They set up camp much as they had the previous afternoon, only this time Tilda helped Imogen with the drop cloth and mattress pads that designated their bedroom. The kitchen remained Beck’s domain.
No one was in a chatty mood, which suited Imogen’s unease; she didn’t like the thoughts that were going through her head. As a writer, sometimes she didn’t trust her imagination. In the writer’s world, everything had to lead to conflict and tension and problems, and she didn’t want problems here. She wanted relaxing days, and the chance to keep reconnecting with nature and herself. But she couldn’t stop imagining in the silence that they were all spinning fears.
Maybe it would help to get her discovery off her chest.
“Want to fill the canteens?” Imogen asked Tilda, hoping to orchestrate a moment alone with Beck. Her sister could be counted on for a low-key reaction; she was less sure how Tilda would respond.
“I can get it,” Beck said, unzipping the side pockets of her pack where she carried her portion of the canteens.
“I thought Tilda might like it,” Imogen said casually, retrieving her own canteens. “It looks like it’s easy here, and she hasn’t done it yet.”
Boucher Creek was barely forty feet from their campsite, but Imogen was counting on the constant gurgle of the shallow water to mask their voices.
“I’m game—gimme those bottles!” They handed her a half dozen containers of various shapes and sizes, which Tilda hooked on her fingers. “Should I take the iodine tablets?”
“You can do them when you come back,” Beck said.
“Okay!” No worse for the day’s three-and-a-half-hour hike, Tilda bounded off on her mission.
Imogen watched her, waiting for her to reach the creek. Beck was on the ground, applying fresh smears of sunscreen on her nose and cheeks, the backs of her hands, when Imogen squatted beside her.
“I found this.” She held out the torn wrapper, and pointed back where they’d come from with her chin. “There.”
Beck turned the scrap over and over; her face gave away nothing. “Okay?”
Was she being deliberately obtuse?
“Doesn’t it look like one of Tilda’s?” Why hadn’t Beck recognized it right away?
“Maybe. I don’t think there’s that much difference in…wrappers.” Now Beck looked at Imogen, as she might a bug under a magnifying glass. “You think this was Tilda’s, and whoever stole it is here?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Imogen looked out, around. A lizard scuttled away in the red dirt. A soft breeze awakened the tree leaves. Far above them contrails from a jet they could barely see left the white signature of its passing. Little else moved. “I mean, maybe they came out here, they could’ve.”
“Low on food? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe we should show it to Tilda—she might recognize it.” Imogen had anticipated that Beck might not look at the clue and leap to her feet with worry. But she hadn’t anticipated her sister’s complete denial.
“Aren’t you jumping the gun a little? We don’t know if this was Tilda’s. We don’t know if this was left by someone who hiked in or out of Boucher today, yesterday, or two days ago. It looks fairly new. But it could be anyone’s, from days ago.”
Imogen felt like she was being chastised; good thing she hadn’t mentioned her more paranoid theory. So you don’t think the Canyon’s playing a little round of Find the Ghost? She nodded. She was just starting to make progress, proving her competency, and she didn’t want her sister to start doubting her. Beck could be counted on for a nonemotional response—wasn’t that why Imogen had wanted to show her the scrap? To put herself at ease?
“Just being careful,” Imogen mumbled.
“It’ll be easier to keep the food bag closer here. More trees. We’re fine, Imogen, it’s not gonna happen again.”
Imogen should’ve felt relieved, but the magnifying glass had been held under the sun too long and she was the bug beneath it, burning. Her sister might trust her with basic backpacking duties, but, like her character Esther, Imogen was afraid she didn’t come across as someone truly sound of mind. While they returned to organizing their camp, Imogen privately brooded. They’d had few reasons over the years to fear humans while camping. But it had happened once before, and Beck had been uneasy then too.
Before Beck moved west for her residency they’d done some occasional car camping, sometimes with Beck’s girlfriend or their dad, sometimes just the two of them. They preferred to go just off-season—mid-September—when the weather was still good, but people were back to school or work. That was how they’d had all of the Blueberry Patch campground, at Finger Lakes National Forest, to themselves. Well, almost. One spot had been occupied by a man who appeared to be living out of his covered pickup truck.
He didn’t do anything—didn’t come and say hello (as some men did when they saw two young women on their own), didn’t get drunk and sing to the moon or hang dead squirrel carcasses from the trees. Beck had wondered aloud how someone could live in a national forest, and she’d kept an eye on the other camp. That first night Imogen felt real fear, sleeping in the tiny backpacking tent beside her sister like two corpses in a coffin. She might have felt safer without the tent, able to see if anyone approached their camp, but it had been a chilly night and overcast enough that rain was a concern. Her writer’s imagination had gone wild, picturing a giant hunting knife slicing through the thin fabric roof of their tent, stabbing Beck in the chest while Imogen, blind and panicked, scrambled to fight back or get out. In real life, I would’ve curled into a ball and played dead.
