The Other Side of Lost Read online

  I glance at the silhouette of my sleeping bag hanging from the tree, and shiver despite the fact that I’m bundled in a mix of everyone else’s clothes. There’s no way it’s going to be dry by now.

  “I might just sleep out here by the fire,” I say, curling my hands around my mug like it’ll help keep me warm.

  “Oh. Yeah,” Josh says, following my eyes. “I forgot about that.” He clears his throat. “Um. You can share mine if you want.”

  I almost choke on my hot chocolate. “Share your sleeping bag?”

  There’s a snicker from the boys’ tents, and then a hush I know is Vanessa, and I wonder for a second if their whole “I’m tired” thing was a calculated act to land us alone, next to the dying fire, with one dry sleeping bag between the two of us.

  Josh shrugs. “Or you can just have it for the night.”

  “What would you do then? I can’t take your sleeping bag.”

  “SHARE IT!” Beau calls from his tent.

  That makes them all laugh, and in the quiet that follows, I can sense them waiting to hear what I’ll say to that. My stomach flutters at the image of Josh and me tucked into his sleeping bag.

  I get up and check mine, but it’s still damp. And now cold. I would freeze overnight if I tried to sleep in it. I tell myself it’s no big deal. That we probably wouldn’t be the first hikers who had to share a sleeping bag temporarily. Out of necessity. I look around at our tents all pitched in close proximity, and then my eyes find the slope of granite on the opposite side, and I remember something Bri mentioned in her letter from the resupply box. One of the things I haven’t done yet.

  “Can we sleep under the stars?” I ask.

  Josh looks surprised. “Really?”

  “Really. It’s so clear tonight, I think we should.”

  He grins. “I like your style. I think we should too.”

  It only takes us a minute to gather up his sleeping mat and pillow, which he hands me. “Here. You can use this.”

  Before I can argue, he grabs a sweatshirt from his pack, rolls it up, and tucks it under his arm. We head away from the tents, over to the rock, and find the flattest part to make our bed for the night. Once it’s all laid out, we stand there a moment—hesitating, because the next thing to do is crawl in together. It’s dark. New-moon dark, and it takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but then I can see the outline of Josh’s body against the silhouettes of the trees.

  “This is okay here, right?” he asks.

  I look up at the stars spilled across the night sky. “Perfect.”

  “Go ahead,” he says, gesturing down at the makeshift bed between us. “You first.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and I bend over and unzip the sleeping bag, then slide in, acutely aware of how little room there is inside.

  Josh sits down and takes off his shoes, then swings his legs into the bag next to mine. It’s snug, and there’s no getting around the fact that every inch of us, from our ankles on up to our hips is touching. We lie down at the same time, slowly, until we’re both flat on our backs, each doing our best to give the other one space. It’s the most uncomfortable position for sleeping I can imagine.

  “Sorry,” I say, trying to scoot as far as I can into the seam on my side. “I don’t know if this is gonna work.”

  Josh laughs and does the same. “It’s okay. We can fit. We’ll make it work.”

  We readjust multiple times until we’re settled on our backs, rolled shirts beneath our heads, looking up at the sky above us. It’s not comfortable, and I don’t think I’ll actually be able to sleep like this, but it’s better than the alternative of my wet sleeping bag. And the view tonight is worth it.

  We both go quiet, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s taking it in too, or because he doesn’t know what to say. For me, it’s both. I realize the last time I slept under the stars was with Bri, during that last summer we spent together, searching the sky every night for shooting stars.

  I scan the night, hoping to catch a glimpse of one. After a moment, a movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. It’s a tiny light moving across the sky, but it’s too slow to be a shooting star. It doesn’t have the blinking lights of an airplane either. I follow its steady pace, trying to figure out what it is, and then it disappears.

  “Did you see that?” I ask Josh.

  “See what?”

  “That tiny light that was moving—like a plane, but not?”

  He’s quiet for a second. “Like that?” he says, pointing straight up above us.

