Played
Dumb idea, obviously, reaching for that pinecone. If I had only taken one of the many zillion covering the ground, I wouldn’t have tumbled down this mountain and found myself staring up into the sky—and into Sam Tracy’s most assuredly I-told-you-so face. I couldn’t see any of his features, just the black and coppery outline of his head. But how was I supposed to know loose gravel lay hidden beneath a carpet of pine needles?
“Sam!” I yelled the moment I heard him call my name. “Help me!” I could guess what he was thinking about me now. The words crazy, irrational and unstable came to my mind. No doubt he could add a few more nicknames to my Hello, My Name Is tag, which, miraculously, was still stuck to my chest.
“I’ll get some help!” His deep voice floated down to me.
I breathed hard, looking all around me. My arms and legs were stuck in branches at the base of a thick pine tree. Suddenly I was less worried about broken bones than I was about bears and mountain lions. The shiny brochures about Woods Canyon had mentioned the wildlife in the area. Certainly all sorts of animals could scale up and down the side of the mountain as easily as I had somersaulted down it, right? “Wait!” I yelled up to Sam, my voice dry and raspy. Yelling burned my chest. “Don’t leave me!”
But Sam’s face disappeared from the sky. I started to hyperventilate; my hands turned ice-cold and my whole body began to shiver, a slow rumble at first that quickly morphed into full-on panic. My eyes clouded with tears.
I tried to calm down. Maybe I could get myself out. I began to wiggle my fingers and then my toes. When I sat up and leaned forward, a sharp pain shot up my back. Hot tears dribbled down my cheeks. I wiggled my toes again and then raised each leg. It hurt to lift my right leg. My crying turned to silent sobs, the kind where your whole chest heaves in and out. Why had I ever signed up for this stupid conference or retreat or whatever it was called? I caught tears with my tongue.
Then a branch snapped.
My body froze, including my breathing. I tilted my head, listening for movement. Above me, enormous black birds flew in a circle. I untangled my arm from its branch so my fingers could sweep the ground for a stick, a rock, anything hard or heavy. All I could reach was dirt and more pinecones. It was as if the pinecones multiplied times ten every time I blinked. My only weapons were a pink cell phone with no service, a granola bar and a water bottle.
Snap! Crack! The sounds drew closer.
I reached inside my front pocket for my granola bar. Maybe I could throw it and buy myself some time.
But from what? And, where?
Pine needles and pinecones rained down all around me.
I squinted into the wind, anxious to see what predator was moving toward me. The wind howled louder, messing with my mind. It was like I was being slowly surrounded. I began to picture a hungry pack of coyotes, or wolves. Or bears. Lots and lots of hungry bears...
My heartbeat echoed all the way to my temples. Goose bumps snaked up my back. I reached inside my pocket for the water bottle. It was the heaviest thing I had on me and better than nothing.
Snap, crack, snap!
I lifted the water bottle over my head.
And then a set of gray antlers appeared from behind a trunk, followed by a head.
A deer—or maybe it was an elk—peeked at me with beady black eyes from between two pine trees. It lifted its long snout toward the sky, its nostrils sputtering. If not for its antlers, it would have blended into the tree trunk.
“Oh, god.” I exhaled. I wondered whether to throw my water bottle at it. I wondered whether it was alone. Maybe I was about to be trampled by a stampede. Panicked, I inched back a fraction against the tree trunk. If I moved back far enough, the lower branches might hide me. But my whole body hurt when I moved even just a few inches. Instead of screaming at the animal and flailing my arms, I simply froze, watching the animal watch me.
The elk lowered its antlers toward the dirt and moved forward. Straight for me.
It took one step, then another, lumbering toward me like it had all the time in the world.
Was this elk psycho? Shouldn’t it be afraid of me? But then, why would it be? It was as wide as a horse, maybe even bigger.
Carefully, I brought my arm back, readying my water bottle.
Snap, crack!
More pine needles floated down from the sky.
My head jerked right just as a flash of blue and black tumbled from above.
A set of feet landed with a loud thump between me and the elk.
Sam.
For a big guy, he moved amazingly fast.
Sam whistled, that loud kind mastered by jocks and gym teachers, his fingers spread in his mouth like a triangle.
