It doesn’t take long to part ways. Aidan splits what gear and resources they have, sending Devin and Sheridan with clothes, jackets, and tarps. They leave Ethan’s unopened package of meals with Ollie’s group and Sheridan takes the rest. Devin keeps the full firewood sling and Ollie keeps the ax. Sheridan takes the larger, more detailed map. Aidan keeps the milestone-specific map.
With a sinking feeling in her gut, Devin says goodbye.
Shockingly, their hike from camp is silent. Devin expects nonstop torment, but for most of the afternoon, Sheridan is unnervingly quiet. She extracts the map from her backpack every hour or so to check where they’re going, but makes no comments. If Sheridan notices the way the terrain shifts around them as they ascend, she says nothing. They crawl from thick patches of rough woods, trees pressed so close together their roots twine like knotted fingers, into great brown ridges completely barren save for a handful of scraggly bushes.
Finally, when they crest a particularly steep ridge at the mountainside, Sheridan collapses.
It isn’t graceful or slow. Her knees hit the dirt, palm hard against the ground, backpack toppled at her side. She chokes and wipes her mouth. The sun is low on the horizon, but it still glares tangerine between them.
“Jesus,” Devin says, pivoting back to pull Sheridan to her feet. “What happened?”
“What happened is I’m tired,” Sheridan snaps. Instead of taking Devin’s hand, Sheridan bats the help away and hauls herself up. “I don’t wanna walk anymore. Let’s camp here.”
Devin narrows her eyes. They’ve only been walking for a few hours. It’s less than any other day of the program, and it’s certainly not on pace if they want to make it to the square in two days. Sheridan should be used to this kind of exercise by now. Maybe they’ve been mostly hiking flat terrain, but a slight incline shouldn’t do this to her.
“It’s not even dark out,” Devin says. “We could go another few hours. Then we’d have less to hike tomorrow.”
“No.” Sheridan lifts her shoulder to work out a tight muscle. “I’m tired.”
“I’m tired, too.” As Devin says it, she feels the tightness of impending exhaustion in her ribs. “But I’ll push through if it means I don’t have to hike all day tomorrow. That’s common sense.”
“To you.”
“To anyone.”
Sheridan rolls her eyes. She unzips her backpack to pull out the map. In silence, she traces a line along the mountains before tapping a dark spot. “I think we’re about ten miles from the square. If this thing is actually populated—”
Devin blinks. “If?”
“Well, yeah.” Sheridan huffs. “I’m not a park ranger. I don’t even really know where we are. I said it was our best bet.”
Devin sinks onto a nearby boulder. She presses her face into her grimy hands and decides she’s not going to freak out. She’s going to be rational. This isn’t new information. Sheridan is right; she’s not any more familiar with these woods than Devin is, she’s just better at maps. They should take a break and save their strength for tomorrow. But this isn’t how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to be doing this alone.
The sun sits even lower on the horizon now, purpling the light across the ridge. She wants to find it beautiful here, but it’s suffocating. The wind is sharper than it was when they began. Night will set in soon and that’s it. It’ll be just Devin, Sheridan, and the dark.
“Let’s do another mile,” Devin says, voice cracking. “Or hike until it’s dark. I just want to go a little farther, okay?”
Sheridan shakes her head. “I’m out.”
“You literally can’t do any more?”
“I don’t want to.”
“God, I wish you stayed behind,” Devin snaps.
Sheridan laughs, a sound that makes Devin nauseous. She flips her hair over her shoulder. “Why? So you could get lost on your own?”
“I’d rather be lost.”
Sheridan offers a condescending smile and starts pulling packets of food from her backpack, muttering something about starting a fire. Devin doesn’t quite hear it, eyes locking on the contents of Sheridan’s backpack. It’s fuller than it should be, stuffed to the brim with shiny plastic packets. It’s so full that a few of the packets slide and land with a thud in the dirt.
“Where did you get all that?” Devin asks.
“Peace offering,” Sheridan says, ignoring the question. She tosses a packet to Devin with a smile. “I grabbed your favorite.”
Devin catches the packet and turns it over in her hands. MEXICAN-STYLE CHICKEN STEW. Sheridan’s right that it’s her favorite, but something doesn’t add up. They were down to only a few packs left at base camp. Even if they opened the brand-new pouch from Ethan’s backpack, Sheridan shouldn’t have this much food. She shouldn’t—
“—and I noticed you always go for the spicier stuff,” Sheridan says, a continuation of something Devin didn’t hear. “I also grabbed—”
“Did you steal these?” Devin asks.
