The Way Back from Broken (22 page)

“You know where to go?”

“He knows, Mom. He's the direction.” Jacey was too eager to go, too hard-edged. Harder than he'd ever seen her, but he understood the wall she'd built. It was easier that way.

They would backtrack as far as Cedar Lake. To get to Pen, they would take a shorter, alternate route. After that, it would still take another two days to get to Vesper. Once there, they were heading straight to Edna, who Leah was sure could call in a float plane for help.

Rakmen smoothed the pocket holding the map, feeling the rectangle against his thigh. Edna. What he wouldn't give to be on her rickety old dock right now. Four days was forever.

He felt his breath quicken and forced himself to slow it down. Take one step at a time between here and there. Lakes and portages. Paddle. Lift. Carry. He knew how to do these things now.

He had to take that first step.

He had to find the trail and carry.

The canoe was ready. Leah had everything he could think of to keep her comfortable. The day had turned all crispy blue sky and puffy clouds.

“Let's go.”

Stoney-faced, Jacey let her mother hug her. Leah murmured last words like a lullaby. When she released Jacey, her face was wet. “Do what Rakmen says and I'll see you soon.”

Jacey pressed her camera into her mom's hands. “I'm leaving this for you. I took lots of good pictures for you to look at.”

“And I have my book.” Leah held up
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
. “I'll be lounging around while you guys are doing all the hard work.”

“Yeah, Mom. You do that.”

Rakmen took Jacey's hand and led her to the canoe. They had to go, and go now, before he lost his nerve. Rakmen pointed the bow of the canoe toward the portage on the far side of the lake. He matched his paddle stroke to Jacey's, remembering the first night she'd been at Promise House.

A hundred years ago on the phone, she had said that she had a dream—a dream where he fixed things. And we were all okay, she'd said, but now they both knew different. You can never promise okay. Or if you do, it's a lie.

. . .

The rest of the day was both like and unlike their very first day on the trail. His body hurt, not because of soft skin and weak muscles, but because he and Jacey were pushing hard. Neither wanted to stop for more than a few minutes, but every time Rakmen paused to check the map and verify their course, he made them both eat something. While he crunched a handful of nuts or sucked at a piece of chocolate, he traced the line of lakes and trails that led to help.

“I know where we are. I know where we're going,” he muttered to himself.

Miles clicked by.

Jacey hardly spoke—another thing that marked the difference from the first day. Only once around mid-afternoon, she said, “What do you think Mom is doing?”

“Reading.”

They kept paddling and crossed another portage.

By the time the sun hung above the hills in the west, they were beat. Robotically, Rakmen lifted his paddle, reached ahead of himself, and pulled it back in a smooth J shape. Again and again and again, he stroked. It would be full dark in an hour. They had to rest soon, but when Rakmen thought of the coming night, he couldn't suppress a shiver.

In the bow seat ahead of him, Jacey's shoulders slumped. She'd hardly paddled for the last hour. His muscles had gone past ache and into burn. They had to rest. Adding flex to his J-stroke, Rakmen pointed the canoe toward the nearest campsite.

Exhaustion roared through Rakmen as he put the bow into the shore. Jacey didn't move, and he wondered if she'd fallen asleep. “Jacey, we need to unload.”

“We can't stop,” she said, pushing back from the shore with her paddle.

“We have to.” He planted his paddle on the pebbly bottom and held the canoe in place.

“We're supposed to get help.”

Help was the refrain that had kept pace with his paddle strokes and his steps on the portages.
Help, help, help
. Rakmen wasn't sure if it was a plea or a goal.

“It's too dark to keep traveling.”

A tremble twitched through Jacey's shoulders, and her hand on the paddle went limp. She whispered into the rapidly chilling air. “I want Mom.”

Rakmen gulped back his own rising tears. He wanted his mom too. Or Dad with his big grin and hospital scrubs. He didn't want to be the adult, but there wasn't another living human for miles and miles.

“Come on, girl,” he said, the words as gentle as he could make them. “I need you to climb out.”