The elk’s ears sprang to attention like pop-up tents before it fled in the opposite direction, hooves clattering across the rock and then back up the mountain until the sounds disappeared into the wind.
“Did you see that?” I screamed, gasping for breath. “I think it was going to attack me!”
Sam bent over, placing his hands on his knees, breathing hard. Pine needles and brown leaves clung to his hair. He shook them from his head and they rained to the ground. Finally, he stood upright, wiping his hands together. “Elk don’t attack. He was just curious.”
“You didn’t see its eyes!”
Sam came closer, peering at me almost the same way as that elk had. “Are you okay?” His tone held more annoyance than concern.
“Yes!” Tears built behind my eyes again, whether of relief or pain I wasn’t sure. “I mean, no.” I paused to catch my breath. “Did you bring help?”
His dark eyes stretched wider. “You asked me not to leave you!”
I swallowed, hard. “Yeah. Well. I meant—”
“You mean I climbed down the side of this mountain for nothing?” He looked at his hands. They were red and scratched from branches and rocks. His jeans were dirty and ripped like mine at the knees.
My mouth opened but no words came out. Frankly, I was a little touched that he had climbed down after me. And totally shocked, to be honest.
From his back pocket, he pulled out a baseball cap. It was pink.
My hand flew to my forehead. I wondered if my skin was still red and blotchy. Not a great time for vanity, but that’s the crazy thought that flashed through my head.
He walked closer, still holding my hat. “So, are you okay or not?”
“I’m...I’m not sure.” I began to wiggle my fingers and toes again. “My right leg stings. And my back hurts.”
Sam knelt beside me. His hands, big as plates, pressed against my thighs and then ran up my arms, surprising me with a gentle touch.
I stopped breathing, maybe because I wasn’t expecting him to go all Mr. Paramedic on me.
“How did you fall, anyway?” His gaze swept up and down my arms.
I shut my eyes, forcing an exhale. “It was stupid.”
“Well, obviously.”
My eyes popped open but I didn’t say anything. Tough to argue with that.
“Can you walk?”
“I’m not sure.” I swallowed.
He began to examine my forehead. “Did you hit your head?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
His fingertips reached for my forehead, never mind that I couldn’t feel them. “What happened here?”
Heat rose up my neck and I was fairly certain that my whole face blushed, probably in pink and red splotches, the way it usually did when I got flustered. “That. Well. Nothing. I don’t know.” I talked faster. “Probably scraped against a pine branch or something.”
“Are you sure—”
“Could I just have my hat, please?”
He handed me my baseball cap and I thrust it over my head, covering Drew’s handiwork.
“Wasn’t there a ranger station up above?” I was anxious to not discuss my BOTOX experiment because, truthfully, that sounded even dumber than my tumble down the side of the Mogollon Rim for a pinecone.
“Empty. I checked.”
“Great,” I mumbled. “What’s the sense in having a ranger station if there’s no ranger?”
Sam shook his head. “Off-season, I guess. Doesn’t matter now. Let’s see if you can walk.”
With his arm around my waist, Sam pulled me to my feet. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pressed my lips together to muffle the shooting pain at standing up. I’d had sprains before from dance practice, but nothing like this. It felt as though a thousand needles were pressing into my back and leg. By the time I stood straight, I was gasping and unable to stop clutching Sam as if he were a life preserver.
“This doesn’t look good,” he said, shaking his head as I balanced on my left foot, still leaning against him.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, gasping for my next breath. “I’ll just need to take it slow. I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Sam looked at me and then at the side of the mountain. The climb back up wasn’t completely vertical but it would still be a challenge, especially now with my injured leg. He didn’t say anything but I knew what he was thinking: it was going to take forever to get out of here.
“I think it helps to stand,” I said, trying to stay positive. “I can do this.” I glanced at the top of the rim and nodded confidently. “I know I can.” I really didn’t want him to leave me. I was going to climb up the mountain, inch by painful inch, even if it took the rest of the weekend.
Then the sky cracked open.
“What the...?” I stared upward, numb. Ice-cold raindrops cooled my cheeks.
Sam sighed. “It’s the rim. It rains in the afternoon.”
