The scream came from Lindsay. She’s gotten to her feet, and she’s pointing into the distance.
“Lindsay!” Warner is trying to do his best to calm her down. “Stop screaming. What’s wrong?”
“It was a bear!” Her blue eyes are flashing. “I saw it! It was coming towards us! It had huge claws and giant white fangs!”
We all turn to look in the direction she’s pointing with her shaking hand. It’s gotten pretty dark now, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything there. Only blackness, branches, and leaves. Now that she’s stopped screaming, all we can hear are crickets chirping. An owl hoots in the distance.
Once again, I flashback to Emma’s words. I dreamed you got eaten up by a monster.
I think of those claw marks on the tree. Despite Jack’s sweatshirt, I shiver and hug my chest.
“A bear isn’t going to just attack us out of nowhere,” Jack says patiently.
“How do you know that?” There’s something wild and unfamiliar in Lindsay’s eyes. “That bear is going to kill us all! I know it!”
“Jesus,” Jack mutters under his breath.
Lindsay clutches her belly and drops back down onto the fallen tree. She lets out a low moan. She’s acting so strangely. I can’t imagine what’s gotten into her, except…
“Lindsay ate some wild berries,” I blurt out. Jack’s head snaps up. “Wild berries?”
“Blueberries,” I say. “About an hour ago. Maybe a little more.” “Lindsay!” Warner cries. “Is that true?”
She lifts her head and nods miserably. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“How could you do something so stupid?” Warner’s handsome face turns pink. “Eating wild berries in the middle of a forest? Why would you do something like that?”
“I was so hungry,” she whimpers. “I just had a few…”
He shakes his head. “And now look what happened to you…”
Jack’s forehead is crumpled in concern. “Claire, what did the berries look like?”
“They were blue,” I say helplessly. I try to remember those tiny berries that Lindsay was stuffing in her mouth. “Bluish, at least.”
“How many did she eat?”
I lift my shoulders. “I’m not entirely sure. Ten? Maybe fifteen?” “Shit,” Jack breathes.
“What?” My heart flutters in my chest. “What do you think it was?”
Jack just shakes his head and crouches down next to Lindsay, who looks even worse than she did a minute ago. She’s doubled over, and now she’s mumbling something incoherent. I feel a stab of guilt in my chest.
Lindsay was begging me to stay in the car with her. If only I had done it… “Hey.” Noah touches my arm to get my attention. “You didn’t eat any
berries, did you?”
Is that concern in his hazel eyes? “No. I didn’t.” Thank God.
Lindsay is deteriorating rapidly. She’s becoming lethargic, and Warner is rubbing her shoulder, trying to get her to answer questions. I comfort myself with the fact that he’s a doctor. We’ve got a licensed physician with us—a surgeon. Even if Lindsay ate some poison berries, he’ll be able to save her.
“She’s losing consciousness.” Warner’s voice is even, but there’s a note of underlying panic. “We need to lie her down.”
Lindsay’s eyes are closed and she mumbles something incoherent. Jack and Warner lower her down onto the dirt, and she’s like a ragdoll. Her face looks really pale.
“What the hell did she eat?” Warner mutters.
“Could be elderberry,” Jack says. “But I’m more worried it could’ve been deadly nightshade. I’ve heard of that growing out here.”
I squeeze my hands together. “Nightshade?”
“The berries are sort of purple-black,” Jack says. “They look like blueberries a little bit. And if she ate that…”
He doesn’t complete his sentence. He doesn’t have to.
Lindsay’s body suddenly goes rigid on the ground. Jack takes several steps back, clearly shaken, but Warner stays close to her. I am frozen, watching in horror as Lindsay’s body starts to shake violently.
“She’s having a seizure,” Warner says. “This isn’t good.” Well, duh.
The shaking goes on for what seems like forever, and when it ends, her body is completely limp. Her head falls to the right, and a glob of drool oozes from the corner of her lips. Warner places his hand on her chest, then lowers his head to the level of her mouth.
“Shit,” he says. “She’s not breathing.”
I clasp my hand over my mouth. “She’s not…”
I take a step back, watching helplessly as Warner performs CPR on Lindsay. I watch his muscular arms pumping against her frail chest. He counts quietly to fifteen with each compression, then puts two breaths into her mouth. Every minute or so, he stops and looks at her chest, then takes her pulse.
Thank God Warner is here. He knows what he’s doing. He’s going to save her.
Noah is standing beside me, watching with the same horrified expression that I must have on my own face. At some point, I feel his arm go around my shoulders. I barely notice it.
“She’ll be okay,” he murmurs.
“Does anybody have a cell signal?” Warner calls out, between compressions.
My hands are trembling as I pull my phone out of my pocket. I say a quiet prayer to myself. But it’s just as I thought. No service.
Noah has his phone in his hand. My eyes light up when I notice he has a single bar. But then he shakes his head. “No service,” he says.
I must be hallucinating. I’m seeing mirages of bars on cell phones. Warner works on her for another ten minutes. I am frozen in place,
watching him. He repeats the same process over and over. Compressions, breath, compressions, breaths, check for breathing, check for a pulse. Each time he checks, I hold my breath, hoping he’ll say she’s back. She’s okay.
But then he collapses onto the dirt beside her. He put his hands on his knees and stares down at her, his eyes glassy. “I think… she’s gone…”
“Gone?” I cry. “What are you talking about?”
Warner lifts his watery eyes to look at me. “She’s dead.”
