Page 28 of Heart of the Sun

Ahead of us, Tuck stopped suddenly. For a moment, we did too, then with a burst of hopeful excitement, rushed ahead. Had he spotted something? We came to stand on either side of him, looking out to the valley below, bathed in a magnificent sunset.

The peachy waves stretched over…absolutely nothing.

“It’s…woods,” Charlie said.

“Fuck,” Tuck swore.

“Oh,” I breathed in disappointment.

Tuck glanced over at me, his eyes moving from my face to the suitcase in my arms, his lips thinning. Instead of commenting, he turned around, stepped forward and looked in each direction from our higher vantage point.

“Well, this is fucking great,” Charlie muttered. He dropped his suitcase and sat on it before removing the water bottle from his pocket that he’d been drinking as we walked. He downed the rest of it before setting it on the ground and then leaning his elbows on his knees and letting out a long-suffering sigh. I felt a burst of annoyance. But that wasn’t fair. This was just a really shitty situation.

Beyond shitty.

The shittiest.

For a moment, my mind spun. How had I ended up here, standing in the middle of nowhere in a pair of leather pants and slippers, holding a carry-on suitcase like it was my baby? It felt surreal. Maybe I’d fallen asleep on the plane and the combination of altitude and the turbulent emotions from the fight we’d had with Tuck had tossed me into a strange dream I was finding it hard to wake from.

I set my own suitcase down and then pinched my wrist.Ouch.No, it was real. We had survived a plane crash. How?I couldn’t say. I knew I should feel thankful, but I was still shocked and terrified. And cold, so, so cold.

“Look,” Tuck said, and the hopeful tone in his voice made me whip my head his way. He was pointing off into the distance. “I see smoke. Do you see that?”

I jutted my head forward and squinted my eyes. “Um… I think so! Yes!” I said excitedly. It was definitely a trail of smoke coming from what looked like a few miles away past a thick forest. “Let’s go,” I said. Whoever’s home it was would have heat and a phone and a bathroom with a door.

Tuck’s arm jutted out, stopping me in my tracks. “In the morning,” he said.

“The morning?” My mouth fell open. “Why spend the night out here in the dark and the cold when there’s a house right there?” I pointed at the wispy trail of smoke.

“Because for one, it’s not right there. It’ll probably take us a couple of days to travel that distance. It’ll be slow going through those woods and it’s not safe when we can’t see. It’ll be dark any minute now.”

“A coupledays?”Oh God.Then my estimation of afew mileswas definitely off. This nightmare just kept getting worse.

“And for another,” he went on, “if itisa house, we have no idea who lives there. It seems like a strange place for a singular home with nothing else around. It could be dangerous. But at least we have a place to shoot for. We’ll bed down here tonight and get up with the sun.”

“Bed down?” Charlie asked, his tone as incredulous as mine had been. “What exactly should we bed down on?”

“The ground,” Tuck said. He glanced at the suitcase Charlie was sitting on. “With all the clothes you brought along, you can drape them over yourselves and be nice and toasty. There’s a tree right there that will provide some shelter from the wind. We’ll be fine.”

I didn’t like the thought of sleeping on the cold ground under a tree either,but Tuck mentioning sleep made me realize how exhausted I was. It wasn’t just the hours of walking while carrying a heavy suitcase with improper footwear. It was the toll from the adrenaline that had been bursting through my body as our plane went down. I suddenly felt so tired I wanted to drop to the ground right there, press my cheek to the dirt and close my eyes.

Tuck adjusted his duffel bag and started walking toward the tree. Its leaves were gone, but it was massive, and its branches alone provided cover.

“Come on,” I said to Charlie, pointing over to the tree, which was only about three hundred feet away.

“Can we just sit here another couple of minutes? My feet are killing me.”

We?Weweren’t sitting anywhere. I was standing. In my slippers. “If I sit down here, I won’t be able to move again, Charlie,” I said.

Charlie glanced at Tuck and then away. He obviously didn’t want to allow him to be in charge. Part of me didn’t blame Charlie after what we’d discovered about Tuck. I was still in shock over all that, if I was honest. The Tuck I’d known as a kid would never get involved with that stuff. He’d changed. But I had to do my best to put that aside and simply trust in Tuck for the moment. He was more qualified when it came to “roughing it,” and so for now, it was wisest to follow his lead. Soon we’d be back in civilization. Soon everything would be back to normal. Soon everything would make sense again.

Charlie huffed but then nodded. “Come on. You’re right. We all need to rest.” He stood and picked up both his suitcase and mine and walked with me toward the protection—meager though it might be—of the massive tree.

* * *

There was no quiet like the quiet of a winter night outside in the middle of nowhere. And there was nothing that made you feel smaller than staring up at a star-studded sky,your back against the earth before you drifted to sleep.

I’d dozed a little, but the cold, and the sting of the wound on my hip, had roused me fully awake, and I was having a hard time falling back to sleep even though I hadn’t gotten nearly enough. An hour? Maybe less. I had no way to tell. I pulled the pile of clothing I’d draped over my shoulders tighter, turning away from Charlie, who lay next to me snoring softly. At least he was managing to sleep.

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