On shore, Jacey held the canoe while he carried their two small packs to the fire pit. He returned, pulled the canoe onto the shore, and urged Jacey away from the water. His every instinct said to keep moving. “We're going to set up the tent, then we'll eat, okay?”

Jacey wiped her eyes on the corner of her sleeve. By now, the sun hung an inch above the horizon. Deep, rusty orange light bathed their campsite and made the surface of the water look like lava. It would be a clear night, and cold.

Rakmen handed Jacey her fleece jacket and warm hat. In silence, they set up the tent. Too tired to build a fire and cook, Rakmen pulled out a bag of jerky and a couple of granola bars. Taking Jacey's hand, he led her away from the shadowed edge of the forest and into the day's last bit of radiance.

As they ate on a rocky point, movement along the far shoreline caught his eye. Some animal. Another tremor of apprehension stole up his spine. Night was coming, and nothing but nylon would separate them from it.

The sinuous, dark shape loped along the water's edge.

“Look,” said Jacey, finally noticing the creature.

For a second, it seemed to have vanished, but it reappeared in the water, swimming straight toward them and trailing a V-shaped wake of ripples. Jacey squeezed closer, and Rakmen slid his arm around her. Only the animal's dark head was visible, and then that too disappeared under the surface.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Dunno.”

Both of them startled when the animal's head popped through the water with a splash and a snort twenty feet in front of them. It had a round face, twitchy nose, and long whiskers. It snort-growled again, and then sneezed.

“Otter!” Jacey squealed.

At this distance, it was unmistakable. Rakmen could even see the silvered fur around its muzzle. It broke into such a monologue of wheezing and grunting that they both laughed. At the sound, it stared at them, head cocked, like a disgruntled old man.

Farther out in the water, three more heads emerged, and the little grandpa swam to join them. The family circled each other, snorting and wrestling in the water. Rakmen and Jacey watched until they disappeared around a point of rock.

Jacey looked up at Rakmen, her face alight. “I wish I could have taken a picture of that.”

“Me too.”

“We'll remember, okay?”

“Every whisker.”

They finished their granola bars and washed them down with cups of water scooped from the lake. The sun slid below the horizon, and everything around them turned monochrome. They picked their way back to the tent in near darkness.

“Do I have to brush my teeth?” Jacey asked.

“Nah.” He knelt to unzip the mesh door of the tent. “In you go.”

She scuffed her feet in the dirt. “Rakmen?”

He peered up at her. “Yeah?”

“I gotta pee.”

He handed her the toilet paper and a flashlight and leaned back into the tent, opening the valve to inflate their camping mattresses. When he turned to grab the sleeping bags, he saw that Jacey was still standing a few feet away, staring at the little path that led into the woods.

“Go on,” he said.

She shuffled around to face him, clenching the roll of toilet paper in both hands.

He sighed. They had a night to get through, and it started right now.

Rakmen zipped the tent and stood. “I gotta go too. Where's that flashlight?”

They followed its thin beam down the tiny path.

Their feet crunched on leaves and twigs, startling some small creature that skittered away in the surrounding dark. Mice, probably. Always the mice. Jacey stayed on Rakmen's heels as he swept the light from side to side looking for one of the large, wooden boxes that served as an outhouse for each campsite. Rakmen wedged the flashlight into a forked tree branch so that the box and the ground in front of it were illuminated. He pulled the lid open, handed her the roll of paper, and stepped outside the ring of light.

“I'm turning around, but I'm staying right here, okay?” He relieved himself into a bush, watching every shifting shadow in the forest around him.

Home had never felt farther away.

In the city, trees were mostly solitary. Some old, some new and planted in neat rows, and all engulfed by asphalt and apartments and strip malls. Here, he and Jacey were the intruders. The trees won hands down. As they retraced their steps, the forest pressed against him; whether threatening or reassuring, he wasn't sure.