“B-but,” I stammered. “The sky was blue a second ago.”
Rain started to fall harder, white and blinding, almost like hail. The valley below us disappeared in the storm, as if it weren’t even there. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees, just like that.
Sam’s arm stayed wrapped around my waist and my arm still wove around his shoulder. It was awkward but necessary, given the circumstances. The corner of his mouth twitched with obvious panic. We stared at each other, wide-eyed, at a mutual rare loss for words.
Finally Sam said, “Let’s wait it out. Got no choice.” He had to yell over the rain. “We can’t climb out now. Too dangerous.” Raindrops clung to the ends of his bangs before spilling onto his cheeks. “Let’s sit underneath the branches. At least it’ll keep some of the rain off.”
“But it might start lightning,” I yelled back.
His eyes widened. “You got a better idea?”
I shook my head. “Not at the moment.”
We turned back toward the tree, me leaning against Sam and Sam dragging me forward. We limp-walked until we dropped in a heap beneath wispy pine branches already heavy with rain.
“How long?” I asked.
Sam looked up. A second ago, the sky had been a hazy gray. Now clouds raced across it, dark as ink blots. “Could be five minutes. Could be five hours. The storm’ll let us know, soon enough.”
“That’s comforting.”
Sam sighed. “Sometimes you can’t have everything you want.”
“You think I don’t know that?” The rain fell harder. It landed on my face like pinpricks.
Sam didn’t answer with a clever quip like I expected. Instead, he placed a hand on my shoulder. Despite the chaos swirling around us, his touch slowed my panicked breathing. He leaned closer to my ear and said, “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Thunder rumbled. Together we looked up at the unforgiving sky and squinted against the rain. “I hope so,” I said. “But what else can we do?”
12
Sam
Crazy freaky spoiled white girl! What had she been thinking?
Even worse, what had I been thinking? I should never have climbed down after her like an obedient dog.
We’d crawled beneath the closest pine. It had thick, wide branches like a Christmas tree, but the lowest branches didn’t touch the ground. Instead of getting completely drenched, our clothes and hair only got annoyingly soggy. It didn’t bother me much but I could tell it was getting to Riley.
She kept wincing. I knew that her leg must have ached but she didn’t moan much. That surprised me. I figured her for someone who’d be full-blown hysterical by now.
But when her whole body began to shiver, I got scared. I knew what I needed to do but I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like it.
“You’re shivering,” I said.
“Telll meee something I donnn’t know,” Riley replied, her teeth chattering. She wrapped her arms around her chest.
“Wait here,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
“Not far. Stay here.”
“Where am I gonna go?”
Ignoring her sarcasm, I ran to the tree nearest ours and gathered as many dry pine needles and pinecones as my arms could carry. I ran back and forth several times, making a fairly decent pile of dry needles beside Riley. We’d already had a nice pile under our tree, thanks to all the needles that had already dropped, but I knew we would need a lot more.
“Can I help?” she said, but I continued to ignore her. There wasn’t time to explain. The rainstorm made sure of that. Besides, what could she do with a sprained leg?
I remembered the folding knife in my pocket. I squeezed it. It was one of those Swiss Army kinds that did everything from slicing through cardboard to popping open bottle caps. Dad had given it to me for my thirteenth birthday, a gift that had surprised me, since Mom was always the one who bought the birthday and Christmas gifts. I couldn’t take it to school but I carried it in the front pocket of my jeans at all other times. Practical Dad. He’d told me it would come in handy when I least expected it. Said a man should always carry one. Also said his dad had given him one when he was my age, shiny silver with turquoise inlay, no longer than my forefinger, just like mine. I used it a lot at work, cutting through duct tape and boxes loaded with paper towels and pasta noodles. But today was what Dad would probably call one of those critical times. Thanks, Dad, I said to myself as I removed it from my pocket. With a flick of my thumb and forefinger, the knife opened with an easy click.
I cut down four leafy, dry, skinny pine branches as fast as I could. I had no idea how long we’d be stranded on this ledge, but I did know we had to stay as dry as possible.
Racing against the rain, I grabbed the branches and hauled them back to Riley. She sat beside the pine needle piles, running her fingers through them, clearly not understanding my plan. The rain continued to pound all around us.
