It’s done now though. I close my eyes and finish the job, then breathe in the cool air rushing into the tent through the gaping flap.
Huff, huff, huff. I freeze, scanning the camp through the crack. God, it’s so dark. I see flashes of movement that melt into blackness. It’s making other sounds. Somewhere on the other side of camp, behind the tents across from ours. Scraping, pushing, short bellows that send the hair up on the back of my neck.
Where is Lucas? He should be here. I step out, and a warm hand covers my mouth from behind. I bite and scream at the same time. Lucas yelps, and I whirl. There’s huffing again. Oh God, it’s close. So close I swear I can feel the heat of the bear’s breath.
It’s not the bear. It’s Lucas. He clamps his hands onto my arms and turns me, and I can finally see it. Not a shadow or a smear of darkness. A bear.
It’s across from us. Mr. Walker said black bears are small, but it’s not. Maybe for a bear, he’s right, but it’s not even thirty feet away from me, looking like a mass of fur and teeth that could tear me into bits and pieces like our pile of stuff.
I think of the vultures I saw earlier, the sinewy something in its beak. My mouth opens, a scream tearing its way up my throat. But then Lucas’s hands squeeze my biceps again, and I stuff it down deep.
“There are three of them,” he whispers.
“Three?” That’s why I’m hearing it everywhere.
“Mom and two cubs. Just stay still.” I try to duck my head, but he gives me a little shake. “Keep your eyes on her. Don’t look away.”
The bear snuffles. I see another splash of black, smaller than the first. And then another. They are scampering over in an area behind Mr. Walker’s tent now, noses rooting through the grass like we left something over there. But we didn’t. There wasn’t anything to leave.
“Go back inside the tent,” he says.
And sit there in the dark listening and wondering? Sure. I shake my head violently.
Lucas reaches down and zips my tent tight. It’s not much defense for Emily, but I’m glad he’s trying.
“Should we wake the others?” I ask.
“Not unless we have to.”
A barking grunt rips through the air, and I cringe. Mama bear raises up on her haunches, and my whole body quakes. She sees us. I’m sure she sees us.
“Don’t look away,” Lucas whispers. “Keep your eyes on her.”
My knees shake, but I do it, eyes open and bladder on the verge of total failure. She lifts her long brown nose high, testing the air around her. I clench my teeth and pray I don’t smell like food.
Finally, she’s down to all fours again. My shoulders droop.
“Do you think—”
Another growl cuts me off, this time near Mr. Walker’s tent. We step sideways around the camp to put distance between ourselves and the bear. Inside the tent, he groans. I turn, staring so hard at the tent, I half expect it to move an inch from the pressure of my eyes. There’s nothing. Quiet. Maybe I imagined it.
Then another very human groan. It sounds like Hello?
“Mr. Walker,” I whisper.
“No, Sera.”
A shrill cry comes from my right. One of the cubs is wandering our way. No, no, no.
Lucas swears softly under his breath, but I loop my arm through his and start walking backward out of camp.
“Go slow. Don’t run,” he says.
I pause, looking at our teacher’s tent, my voice dropped to a whisper. “I heard Mr. Walker.”
“You probably heard one of the bears,” he replies just as softly.
Something rustles inside Mr. Walker’s tent. A groan and a thud. The bear hears him, scuttles back and then forward, with lots of loud, angry chuffs. She’s agitated, I think. Mr. Walker goes quiet in his tent. He must hear the bear, right?
I start to edge closer. The mother bear lopes behind Mr. Walker’s tent, and the cub we saw patters closer to us. Lucas snags my arm.
“We have to get out of here,” he says. “That cub is too close. If the mother sees us…”
He doesn’t need to explain. Every sound those animals make is ratcheting my shoulders closer to my ears. Still…
“What do we do about the others?”
“Hope to God they’re smart enough to stay in their tents if they wake up.”
It’s the slowest version of running away I’ve ever known. One step. Another. The cub moves closer to us. Another few steps back. I can’t see Mr. Walker’s tent now. Or Jude and Lucas’s. I can only see mine and Emily’s, dark and silent in the night.
We stop by a large oak, listening to the bears moving around the camp. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear the soft hush of the river. We’re caught between two terrors, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop shaking.
My vision’s gone smeary. The darkness swirls dead leaves into monsters, the ground into a living carpet. I stay close to Lucas and try not to think of what happened earlier at the river. But when I close my eyes, it’s all I see.
“The bears could come back this way,” I whisper.
“We’ll wait and listen.” Lucas isn’t shaking. He’s warm and calm. Everything I am not.