago, before the cancer killed
Dad and a part of me, too. I feel like I’ve been drugged, but I’m sure it’s
just all the exercise. I fall asleep before I get too weepy.

I dream Bernard’s standing in
front of me, laughing his big, deep laugh about something. I know we’re at school,
but it’s not the same building. It’s one of those prettier-than-life high
schools they use for movies. There are dozens of other kids around us, all
laughing, and I don’t know why. Wearing a tux, Bernard hops in the driver’s
side of a little, purple sports car. I’ve never seen him in anything half as
nice. I climb in, too, but the car won’t start. It doesn’t even make a sound
when he jiggles the key.

All of a sudden, I see my mom. Her
face is all red, and I can tell she’s been crying. She’s standing in the liquor
aisle of a twenty-four-hour discount store, wearing a robe and slippers. Of
course, she would never leave the house dressed like that, but there she is,
bawling her eyes out. She has a huge belly, like she’s nine months pregnant.
She’s bawling hot tears of rage, lifting bottles from the shelves and throwing
them on the linoleum—vodka (
crash!
), brandy (
ka-boom!),
tequila (
bam!).
The alcohol pools in a reservoir at her feet, which
grows wider and wider.

The current of alcohol swells and
bursts forth in a roaring wall. It rushes through a forest surrounding the
store, splashing against tree trunks and drowning weeds. The trees and the
store burst into flames, but Mom just stands there, untouchable. I can feel the
heat on my skin. I can smell the smoke. I yell at Mom to run, but my voice
barely registers against the roaring fire. The heat is making little pinpricks
across my skin, licking up the sweat. I want to wake up, but I can’t. I’m stuck
in this fiery hell, with the heat and smoke and ash falling around me like
charred confetti.

Mom is singing. I can’t make out
the song, but it sounds so pretty. The flames are coming toward me. My eyes
burn with orange and red and white. Then I hear an unmistakable noise, booming
in my ears. A heartbeat.
My
heartbeat.
Ka-thud, ka-thud, ka-thud.
That’s when I realize my eyes are open—wide open.

This is no dream.

I thrash around, desperate to
move, but an unseen force is holding me at bay, locking me in place. It’s as if
I’m being held in an invisible coffin.

Pinpricks of heat lap at my back and
force me into a state of panic. Everything is hot,
so
hot, like I’m
standing right next to a bonfire. I’m not lying on the ground anymore. Pockets
of air have lifted me up, like buoys, from underneath. I’m being held about forty
feet off the ground, hovering horizontally in the dark night. My body feels as completely
weightless as the air itself. My whole face is pulled back in horror.
How is
this happening?
The sound of my heartbeat has been replaced by screams, and
I look back down at the earth to see all the girls enveloped in smoke and
flames. May and Sarah are wailing—an animal sound, nothing I’ve ever
heard. They’re burning up. I scream out to them as loud as I can, desperate to
help, but my voice comes out in a tiny squeak, hardly noticeable over the cries
from below.

Smoke is everywhere. I can see it
in the black air, wafting over the trees and clouding the flames below.

Then the air goes quiet. The only
sound I can hear is the crackling of the fire. My whole body is twisting and
shaking in the heat of the air. I try to scream again, but it’s as if I’ve been
gagged. I see the moon rising in the black sky. Soon, it is directly above me,
bright white and beaming. I can’t take my eyes off it. The stars around it have
morphed from tiny, twinkling orbs to spinning spheres of combusting,
flame-spitting fire. It’s terrifying.

I feel my body being gradually
lowered back to the ground, right back onto the dirt where my tent had been.
The fireballs fade back into stars, and the camp is bathed again in moonlight.
I want to get up and run to May and Sarah and the other girls, see if they’re
okay. But my whole body is paralyzed. Only my eyes will move.

I can feel my eyelids drooping
against my will, and despite my fear, I fall asleep again.

When I
wake up, the air is a thick, sooty gray, and I can’t see more than a foot in
front of me. It catches in my throat. I start coughing, hard—thankfully,
I can move again. My tent has been reduced to blackened flakes, steaming in the
sunlight that’s breaking through the smoke. My cotton clothes and leather boots
are in good shape, but all the rest of my stuff—my plastic-coated rain
jacket and backpack, my sunglasses—is completely destroyed. The ground is
hot, like beach sand on a sweltering summer day.

