“This is nuts,” Rachel said hoarsely. “You’re all going to shit yourselves to death.”
“So what? At least we won’t be thirsty.” I practically ran down to join the others. The water tasted like slate, algae, sunlight. I couldn’t get enough of it. I gobbled it up; drank to the point of nausea before I lifted my head, dizzy, my vision blurring for a moment before my thirst headache began to dissipate. The forest looked monstrously heavy in the lowering light, seeming to sprout more green before my eyes. I felt it waiting to engulf us, ingest us. One water shoe badly torn, Rachel limped down to join us on the lower rock stair but did not take a sip of water.
“It’s crazy to go back the way we came,” Pia said between gulps of river water. “Plus, we’d be climbing uphill. The raft has to be close by.”
“We don’t know that,” Rachel said. “What if it’s washed another twenty miles downstream? Then we’re fucked!”
Pia came up to her elbows, seemed to think it over. “We’re more fucked if we try to go back and we can’t get to where we started. Look”—she got to her feet—“whatever decision we make, it has to be the right one, do you know what I mean? There’s no time to make the wrong decision. It could kill us.” A few horrible moments for that to sink in. “And come on, Rachel, really, do you remember it that well? Where we put in? Would you recognize it?”
“Wouldn’t you? I guess you were a little distracted.”
Pia flipped a hand in the air, dismissing the remark. “Sandra, would you know it if you saw it?”
“I think so,” she said from under her battered helmet. “I remember the little island.”
“Wini?”
I squinted at the trees and rocks and bruised-looking sky upriver. “It all looks the same to me. We’ve seen so many of those little islands, haven’t we? I think we need to go after the raft.”
“Then it’s decided,” Rachel said. “Me and Loo head upstream to try to get help. You and Pia try for the raft.”
We looked at each other. A tiny, pitiful nation of four about to be made smaller and weaker still.
“Are you nuts?” Pia said, reading my mind. “It’ll be dark in no time and you guys’ll be somewhere in the middle of freaking nowhere, and we’ll be in another part of nowhere, equally screwed. We stay together, that’s it. End of story.”
Rachel paced in a tight circle, hugging herself. “I don’t know. I don’t want to die in this place. This is . . .” She ground her fists into her forehead. “This was not my idea, this—this disaster, just so Pia could have her big fucking adventure.” She threw her hands up toward the sky. “Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t just go someplace safe and comfortable where we could all relax and hang out and maybe even live through it.” Her voice clogged with tears. “No, that wouldn’t have worked at all. Anything fun or sane like that.”
Pia gazed down at the silvery water, hands stuffed in vest pockets, statue-still. Exhaustion and shock beginning to show on all of us; the pallor of our skin, even our ability to argue.
But we couldn’t all be down for the count. Not now.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to say something, even though the words felt bizarrely gung ho coming out of my mouth. “Well, sorry, kids, we’re not in Aruba. We’re not sitting on the deck by the ocean drinking cosmos and watching the sun set. So let’s get our shit together.”
“Maybe go have some water,” Sandra said. “It helps a lot.”
But Rachel had caved in to her tears now, though none of us seemed moved to comfort her.
“We go downstream and look for the raft,” Pia said. “All of us.”
? ? ?
I think Rachel had the worst time of it. She scrambled along the bank close behind me, barely able to see through her one lens and still refusing to drink. Pia took the lead, sometimes so far up ahead and out of sight I was worried and pissed off at the same time. Ahead of me Sandra moved doggedly along, making small moaning sounds as she pulled herself from place to place. At times we had to detour into the woods, never daring to go out of earshot of the river.
The sky turned gunmetal gray. I could taste the rain coming on the air. After a wretchedly cold hour-long slog, we half stumbled onto Pia, who had come upon an inlet of sorts. A brief stretch of beach walled off by forest on three sides. Above us, a hawk circled in the dying light of the sky, threaded through the tops of the trees, and disappeared.
“We better stop here for the night,” Pia said. We couldn’t have gone more than half a mile from where Rory lay, but she was right. We could barely make out our hands in front of our faces. “Let’s gather whatever we can to cover ourselves.”
Like Rory, she didn’t need to say—I thought it anyway. We cleared brush and the stones we could lift from our tiny camp so we could all stretch out a bit or at least sit next to each other, then arranged a few branches and sticks into the crudest of lean-tos. Behind us the land and forest rose steeply up, blacker than any night I had ever seen.
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