Page 66 of Wild Child
Perhaps that had been the hardest lesson of all. The one that was the most difficult to accept and the hardest to articulate. Best friends or not, Devin always had his choice at the end of the day. He could choose me, or he could choose his own life.
If he'd just chosen me,I thought,we could have been . . .
That thought died away too, because I saw what he meant more clearly now. We could have beensomething, but for how long? The dependence would turn to resentment. Hadn't that been Mama and Jim? Jim relied too much on Mama. To get rid of him, she'd cheated on him. Used him.
Resented him.
The truth lay in ugly paths before me. But I couldn't face this now, so I swept it all into its own box and set it aside to think about later. Later, when I wasn't so hungry and wildly emotional. Later, when a drug dealer and his cronies weren’t hunting us down in the forest. Or maybe they weren’t, and we were just that far gone to fatigue and hunger.
If nothing else, catching up with Devin in such an easy way had been a gift. I missed justbeingwith him, and it seemed like we sidled closer to that easy dynamic every day. Now wasn't the time to grapple with what we would be after this. Best friends . . . from a distance? Friends that reunited when we could, but lived our separate lives?
As good as it felt now to pick back up, what would it feel like when he left again? And again?
And again?
Bigger questions lay behind all those. Questions I'd been stuffing back in the boxes they kept sneaking out of. Questions likewhen will I see the world?AndIf not guiding, then what will I do? Who am I if not this?
I turned my attention to our destination to get my mind off the heavier weight of Devin and Ellie. Of adulting and decisions and futures. Right now, we needed to get home. The rest could unbox itself then.
The ridges overhead shifted every now and then, revealing new rock formations or wooded hills. Canyons funneled here and there, hiding behind other mountains as we approached. In general, the landscape didn't look familiar, but I hadn't hiked this far up this stream before. Besides, a mountain looked distinct from one direction and completely different from another. The most familiar places could be completely changed in the space of only a few steps.
Still, I couldn't help but wonder if this was therightstream.
My footsteps were slower today, held back by hunger. We slipped to the stream several times to keep drinking, but my empty stomach became more offended. The water slipped away from my belly too quickly and left me ravenous. Not only that, but the stream narrowed in size.
"Dev," I said with a croak. I cleared my throat. How long had I been lost in thought? "I'm not sure we're in the right canyon."
He paused. "Me either."
Thattroubled me more. "Why didn't you say something?" I asked, and it came out sharper than I intended.
"I wasn't sure."
I rubbed a hand across my forehead. So much for him taking a backseat and letting me control this ride. "Maybe I didn't understand the ridges the way I thought. I could have sworn . . ."
In vain, I tried to draw up a mental picture of the map, but it was too complicated to pull from memory. My instinct told me to head south a little more, maybe circle that way to get back to our original campsite, and then the truck. But what if we were too early? We couldn't have gonethatfar south the night we'd escaped.
Could we?
Devin glanced overhead, then crouched down, braced a stick between two rocks, and marked the tip of the shadow with a rock. Mac used to make a shadow compass in the same way, as a method of gauging what direction was north and south. Dev straightened again.
"Let's make sure we're still heading the right way," he said. “Might be a good time for a break, anyway. We'll give it thirty minutes, then make sure we're in the right direction.”
"Good idea."
We took a moment to rest. Sweat dried on my arms. I brushed off the gritty white powder that remained on my skin and tried not to think about how delicious a box of crisp, salty fries would taste right then. My legs ached. Despite frequent drinking, my head still felt dizzy and my mouth was dry.
Devin grimaced every now and then if he moved his head too quickly, and I wondered if he'd have lasting effects from such a nasty blow to the head. I leaned back on a rock and closed my eyes. He put a gentle hand on my shoulder that jolted me awake a few minutes later and gestured toward where the shadow had moved on the ground.
"We're still heading west."
I frowned. Then why did this look so unfamiliar? Perhaps I didn't know the mountains as well as I thought. Our options weren't great. If this wasn't the right stream, at least it headed down. But where we'd land, I wasn't quite sure. Some streams just disappeared into the ground, and then we could really be stuck. Others kept trickling through the mountains until they dried out. Eventually, if we kept walking to the west, we might run into some ranches or farmlands. But if we were too far south, we'd just keep walking into the forest.
That couldn’t be right, either.
If we were that far south, we should have been walking all night to make up the same distance we'd covered all that day. I couldn’t recall we’d hiked that long. No, we just needed to keep going.
"Well." His forehead ruffled as he glanced up at the sun. "We're definitely not heading farther into the mountains east of here, which means we have to intersect withsomethingelse eventually."