I sit up. I can barely breathe.
It’s like I’ve been in a coma and have to relearn how to move. The smoke is
stinging my eyes, so I squint. I’m coughing uncontrollably.

“Hello?” I croak through the haze.
There’s no answer and no one in sight. Everything around me
—
the tents, our gear
—
is charred and
smoldering.

“HELLO?” I shout.

No sound. Just birds chirping.
I’ve never heard so many.

Instinctively, I reach for my cellphone
on the ground beside me. It’s a charred clump of molten metal and plastic, and
hot as a poker.

“Shit!” I scream, dropping it
instantly. I scramble to my feet and stumble to the lake, then thrust my singed
hand into the lake water. Thankfully, it’s cool, an instant salve for my palm.

I hear nothing, nobody’s
responded. My stomach flips. What if they’re dead? Their bodies really burnt under
all this smoke and soot? The air is so thick with smoke that if they
are
alive,
I doubt they could have gone far.

“Hello! Sarah? May? Guys?” I
shout, but don’t hear a sound. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” I mutter under
my breath like a mantra.

I hold my shirt over my mouth and
nose, squinting against the smoke. I’m not sure how much longer I can survive
breathing this shit in. Will I die here, at Lake Astor? Three thousand miles
from Mom? Bernard?

The air is so thick and gray I
can’t see four feet in front of me, but it’s better if I crouch down. That’s
when I notice—none of the grass is burnt. Even the grass under my tent—which
is now a flat, blackened rectangle—is growing green and lush. It looks
completely normal, actually thicker than it was yesterday. There are tiny,
white, bell-shaped flowers scattered here and there, and I even spy a
butterfly, shimmery and blue with black spots along its wings, resting on a
leaf. My jaw drops open. I can’t believe my eyes. How did all this survive the
fire?

“Hello?” I shout, again to no
answer.

A breeze is picking up, and the
haze of smoke is slowly lifting. I see clumps of black steaming in the grass.
Bodies.
I vomit, my back heaving up and down in giant sobs.

I walk over to take a closer look,
to see if, by some miracle, any of the girls are alive. May’s is the first tent
I reach; it’s charred just like mine, smoldering in the sun.
“Please,
please, please, please, please, please, please,”
I say over and over, in a
whisper. I dry heave over a nearby patch of grass until I can’t stand it any
longer. I have to get through this.

I hold my shirt over my face and
pick up a long stick with my free hand. Tears blur my vision. It’s hard to tell
if they’re from the smoke or from the ache tearing through my heart. I use the
stick to flick the little bits of ash around. Some of it’s still smoking. The
blanket of soot makes it so I can’t see very well, but I feel the end of my
stick hit something mushy. Something gritty. I crouch to get under the thickest
of the smoke and my worst fear is realized. It’s a rib cage, bloody skin peeled
back and charred black like something off a barbecue. I start to sob and vomit
at the same time, every so often managing a sidesplitting scream.

The air starts to clear. Next to
May’s tent, Sarah’s is in the exact same shape. Scorched into black-and-gray
powder, with a bloodied, black skeleton in the middle. So many tears are
running down my cheeks that the ash floating in the air is sticking to my skin.
It doesn’t matter, nothing matters.

The smoke is gone now, and I can
see fourteen black circles over the ground where the girls’ tents were, the
campers’ bones splayed out in varying stages of disintegration. Nothing natural
is burnt. The trees are just as leafy, the sky even more blue than it was
before the fire. I can’t stop crying. I’m so confused. I keep sucking in air
and blowing it out, like there’s not enough oxygen in the world.

I stare at the bodies, trying to
make sense of this, but my brain is clogged. This is so far outside the realm
of my experience, I’m paralyzed. All I can do is gape and stare.

Some of their clothes are left unburned,
untouched, like mine. I find a platinum ring hidden in the ash, which reminds
me of my compass. I reach for it around my neck. It’s unburned and feels solid
and heavy in my palm. I’m going to need it now.

I fall to the ground and wail. What’s
happening? All I know is I’m alone here and everything is toast. Why are all my
friends dead? And how am I still walking and breathing? My heart beats so
loudly I can hear it thudding in my chest. I can’t even begin to consider what
to do.

