Stranded Read Free Page B

hungry. And we hadn’t even gone that far today.
    Chris passed around the plates and utensils. No glass or aluminum cans allowed. Every piece of trash we had to carry out.
    Chris slapped the meat patties onto the cookstove; the smell brought tears to my eyes.
    â€œWho wants it Sconnie style?” Chris held up a packet of cheese slices.
    Our hands shot up. “Good choice.” Chris laughed.
    After a few minutes he flipped each burger and added a slice of cheese; we clutched our plates and drooled. “Y’all remind me of my dogs when it’s feeding time.” He grinned. “But that’s to be expected. We didn’t go far today—a few miles, but there were a few tough portages. And y’all did good your first day out. Real good.” Chris pointed his spatula at each of us in turn. “But you’re gonna be sore tomorrow, so I want each of you to drink at least one liter of water tonight. If anyone needs ibuprofen and doesn’t have their own, I have some. The important thing to remember is that we take our time. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.” He looked back down at the cookstove. “Time to eat.”
    Don’t want anyone getting hurt. I bit into my burger. Melted cheese seared the roof of my mouth, but I didn’t care. Nobody ever wanted to get hurt. But it still happened, didn’t it? No matter how careful you were, no matter how smart your plans. It happened anyway. It happened all the time.

Day 2
Morning
    The mosquito buzzed by my ear, circling my head like an insect spacecraft. So much for bug spray. I was sweating like it was an Olympic sport. Beads of sweat ran down from my hairline, pooling under my chin, and dripped off like a leaking faucet with every step. I wanted to wipe it away. I wanted to swat that mosquito. Instead, I adjusted my grip on the aluminum canoe and took a slow breath. It seemed like we’d been doing this all morning. Walking with a canoe loaded with all our stuff. Like it was some sort of sick joke. Canoes were meant for water, right? Shouldn’t we be paddling across some clear ice-blue lake? Admiring the scenery? Looking for fish?
    â€œGood God,” Chloe grunted from the front. “How much longer?”
    We were the last ones in the caravan, trailing a good twenty yards back from Wes and Jeremy. Jeremy’s orangeshirt vanished and reappeared between the trees like a warning light. It would be easy to get lost out here . But the trail was wide and fairly obvious, and we’d seen other people this morning (mostly families). I couldn’t imagine the Dodd family going on a trip like this, no matter how much my dad would have enjoyed it. Maybe my mom would agree if we stayed in one of those fancy resort lodges that dotted the shore of Lake Superior. I shook my head, partly to deflect the mosquito. Maybe she would have agreed to that a few years ago, but not anymore.
    Chris lead the way, carrying his kayak by himself, so I guess we shouldn’t be complaining. He told us last night around the campfire that people would get scarce by the morning of the third day, after we passed the waterfall and got into a really remote area.
    I gripped my fingers along the canoe hull and breathed into the burn. If this wasn’t remote already, I had no idea what the word meant.
    â€œStop.” Chloe jerked to a halt, and I almost dropped my end.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œLog.”
    â€œAnother one?” I set the canoe down and shook out my arms, rolled my neck back and forth. I had a stash of ibuprofen and had taken three last night, then fallen into a dreamless sleep, a type of sleep I hadn’t had in a long time, which was definitely better than the dreams I normally had. Technically I would call them nightmares.
    â€œOkay,” I said, getting a new hold on the canoe. “You go first, and then we’ll slide it over.”
    Chloe picked up the front and slid it on top of the moss.