So, there I was, lost in the middle of a huge forest, and instead of leading the way, as she usually did, Alice was relying on me to show her the way home.
Brilliant.
Totally, totally brilliant.
I looked all around me carefully, trying to find something different, something I’d recognise again, if we walked past it a second time. I was wasting my time though. We were in the middle of a forest, and there was nothing to see except trees.
I took a deep breath, and started to walk. I took my time, concentrating on going in a straight line. Alice walked right behind me, encouraging me, like she did when I was learning to roller-blade.
‘Keep it up, Megan. You’re doing great,’ she kept saying.
And even though I knew I wasn’t doing great, it made me feel a bit better.
Every now and then, a tree would block my path, and I had to carefully walk around it, and then try to keep walking in the same direction as before. Soon Alice began to walk beside me, and I wasn’t so scared any more. For a while it felt like we were just out for any old walk, and that we weren’t lost at all.
We started to chat again.
‘What do you think Melissa would do in this situation?’ asked Alice.
I thought for a minute.
‘Worry that her hair would get messed up by all these branches?’ I said, as I flicked yet another branch out of my face.
Alice laughed.
‘Yeah, or cry because she got a speck of dirt on her sandals.’
We spent a while listing all the stupid things that Melissa would do if she was in our situation, but in the end, we both ran out of ideas. Then I started to get scared again. My legs were getting tired too.
‘Let’s stop for a while,’ I said.
Alice shook her head.
‘Maybe we should keep going,’ she said.
And that’s when I realised that she was scared too.
And that’s when I started to get very, very scared.
Alice is the bravest girl I’ve ever known.
And if Alice was scared, then, things were very, very, very bad.
I pulled Alice’s arm, and made her stop.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Are we even sure that we’re going in a straight line?’
‘Of course we are,’ said Alice. ‘I think.’
I looked up through the trees, but there was still no sign of the sun. I tried not to sound too scared.
‘Let’s be double careful,’ I said. ‘Let’s both watch out and make sure that we are walking in a straight line. OK?’
Alice nodded.
‘OK.’
And so we walked some more.
Much, much later, when I felt like my legs were going to fall off, I stopped and leaned against a tree.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t this tree look familiar to you?’
Alice sighed.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s a tree. It’s green and brown, just like all the others.’
‘Look properly,’ I said. ‘Look at this broken branch. Haven’t we seen this before?’
Alice shook her head.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. There’s lots of trees with broken branches.’
I looked around. Alice was right. There were lots of trees just like this one. I thought hard.
‘We should leave a trail,’ I said.
‘Like Hansel and Gretel? They used crumbs, didn’t they? We don’t have any bread. And if we did, I wouldn’t scatter it on the ground, I’d eat it.’
‘Yeah, but Hansel and Gretel used pebbles first, remember?’
‘But there are no pebbles here either.’
Once again she was right. There wasn’t a single stone to be seen. Except for Alice and me, there was nothing to be seen except for trees and mossy stuff.
We had to do something though. We had to know if we were walking in a straight line. Suddenly I had an idea. I reached up and broke two twigs off a tree.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘How about if we put these on the ground in a cross shape, and that will leave a trail?’
‘That’s a great idea,’ said Alice, and for one second I felt proud, before I started to feel scared again.
Alice reached up and pulled off loads of twigs.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘You go first, and we can do every second one.’
And so we continued to walk, marking our path every few metres with two crossed twigs. After a while, my hands were cut from breaking twigs, my back was sore from bending down making the crosses, and my legs felt like I’d been walking for about a hundred years.
I stopped to catch my breath.
‘What time is it?’ I asked.
Alice looked at her stupid fancy watch that didn’t have a compass.
‘It’s ten past five,’ she said.
That was very bad news. Even if we found our bikes immediately, we wouldn’t be back home by six. Mum was going to kill us.
‘Alice––’ I began, but she interrupted me.
‘Let’s keep walking for ten more minutes, and then we’ll stop for a rest. OK?’
I nodded. All I wanted to do was get out of there, and get home as fast as I could.
Just then Alice stopped so suddenly that I crashed into her.
‘That wasn’t ten minutes, was it?’ I said.
Alice didn’t reply.
‘Why have we stopped?’ I asked.
Instead of replying, she pointed down at the ground.
I followed her pointed finger, and gulped. There on the ground in front of Alice, were two neatly crossed twigs.
‘Maybe someone else did that,’ I suggested. ‘Or maybe they just fell off the tree like that.’
Alice walked a few metres and pointed again – two more neatly crossed twigs. I ran past her and saw two more.
I threw myself down on the mossy ground.
‘We’re going around in a circle,’ I said, trying not to cry.
‘Remind me again why Hansel and Gretel left a trail,’ said Alice.
‘So they could follow it home,’ I said.
‘So starting it when …’ she began.
I finished her sentence for her.
‘… we were already lost was a total waste of time. If we follow these twigs, we’ll just end up walking in an endless circle. It was a stupid, stupid idea. I am so dumb sometimes.’
Alice sat down and put her arm around me.
‘You’re not dumb,’ she said. ‘You’re the cleverest girl I know.’
‘So why did I suggest a stupid trail then?’ I asked.
‘Well, at least now we know we’re walking around in circles,’ she said.
‘And knowing that will help us how exactly?’
‘Weeeell,’ said Alice slowly. ‘Now we know that we have to do something different.’
‘Like what?’
Alice put her head down.
‘Sorry, Meg,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.’
Neither of us said anything for a while. Suddenly I jumped up. ‘We are so totally stupid,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t we think of it before?’
‘Think of what?’
‘Why don’t we just use your phone and phone someone for help?’
Alice still kept her head down.
‘I’m out of credit, remember? I used the last of it to text Grace in Lanzarote the other day.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But even without credit you can phone the police. Even I know that.’
Alice still didn’t look up.
‘I know that too, but because I’m out of credit, I left my phone back at the house. I didn’t see any point in bringing it.’
I sat down again. I didn’t want to think of Grace having fun in Lanzarote, but I couldn’t help it.
‘I bet you wish you were in Lanzarote now,’ I said.
Alice looked up at last and gave me a small smile.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Who needs Lanzarote? I’d be happy to be back at your place, running around the garden, playing with Rosie.’
Suddenly that sounded like the best thing in the whole world – just being out of this forest, and safe again.
And it also felt like the most impossible thing in the whole world.