Page 44 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
But there’s only a second of silence, like he’s drawing in a breath. “Okay. I’ll let Wang—know right—” The line won’t stop glitching, his sentences fading in and out of focus, leaving me to piece his fragmented words together. “… and we’ll figure—out. You can’t be—far away if you—mobile reception—can you … hear—”
“Sort of,” I say. “Not very well. And I don’t know if I’ll have a signal for long.”
“… any significant markers—can see?”
“I don’t know.” I scan the area, trying to identify something from all the yards of deep greens and burnt browns. “There are a lot of trees … There’s also a … a rock behind me that I’m pretty sure I passed earlier—”
“Not as helpful as—was hoping.” Even though half his words come out pixelated through the speaker, his sarcasm is as pronounced as if he were standing right next to me. I can practically picture him, his arms crossed, his head cocked to the side.
“Well, I’m sorry there are no giant neon arrows pointing to my head here, but it’s aforest, Cyrus,” I say, exasperated. “Its main characteristic is that it has trees.”
“Describe—the rock—then … Be specific …”
“Describe the rock?” My brows furrow as I turn toward it. If the situation weren’t so dire, I’d think he was playing a prank on me. “It’s pretty square, as far as rocks go. About the size of Prada’s straw tote bag from last season. When you stare at it from a certain angle, the surface looks shockingly like the face of a sloth.”
It’s hard to tell if the heavy static crackling through the phone is from the patchy reception, or just from him sighing. “Please never—get lost again.”
“I have no plans to,” I reassure him. “But, like, what am I supposed to do now? Describe more rocks to you?”
“Stay there. I’ll come find you—”
And then the line breaks.
“Hello? Cyrus?” Cursing, I start to call him again, but the signal’s gone. No matter how I angle my phone, the sign in the corner remains frozen at No Service.
Stay there, Cyrus told me. I couldn’t go anywhere else if I wanted to. Now that the cold really has set in, it has a way of amplifying every ache: the painful blisters splitting open on my heel, the sharp stitch knotting my side, the cramps squeezing my muscles. So I stay standing, too exhausted to do anything productive, too alert to rest. Every hiss of the leaves or tap of the branches makes my heart startle, then sprint faster. And as the last rays of sun wash away, doubt slithers in, twisting into my gut. What if a bear or a snake or a poisonous spider attacks me before anyone comes?
In my head, the news headlines are already writing themselves:Teen girl goes missing on trip in Guilin. Former model disappears in bamboo forest. Three-day search for high school student continues.The local news will interview my parents, my classmates from school.Of course we had no idea something like this would happen—we just thought it would be a fun educational trip to help her improve her Chinese, my mom will whisper, wiping at her eyes. There might be a comment from Cate, a deep, moving tribute to our years of friendship:I guess I liked going shopping with her.They’ll all say that I had a bright future ahead of me, since they don’t know any better. If I end up dying in a horrific enough way, maybe someone will even make a documentary about me. Getting invited to a movie premiere has been on Cate’s very public bucket list for years, right after kissing a royal, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if the movie happened to be about my disappearance.
I squeeze my eyes shut against that particular depressing thought, but when I open them again, it barely makes any difference—it’s as if the sky has closed its eyes too. Darkness falls over everything, sparing no inch of ground. I’ve never been bothered by the dark before, but I’m realizing that’s just because it was never truly dark in the city. There would be the soft blue glow of my alarm clock on my bedside table, or the headlights of a passing car filtering through the curtains, or the blink of the security alarm from the ceiling, or the neighbor’s porch light automatically flickering on when they returned home.
Nothing like this.
I rely on the flashlight on my phone to fend off the darkness until it drains nearly all of my battery. And then I’m rendered defenseless, shivering in the cold. My last remaining comfort is Cyrus’s words, echoing through my thoughts.I’ll come find you.It shouldn’t bring me much comfort at all, given his record of getting me in trouble versus getting me out of it. But somehow, he sounded like he meant what he said. Like he was prepared to crawl from one end of the forest to the other if he had to, and if I were stranded in the ocean, he would swim through the icy depths just to search for me and carry me back to shore by himself.
So I swallow the lump in my throat, pray all the wild animals out here have an aversion to human flesh, and I wait.
At first I think I’m imagining it.
The soft hiss through grass. I’ve imagined plenty of things already, stranded here in the dark; the whisper of voices or the sound of footsteps approaching, only to look up and find nobody there.
Maybe it’s just wind, I think hopefully, helplessly, even as the hissing grows louder, more distinct than anything my brain could create on its own.God, please let it just be wind.
But then the grass rustles, and a long, dim shape slithers closer toward me, and everything in my body boils down into one silent scream. I’m frozen, which feels almost ironic because my heart has never moved so violently inside my chest before, pushing against my rib cage like it’s struggling to break free. Pure, raw fear cuts through my core as the snake stops within a few bare feet of me. A terrible mass of black scales and cold, empty eyes, its body so long I can’t see where its tail ends. If I run, it might strike. If I stay, it might strike too. Every possibility seems to lead to the same horrific outcome: snake fangs piercing through my flesh, my body cold before they can find me.
They always say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. I’d figured that they meant the highlights: birthday parties and major coming-of-age events and rite of passages, like kissing your crush or learning to drive or the snowy Christmas you spent with your family at a cabin in the woods.
But the memories that flicker to life in my mind have no logic behind them, just a fast, confusing blur of moments I thought I’d forgotten, hurtling forward to the present …
History class at the second school I transferred to. A girl’s called up to write something on the board, and as she brushes past my seat, her bony elbow rams into my side, hard enough to bruise. I flinch back, more from shock than pain.Oops, sorry,she says, but I can see in the cold lines of her face that she’s not, that she’s been waiting for the opportunity to do this, that she’s heard the rumors already. Bile fills my mouth. I pretend nothing happened—
That’s her,they whisper at lunch. I stab my fork through the soggy spinach in my bowl without lifting it, hide my face behind the black veil of my hair. I just have to make it through these next ten minutes. My lips quiver. And then the next ten. And the next ten. Then it’ll be class, and then school will be over at last, and then—
Everyone’s gathered around the table, laughing so loudly that the paintings left on the drying rack quiver. My stomach turns when I see what they’re laughing at. The clay dragon figurine I’d made during our last pottery class. I’d been so proud of it, so happy while I was making it, but now all I can see is how crooked the figurine’s head is, how comically large the eyes are—
Cyrus holding my lunch high over his head in the playground. Give that to me,I snap, but he just grins, black eyes glinting, and steps back, out of reach—
Cyrus chasing me across the oval, the warm, momentary press of his palm between my shoulder blades. Tag. You’re it. I run after him, but the grass is still wet from the rain yesterday, and my feet slip—