Their little camp—tent, canoe, paddles, hanging pack—was the tiniest speck in all this wilderness. He hung the flashlight from a loop at the top of the tent. It swung in wide circles, illuminating the blue nylon. As he wriggled into his sleeping bag, he imagined the view from space. A half-dome of sky blue glowing between the black trees and the inky slickness of the lake.

“I miss Mom,” said Jacey from the cocoon of her sleeping bag. Her voice was muffled, and he couldn't tell if it was because of the layers over her mouth or because she was crying again.

His throat grew thick. They should have stuck together. They should have waited for someone to find them.

No one was around to find them.

If anything else went wrong, no one would ever know.

Jacey was definitely crying.

“Girl,” he said, rolling onto his side and pulling the sleeping bag away from her face. “You know what?”

“What?” she snuffled.

“Your mom is in her tent, in her sleeping bag, same as us,” he said. “She's got that little lantern on, and she's reading.”

The dark outside was even darker.

All he could do was keep talking.

“Remember that big cliff we paddled past on the last lake?”

“Yeah,” said Jacey.

“I bet if you were up on top if it right now, you'd be able to see her tent glowing in the distance.”

“Like a pumpkin?”

“Exactly. And you could see our little blue tent. Your mom is probably thinking
Jacey had better be asleep. She needs a good night's rest
.”

“No, she's not.”

“She totally is. And...” He grasped for words. “And she's thinking
If Jacey doesn't brush her teeth, she'll smell like a moose.
” Rakmen plugged his nose and in a nasally groan said, “Phew! Moose alert!”

Jacey giggled.

“If you start smelling any worse, I might have to tow you behind the canoe tomorrow.”

“I'll brush in the morning.”

He lowered his voice. “When we get back, we'll tell your mom about the otters.”

“They were really cute,” she murmured.

“And at home, you can tell your dad about the moose and all the birds and show him your amazing pictures.”

Somewhere in the soothing rush of his words, Jacey began to snore softly, like a purring kitten. Rakmen checked the zipper of the tent and turned off the flashlight, but sleep didn't come easily. The treetops hummed with insects. The lake lapped against the shore. He wanted the roar of trucks on Lombard Avenue or music from the party house at the end of his block. Those were sounds that filled up space.

The loons started up, their howls reverberating off the water. Branches cracked and broke. Much later, he heard an owl call from the far side of the lake. After a moment it was answered by another in the distance. This wilderness was big and expectant. He was nothing but bone and flesh and gristle.

And beside him was a little girl, asleep.

CHAPTER 29

Morning couldn't come fast enough. As soon as it was light, he climbed out of the tent. His mind looped through the series of tasks that he had to accomplish to keep them alive.

Don't fall.

Don't drown.

Don't get lost.

The weather had changed in the night. Clouds blotted out the sun. The air felt heavy in his lungs. All his thoughts were circular. Each
what if
led to another and ended up back around where he started. There was no getting off this ride.

A memory hit him hard. He'd been eleven when his dad had taken him to the decrepit amusement park near the river. Rakmen had begged for the Screaming Eagle, a ride that suspended you from a pincer-like claw and swung to the tops of the trees. As they'd waited in line, the thrill coursing through him turned sour, and the corn dog he'd eaten for lunch churned in his stomach.

He didn't want to do it. It went too high. It spun too wildly.

“Come on,” his dad urged. “It'll be fine. You'll regret it if you don't go.”

No, he wouldn't regret it.

Not at all. This was not for him, but they'd waited in line, inching to the front. If he backed out now, Dad would know he was afraid. As the shoulder restraints locked down on his shoulder, the tears started, only to be swept off his face by the force of the ride.

The scream of a loon on the wing brought him back to the lakeshore.

Jacey was climbing out of the tent, rubbing sleep out of her eyes and staring blearily around their camp. “What's wrong with the clouds?” she asked. “They look upset.”

She was right. The underside of the cloud layer was bloated and dark. The vapor seemed more solid than air, roiling in slow, sick swirls.

Rakmen tossed her a bag of trail mix. “Eat. We've got to get moving.”

She nodded, and in silence they packed the tent.

Four hours later, the threatening clouds morphed into full-on storm.