My sobs are the only sound besides
the birds and the wind rustling through the trees. The shock knocks the wind out
of me, and my heart shatters. I lay on the ground, for what could be eternity,
trying to remember to breathe. Memories of Sarah and May flash before my eyes
like a home movie, its colors richer and deeper than reality. I see Sarah and
May that first day at Astor, when their wide smiles and easygoing personas were
the only things that kept my nerves at bay. I watch them jumping into the lake
to tip over the guys’ canoe, cracking up onstage during our skits, hugging
their parents at summer’s end. My heart hurts so much I can almost feel it
turning cold and black inside me. I could lie there all day, but I’m still
scared for myself. That fire seemed to come out of nowhere and might be back at
any second.

The air is completely clear now,
the sky as blue as I’ve seen. Birds keep on chirping, swooping past me. A
falcon. A meadowlark. I don’t know where they’re all coming from. The water
looks clearer, too, with jumping trout and salmon arching over the surface and
skittering away. Lake Astor was always pretty, but now it’s beyond beautiful.
But I can’t enjoy it.

All I want to do is collapse here
and never get up. Sarah and May are dead; all the girls I knew here are
skeletons. Nothing will ever be right in the world, ever again.

 It dawns on me that I need
to get help. If I retrace our steps from yesterday, I’m sure I’ll reach camp. I
have to alert the authorities. Their
—
gulp
—
families. How am I going to explain this?

I start running back toward Camp
Astor along the same well-worn path we took yesterday. Overnight, so much brush
grew up along the trail that I begin to doubt I’m even going the right way.
Until after about an hour, when I see the nurse log, but I swear the aspen
coming out of its trunk is twice as big as it was last time. I keep running, my
desperation propelling me forward.

When I round the bend to camp, my
heart stops in my chest. The buildings are torched.

“Holy!
Fuck
!” I scream,
putting my hand up to my mouth and falling to my knees. I want to crawl into a
ball and vanish, but I’m worried the fire could come back. I can’t do anything
without help.

I timidly walk through the camp to
see what remains. Each cabin is still standing but so charred they look like
they could collapse with a strong wind. The roof of the office is bowed a few
feet from the ground. It takes me a second to notice that everything but the
buildings looks fine, even the grass edging the walls and the ivy crawling up
over the office chimney. They seem to be even greener and prettier than they
were yesterday. The air smells smoky, but also oddly fresh, like the
pine-filled Oregon rainforest in the morning dew.

Slowly, I make my way over to the camp office building
and peer through a broken window. Everything inside is melted into a black
blob—the computers, the office phone, all surfaces except a few key
things: a canvas bag lying on the ground, a glass jar on its side nearby and a
ball of twine Brit used to string our nametags. That’s it.

The roof looks like it’s about to
cave in.
I’m scared to go inside, but I might be able to use that
stuff. Everything I brought—my plastic flip-flops, my purple suitcase
filled with coordinated outfits—is burnt to a crisp
. I grab a sturdy stick from the forest behind me and use
it like a forklift, pulling things out one at a time. Memories of last night
flash in my mind. I keep seeing wisps of fire and hearing the cries of Sarah
and May and the other girls in my head, louder than ever. Did I actually hover
over the ground while they melted away? It’s enough to make me think I’m going
insane. I need to call my mom, but every phone is melted into a blob. I know I
have to find help, the police,
someone
, but all I really want to do is
crumple onto the ground in a heap of tears and wait for someone to stumble upon
me and make everything okay again.

When the boys left yesterday
morning, they headed east, to the Kanselon River, so I decide to start walking
that way. I hold out hope that they’ll still be there, laughing it up like
idiots, totally oblivious to the utter destruction nearby.

I’m just a mile or so from Camp
Astor when I realize that won’t be the case. I see a house—an over-the-top
estate hidden away in the woods—torched black just like everything else
I’ve seen. The roof is caved in, the windows are blown out. The car sitting on
the long gravel driveway looks black, the paint bubbled.

A few miles farther, as the sun
starts to drop below the tree line, I see the boys’ camp. It looks just like
ours did this morning
—
sixteen smoldering black circles slung along the river. The
sight sends a surge of adrenaline across my chest, and I raise my palms to my
face. It’s too much. My head hurts, and I start to feel dizzy like I could
faint at any second. I realize I haven’t had anything to eat or drink all day.
I haven’t even thought about it. How could I?

I sit on a boulder by the slowly
moving water, which is swirling on its way to the Atlantic. I put my feet in without
taking off my boots. It’s hot as hell and I’ve never been so thirsty. Thank God
I found the glass mason jar; I gingerly scoop up a cup of river water and bring
it to my lips.

“Hey!”