Sheridan looks up. The purple light makes her eyes glow like moonlit water. She looks into her backpack then back at Devin. “Define steal.”
“Oh my god,” Devin says. “Why would you…?”
“You could also say thank you.”
“How much did you take?”
Sheridan shrugs.
Devin stands, fists at her sides, and she’s trying—she’s trying—to tamp down the anger. But when Sheridan looks at her with that careless expression Devin nearly combusts. It’s Ollie’s almost-drowning all over again. Sheridan doesn’t care. Devin imagines the other group when they realize what’s happened. When they run out of food and go hungry. They’re supposed to be on the safe path, and now they’re going to starve. She wants to grab Sheridan by the matted, knotty spill of her hair and drag her over the ridge.
“Jesus, they’ll be fine,” Sheridan says. “I took all the cheese tortellini. And the chicken stew. And some other stuff, but who cares. We’re the ones doing the hard part. We’re hiking up a fucking mountain to help them. We get more food.”
“There’s three of them,” Devin says. “There’s only two of us. They need more than we do.”
“But—”
“And you lied to them.” Devin closes her eyes. A cool breeze runs up over the ridge, hard and fast enough to rock the trees behind them. It’s firmly night now, the sun only a hazy glow of pink at the horizon. “I watched you figure out the food with Aidan. You lied to him.”
“Who cares?” Sheridan laughs.
“I care.”
“Well, that’s the last time I do anything for you,” Sheridan says. “Are you making the fire, or do I have to?”
Devin bites down on the inside of her cheek until she tastes iron. She eyes the huddle of trees behind them and sighs. Her anger slowly curdles into disgust. When she speaks, she doesn’t look at Sheridan.
“Make it yourself,” Devin says. “And keep the food. I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, god,” Sheridan says. “This seems dramatic.”
“It’s gonna be cold. I’m sleeping by the trees.” Devin picks up her backpack. “Sleep out here if you want. I don’t care.”
She makes her way into the trees without looking back. She feels the sharp burn of Sheridan’s glare at her back, but she doesn’t care. She walks until she finds a small clearing in the dark and, with a sheen of cold sweat blanketing her, she sets up her tarp and sleeping bag. If Sheridan starts making a fire, Devin doesn’t hear. If she makes food, Devin doesn’t hear. And if she eventually joins Devin in the trees, Devin doesn’t hear. She ducks her head under the downy lip of her sleeping bag and the world falls silent. When she dreams, she dreams of concrete under her sneakers and mattress springs under her back. Maybe if she’s lucky, she’ll wake up alone. Maybe if she’s luckier, she won’t wake up at all.
As she drifts off to sleep, Devin is certain she hears the dull tap of fingers at the edge of her tarp.
Once Devin and Sheridan are gone, Aidan leads the others from camp, milestone map tight in his grip. He assures Ollie and Hannah that, as a former Boy Scout, he knows the basics of following a map. As long as he sticks to the slightly weathered path through the woods, they can’t go wrong.
They begin their hike and it’s like the world is upside down. Anxiety tightens in Ollie’s chest because this is all wrong. Going off the path would be wrong, too, though. Staying in place would be wrong. He puzzles and reworks the scenario a thousand times, but there is no right answer. He went to bed feeling waterlogged and exhausted but somewhat assured he could make it to the end of these fifty days. And he woke up to this mess.
Aidan leads them down a mossy, dew-damp slope, winding them lower into the woods until they reach a great basin with trees so wide Ollie isn’t sure that all three of them linking arms could reach around. If they really are lost out here, he doubts a helicopter would be able to see them this deep in the trees.
Ollie finds himself staring at the back of Hannah’s head again. He’s been doing it more than he should lately, watching the way a little bit of her hair always falls out of place, the way her shoulders have slackened as the days pass. She’s tense again today, though Ollie imagines that has something to do with their program falling apart on them while they’re miles deep in the woods. There’s a part of Ollie—especially in the silent hours—that wonders if he might’ve been friends with Hannah in the real world.
She isn’t like Devin, the kind of kid that was always orbiting his group of friends because similarities drew them together. Meeting Hannah feels like lightning in a bottle. She’s an impossibility for the Ollie who suffered his way through life back home, but now she’s here, a few feet in front of him, dodging low-hanging branches and roots that grab for her ankles.
“Hey,” Ollie says, jogging a little to match Hannah’s pace. She doesn’t look up at him, but she doesn’t pull ahead, either. “How’re you feeling?”
“You know. Pretty bad.” Hannah laughs, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Yeah.”
