Page 1 of Daddy's Girl

One

Delaney

This is how girls die in the movies.

The naïve twenty-something city girl disappears in the woods, and they find her backpack three counties over, tangled in a tree root or chewed through by coyotes.

I'm halfway across a goddamn river in Michigan, clinging to a rope swing like a dumbass. If I wasn’t scared shitless, I’d laugh thinking I was competing on Fear Factor.

The current below me isangry—fast, foaming, loud enough to drown out my breath. The rope stopped swinging about twenty seconds ago and no matter how much I try to regain inertia, I’m dead stop hanging with no hope of reaching the bank. My legs are shaking. My pack's too heavy. My arms are slipping. I've got one foot twisted through the loop, dangling like Tarzan's sad, clumsy cousin.

Cherry on top is, I can’t swim. I have a love hate relationship with water.

Hot shower? Friend.

Hot tub? Very good friend.

Cold bottle of water after a workout? Acceptable.

Being immersed in raging river water where I may be pulled under? Lifelong enemy.

I'm going to die before I ever meet him.

Jack Boone.

The whole reason I’m hanging here like a lead weight on the end of some deep-sea fishing line. All the hand-painted signs nailed to ten different trees at the start of the trail didn’t seem to apply to me. Blood-red letters screaming ‘KEEP OUT’, ‘NO TRESPASSING’ and ‘MY LAND, MY RULES’.

My dad gave me Jack’s number before he died. The implausible best friend that lived somewhere on Wildfire Mountain, who I’d never once met or even seen a photo of. I hadn’t considered it much at that time—having my heart ripped out pretty much consumed me—but in the months that passed, I wondered why my father still considered him such a good friend. After all, he hadn’t once come to visit as dad’s condition worsened, or as far as I know even called. The man he’d made the center of so many of my bedtime stories. The bigger than life mountain man slash superhero he’d met in the service.

"If you ever need anything, kiddo, call Boone. I saved his life once, he said that was a debt he could never repay."

But the number got wiped when my now ex-boyfriend crushed my phone under the heel of his boot when I tried to leave.

And now I'm here with "Wildfire" scrawled on a map, following a trail that looked like maybe it led somewhere, and this river between me and... I don't even know.

My fingers still feel the cold press of Dad's dog tags clutched in my palm at the funeral. His last gift to me. Everything else was already gone—our apartment, our savings, his smile. Cancer took it all.

A memory flashes through my mind. Dad sitting in his recliner, a fraction of the man he was, blankets tucked around him, the hum of the machine that fed nutrients into the tube in his nose clicking away, taking the chain off his neck and putting it around mine. "Remember, kiddo. If you ever need anything, call Boone. He's the only one I trust. I’m sorry you never met—he’s not the easiest guy to get close to, but that’s just Boone. He’d do anything for you though. I know that as well as I know you’re the most precious thing in my life."

I shift, shrugging my pack higher on my shoulders as it starts to slip, re-thinking the ten Petoskey Stones and three Yooperlites I grabbed as I packed.

The movement makes the swing jerk.

“Help me, please!” I scream to the break of blue and white at the tops of the swaying thick pines that seem to reach a mile into the sky.

My dad always taught me when you are in trouble, never yell for help.

Always yell ‘fire’ he said. Everyone ignores ‘help’…

“Fire!”I scream.“I’m on fire over here!”

The words scrape on my raw throat as the absurdity of those words crashes around me. Literally. Like, no way I could be on fire with the world’s angriest river taking ice-cold pot shots at me while I’m dangling helplessly above the rapids.

Of course no one hears me. This isn't some tourist trail. This is fucking nowhere.

Okay. Okay. Think, girl. You got yourself into this, you can get yourself out. Then, it’s like a lightbulb flashes above my head…

Flare gun.

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