I close my eyes and breathe, slowly. I need to stop letting them get to me.
I open my eyes and turn away. I start walking. When I notice movement a few minutes later, I don’t investigate. All I can see is the puffy road, and I follow it around a curve and into the trees.
Hours later, it’s time to make camp. I build my shelter and collect my firewood. I strip some bark for tinder, then reach for my belt loop.
It’s empty.
My guts turn cold. My fist clenches.
My fire starter is still clipped to my old pants, discarded on the Trails ’N Things bathroom floor.
The loss makes me woozy. I rock backward to sit; the world rocks with me. I can’t go back. I can’t go through that town again. I can’t lose two more whole days; this is a race and I’m already behind. My throat is so tight I can barely breathe. I cup my mouth and nose with my hands, bracing my jaw with my thumbs. Proximity turns my fingers translucent. The crumbled tinder is soft and sharp against my skin. The worst part is that this loss is wholly my fault—not a failed Challenge, just stupidity.
I had no idea it would be like this. They didn’t say anything about a fake pandemic or props shaped like dead people. About animatronics or feral cats. Empty towns and abandoned children. They didn’t say anything about being so alone for so long.
I will not give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
Three words and it’s over.
I close my eyes and rub my fingertips into the ridges of my eye sockets. My skin shifts with the pressure, skimming along the bone of my brow.
I thought this would be fun.
Ad tenebras dedi. I cannot speak it. I will not speak it. The journey’s too hard only if I’m too soft. I don’t want to be too soft. I don’t want to be hard. I don’t know what I want to be. I made it past the night hike. I made it past the cliff. I made it past the blue cabin and the doll. I made it past the coyote. This will not be the moment that breaks me. I will not quit, I will not. I can survive one night without fire. I can. And tomorrow? I have the multi-tool. I can make a spark with one of its attachments. I don’t need to resort to the desperate rubbing of sticks. My blunder is not the end. Day-by-day, step-by-step, I will make it home.
I crawl into my shelter without eating and clutch my glasses lens in my palm. My stomach is as knotted as my hair. I sleep fitfully and dream of a baby, our baby, crying endlessly.
The next morning I break into a gas station. It’s well stocked and prop-free. I help myself to water, jerky, and trail mix. A few pop-top cans of soup. I take a pack of sanitary napkins; it feels like I should be due soon. Just before exiting, I also grab a box of Junior Mints. As I walk away from the gas station, I shake the box like a maraca. The road bends. I play “La Cucaracha.”
I’m trying to raise my spirits, but it’s not working. My improvised music only reminds me of all I’ve left behind. Feeling lighthearted, taking a moment to relax—I miss that. And I miss real food, modifying recipes to suit my tastes. Dicing five cloves of garlic instead of three, pouring in an extra swig of wine, substituting fresh herbs for dried. I miss the smell of sautéing onions and roasting chicken. The delicious wafting steam from a pot of lentil soup. I miss homemade bruschetta on toasted baguette. Ripe tomatoes from the farmers’ market, a handful each of purple and Thai basil from my herb garden.
“Miss.”
I miss lattes. Driving into town to the good café once a week, the perfect froth a whole-fat treat. Toddlers with iPhones at the next table, Mom and Dad guzzling espresso and pretending muffins are nutritious. Displaced hipsters pushing strollers outside; pocket-sized dogs tied to chairs, yapping and wagging their tails.
“Miss.”
I miss yoga classes. Kickboxing and spinning. Movement that led to strength, not this tightness I feel from brow to toes. I miss the chatty elementary school teacher who always put his mat to my left and the middle-aged lawyer who jabbed and crossed behind me. The lawyer used to tell me how skinny I was getting, nearly every week; now I’m the smallest I’ve ever been. I wonder if they’re watching, if they miss me.
“Miss.”
I miss my husband’s dark eyes and light laugh. His black stubble, flecked with white at the chin. Penguin coloring, we call it; inaccurate, but fun. I miss our jokes. I miss him. I miss us.
“Hey, Miss!”
The words crash through my thoughts. Actual spoken words and I’m not the one who said them. I stop and hear only my thrashing heart and the gentle slosh of water. Then footsteps from behind. I turn.
A young black man wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans stands only a few feet away. He’s shorter than I am, lean, with buzzed hair. The whites of his eyes are huge. Beyond that, I can’t discern much other than that his hair is hair, his skin is skin, and the lettering of his sweatshirt pulses lightly with his breath. In living, he is beautiful, as is all he represents: an end to alone. For three beats my heart says yes yes yes. I want to take this stranger in my arms and say: I’ve missed you.
My lips crack open. I almost whisper, then I can’t. The words are not meant for this man. I blink once, heavily, and remind my heart of the game. I take a step away. He is here for a reason, I tell myself. He might be here to help.
“What do you want?” I ask. My voice crackles with disuse.
“I…” He fidgets. His voice is soft, and not very deep. Not deep at all. He can’t be more than eighteen, and a late bloomer at that. White letters across his chest read: AUGERS? I squint. No, RUTGERS. He’s a college kid—like Josh, who also seemed very young.
“I just haven’t seen anyone else in so long,” he says. He’s staring at me as though to prove his point.
I cannot trust him.
“Look for someone else,” I say, and I resume walking.
“Where are you going?”
He is walking beside me. When I don’t answer him, he asks, “Can I have something to drink?”
I gather all the generosity I can muster. “There’s a gas station around the bend. Get your own.”
“Will you wait for me?”
I stop and squint at him again. He must have been difficult to cast.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll wait.”
His eyes widen with exaggerated emotion—I think it’s supposed to look like joy. “Around the bend?” he asks.
“Around the bend.”
“You’ll be here?”
I nod.
He begins to jog, shooting glances back at me every few steps. He morphs into a red blur and disappears around the bend. I imagine him sprinting toward sustenance, taking his role seriously.
I wait a few more seconds then slip into the woods. I do my best not to leave a trail, though anyone with a tracker’s eye could see where I passed through the tall grass. This kid doesn’t seem like he has a tracker’s eye, but he might have access to the cameras. A radio and GPS. I move slowly, but it doesn’t matter. I’m carrying too much to be quiet and I keep stepping on crisp sticks and crunching leaves that are impossible for me to avoid. A blind man could find me. Maybe I should stop moving at all, but then I wouldn’t be getting closer, I’d be stuck here and—
An anguished, wordless howl echoes through the woods.
I pause, momentum banging my water bottle against my hip. I hear another howl and can tell from the intonation that this one contains words, though I can’t interpret them. I tell myself not to go back, and then I do. I leave the woods. As soon as I emerge, I see him. The road here is straight and I have not gone far. He runs toward me, sharpening as he nears.
“You said you’d wait,” he cries. His eyes are red and his dirty cheeks are river deltas drawn to scale.
He’s a better actor than I figured.
“I’m here,” I say. “Where’s your stuff?”
“I dropped it,” he says. “When I saw you weren’t there.”
I walk with him to collect his provisions. They’ve spilled from plastic bags he must have found behind the counter. Bottles and cans and oblong packages lie all over the road, some still rolling.
“You don’t have a backpack?”