“I know Aidan thinks this is all part of the program, but I just feel like…” She pauses, contemplating. “I don’t know. It’s all off.”
They’ve lost almost half their group to the woods, and if animals don’t get them, Ollie is sure Devin and Sheridan will kill each other within forty-eight hours. If this is a test, they’re going to be in trouble for letting the two of them leave. If it isn’t a test, they’re all doomed anyway. They might have ten days of training in these woods, but his mind flashes back to news reports before school in the morning, blasting the faces of experienced hikers gone missing from routine, well-traveled trails.
“Yeah. I don’t know if we’re making the right choice.” Ollie adjusts his beanie, carefully avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know if we had a right choice.”
“Things got intense,” Hannah says. She looks up, mouth pinched in a pout. “Sorry if I seemed off. I was just … I don’t do great when people start yelling.”
“I’m sorry,” Ollie says quickly. “I hate when stuff gets like that.”
When Hannah closes her eyes, her dark lashes flutter against her cheeks. “You know what I keep thinking about? I didn’t even have to be here.”
Ollie’s eyes snap to Hannah.
“I mean, my dad said I had to go, but they didn’t drive me here. Or fly with me. They dropped me off at the airport with a boarding pass and Liv’s phone number.”
“Wow,” Ollie says. “Wow. You could’ve ditched at the airport.”
“I could have,” Hannah says softly. “I don’t think it would have gone very well. I’m not … I don’t think I’m cut out for life on the road.”
“Maybe not,” Ollie muses. “But you’re in it now.”
“You think I should’ve run?”
“I think your situation is different from mine. Or Devin’s. Like, they had to hire people to kidnap us because they knew we wouldn’t go.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever told my dad no,” Hannah says, more to herself than to Ollie. She looks down like she always does when she’s embarrassed. “How do you, like … live in the same house after that? After a big fight?”
Ollie considers. “I just leave. When I come back, he’s usually calmed down and we just go back to what we were doing.”
“You don’t talk about it?”
“I guess not.”
Hannah nods like she doesn’t realize she’s lobbed a Molotov cocktail into Ollie’s brain. He tries to remember a single time he walked away from an argument and then discussed it with his father later. He tries to remember a single resolution they came to together. But that’s not how Ollie’s father works. He’s a reactor. He blows up at what he sees and, once he’s sky high, it doesn’t matter what you say to calm him down. He’s like a storm, raging over you and then moving on, leaving only ruins as proof he was there.
“Are you mad at me?” Hannah asks.
It takes Ollie a moment to recalibrate. “Am I mad at you?”
“For the vote.”
“Oh.”
“I wasn’t trying to sabotage Devin. I promise.” Hannah straightens her backpack straps. “I just didn’t think we’d be able to stop her from going. Even if we voted against it, she would’ve just left while we slept.”
Ollie nods. Realistically, Hannah is right. He knows Devin well enough to know that, given the chance, she would’ve gone anyway. She’s been trying to run since the moment they put her in the van next to Ollie. It isn’t enough to ride out the storm together. She has to be free faster, she has to do it alone, and she has to put herself in danger to feel like she’s making the right move.
“It’s fine,” Ollie says. “You’re right.”
“We’ll see them again,” Hannah says. “I don’t think there’s anything out here that can kill Devin. She seems kind of indestructible.”
“I can think of one thing,” Ollie muses. “She took it with her.”
“Yeah,” Hannah says. She doesn’t laugh, but when Ollie chances a look at her, there’s a half smile playing at her lips. “I kind of wish we could record them trying to do this together.”
“God, that would be sick.”
Ollie means to say something else, but ahead of them, Aidan comes to a stop. The basin they’ve been hiking through is darker than it was when they began, partially because the daylight has died overhead, dimming the sun through the treetops. They’re even deeper in the valley than Ollie realized. He squints at the branches overhead, looks back the way they came, and nausea bubbles in his stomach. This isn’t right. They aren’t even on a path anymore. He was so caught up talking to Hannah, he didn’t catch Aidan leading them entirely off the trail.
“Aidan,” Ollie says softly. “Where are we?”
“Uh…” Aidan hesitates. He turns the map over in his hands and adjusts his glasses. “I think we were supposed to be following a creek, actually.”
“What creek?”
To their right, there are trees. To their left, there are trees. In front of them, the valley sinks lower and Ollie imagines it opening into a scattering of dank caves beneath the ridges they’ve been hiking. He looks in every direction, but there are no creeks in sight. There haven’t been for hours.
Aidan’s cheeks are bright red. “I think maybe I got this mixed up. I thought it was a ridge or something. But it’s a creek.”
