Busted.
My phone is completely busted. It’s sopping wet, the screen cracked. I have no way to call Owen and Mercy. And, worse than that, the pictures I risked my neck for are gone.
I sit in the mud on the banks of the Starling, water dripping down from my hair and into my eyes. My shoulder aches where I hit it, and my knee is bleeding, jeans torn. My clothes are soaked. My shoes are gone—the current ripped them off my feet.
I glance around at the forest beside me. It’s dense brush. And no wonder. The east bank of the Starling is all part of a National Forest Reserve. No people. No roads. Just endless trees and swamp. I have to get back to civilization. Camp is half a day’s walk back the way I came. I can be there before dark. True, I’m on the wrong side of the river. But it’s calm water at camp. I can swim across.
I shudder. The idea of getting back in the water so soon is not something I want to do. But it’s better than sitting here forever.
I drag my aching body to my feet and begin my long stumble back toward Camp Clearwater.
It’s tough going. The ground is all roots and twigs and spiky things that poke and stab at my bare feet. It’s enough pain to distract me from my aching shoulder. But my knee hasn’t stopped bleeding, a steady stream of red trailing down my leg.
After about an hour I take a seat on a rock and inspect the wound. Pain radiates through me as I press around the gash. It’s deep. The skin around it is pink and puffy. The inside is red, and I can see enough torn flesh to make me queasy.
Maybe I should try to wrap it. Keep pressure on it. But with what? I’m still soaked. And I feel like a wet bandage will do more harm than good.
I glance around hopelessly for something to use on my knee. The water is calmer here. Still fast, but the white water is well behind me.
A sound rises over the rush of the Starling.
A boat is coming.
A little tin fishing boat. Ed and Dale.
I scramble back to the trees and hide in the brush.
“For the last time, I’m not going in there!” I can see Dale sitting at the back of the boat, hand on the rudder. Voices carry easily over the water.
“You want to explain how we let this happen again?” shouts Ed from the bow.
“I want to be alive to do it, yeah! I’m not going in those rapids.”
Ed says nothing, staring downstream. I edge a little farther back, making certain they can’t see me.
“Kid’s dead anyway,” says Dale. “No one can swim through that.”
“What if he climbed out onshore somewhere?”
“You said the same thing about the Elliot kid,” says Dale.
My stomach clenches. These guys chased me into the river just like they did Mike.
“Come on,” says Dale, “let’s go.”
The motor revs, and the boat turns back. I’m alone again with the Starling. They think the river killed me. But it didn’t. The Starling is my home. It didn’t kill me when I was little. It didn’t kill me now.
It didn’t kill me because Mike taught me how to survive it.
And if I can survive by doing what Mike taught me, I know he must have survived it too.