  It takes me a second, but I spot what he’s talking about, and it’s the same thing. “Yes! Just like that,” I say, and I follow its arc again until it disappears.

  “Satellites,” Josh says. “They’re everywhere if you look for them.”

  “Really? Like space satellites?” I scan the sky for more.

  He laughs. “I don’t know if that’s the official name, but yeah, I guess so—for cell phones, TV, internet. It’s all up there, orbiting around. You can even see the space station when it passes by.”

  I spot one, and then another as he speaks. “I can’t believe we can see them from here.”

  “I know. It doesn’t seem like we should be able to.”

  I watch the two satellites cross paths, go their separate ways, and then disappear into opposite sides of the sky, and I’m not sure if I like being able to see them, or if it’s disappointing that we’ve even crowded the sky with our high-speed everything. I picture the billions of texts and posts and internet searches flying across the air, bouncing off the satellites as they go, leaving glowing trails behind them until the whole night sky is an impenetrable web of wasted time.

  “It’s kind of sad,” I say, thinking about it.

  Josh turns to me. “Why?”

  “Because you can’t get away from all of our stuff, even out here, this far away from everything else. It’s like we even ruined the sky.”

  “Maybe,” he says after a moment. “Or, maybe it’s good that you can still see it out here. Because you can see how small it really is.” He pauses. “Look. All of those tiny little satellites are nothing compared to what’s out there.”

  I sweep my eyes across the sky. He’s right.

  “I guess that’s true,” I say. And then I laugh. “You’re quite the trail philosopher today.”

  He shrugs. “I told you. You say things out here you never would otherwise.” A cool breeze rises and sweeps over us, and we both shiver.

  “Should we try and zip it up?” Josh asks. “It’s just gonna get colder.”

  I look down at both sets of our legs crammed into the sleeping bag, and the zipper that widens at our hips. “I don’t think we can with both of us in here.”

  Josh reaches down and pulls up on the zipper, but only gains a few inches. “We’re too wide like this. Here,” he says as he works the sleeping bag to get the zipper on the side, “lie on top of me real quick.”

  I don’t know what to say for a second, but then I burst out laughing.

  “That’s one I’ve never heard in real life,” I say.

  He laughs too. “Yeah, that came out wrong,” he says, fumbling with the zipper. “I meant so we could get this—”

  “I know, I know,” I say, still laughing. “Here.” I lift my body and then angle it toward his until it’s enough of an adjustment that the zipper finally closes us in that way. Barely.

  A few seconds of silence follow, seconds in which I realize that the entire lengths of our bodies are now pressed together. I hold my head back, self-conscious of our all of a sudden very close proximity, and of my weight on him.

  “I’m sorry.” I try to shift so that I’m not lying right on top of him.

  “It’s okay,” he says, his mouth so close to mine I can feel the words as he speaks them. “This is . . .”

  “Nice,” I finish as his stubble brushes my cheek.

  Time stops for a moment and holds us there, suspended between the stars and each other’s g
ravity. I look down at him, there in the dark, and try to fight it.

  “I . . . This isn’t what I came out here for,” I whisper.

  “Me neither,” he answers back.

  We lie perfectly still beneath the sparkling sky, and I can feel the cold night air, and the warmth of his skin, and our hearts beating right up against each other.

  “I don’t want to forget what this feels like, right now,” I say.

  He smiles in the dark. “Neither do I.”

  Our lips drift closer, and his hand slides to the small of my back, beneath my T-shirt, sending tiny shivers up my spine. He pulls me into him, and our lips melt under the infinite sky, a million miles away from the rest of the world, in our own little universe.