“We’re going the wrong way?” Hannah asks.
“I think … maybe?”
It’s like someone’s shoved Ollie’s head underwater again. They got a late start on hiking thanks to the chaos this morning, meaning they’re already behind. Depending on how wrong Aidan is, they’ve lost a whole day. He can hope there’s a way to hike directly to their next camp, but if not, they’ll have to hike back the way they came. By the time they fix it and get back, they’ll be two full days behind. If pickup is supposed to come for them in thirty-nine days, they’re already off by two. He doesn’t want to be angry because he doesn’t get angry. But after everything else today, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
“I thought you were good with maps?” Ollie asks.
Aidan’s eyes widen. “I am. I just read this one wrong, I think.”
“Let me see it.”
“It’s okay. I’ll fix it. I’ll—”
“Aidan,” Ollie warns. “Let me see the map.”
Reluctantly, Aidan hands over the map. Ollie’s not good with maps, either—not good with directions in general—but he presses it to the nearest tree and squints. He traces the distance from CAMP TEN to CAMP ELEVEN. Under CAMP ELEVEN, a smaller comment reads FOOD DROP. They’re supposed to get replenishments tonight.
The map isn’t as distinct as the one they sent with Devin and Sheridan, but it’s clear enough to show that, like Aidan said, they should have been walking along a thin, winding creek all day today, stopping at the place where the creek splits in two. He traces a second line on the map, craggy and wooded, winding away from the milestone trail.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Ollie mutters. “We have to hike back the way we came.”
Hannah joins Ollie, twirling her cross necklace around her finger, and he traces the paths for her, too. Anyone who knows anything about maps should’ve been able to see the difference. He can sense Aidan behind them and knows he’s sorry. He’s sure Aidan will say it a thousand times, but that doesn’t erase that they’ll have to spend tomorrow making this right. That could be it for their rescue. One day in, and they’re dead.
“How long ago did you realize we’re supposed to be hiking along a creek?” Ollie asks.
“I didn’t notice.”
“Were you looking at the map while we hiked?”
Aidan looks down. “Not really. I thought the creek would show up eventually.”
“So you did know there was supposed to be a creek,” Ollie says.
“Ollie.” Hannah moves between them, brow furrowed. “He made a mistake. It’s okay. We’ll fix it tomorrow.”
“Except we won’t fix it tomorrow,” Ollie says. “Because we’ll spend all day hiking just to get back to where we started. Unless we can figure out a route to get directly from wherever we are to the next camp, we’re a full two days behind.”
“I’m sorry,” Aidan manages.
There’s a squeeze again in Ollie’s chest. Don’t lash out, it warns. Keep it cool.
For once, Ollie understands how Devin feels.
“I’m not trying to make you feel like shit, but why did you say you understood maps if you didn’t? We could’ve figured this out together. Now we’re lost.”
Aidan pushes his glasses to his hairline and presses his fingers to his eyes. He says nothing, but Ollie hears the strained, puckered sound of his breathing. He’s managed to make Aidan cry. Ollie feels sick and Aidan is crying and Hannah is looking at him like he’s a monster. He’s not a person who lashes out. He’s not Devin, wandering the woods with the world’s shortest fuse. He’s patient and he’s nice and he just made someone cry.
“Look. It’s fine,” Ollie says. “We’ll make camp here tonight and figure it out tomorrow, okay?”
Aidan nods. He wipes at his eyes and says, “I’m really, really sorry. I thought I knew where we were going.”
Hannah moves to his side, wrapping an arm over Aidan’s shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure it out. I bet we can find a way to get caught up tomorrow. Then we’ll only be off by one day.”
Aidan nods.
“How about you take first watch?” Ollie asks him.
Aidan fixes his glasses. “Watch?”
“We don’t have the coaches with us,” Ollie says. He looks out at the trees. “And if … if something happened to them, we should be watching our camp.”
If he’s being honest, Ollie isn’t entirely sure he wants Aidan in charge of anything else tonight. But if it means he’ll feel he’s contributed and will be clearheaded in the morning, it can’t hurt.
Ollie looks out at the trees and swallows. He wants to believe they’ll wake up in the morning and find the way back without a problem. He wants to believe they’ll meet up with Devin and Sheridan in a few days. He wants to believe this is all part of their program and that they’ll be rewarded by the very-much-alive coaches when it’s done. But that sinking, clawing dread in the pit of his stomach has only gotten heavier as the day has worn on. He wants to believe they’ll make this right, but he can’t.