“That way.” She points up the mountain.
I squeeze my hands into fists. But I think of the look on Dad’s face if I manage to get her back to L.A., and ask with clenched teeth, “Would you like to close the car door then so I can drive?”
“Oh yeah,” she says, as if it hadn’t occurred to her. She leans over and slams the door shut, and we’re off.
I’m lying here in a tent, pretending to be asleep but actually fearing for my life as I watch a bunny murderer have a conversation with our campfire.
Here’s how it went down. Halfway up Mt. Rainier, Juneau orders me to go off-road down this dirt track. Once we’re way past where anyone—say, rescuers—could actually find us, she tells me to stop. It’s getting dark, and it’s like we’re in a scene from one of those documentaries where oblivious backpackers set up camp near a bear cave or a wolf den or on top of a killer scorpion nest and are taught their lesson for thoughtlessly encroaching upon nature. And just when I’m thinking this, Juneau gets her pack out of the backseat, pulls a nylon bag out, and starts setting up a freaking tent.
“What are you doing?” My voice shoots up an octave, like I’ve been breathing helium.
She looks over at me and says simply, “What’s it look like?”
“We’re not sleeping here tonight! This isn’t even a legal campsite!” I squeak.
“We have to. I wasn’t able to Read nature in Seattle. The city made me too anxious. I saw a postcard of this mountain and knew it would be the perfect place to Read. It kind of looks like home,” she responds. And just like that, she goes back to unwrapping the nylon tent and sticking folding metal poles through it. I stand like an idiot while she brushes twigs and rocks away from a flat bit of ground and then pulls the tent over to it and starts banging pins into the earth to anchor it.
She turns to me. “If you want to help, you can get a fire going before it’s too dark to see.”
“A fire? I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in the middle of a national park. And why do we need a fire?” I ask. “It’s not even cold out.”
“For dinner,” she says, and out of her pack she takes two carved and painted dowel-looking things, clicks them into grooves to fit together, and grabs a bundle of little pointed arrow-stick thingies, and I’ll be damned if she’s not walking off into the forest holding a mini-crossbow.
I don’t even try to make a fire. I go back to the car and for a half hour I fiddle with my iPhone, trying to turn it back on, but it’s completely shot. I’m wondering what she could have done to break it when I look up and see Juneau stride into the clearing, holding a dead rabbit by the hind legs.
Not even looking my way, she sits down on a rock and takes a huge bowie knife out of her pack and starts peeling the fur off. I can’t watch. I feel sick.
By the time I turn back around, she’s made a fire and has set up a kind of makeshift spit by driving two branches into the ground on either side of the flames. Then, ever so casually, as if she were tying her shoes or something, she shoves a third stick through the raw, red-skinned rabbit’s mouth and out its other end, and I have to walk off into the woods by myself because I think I’m going to puke.
By the time I get back, the thing on the spit actually looks like meat and smells appetizing enough to make my mouth water. I stand there and watch her as she roasts some mushrooms and leaves in a little pan over the flames, using the juice dripping from the meat to cook them.
“I get it that foraging is the hip new thing for you back-to-nature types, but you do realize there is a McDonald’s about a half hour down the road?”
For a moment it looks like she doesn’t recognize me. Then she nonchalantly cuts a sliver of cooked leg off something that was cute and fluffy and hopping around about an hour ago. She holds it grimly up on the end of the knife, like a dare. I shudder, but pick the meat off the knifepoint and pop it in my mouth. Oh my God, it’s really good.
She sees my expression and smiles. “Saw the McDonald’s sign on the way. But I tried it in Seattle, and frankly, that stuff’s nasty.”
21
JUNEAU
HE IS QUITE LIKELY THE STUPIDEST BOY I HAVE ever met.
No, strike that. Not stupid. He actually seems smart enough. He has a good vocabulary when he makes an effort to use it. And I can tell he listens to every word I say and stores it away for later. Why?