One Was Lost(6)

I shift our tent poles to straighten them as best I can, and Emily swishes the tent cover around. It’s a little lopsided, but we get it upright. I hold one hand out wide, giving Emily some jazz hands. “Ta-da!”

“You’re pretty good at this.”

I shrug. “We had tents in the background of one of our summer plays. I spent three nights a week setting them up on stage.”

Emily helps me straighten the tent, locking the poles for security. “I thought you were a director or something now.”

“I am. Usually. Which means you do all the jobs that don’t get finished. Tent assembly included.”

A snap-cracking in the woods to the south tells me Mr. Walker is returning from the creek, where he’d stayed to direct Ms. Brighton. There he comes from stage left, hands tucked under his backpack straps and a deep furrow over his brows. I try to imagine what lines will be his.

Except this isn’t a stage, and there won’t be an intermission or flowers after the curtain call.

“Are they OK over there?” I ask.

“Ms. Brighton’s plenty capable of getting them through the night.” He says it convincingly, but his eyes are too squinty. I don’t believe him.

“Should we call for help?” Emily asks, pipsqueak soft.

“No signal,” he says, and his grin has a hard edge. “I told you girls not to bother bringing your phones. It won’t kill us to handle this crisis. Might even build some character.”

I’m not sure how wringing out my bra or dying of hypothermia will build character, but I nod automatically.

“They don’t have water, but they have a filter bottle in one of the packs.” He frowns, and I can tell he’s sorting supplies in his head. “I’ve got the bottles we filtered at our lunch stop.”

Ah, those were good times. During the first hour of the downpour, all eight of us clustered around the river, trying to cover the filter with ponchos to protect it from rain contamination. Because the only thing that would make this trip more special would be a case of the trots.

Mr. Walker’s smile goes even tighter. “Bad news is Ms. Brighton’s got most of the food.”

I shrug. The smell of wet leaves and mildewed canvas isn’t doing much to whet my appetite anyway.

“I see you got your tent up without me tonight,” he says, putting on an expression that makes me think of dry-erase markers and trigonometry homework. He’s all teacherly pride and confidence, and as much as I want to gripe about how cold and hateful I feel, his words from sign-up week are still rattling around in my head. You’re such a leader, Sera. I’d love to have you on this project.

So here I am. My friends are repainting the town rec center, and I’m here in hell, collecting enough mosquito bites to contract malaria.

Still, I keep my shoulders back and my smile pasted on. “We’re regular survivalists. It’s all good. Emily helped me wrench this baby into shape.”

“I broke a string,” Emily admits, sounding like she might cry over it.

“Great teamwork,” Mr. Walker says. He moves around to fiddle with our work, shifting a couple of poles and tugging on the fabric here and there. Before I can fully figure out what he’s trying to do, our whole tent is perfectly centered on the poles and tidily covered. He digs around in his pack and hands me a box of Whoppers and a bottle of water for each of us.

“That’s about it,” he says. “But it’s safe. Sorry it’s not more.”

Suddenly, all the rotten earth smells whisk to the back of my mind. The promise of chocolate is heady, and my stomach growls. My fingers are actually pale and shaky when I hand Emily a water. I’m hungrier than I thought.

“You may be the greatest teacher in the history of teachers.” I laugh, waggling the Whoppers.

“Well, don’t tell the guys. They’re stuck sharing the half-melted Hershey bar.”

“Jude has his own food,” Emily says, that same darkness leaking into her words. I sort of get the Jude hate. He has all the things we don’t. He looks at the rest of us like we’re less.

“You mean the macrobiotic twelve-dollars-a-pop granola bars?” He winks. “Well, unless he’s evolved into a higher life form, he’ll still need water.”

I look around pointedly. “Huh. Where on earth could we get some of that?”

“Clean water,” Mr. Walker says. Then he points at a spot between our tents. “I’ll be setting my tent up right there if you girls need anything. Things will look better tomorrow.”

I nod before unzipping our tent flap with a sigh. It might not be raining anymore, but I’m in a quarter inch of water, and I’m pretty sure I’ll need six showers to scrub off the standard-issue musty camping smell.

The last thing we want is to get the inside of the tent wet, but getting out of our boots and ponchos is a clown show. Emily holds up her poncho as I squish my feet out of my boots and stand barefoot on top of them, wrestling my poncho off. Then it’s Emily’s turn. By the time we’re in, I don’t know if any of it was worth it. Our soggy boots and backpacks are leaving puddles inside the door. Even when I peel off my jeans and sweatshirt, my tank top and undies are wet. Unpleasant doesn’t even touch this, but I put on my sleeping clothes anyway.

Emily doesn’t complain and, like every other night this week, only tugs off her pants when she’s got a sweatshirt wrapped around her waist. The first night, I felt almost pervy just ripping mine off, especially since I’ve got at least fifteen pounds on her. By day two, I was too tired and achy to care. Now as we carefully wrestle our (also damp) sleeping bags out of our packs, I roll my shoulders, feeling knots bunching at the base of my neck.