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The rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle by the time her crew was ready to hike down the mountain. The normally small tarns on the plateau below the lookout had merged into larger ponds, and as they sloshed down the muddy trail, they could hear rushing water in creeks to all sides. Mist obscured Mount Baker, so it was either still raining or snowing at altitudes that were only slightly higher. The clouds overhead were thick, but with luck, the major precipitation would stick to the slopes of the volcano.
After reaching their scheduled camp, they breakfasted on last night’s dinner, which vaguely resembled spaghetti carbonara. Then Sam awarded Nick, Olivia, and Gabriel their Navigator necklaces, for their adult behavior and contributions last night to the welfare of the group. She wanted all her crew kids to finish on the highest level; they deserved it.
Precipitation continued in the form of sporadic drizzle, but Sam decided that was part of the outdoor experience, so they all donned their rain gear and spent the day learning search techniques. These mainly consisted of spiraling out from the place last seen as best as possible given the rough terrain, marking off search quadrants and exploring new ones. She divided them into three teams, with Nick, Olivia, and Gabriel as leaders.
“Safety first,” she stressed. “You never want to lose a search volunteer.”
Aidan and Maya took turns getting lost, and the whole crew seemed to enjoy finding them again, blowing their whistles to alert everyone else when they did. Ashley was astute enough to look up and spot Maya in the branches of tree, and Nick and Taylor, a team of two, simultaneously discovered Aidan hiding between boulders.
The search exercises were strenuous but fun. Sam was proud of her crew. They’d been on their own for hours during the day, and they’d all shouldered the responsibility well. Reflecting back to their first day together when Justin and Taylor had been so uncooperative and the rest so hostile, she knew they’d all come a long way.
In the evenings, around the campfire, came the most difficult times. Sharing, urging the kids to plan for their futures. The exercises were carefully sequenced by the company counselors to prepare the teens for the end of the program.
Taylor, Gabriel, and Justin seemed reasonably optimistic about getting back to the real world. Nick, Olivia, and Ashley were unwilling to share their plans, but Sam believed they were strong enough now to at least begin coping with whatever awaited them at home.
After dinner, they sat in their usual circle, struggling with the daily matter of entertainment for the evening. Gabriel suggested the question game again, which was quickly vetoed. Then they discussed marbles, but dismissed that as well because of the lack of appropriate pebbles in their location. Swordfighting with sticks was proposed by Justin and seconded by Nick and Ashley.
“No way,” Sam said. “The first one to pick up a stick gets demoted to zombie.”
Taylor stood up, dusting off her pants. “Bocce!”
They all stared at her.
“Bocce ball,” she said. “I’ve played it before. There’s even a court in my neighborhood. It’s sort of like bowling, except without the pins. All you need is four balls apiece and an extra one that looks different for a marker.”
Gabriel, Nick, Justin, and Olivia pushed themselves to their feet and started the hunt for bocce ball-sized rocks. Maya and Aidan rose to keep them within sight.
“No, no,” Taylor said in the distance, “Best would be baseball size rocks.”
Ashley elected not to participate and instead sat with her back against a log, frowning, her journal open in her lap and a pen in her hand. Sam went to her tent and pulled out her own notebook to write about the happenings of the day.
Within a half hour, the crew had marked the boundaries of a bocce ball court with twigs, located a mostly white rock that Taylor called the pallino, and were enthusiastically tossing their rocks toward it. The three rocks that ended up the closest to the pallino scored a point, and the teens had decided that ten points won the game. There were occasional arguments about which balls belonged to whom, which was not surprising given that the “balls” were all rocks, and most rocks in the area were similar. When Sam looked up, Taylor was in the lead with seven points, followed by Justin and Gabriel, both with six. Olivia and Nick had four.
Nick lobbed his rock toward the white one, but tossed too hard, and overshot. His rock collided with another on the outside of the mass and then ricocheted away, ending up completely off the makeshift court.
Justin guffawed. “Gex, Lightning, that was pathetic. You couldn’t hit an elephant if it was standing on your foot!”
Clenching his jaw, Nick snatched his last rock from the ground beside his feet and pitched it hard overhand at Justin. The rock struck the larger boy squarely in the forehead with an audible thud.
“Shit!” Justin dropped to his backside in the dirt. Blood gushed from his face.
Holy crap. Sam rolled to her knees, dumping her notebook into the dirt. In her peripheral vision she saw Maya and Aidan running toward the bocce game.
