The Way Back from Broken (16 page)

But it had also, he realized, turned off his brain. It had been hours since he had thought of home or Dora or the gaping shotgun blast through his chest. The pain in his body trumped all of it. Its stupor was a small but not insignificant treasure, like the nuggets of quartz in the pocket of his pants.

When Leah pointed to an open campsite, he added extra force to his J-stroke and nosed the canoe into shore. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and dark was coming fast now. The spot was mostly rocky, with a grassy oval in the middle. Some other camper had made a ring of stones for a fire, and a twisted grill leaned against it. Rakmen hauled up the big pack, eyeing the line of dark trees behind the campsite. He didn't like the way the forest pressed against them.

“Hey, Jacey,” said Leah, emerging from the open top of the huge pack with a collapsible saw, “I saw a downed cedar along the shoreline. Let's go get some firewood. Rakmen, can you find the tents?”

He nodded and watched them disappear around a rocky point. When the sound of Jacey's voice faded, other sounds filled his ears—swishing, creaking, tapping. He had no idea what this place contained. He unpacked their gear, glancing over his shoulder every few minutes. Two tents—one blue and one orange, sleeping bags and pads, the nylon sacks that held their clothes. All the crap he'd been carrying. He found the red zippered pouch that held the first-aid kit and rummaged through it for three Advil and a Band-Aid.

“You're bleeding,” said Jacey, coming up behind him and dropping an armload of wood.

“Don't sneak up on me.”

She grinned. “Wasn't sneaking. I was quiet. Now gimme that.” Jacey swiped the Band-Aid out of his hand and insisted on wiping down his knee with an alcohol pad.

Too exhausted to argue, he let her fuss over him. “I didn't think you knew how to be quiet.” She made a show of gluing her lips tight together. “I'll believe it when I see it,” said Rakmen.

Silence didn't last long. As soon as Leah returned to camp with her own armload of small branches, Jacey returned to a running commentary on the sound of frogs and what kind you could eat, whether cattail roots tasted like celery, and if leeches ever ate anything besides blood.

“Come on,” he said, pulling her away from the fire pit where Leah was lighting a fire. “You need to chill out. Let's put up the tents.”

“Have you ever slept in a tent? I'm so excited. It's like a little fort.”

The thin nylon was no substitute for proper walls. Tired as he was, Rakmen wondered if he would be able to sleep. The ever increasing dark seemed to amplify the sounds around them, and the flickering light from the fire cast a pitifully small circle of brightness. If anything, it made the dark seem darker. It was as bad as being under the canoe.

Or in the basement of Promise House.

By the time they had finished, the water for their dehydrated food packs had boiled. “Here,” said Leah, handing them each a bowl of glop.

He tipped it toward the firelight, trying to figure out what color it was.

“It looks gross,” Jacey whined. “What is it?”

“Lasagna.”

Rakmen stole a glance at Leah, wondering if she was going to yell at Jacey, but his biology teacher was out of steam. She stared at the fire, spooning in mouthfuls of glop. Rakmen stuck his spoon in the bowl. His dad made terrific lasagna, and it came out of the pan in thick, cheesy squares. It did not resemble this stew of noodle bits, red sauce, and rehydrated beef crumbles.

The fire crackled and popped. All around the campsite, trees swayed and leaves rustled. He was a city boy overdosed on green and pain. Rakmen's stomach rumbled. He chewed slowly at first, and then more quickly. The sauce was tangy and full of garlic. Soon he was shoveling the noodle mash into his mouth, amazed that anything could taste so good. Especially something that came out of a foil packet looking like lumpy dirt.

“This is delicious,” said Jacey, her words garbled by the half-chewed food in her mouth.

Leah nodded and kept eating.

As his belly filled with hot food, the aches and pains in his body dulled. Jacey threw a pinecone on the fire. It spluttered and then burst into flame, throwing sparks. She hummed under her breath and poked at the coals. The flickering light from the fire transformed her features. She was no longer a dull smudge of a girl. She was glowing and otherworldly.

When Jacey caught him looking, she smiled.

That look again.

The look that said he was enough. More than enough.

She was wrong, of course. But he felt satiated somehow by the food and the fire and the cessation of labor and by having her close. Maybe it was animal nature to survive. A paleo thing—all burning torches and red paint on cave walls.

