The Tent: A Novella Read Free Page A

happened since has improved the quality of the situation. Until now.
    Emma’s smile has grown, just a bit, but these days that might as well be a brilliant lighthouse beam in the dark, scalding away the shadows, at least for a little while. It gives him hope, however tenuous, that maybe things can get better.
    “It sure did fly, didn’t it?” he says, and pictures their miserable old tent, picked up from the clearance section at their local Wal-Mart for a song. Less than five minutes into the storm, and with the sound of staggered applause, the wind tore it free of the pegs and sent it flying away like a pterodactyl to tangle itself high in the canopy above their heads, where it flapped and twisted and snapped like a creature chastising them for trying to keep it tethered. In retrospect, the image was comical, but at the time, exposed to the sudden shock of the cold rain and biting wind, and yet another goddamn disaster in a year, a life , replete with them, his initial reaction had been to blame Emma for not hammering the pegs in deep enough. If he was honest, he still believed that, but if accountability was the game du jour, then he’d already beaten her by a wide margin. She might have lost the tent; he had gotten them lost. And considering his fears about the fragility of their marriage, it had been foolish to rebuke her for anything at all.
    “Have you checked your phone?” she asks.
    “Yeah. I’ve been keeping it off to save the battery, but I checked it about ten minutes ago. Still no signal. That was kind of the point of coming here, but it sure doesn’t help us much in a pinch, does it? How about yours?”
    “Left it in the car. Didn’t think we’d need it.”
    The idea of the battered old Toyota (itself so cheap and old, it has contributed to multiple instances of Mike’s bad luck) with its shelter and warmth, is like an oasis to Mike. In daylight, he figures it might even be visible from here, but at night, with the storm raging around them, he might as well have parked on the moon.
    “What about that compass app thingy you downloaded for Cody?”
    “It would need to know our location via the GPS,” he says. “And if we had the GPS, we’d have the location, and we wouldn’t be lost.” As the words leave his mouth on a cloud of staggered vapor, he realizes they represent the first honest answer to the question she asked in the beginning, and his smile fades. “I’m sorry,” he says, wincing as a fresh gust of wind sprays rain into their faces. “I messed up.”
    She chooses not to acknowledge his confession, and that is somehow worse than if she had. It suggests her expectations of him are right where he has always feared they would one day end up , and where they themselves are now: somewhere south of nowhere.
    “Let’s not let Cody hear that, all right? I don’t want to scare him.”
    He nods his agreement. “I don’t think we have anything to worry about there. If anything he seems to be enjoying this.”
    “Well, you promised an adventure. Looks like he’s having one.”
    It was supposed to be an adventure for them all. A more stable, more carefree couple might still have been able to view it as one. But stable they are not, and labeling this an adventure now would only be a form of denial.
    “I still can’t believe it’s even possible to get lost in this day and age,” she says.
    “People get lost all the time.”
    “I know, but…” She gestures helplessly at the dark theater of their surroundings, her flashlight illuminating the sinuously moving boughs above their heads. “We didn’t camp that far from the trail, did we? I mean, shouldn’t it have been easier to find? How did we go so far off track?”
    There is no accusation in her tone, but his conscience is a lot less forgiving. He had, in actual fact, disregarded the suggestion (warning) from the camp attendant in favor of a more out of the way (prohibited) area, a more great outdoorsy (unincorporated) place