Maybe the man had simply been homeless and hadn’t deserved to be the cause of their fear. Yet Imogen was glad they’d be sleeping in the open at Boucher. If someone approached them in the dead of night, tripping over rocks and scrub, she was certain it would awaken her. And she’d sleep with her Swiss Army knife in her fist, just in case.
They ate a hot lunch of Cup Noodles. Afterward they gathered all their food into the bag, and Beck hung it just a few yards away from their kitchen, on the branch of a cooperative tree. They stripped down to T-shirts and shorts and what the Blum sisters affectionately referred to as camp shoes, which were just a lightweight pair of old shoes brought to wear around flat terrain. By comparison to her boots, Imogen’s Skechers felt like slippers. They kept a sleeve of Fig Newtons and a canteen with them and went off to explore.
Tilda let her camera dangle from her wrist, snapping a few shots as they meandered. She had Imogen and Beck pose at noteworthy locations: in front of the creek; at the entrance to the unfinished mine; from within the half-collapsed rock igloo. In person, each place looked even less habitable, though Imogen thought she saw something slip away into the shadows at the back of the mine. It was probably a rattlesnake, so she kept the sighting to herself. Sometimes they swapped and Imogen took pictures of Tilda.
They passed the afternoon this way. Ambling. Sitting in the shade, their legs outstretched on the feathery dirt. Sometimes they talked, relaxed tidbits of conversation. But many of their questions drifted away, unimportant and forgotten.
As the sky wrapped itself in an amethyst cloak, they ate supper. Washed up. Put the food bag back in its tree. Earlier they’d found a corner sheltered by two rocks and claimed it as their latrine, digging a shallow trench with their plastic trowel. But Tilda still wanted someone to go with her and Stand Guard. On their last trip before bedtime, Imogen kept her flashlight angled at her feet, waiting to escort Tilda back to camp.
Tilda chatted about something as she squatted, her wad of toilet paper at the ready, but Imogen wasn’t listening. High up in the rocky bank on the other side of the creek she saw a flash of light. Though she hadn’t smoked since her freshman year of college—when they’d all agreed to cut the worst of their bad habits (at least the consumable ones)—she was certain about what she’d seen.
A match, igniting. The flare of a cigarette on its first inhale. Then darkness.
Someone was up there.
If she could see that, he could see her. Them. Imogen switched off the flashlight.
“Hey! I can’t see.”
“Your eyes will adjust. It’s a beautiful night.” Above them hung a bulbous moon.
Tilda grabbed Imogen’s elbow as she stumbled on the way back to camp. “Can’t we use the flashlight?”
“We don’t need it.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tilda huffed, annoyed.
Imogen really didn’t want to agitate Tilda, especially as their truce was so recent and fragile, but she wasn’t sure what to do about her suspicion that they were being watched.
“Why is it okay for Beck to use her flashlight”—indeed, Beck had her light on as she zipped up her pack and slid into her sleeping bag—“but we’re supposed to walk in the dark? Sometimes your rules seem a little random.”
“Yeah, why are you walking in the dark?” Beck asked. She illuminated Tilda’s bed as Tilda slipped off her camp shoes and tucked herself in. Imogen managed in the shadows on Beck’s other side.
When Beck finally flicked off her light, Imogen rolled over in her sleeping bag and whispered, “Did you see it?”
“See what? What are you talking about?”
“What are you guys whispering about?” Tilda leaned on her elbow, joining the conversation.
“I thought I saw something.”
“What kind of something?” Beck asked.
“A cigarette lighting up. Up there.” She pointed across the creek. “Isn’t there a shelter there?”
“Imogen. I never promised we could have the entire Canyon to ourselves. This was the best I could do.”
“I’m not blaming you. But—”
“There could be people here. It’s entirely possible. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”
It sounded like they sighed in unison, vexed in different ways. Tilda noticed too, and laughed.
“We heading to the river tomorrow?” she asked Beck.
“That’s the plan.”
“Awesome.”
On their backs, they watched the sky. Tilda asked Beck a few more questions about the river and tomorrow’s walk. Imogen lay there silently, feeling left out, misunderstood. Okay fine, there could be people there. But it meant they were vulnerable at night when their flashlights were on: someone could see their camp from above. And no one wanted to be spied on while their pants were down. The second she thought it, she understood why she shouldn’t say it aloud—then Tilda really wouldn’t be comfortable squatting out of doors.
Tilda fell asleep first. Then Beck. Imogen visualized sight lines and angles, so she could lead them to a better-shielded latrine tomorrow.
It didn’t have to mean anything—a person camping in the rain shelter. It could be unrelated to the stolen protein bars. But it bothered her in the same way the man’s presence at Finger Lakes National Forest had. A niggling worry. Something—someone—slightly out of place.
Imogen fought the urge to flip onto her stomach, direct her little LED flashlight onto the rocks across the way. Whoever was up there had retreated to a deeper place within the overhang to enjoy his smoke. But she wanted him to know.
We know you’re out there. Don’t fuck with us.
While she’d intended to keep her Swiss Army knife in her fist, closed, she drew open the largest blade as she curled up on her side, and laid the knife within easy reach of her bundled pillow.