  Until We Find Our Balance

  THE SUN PEEKS over the little patch of mountains that’s visible through the trees, and I know everyone will be awake soon. My mind races, but I lie perfectly still, in the exact position I woke up in—back pressed to Josh’s chest, head resting on one of his arms, with his other one wrapped securely around me. Wondering what’ll happen when he wakes up.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say to someone I shared a sleeping bag with after a kiss that probably shouldn’t have happened. I do know that it really isn’t what I came out here for, and part of me feels guilty. Like I’m somehow not holding up my end of the bargain with Bri, or myself. I’m supposed to be out here to honor her, and figure myself out, not fall for the first guy I met, who happens to be sweet, and smart, and good-looking, and who saved me from being swallowed by the river.

  I decide to tell him some version of this. That last night I got swept up in the stars, and being so close, and everything else. And that it was impulsive. That it won’t happen again, because I need to focus on figuring things out, and it seems like maybe he does too, and I don’t want to upset the balance of the group either. I hope he’ll understand when I tell him that getting close to someone is not why I’m here, and the timing is all wrong, no matter how much I like him or how great that kiss was.

  And then I tell myself that’s all it was. One kiss. One tiny moment of connection before we fell into the kind of deep, exhausted sleep that I’ve only experienced out here on the trail. But now here we are. So tangled up with each other that I don’t dare move.

  “Mari?” Josh whispers. “You awake?”

  I close my eyes, prepare my speech, and then open them again. “Yes.”

  “I um . . .”

  Our words crisscross each other.

  “I can’t feel my arm,” he says.

  “Last night was a mistake—” I blurt.

  We’re both silent for a second, and then I realize my head is resting on his arm. I sit up, flustered. “Oh my god, I’m sorry.” I scramble out of the sleeping bag.

  Josh lies there a little bewildered and flexes his hand open and closed a few times before he sits up. His wavy hair is wild and sticks up in every direction, and the way he looks up at me almost makes me want to take it back.

  “Okay,” he says slowly. “I’m sorry too then? I didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t—I was the one who—” I can’t stop looking at him. “Anyway, let’s just . . . forget about it. It shouldn’t have happened, and I don’t want things to be awkward.”

  I turn and walk back to camp before he can answer, a sinking feeling in my gut that I’ve just made things impossibly awkward.

  At camp, I busy myself with gathering and repacking my things, which haven’t completely dried yet. When I pick up Bri’s journal, with its pages all puffy and warped, I miss her. I feel a little lost after last night, and even more lost without her plan for the day. I wonder what she would’ve written for the miles that lie ahead.

  Josh keeps his distance until the others have woken up too. It’s early, and aside from our customary good mornings, nobody seems to be interested in talking yet. Instead, we all set about our daily routine of filling and filtering water bottles, eating breakfast, and taping up our blisters.

  No one mentions anything about last night, and Josh barely looks at me, even as we all sit in a circle for him to read from his guidebook about the portion of the trail we’ll be doing today, including a two-thousand-foot climb up Bear Ridge. He reminds us that we have to make up miles from yesterday, and I feel a little sting of guilt at the mention of it. We’ll have to move fast for the next two days, with few rest stops if we want to make it to our next resupply before our food runs out.

  We’ll be on our own to do this first section, given that we hike at different paces, but we agree to meet up at the next creek and cross it together, since it’ll likely be high and difficult. I glance at Josh when he mentions this, but he doesn’t meet my eyes, and now I feel even more guilty over the way I acted this morning, especially after yesterday.

  There’s a different energy between us all this morning. I don’t know if it’s because Josh isn’t his usual, fearless leader self, or just that we’re all tired and trying to get our heads straight for the long day ahead of us, but as we leave camp, we all sort of naturally separate and fall into our own rhythms.

  I’m thankful for this. For the alone time, to think and walk. The trail drops steeply, and as I crisscross the switchbacks over the wide valley below, the panic I felt this morning when I woke starts to recede. The crunch of my boots on the dirt, and cloudless sky above, and the great swaths of trees below all center me in a way that is at once comforting and energizing. I’m surprised how quickly I find my way back into this peaceful place today, and I’m happy to stay there, outside of my mind, as I move through the changing landscape.