I dropped the branches and then dropped beside her, motioning for her to scoot to the side so that I could begin.
“What are you doing?” Riley said.
“Making a bed for us.”
Riley’s eyes grew wider. “Will we be here long enough to need one?”
“I’m guessing we might be. And we’ve got to work before there’s no light left at all.”
“What can I do?” She grimaced as she pulled her injured leg out of the way.
“Nothing. For now.”
I spread the pine needles in a circle big enough for two. Then I placed the branches over the needles, weaving them top to bottom. It wouldn’t exactly be plush but it would be better than sitting on the wet ground.
Rain trickled down my back as I worked. Drip drip drip. It was going to be a long hour, a long night, a long weekend—I had no way of knowing. If we were lucky, the storm would blow across the valley before sunset and we could try to hike back to the campsite. I started thinking through several scenarios, one of them including carrying Riley on my back. She was tall but thin. I could probably manage it.
Satisfied with our makeshift bed, I leaned back on my heels to give it a final once-over. “Well,” I said, turning to Riley.
“It’ll have to do,” she said, her teeth chattering again.
I sighed and then moved closer to her on one knee and then the other. Without another word, I put my arm around her and pulled her toward me before she could object, which, knowing what I knew about Riley, she would.
But she surprised me. Again.
Instead of complaining, she exhaled against me, curling into my shoulder. I sat with my back against the tree trunk, Riley’s body pressed against my chest. My arms wrapped around her, tighter, as she shivered. Her warm breath heated my neck, the closeness of our bodies heating us both. I tried to ignore that she smelled all girl, her hair like flowers mixed with fresh pine. It kind of became hard for me to speak, but after an excruciatingly long silence, I forced out a word. “Warmer?” It came out like a squeak. I rubbed the side of her arm.
She nodded, her hair brushing up against my chin. “Should we start a fire or something?”
“It’s kind of raining, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She turned her face to mine. “You mean, you don’t know how to start a fire?”
My back stiffened.
“I thought you would know....” Her voice trailed off.
“You mean, I should know because I’m Native?”
“No,” she said, her whole body rising in place. “Because you’re a boy. Weren’t you a Boy Scout or anything?”
I pulled back and stared at her, speechless. A second ago, we were sharing a moment. Now I wanted to get far away from her all over again, which was pretty much impossible given our current living quarters.
We both seemed to be counting back our outrage. One second. Two seconds. Three...
We glared at each other. It became a staring contest.
And then, when we both absolutely had to blink, we both burst out laughing. In that moment it was as if a balloon had popped between us as we sat tangled together on our mostly dry makeshift bed of pine needles and branches.
“Believe it or not, Boy Scouts wasn’t exactly a big thing on the Rez.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” she began, still laughing.
But I stopped her. “Forget it. No offense taken.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.” I’d certainly heard crazier than that. During my freshman year, a guy had actually asked me if I lived in a teepee. And he’d been serious. To which I’d replied, “Dude, you need to get out more.” It hadn’t exactly made us friends, and he’d looked at me strangely for the rest of the semester.
“In case you were wondering, I wasn’t a Girl Scout.”
“No?” I said. “I thought all girls north of Pecos Road were Girl Scouts at some point. You know, with the lure of the thin mints and all.” So much for stereotypes.
“No.” Riley lifted her chin. “I was a Bluebird.”
“What the heck is a Bluebird?”
“Someone who didn’t want to be a Girl Scout.”
“Did they happen to teach survival techniques to Bluebirds?”
“No.” She looked up at me, totally serious. A raindrop clung to her eyelash and I thought about reaching down to wipe it away with my finger. “But I did get a cooking patch for making macaroni and cheese from scratch.”
“Totally useless right now.”
“Agreed,” she said, grimacing.
We laughed again and Riley blinked, the lone raindrop trickling down her cheek.
I leaned back against the tree trunk again with Riley pressed against my chest. We looked out past the branches. The world had become a gray wall of water, and I wondered how much longer the tree branches would shield us.
Since it looked like we’d be stranded for a while and Riley was tucked inside my arms, I got brave and said, “So, what’s with all the pink?”
