Page 20 of Unpacking Secrets

Thiswas why I didn’t hike. Right.

Pausing to catch my breath, I braced my hands on my knees and listened to a bird trilling overhead. Just before I continued trudging up the hill, a twig snapped somewhere to my right.

The tiny hairs at the back of my neck prickled like I could feel someone staring at me. I straightened slowly, fighting the urge to spin around and run back to the car. Though I glanced into the thick forest butting up against the path, I didn’t see anything unusual, certainly nothing to warrant the sudden rush of fear through my veins.

There was nothing except the quiet sounds of nature surrounding me, the rustle of wind and my own uneven breaths mixing with birdsong, but the feeling of being watched didn’t quite subside.

Forcing myself to start moving again, I hiked until muscle strain and the sweat beading across my forehead distracted me from my unease.

I could see nothing but trees and the worn path in front of me up until the final curve. Then, suddenly, the trail opened into a clearing. Before me lay a breathtaking view of the lake and surrounding forest. A rustic wooden rail lined the cliffside, which dropped down a distance far enough to make me dizzy when I peered over the edge.

Though the forest crept right up to one side of the clearing, to my left was a steep incline down toward the creek—not quite as terrifying as the cliff straight ahead, but I edged closer to the trees, just in case.

My muscle fatigue was quickly forgotten as I snapped dozens of pictures from a variety of angles and spent the next hour and a half sketching. The day heated up quickly as the sun rose high over the expanse of trees, but the changing light revealed new wonders for me to capture.

When I stood from where I’d been kneeling, I left the sketchbook on the ground to stretch out my back and arms. Then, with my eyes on the horizon, I took one step back away from the rail, then another, holding my thumbs and forefingers up to try to frame the view just right.

Almost there.

A sharp crack broke through the quiet of the forest, far louder than the snapping twig from my ascent and significantly closer.

My body jerked in surprise—was that a gunshot?

Before I could determine the source of the sound, the sickening realization that I’d stepped back too far broke past the rush of adrenaline, and I lost my footing.

For a heartbeat, I was frozen mid-air, trying desperately to catch my balance, then I tumbled down the hillside toward the creek bed.

Branches and roots clawed at me as I fell, snagging my hair and skin like talons. I tried to cover my face with my arms, but I could barely tell up from down, bouncing painfully over rocks and fallen tree limbs. When I finally rolled to a groaning stop at the bottom, I held perfectly still, afraid I'd broken every bone in my body.

The pain was all-encompassing. I couldn’t even tell where it was coming from.

The world spun drunkenly overhead in a dizzying blur of tree limbs, leaves, and clouds. I could hear nothing over my own ragged breathing, as though the birds had stopped singing upon seeing some idiot rolling down a hill.

“Oh my god,”I rasped, then reality hit.

I’m going to die out here, alone. No one will come looking for me.

I hadn’t told anyone where I was going, not even Sarah. Surely that was the most basic rule of hiking, and I hadn’t even thought about it.

Who was there to tell, anyway? The guy who hated me, or the old people who worked at the inn?

A strangled sob burst from my throat as I fought down the panic rising inside me.

Slowly, as my eyes focused again on my surroundings, I was better able to gauge the extent of my injuries. Every inch of exposed skin on my arms and legs was scraped raw. I lifted each arm carefully into the air, bending and flexing my elbows and wrists.

A sharp twinge in my left wrist seemed like cause for concern, but I could still open and close my hand. Nothing broken, which was a relief. The scratches on my arms weren’t deep, though they stung like hell.

When I attempted to bend my knees, I flinched. My right kneecap must have struck a rock or a log on the way down, and the resulting bruise blooming under my skin was already dark and angry. Both ankles seemed uninjured, a fact for which I was supremely grateful. The hike back to the car wasn’t going to be fun no matter what, but it would have been an awful lot worse on a broken or sprained ankle.

I turned my head slowly back toward Cooper’s Point, realizing my sketchbook and backpack were still up there.

Even on my best day, I wouldn’t have been able to climb back up the steep hill from this spot. I’d have to find the base of the path in order to make the ascent again,thenhike all the way back to the car.

Forget it—I’d just hope my stuff was safe up there until I could handle the trek. Again.

I was still staring toward the Point when a flash of movement up at the edge of the clearing made my heart lurch in my chest, but it was gone before I could determine what it was. Human? Animal? After plummeting all the way down that hill, I couldn’t trust that I wasn’t imagining it.

The pain, that twig snapping in the forest along the path, the gunshot . . . it all melded into the perfect storm for a prime freakout.

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