  I don’t know how many miles it is before I reach another creek, but everyone is there, leaning against rocks, sipping from their CamelBaks, and talking and laughing, and now it seems everyone is in good spirits. We get ready to cross the creek together, like we did yesterday, and I try to be casual as Josh and I link arms, because necessity trumps ego out here.

  We make it without any trouble, and he gives me a quick smile when he lets go of my arm, but doesn’t say anything before it’s back to pace hiking. Right away, he pulls far, far ahead of me, and I can’t help but think his speed has more to do with separating himself from me than getting in miles. I try not to regret what I said this morning, try to stand by it in my mind, but the farther away he gets, the more I wish he wouldn’t give me so much space.

  Up ahead, I see Vanessa and Jack stop for a moment, then he continues on and she hangs back waiting for me.

  “Hey,” she says when I get to her. “Everything okay with you and Josh? You guys both seem a little tense today.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Yeah. I messed up. I kissed him last night, and I shouldn’t have, and now things are awkward because this morning, I told him that it was a mistake.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and now I hope I’m not making things awkward with her too. I don’t know where she stands, or what she might think of me for this. I brace myself for her to be angry or upset or judge me, but she just nods slowly.

  “I figured that was coming—the two of you, I mean.” She smiles. “There’s definitely a little spark there.”

  “There is,” I say. “But I don’t think this is the right time or place, or . . .” I feel guilty all over again just thinking about it.

  “I get what you mean,” Vanessa says. “And I think he’s still kind of trying to figure things out for himself after she-who-shall-not-be-named, so he probably feels the same way.”

  We’re both quiet, and then she puts a hand on my arm.

  “It’ll be okay. Give it a few miles, and I bet by the time we make it to camp tonight, you guys will be fine.”

  “I hope so,” I say. “I just want things to be like they were before. Simple.”

  “Then don’t make them complicated,” she says. “It was just a kiss.” She smiles, and gives my arm a squeeze. “Truthfully, I would’ve kissed him too, after he pulled me out
of that river.”

  I laugh, and so does she.

  “You want me to stay back with you, or should I catch up with Jack?”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “I could use the solo time.”

  She nods. “Okay, but don’t overthink it. I’ll see you at the creek.”

  She picks up her pace, and I slow mine to let her pull away. It’s nice on this part of the trail, which winds its way through lush meadows, along meandering streams before the dry, rocky switchbacks resume. I’m still behind everyone else, but I feel strong today, despite the pain in my knee from yesterday’s fall in the creek. I move forward by myself, with the most confidence I’ve had on this trail so far. It’s Bri’s boots I’m wearing, but my own legs are what carry me over each mile. The daily physical punishment is familiar now, and it feels good knowing that I can handle it.

  I remind myself of this as I move swiftly through more meadowland, and I try to take in the beauty all around. Today it looks like nature is showing off, and I am an impressed audience. When I see the trail begin the main climb for the day, and Josh, Beau, Colin, Jack, and Vanessa making their way up the switchbacks, I decide to give myself a moment to stop and prepare. To soak it up, like Bri would.

  I slide my pack off beneath the shade of an aspen grove, sip some water, and stretch my shoulders next to the creek before I find a rock to rest on. Above me, the aspen leaves twinkle and wave in the breeze, and for a moment, I’m not here on the John Muir Trail, but right back in the meadow in front of Bri’s house, looking up at the very same trees. We are young, ten at most.

  “Look,” she whispers. “The leaves are sparkling.”

  I squint up into the sunlight that streams down through the dancing leaves and smile. She’s right. They do look like they’re sparkling.

  Bri jumps up from where we’re sitting and raises her arms high above her head, wiggles her fingers, and twirls as fast as she can.

  “Come on!!” she yells.

  I get up and join her, and we dance and spin beneath the aspens until we’re so dizzy we fall down, laughing at the way the ground tilts and shifts beneath us, until the world stops spinning and we find our balance again.