One By One by Freida McFadden(22)

The two of us are lagging a good twenty feet behind the others. We’re far enough back that I can’t hear a word they’re saying. But I make sure to always keep them in my line of sight. The last thing I want is to get separated.

“When we get to the inn,” Lindsay says, “I’m going to soak in the bathtub for like five hours. Until I’m a prune.”

I manage a smile. “I just want to lie down on a nice soft bed.”

“You know what else I’m going to do?” Lindsay licks her lips. “I’m going to order room service. A nice big bacon cheeseburger.”

I laugh. “Goodness, what will Warner say?”

“And a big box of double stuffed Oreo cookies for dessert.” She inhales sharply. “God, I haven’t eaten Oreos in…years, I think.”

Back in college, I would have said that Oreo cookies were Lindsay’s favorite food in the whole world. She always had a box of them in her room, in variable stages of being eaten. She used to take them apart and make a little stack of the chocolate wafers, then a giant ball of the creamy stuffing. I remember the way I used to groan when Lindsay would pop that white ball in her mouth.

Okay, I used to do it too sometimes. But it was fun. I can’t imagine Warner would approve of Lindsay eating a giant ball of Oreo stuffing.

“Honestly…” Lindsay rubs at a little red patch on her neck. Now that the sun is falling, the bugs are coming out, which stinks for me—I’m always a target. “I am so hungry right now. I feel like I could eat bugs.”

“Jack has some beef jerky in his bag, you know.”

Her eyes light up for a moment, but then she shakes her head. “Warner will kill me.”

“Warner will kill you if you eat some beef jerky when you’re lost in the woods?”

“You don’t get it.” She smacks at her neck, then looks at her palm. “Goddamnit. There’s like a million mosquitoes out here.”

“What don’t I get?”

“Look, I just…” Lindsay seems like she has something to say, but before she gets it out, she points excitedly at a bush on the ground. “Claire! It’s blueberries!”

I look at where she’s pointing. It’s a large, leafy green bush that has a bunch of plump, dark blue berries growing from it. Even though I had a burger rather than a salad, the sight of any sort of food makes my stomach growl. It’s past our usual dinnertime.

“Are you sure those are blueberries?” I ask.

“Of course! I used to go blueberry picking all the time when I was a kid.” She plucks a berry off the bush. “This is definitely a blueberry.”

“I don’t know…” I look ahead at the others, who are within earshot, but only if we shout. “Maybe we should ask Jack if they’re okay to eat.”

“Why? Because he was a Boy Scout a million years ago?” She rolls her eyes. “He has no clue. If he did, we’d have found that stupid inn by now.”

Before I can stop her, she pops the picked berry into her mouth. She chews on it thoughtfully. I take a step forward, ready to catch her if she starts foaming at the mouth and collapses.

“It tastes good!” she says. “It’s a blueberry, Claire. It’s ripe and sweet. If it were poison, it would taste bad.”

Is that true? I feel certain I read some poison berries have a sweet taste.

Lindsay is plucking berries from the bush. She’s got at least a dozen of them in her hand, and she’s eating them as she goes. I get a sick feeling in my stomach. This is a bad idea. As much as I’m not excited by the idea of Jack’s beef jerky, I don’t think we should be eating random berries we find in the woods. Also, don’t blueberries ripen in July? It’s still only June.

“Lindsay,” I murmur, “I really don’t think this is a good idea. We have no idea if the berries are safe or not. Can’t we just check with Jack?”

“Oh, come on. What are the chances some random berries we come across are poison?”

Maybe I’m a glass-half-empty type of person, but I feel like there’s a much smaller chance that some random berries in the woods aren’t poison. “Lindsay…”

“Fine.” She pops a couple more berries in her mouth, then drops the rest in the dirt below us. “I won’t eat them, okay? Happy?”

I look up—everyone else is way ahead of us. They don’t seem at all concerned we’ve fallen so far behind. Would they even notice if we just vanished? “We better catch up.”

“Yeah…” Lindsay looks suddenly exhausted, like she can’t go another step. “We better.”

I know exactly how she feels. But we don’t have much of a choice. If we want to get out of here tonight, we’ve got to keep walking.





Chapter 12


ANONYMOUS



My mother grew berries in our backyard.

She grew mostly blueberries and raspberries. The raspberries started as tiny hard green blobs, then would expand and darken in color. Those were my favorites. When they were ripe, you could pluck them right off the bush with no effort at all.

The blueberries would ripen a month after the raspberries. They would start out pale, then get fat and turn blue. The blueberries tasted good, but I avoided them. Because of the nightshade.