Justin was on his feet again before Sam or her peer counselors could reach the kids. Taylor and Olivia rushed toward their tents, Ashley and Gabriel froze in place at the side of the court, and Nick stood his ground as Justin charged and punched him in the face so hard that the smaller boy fell sideways to the ground.
Sam’s pulse was galloping as she positioned herself between the two boys. To think that only a few minutes ago she had been congratulating herself on how well her crew was getting along.
Maya helped Nick up, then dragged him off into the woods. Aidan and Sam restrained Justin, each hanging onto one of his arms, until he unclenched his fists. Then Sam doctored the big kid’s face as he sat on a stump. Her hands were trembling as she cleaned the gash with antiseptic, closed it with butterfly bandages, and then taped a large gauze rectangle on top. The gauze patch was quickly dotted with seeping blood. It was scary how copiously facial wounds bled.
“You’ll have a big bruise.” She placed the last piece of tape next to his left eyebrow. “But that will just add to your brawny appeal, Justin. Goes with the dragon tattoo.”
Justin’s fists were clenched in his lap. “That little shithead. He’s gonna pay.”
How quickly that situation had gone to hell. Probably wasn’t a good idea to encourage games that involved rocks. And who would have guessed that Nick would strike the first blow?
She examined Justin’s eyes with a penlight. Equal pupil size right and left, thank heavens. “We’ve got almost three days to go, Justin. Three days you and Nick have to spend together.”
Reaching a hand up, he pressed his fingertips to the bandage on his brow, wincing. “I’ll pound that shrimp into the dirt.”
She rested a hand on Justin’s shoulder. Her fingers were weak from adrenaline; but under her grip the boy felt like a solid knot of muscles. “I can understand why you feel that way, and you have reason to be mad. But you did insult him first. And what would beating up Nick accomplish?”
He glared at her like she was a dimwit. “Respect.”
“I know about your past, Justin. Do you want to end up in jail?”
He bristled. “I can’t let anyone get away with—”
“Justin, do you respect your father?”
The teen scowled at her for a moment more, his eyes burning. Then he lowered his gaze to his lap. His pants had dark splashes of blood on the thighs. “Gex.”
After a few minutes more, Nick and Maya were back, both uncertainly watching Justin. The smaller boy’s cheek and jaw were swollen, the blotchy redness already giving way to purple. Maya, her gaze fixed on Nick, jerked her chin toward Justin.
“Sorry.” Nick’s voice was barely audible.
“You should be,” Justin snarled. He stared over Nick’s head into the distance.
“I wanted you to see that I can aim,” Nick said.
Justin snorted and faced the other boy. “I was kidding, for chrissakes. Why the gex are you so sensitive?”
Nick turned on his heel, shooting a look at Maya. “I’ll be in my tent.” He strode off.
Sam pondered for a minute whether or not to insist that Justin apologize to Nick for punching him, but decided to leave the situation alone. After kicking apart the bocce ball court to keep the campsite as pristine as possible, the kids read or wrote in their journals and eventually went to bed.
Sam fretted. Should she take away the two boys’ Navigator status? Would she be held liable for Justin’s and Nick’s injuries? Would Troy? The poor man had enough trouble. She didn’t want to tell him what had happened, but postponing the news could potentially get her in more trouble, so after asking Aidan to check on Justin during the night to be sure he wasn’t concussed and unconscious, she carried her phone into the woods to report in.
“Don’t worry,” Troy reassured her. “As long as they’re ambulatory when we give them back, the parents are usually grateful. We had one who ended up in a sling after dislocating his shoulder.”
“It all happened so fast. I never expected it.” She felt for the parents of these teens. “Nick is so quiet most of the time.”
“You have to remember that they’re broken when we get them, Sam. And neither the parents nor the kids are ever totally honest about all their hot buttons.” There was a pause. “Kim was better at drawing them out than I’ll ever be.”
Sam knew how he felt. The rock throwing incident would probably not have happened if Kyla had been in charge. “I never saw it coming, Troy. They were all getting along so well. And we’re so close to the end.”
“Sometimes that’s when they’re the most self-destructive, Sam. Some of them don’t want to go home.”
“Is it safe to do the final solo campout tomorrow night?”
“That’s the program. Put Nick and Justin as far apart as you can. And then watch ‘em like a hawk.”
Lovely, she thought. She stashed her cell phone back in her pocket and began the trudge back to camp. She studied the sky. The clouds had briefly risen during the evening, but now they’d lowered again. There would be no stars and no moon visible tonight. The dreariness matched her mood.
She was a very weary hawk.
