Turns out my passenger is pretty funny when she wants to be. We’re bumping along, going maybe ten miles an hour, and suddenly she shades her eyes with her hand and goes, “Slow down! I see the Golden Arches! Big Macs dead ahead!”

For one tiny millisecond I almost fall for it.

“Gotcha!” She grins at me.

“No way.”

“Way. You totally believed me.”

“You’re good,” I admit. “Good enough for ice cream. I’ve been saving the last pint of chocolate chip. In that cooler in the back.”

Her eyes dart to the back and I burst out laughing.

She slumps in her seat. “Great. I got away from fatness camp, but I can’t get away from imaginary food.”

“Fatness camp?”

“They call it fitness because it sounds better. But at least half the girls are there to lose weight.”

“Can I ask you a question? Why were you out in the woods at night?”

“No comment.” And she won’t say any more on the subject.

But here’s the thing. After making each other laugh, we’re no longer strangers. We’re not a team yet, me and Delphy Pappas, but we’re getting there.

Late in the day, with light fading through the green leaves, and the smell of smoke ever more distant, we come upon a faded hand-painted sign, nailed to a tree:

PINEY POND COTTAGE

WALK FROM HERE

Delphy says, “If somebody’s home, maybe they’ve got a phone. I really, really want to talk to my mom.”

“It’s a footpath,” I point out. “Too narrow for a vehicle.”

But Delphy leverages herself out of the seat, grabs the stick she’s using for a crutch, and hobbles past the sign. I’m nervous about leaving the Jeep alone. It saved my life, and my guts tell me to stick with it until we’re clear of the forest, clear of the fire. I can’t outrun a fire, and for sure Delphy can’t. But I need a phone as much as she does, to make sure my mom is okay, and to get us rescued. So I carefully park the Jeep in a cleared space near the sign—this must be where the owners leave their car or truck—and follow her down the footpath.

The path looks like it hasn’t been used lately. The undergrowth is so thick with ferns that it’s like a wall of soft green waves on either side. Delphy is limping along so fast I can hardly keep up, and I worry she’ll trip and make her ankle worse.

“Wait up! Take it easy!” But she’s real determined, crashing through the ferns and slashing her stick to clear the path, and then suddenly we’re in the clear.

A meadow slopes down to a white cottage on the edge of a small pond. There’s a small rickety dock but no boat, and the shutters on the cottage windows are closed.

Nobody home is my guess. But Delphy is determined to find out for sure. A screened-in porch wraps around two sides of the cottage, and she’s up the steps and into the porch before I get there. Darting around the old wicker furniture and peering through the glass on the front door, into the dim interior.

She rattles the doorknob. Locked.

“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” I say. “There’d be a car or truck in that spot, right?”

Sounding irritated, she turns to me. “Okay, Sherlock, I get that. Nobody’s home! Duh. But what if there’s a phone charger in there, or a landline?”

I take a step back. She’s taller than me, and holding a big stick. She notices my reaction and her face falls. “Oh, hey. Hey, I’m sorry. I’m just, like, hot and miserable and obsessed about calling my parents, okay?”

“Delphy, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any chargers in there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Look around. There are no power lines attached to the house. No telephone lines. No lines of any kind.”

She hobbles down the steps, looks up at the roofline of the porch and cottage. Her shoulders slump. “This is so messed up.”

“There are a lot of places like this in the backwoods. Hunting cabins and getaway cottages that are too remote for power.”

“That’s stupid.”

I shrug, not so sure about that. “It’s sort of like camping out, except with a real roof over your head. Summer only, I’m guessing. Unless they come in by snowmobile. That lumber camp? It didn’t have power, either.”

“I hate this!” Delphy says, frustrated. “Hate it, hate it, hate it!”

“No, no, this is good!” I insist. “This is a great find, even without a phone. We’re far enough ahead of the fire that we can hardly smell it. And besides, we don’t dare drive a logging trail after dark—too easy to go off the road. So we need a place to stay for the night. The porch is good. The bugs won’t be able to chomp on us. Plus, we have chairs and couches and cushions. See? It’s way better than sleeping in the Jeep. I’ll go back for some food and we’ll have a nice supper right here on the porch. How about that?”

Delphy wipes her glistening face with the back of her hand. “You’re okay for a boy, you know that?”