When they finished eating, Leah handed him a head lamp. “I need you to help hang the food pack.”

He took the head lamp but stared dumbly at her. “Hang it?”

“In case of bears.”

“I thought you said we'd be lucky to see a bear because there aren't many of them.” Fighting a bear for their silver packets of dehydrated food was definitely beyond the limits of Rakmen's animal nature.

“We're not going to have a bear problem,” said Leah, wearily loading all of their food into the big pack and strapping it closed. “We're being prudent.” Jacey's eyes were huge behind her scraggly bangs, and Rakmen saw her slip a chunk of hair into her mouth and start chewing. She edged closer. “Bring the pack,” said Leah, grabbing a piece of firewood and a coil of rope.

Jacey slid her hand into his, and they followed Leah to the dark line of forest. About thirty yards from their tents, Leah picked a pine tree with a strong branch about fifteen feet up. She knotted the rope to the chunk of wood, whirled it around her head, and launched it over the branch. The piece of firewood hit the ground at their feet. “We've got to get the pack up as high as we can,” said Leah, untying the rope from firewood and retying it around the backpack. “If you lift, I'll pull. One, two, three.”

Rakmen hoisted the pack, groaning as every muscle in his body throbbed with pain. Leah pulled on the loose end of the rope.

“Hurry,” he grunted.

“Give it one more good push,” she said.

He shoved as high as he could. Leah took up the slack in the rope, wrapped it around the trunk of the tree, and secured it with a knot.

“It's a bear piñata,” said Jacey, staring up at its lumpy bulk.

“I'm more worried about mice,” said Leah.

“It's always the mice,” Rakmen blurted. “What is it with the freaking mice?”

“I don't know,” Leah sighed, leading them back toward the fire pit, “but I've got to sleep.” She and Jacey crawled into their tent.

Rakmen slid into his and sat cross-legged in the middle of it, taking stock. The tent had two doors, one mesh and one nylon. It was too hot to close them both. He zipped the mesh against bugs and then tried to decide about his pants. The last thing he wanted was for a bear to surprise him in his underwear. He started to slide inside the sleeping bag fully clothed, but that was dumb. It wouldn't matter if he were naked or not. The bear would win. Besides, the pants were muddy, bloody, and uncomfortable.

He stripped down to underwear and wadded his pants and sweat-crusted T-shirt in the corner of the tent. The fabric of the sleeping bag was slick against his chest. The murmurs from the other tent subsided, and he listened to water lapping against the rocks, wind in the treetops, and an intermittent skittering of something small moving in the grass.

Out of nowhere, a loon howled wildly. Its cry echoed from the far end of the lake, reminding him how much distance was out there. Lake and forest stretching away and away in every direction. No signs. No bus routes. No easy way home.

He couldn't settle. Every time he dozed off, there were red eyes and piñatas and claws on flesh. He jerked awake in the pitch black. Molly had cuts like that. They'd been downstairs. Group was long over. Crumbs swept. Kids gone. Upstairs, their mothers were deep in conversation. Rakmen sat on the couch flipping through his notebook as Molly put away the last of the art supplies. She tucked a stray doll into the toy trunk and plunked down beside him, her knee resting against his. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, rubbing her eyes. “I'm so empty,” she said, breathing lightly and smelling like gingerbread. The closeness of her unnerved him.

“Want me to forage for goldfish crackers in the couch cushions?”

It didn't make her laugh. Instead she slumped back on the couch, leaving her arms limply outstretched, palms up, penitent. That was when he'd seen the thin, parallel scabs on the milky skin of her inner arm.

He absorbed the lines of dried blood and the knowledge of how they got there, slice by careful slice. Without thinking, he'd reached out with one finger to graze her wounds—one, two, three, four. Molly tilted her head until it rested on his shoulder. Her hair spilled over the front of his black hoodie. He breathed her in as she breathed out, and they sat together until they heard the scraping of chairs upstairs.

As he lay in the tent surrounded by night noises and aching in every single part of his body, he thought maybe Molly had been using pain to pour herself back into the empty container of her body. His collection of blisters, bruises, and torn muscles hurt like hell but made him feel present, like his self or soul or whatever filled his limbs from toe to head.