She turned her head to peer up at me from beneath the brim of her cap. “What do you mean?” she said, although I knew she knew what I meant. I mean, come on!
“You. Pink. It’s all you ever wear.”
Her clear eyes widened. “How would you know?” She turned defensive and I immediately felt like an idiot. Here I was just trying to make small talk, and I succeeded in pissing her off again in less than twenty seconds.
Just as I was about to open my mouth and apologize, she said, “What about you? Ever heard of a washing machine?” Her button nose wrinkled for emphasis. The awkwardness between us had returned.
I closed my eyes and counted to three. “I was at a party last night. Got home too late to change.”
“How nice for you.” She didn’t hide the contempt in her voice.
“Our maid doesn’t work on Saturdays,” I added, matching hers with more of my own.
“Ha. Ha.” She exhaled. “Now you think we have a maid?”
“Well, don’t you?” Ryan Berenger had gotten a new Jeep for his sixteenth birthday. He wore expensive sunglasses and his parents were members at the country club. Didn’t people like that employ maids?
Riley exhaled again, loud. Loud enough for me to hear the disgust in her voice. Or maybe it was disappointment. She shifted in my arms. “Look, could we just not talk?” She tugged on the rim of her baseball cap again.
Now my shoulders shrugged indifferently. “Sure. Just making conversation.” I looked out at black clouds blowing straight for us.
“Well, insults don’t exactly make good conversation starters.”
“Okay,” I challenged. “So you say something. We might be here awhile, you know.” I hesitated to tell her that it could be more than a little while, especially when she kept reaching for her leg, the one she said hurt the most.
“I wonder what everyone’s doing up at the campsite? You think anyone’s noticed we haven’t come back yet?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”
“Hasn’t it been hours already?”
“Maybe.”
“I wonder what they’re thinking,” Riley said. She had finally stopped shivering.
“Who?” I really hoped she wasn’t referring to Jay Hawkins again.
“The other kids.”
“What do you care what they think?”
“I always care what other people think,” she said. “Years of practice. Can’t help it. Don’t you?”
I chuckled. “I couldn’t care less.”
She sighed, heavy. “I wish I was more like that.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
She looked at the name tag on my chest. I reached down and ripped the soggy thing off.
“I suppose you’re the one who nicknamed me Pink Girl. Real nice, by the way. Very original.”
“That really fits you. And I may borrow it from time to time. But it wasn’t me.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Her chin lifted. “Which one?”
“Guess.”
She sighed like she didn’t want to play. But then she said, “Bossypants.”
I bit back a laugh because that nickname seriously had crossed my mind for Riley Berenger. “Nope. Not me.”
She pulled back. “Smart?”
“Nope.”
Her voice grew louder. “Thorough?”
I smiled down at her. “Bingo.”
“But that is so...lame.”
“I thought it was perfect for you. The perfect nickname.”
“Thorough is for grandmothers and computer manuals, Sam. A girl doesn’t want to be nicknamed Thorough.” She rolled her eyes and looked away. “I thought for sure yours was Pink Girl.” Then she reached for her name tag and peeled it off her sweatshirt. She crumpled it up and slipped it into her pocket.
“So which one was yours?”
“I’m kind of hungry. Are you?” she said, ignoring my dumb question since her pink ink on my name tag made it pretty obvious which nickname she’d chosen for me. I was Complicated, though? What did she mean by that?
“What do you have?”
She reached into a pocket in her sweatshirt. “One water bottle.” She reached into her other front pocket. “A slightly broken granola bar.” And then she reached inside her pocket a third time. “And one stupid pinecone.” She threw it as hard as she could into the slanting rain.
“Nice throw.”
“It’s a gift,” she said.
I looked down at her as she continued to stare straight ahead. Riley’s neck was long and pearly white, almost translucent. For some reason my eyes landed on the skin just below her ear and stayed there. I swear I could see her pulse move, and it stole my breath for a second. I did a mental headshake. But before I could stop myself, I said, “You know, you’d be a lot prettier without that hat.”
Silence. She turned to me, unamused.
I swallowed, hard. I had no idea why I’d said that. It just popped out. Suddenly I was a fashion expert?