Her strangled whisper caught in her throat. She could barely hear her own voice.

“Bear!” she tried again.

The words were quiet and harsh.

Lavender took a step back, almost tripping over a rock as the bear emerged the rest of the way from the bush. She heard a weird little whimper coming from her throat. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her hands clutching her neck like a choking person, which was strangely appropriate. Lavender felt like she was choking. The pulse in her neck pounded so hard, she thought it might explode.

Cartoon bears and teddy bears and caged bears at the zoo … none of these did justice to the creature in front of Lavender. “Black bears are small,” Mr. Bob had reassured the class when they first arrived at camp. Well, Mr. Bob was a noodle head. What did he know?

The monster in front of her looked like it could swallow Lavender’s entire face in one bite. It had claws and teeth, and Lavender was not about to fight back no matter what Mr. Bob had recommended. His words parroted through Lavender’s mind in a cruel parody of reality. At camp, surrounded by friends and teachers, she’d almost thought it was funny when he told them: “If you keep your campsite clean and lock up your food, you are not likely to see a bear. If one does attack, do not play dead and do not run. They will chase. We have black bears here, and the best way to deal with a black bear is to scare it off. Use bear spray; make yourself look bigger. If attacked, fight. But for the most part, black bears are not aggressive.”

Too bad this bear had missed the memo about not being aggressive. Too bad Lavender didn’t have any bear spray. Too bad she didn’t have a secure location like a car conveniently nearby.

Maybe there were cubs around. That would explain why the bear was rising to its rear legs. If Lavender thought the bear seemed large before, that was nothing compared to how it looked now. The bear towered over Lavender and made a deep huffing noise, snapping its teeth and rumbling, low and loud.

“It’s a bear!” Lavender finally found her voice, shrieking loud enough for her friends to hear. John, Marisol, and Rachelle gasped as they finally noticed that Lavender was about to become a midmorning snack.

The bear, still snorting and growling, took a step toward Lavender. She wanted to run. All her instincts told her to run. With every molecule and every atom that made her Lavender Hypatia Blue-Morris, she wanted to run. She wanted to sprint. She wanted to fly out of there. She didn’t care if Mr. Bob had said that she wouldn’t be able to outrun a bear; she wanted to try.

Only she couldn’t.

Lavender’s brain was no longer in control of her legs. They simply would not listen. She felt as if the force of gravity had suddenly quadrupled around her. Lavender didn’t have enough strength in her entire body to lift a single toe, never mind run.

The bear was not having any similar issues with gravity. It took a step toward her.

“Lavender, do something!” Rachelle shrieked.

Like what? For once, Lavender was open to suggestions … even if they came from Rachelle.

Too frightened to look away from the animal, Lavender could hear her friends’ feet shuffling through the brush. Were they backing away? Abandoning her?

The bear, which had been briefly distracted by the sound of her friends, now refocused on Lavender, making more of the rumbling, huffing noises. The bear went down on its front legs again and started charging straight at her.

Lavender heard herself start whimpering again. She shut her eyes and braced herself for the attack, hoping that when she felt the first claw she would be able to move again. If she was going to go down, she wanted to go down fighting. She wondered what it would feel like when its paw swiped her skin. Lavender liked her skin how it was: whole and unshredded. She tried not to the think about the pain when those teeth and claws ripped into her.

A warm, foul huff hit her face. She knew if she opened her eyes, she would be only centimeters away from those razor-sharp teeth. Lavender squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. This was how her life ended. She never imagined it would be so gruesome. Or so smelly. Or so soon.

“Go away!”

“Get out of here!”

“Shoo, bear. Shoo!”

A chorus of shouts startled Lavender into opening her eyes. The noise must have startled the bear, too, because the hot, stinky breath disappeared from her face as the animal drew back from her. Suddenly it charged around Lavender and ran at the others. She spun around in time to see the bear heading for John, Marisol, and Rachelle. They were spread out in a semicircle, a few feet from one another, shouting and yelling. Rachelle held John’s jacket above her head, and she shook it. John was waving around his red hoodie. Marisol was simply waving her arms.

“Watch out!” Lavender called.

Rachelle fell back a couple of steps as the bear bore down on them.

“No!” said John. “Hold your ground. It’ll chase if you run.”

Rachelle stopped yelling, but she kept the jacket above her head, looking as tall as possible. For a heartbeat, Lavender thought Rachelle was going to be the one who wound up as bear food.

But John started jumping up and down.

“Yo, bear, over here! Leave her alone!” John waved his hoodie.

The bear stopped, switched directions, and ran a few steps at John.

“Stop it, bear! Don’t bother him.” Now Marisol shouted, distracting the bear from John.

The bear looked toward Marisol.

Rachelle found her voice again. “Go away.” She repeated the words again and again. Lavender watched as they worked seamlessly to call at the bear and distract it over and over.

A knot eased in her chest, and she found herself able to speak.

“Get out of here, bear! Shoo!” Lavender screamed.

Maybe Mr. Bob knew something after all. The yelling and intimidation seemed to work. Without any warning, the black bear suddenly dodged past Rachelle and ran a little way downhill before it threw its paws around a trunk and started climbing a tree with a speed and skill that astonished Lavender.

The four of them stood, watching.

Marisol broke the shocked silence: “You guys, we did it.”

Lavender’s legs gave out. She collapsed in a heap in the dirt.

And just when she thought she could not be any more shocked by a turn of events, Rachelle was first to dash to Lavender’s side.

“Are you okay?” Rachelle asked, grabbing Lavender by the cheeks and looking in her eyes.

Lavender tried to nod, which was difficult with Rachelle’s death grip on her cheeks. “I think so. Are you?” Lavender managed to ask.

Rachelle let go of Lavender with a nervous chuckle. “I doubt I’ll ever be okay again after this field trip.”

“No kidding?” Lavender heard herself laugh back. “I think we got the science campout from the bad place.”

“Is everyone all right?” Marisol flung herself at the two of them, giving Rachelle and Lavender no choice but to join her in a group hug.

John reached them next, still glancing over his shoulder toward the tree the bear had climbed. “That was awesome!” he said. “But I really think we should—”

Marisol interrupted him, leaping up to give him a quick hug, too.

“John, you saved us,” she said. Marisol looked at Lavender, who was still on the ground next to Rachelle. “You were probably too distracted by the bear to hear him, but it was his idea to make ourselves look bigger and try to scare it, and it worked. Can you believe it? We actually worked together to scare off a bear? We did that. We scared off a bear.”

“Everyone helped,” John said with a quick smile, before looking over at the bear tree. “Don’t you guys think we should keep moving? Before it comes back down.”

Lavender nodded. As shaken as she was, Lavender still wanted to put as much distance between them and the bear as humanly possible.

“What about finding cactus?” Marisol asked.

“Right this second, I’d say getting away from that bear is more important,” John said.

“Good point,” Marisol said.

Rachelle stood and offered Lavender a hand. Lavender took it.

“Let’s hurry,” John said.

No one was going to argue with that. Together, the four began walking uphill toward the mountain, as fast and far away from the black bear as their legs could carry them.