And in spite of how much he ached, Rakmen fell asleep.

CHAPTER 21

When the rising sun turned his tent into a glowing blue cocoon, Rakmen woke and found his limbs still attached. He'd done it. He'd actually survived a night in the woods. He grinned up at the blue nylon until he tried to extricate himself from his sleeping bag.

“Oh crap.” He could hardly lift his arms. Wedging himself out of the sleeping bag sent pain shooting through his body. Every single muscle was solid concrete. He rolled over on his knees, wincing as the puffy bruise on his right one touched the ground. Rakmen collapsed onto his stomach, tapping his forehead against the ground in frustration. So he made it through one night. Big deal, sucker. Another day. Another slap in the face.

“I'm not moving,” he told the sleeping bag. “Never again.” Not for Jacey or Leah or even Molly. “I'm done.”

His empty stomach roared. Even his body was against him.

Rakmen cursed under his breath as he pulled on his pants. Everything hurt, but Jacey's oddly comforting pocketful of treasures bumped his thigh, and he checked to make sure the pocket flap was safely buttoned before crawling out of the tent.

Mist, golden from the sun, rose from the flat surface of the lake. The cool morning air brought gooseflesh to his bare chest, but Rakmen could tell the day would be a hot one. Tiny snores came from the orange tent, and he thought he was the first one up until he caught sight of Leah sitting on the rocky point and looking at the lake.

He tensed, trying to read the curved line of her back and the way her arms wrapped around her knees. He approached her like a bomb tech and went into defusing mode. Red wire? Blue wire?

He scuffed his feet to make enough noise not to startle her, and when she looked up, his tension eased a notch. There was a softness to the lines around her eyes that he hadn't seen before. She raised a hand in greeting before turning back to the lake. Rakmen splashed his face in the water, running his fingers through his dark hair.

Jacey woke up and wandered blearily out of the tent, clutching her toothbrush. “Where's the sink?”

Leah actually kind of smiled as she handed Jacey a water bottle. “Spit in the bushes, sweetie.”

Rakmen joined Jacey at the bush-sink.

Jacey crossed her eyes at him and let a glop of white bubbles ooze down her chin, zombie-style. They practiced lurching around and foaming at the mouth until Leah told them to pack up their tents.

“Aren't we staying here?” Rakmen asked.

“I want to keep moving.”

“Why? This seems okay. No bears.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, making the dark circles under her eyes seem even darker. “I can't stay in one place.”

Jacey wiped her mouth on her sleeve and ducked back into her tent. Rakmen could hear her stuffing the sleeping bag into its sack. His own heaviness returned, numbing his limbs like he was an actual zombie.

He deconstructed his tent while Leah made oatmeal. After cleaning up the dishes, they loaded the packs in silence. A loon skimmed to a landing in front of their camp, screaming like a prisoner. When they left that lake behind, Rakmen never wanted to see it again.

. . .

After that portage came another lake and another and another. It was almost noon, and even on the water, it was hot. The stifling air buzzed with insects. A particularly irritating deer fly had been harassing Rakmen for ten minutes until it succeeded in a nipping out a chunk of flesh on his ankle. “Damn it!”

“You're naughty,” Jacey teased from her spot in the middle of the canoe.

He grimaced.

“There's the next portage,” Leah said, pointing ahead to where a wide creek burbled into the lake. “Let's eat before we go.”

“Lunch is good,” Rakmen said, stomach growling.

While Leah divvied out their rations in neat piles on cloth bandanas, Rakmen and Jacey poked around. The rocky stream bed was fifteen feet wide and less than a foot deep in most places. There were a few deeper holes at the downstream side of the largest boulders. In those spots, the water churned to a white froth.

“Guys,” said Leah, calling them back.

Rakmen knew without counting that he had ten crackers stacked neatly beside a pile of nuts, dried apricots, a chunk of cheese, and a one-ounce square of semi-sweet chocolate. The woman couldn't be trusted with plates, but she was precise about crackers.

As they ate, Leah spread out the map between them. “We're here at Wrangel Lake. This portage follows the stream until it gets a little deeper, then there's a short section to paddle and another portage around some rapids.”