“No!” I squirm away from Noah and drop down beside Lindsay. I pick up her limp left hand. “That’s not possible! All she did was eat a few berries…”
“If it was nightshade—” Jack says
“Shut up!” I scream. “The only reason she ate those berries is because we’ve been lost in the goddamn woods for hours! Why can’t we find this stupid inn? Why can’t we…”
I can’t even finish my sentence, because I’m crying so hard. How could this be happening? We’re supposed to be lying in the Jacuzzi now with a glass of bubbly. Instead, we’re lost in the woods and Lindsay is dead. Dead! How could Lindsay be dead? She’s my best friend! My college roommate. My maid of honor. The children’s godmother. She was so young and healthy and…
I feel Jack’s arms around me. I sob into his chest like I haven’t cried in years. Why did I go on this trip? I don’t know anything about the wilderness. I just wanted a week away. Is that really so awful?
Oh, Lindsay…
When I pull away from Jack, there are wet spots on his shirt from my leaking eyes, rimmed with mascara. For a moment, I try to get control of my emotions, but there’s no hope of that. My legs give out beneath me and I fall to the ground. I squeeze handfuls of dirt in my palms as I gasp for air.
“Lindsay,” I whisper.
She looks so still, lying there. It seems impossible to believe she’s gone.
I met Lindsay on my first day of college. I had been so nervous about my new roommate—I got butterflies whenever I thought about it. I had heard so many horror stories from people about bad roommates, and then when Lindsay walked in with her cute blond bob and shy smile, I couldn’t help but throw my arms around her. She laughed and hugged me back.
Lindsay will never hug me back again.
When the kids were born, there was nobody else I would’ve considered asking to be their godmother. The kids adore their Aunt Lindsay.
Even though we’ve grown apart a bit since I embraced suburban life, she’s always got an armful of presents for them when she comes over.
What will I tell Aiden and Emma?
“Claire?” It’s Jack’s voice. “Are you okay?”
“No!” I bury my face in my hands. “I’m not okay!”
This is all my fault. Lindsay wanted to stay behind, and I said no. I said we should stay with the group. If only I had stayed behind in the car with Lindsay, she’d be alive right now. Or if I had tried harder to talk her out of eating those berries…
I want to give up. I feel like lying down in the dirt and not going another step.
“What are we going to do next?” Michelle pipes up.
That’s Michelle all over. My best friend is lying on the ground dead, her body not even cold yet, and Michelle is plotting our next move. I lift my head to glare at her. Of the five of us, she seems the least frazzled by far. Her black hair doesn’t have a strand out of place, and even her makeup is intact.
I shoot daggers at her with my eyes. “What’s the difference?”
“What’s the difference?” she repeats. She gives me a sharp look that reminds me that I probably shouldn’t have been clinging to her husband for comfort. I hadn’t been thinking about it at the time, but now I realize how that must’ve looked to everyone else—especially Michelle. The truth is, I’m scared of this woman. “The difference is that we’re still lost. We don’t have much food or water, and it’s now nighttime. We need to keep moving.”
I scramble back to my feet. “We can’t leave Lindsay here.”
Michelle stares at me. “She’s dead, Claire. And if we don’t get moving, we will be too.”
I shake my head.
“I’m surprised at you.” Michelle lifts an eyebrow. “You’ve got two young children waiting for you at home. You really don’t care about getting back safely for them?”
I suck in a breath. She makes a good point. If I had eaten those berries like Lindsay, I could be lying on the ground beside her—dead. Emma and Aiden wouldn’t have a mother anymore. All of a sudden, my longing for my children becomes so intense that I feel like I’m suffocating.
But at the same time, I can’t imagine leaving Lindsay here like this. Just lying on the ground. What if animals start eating her? I feel sick at the thought of scavengers chewing at her skin. She doesn’t deserve that. Even if she’s dead.
Oh God, I can’t believe she’s dead. Lindsay, Lindsay…
“Warner,” I say pleadingly. He looked so haunted when he pulled away from Lindsay’s dead body. There’s no way he’s going to want to keep moving. “You think we should stay, don’t you?”
Warner wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. He looks down at Lindsay, his light brown eyebrows scrunched together.
“I…” He clears his throat. “I actually… I think Michelle is right. We have to keep moving.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “What? Are you serious?”
He lets out a long sigh. “We have to. It’s our only hope. That’s what Lindsay would’ve wanted.”
My mouth falls open. I can’t believe other people are agreeing to this. Especially Warner, the guy who was sleeping with Lindsay and apparently so in love with her that he was going to pop the question this week. He should be showing a little more grief for the woman he almost married. He should be sobbing into his hands. Not spouting bullshit about how Lindsay would’ve wanted us to abandon her body here in the middle of the woods.
“You’re kidding,” I say. “Aren’t you sad? Can’t we take five goddamn minutes to grieve?”
His full lips purse. “What do you want me to say? I’m sad. Of course I’m sad. Lindsay was a beautiful woman. This was tragic.” He takes a deep breath. “But it’s not going to help Lindsay for us to die here.”
I look over at Jack, whose eyebrows are bunched together. He hasn’t said a word about any of this. But he’ll support me. He’s known Lindsay almost as long as I have. And he cares about me more than anyone else in this group, including my own husband. Not for the first time, I wonder what sort of life I would have had if I had ditched Noah for Jack at that party in college. “Jack…?”
“I agree with Michelle and Warner,” he says quietly. “We need to keep moving.”
I jerk my head back like I’ve been slapped. I know they’re just being logical, of course. It’s not like I want to be stuck out here in the wilderness.
It’s not like I want to starve to death or die of thirst. I want to go home to my family. But at the same time, I just can’t fathom leaving Lindsay like this.
But what am I supposed to do? Stay here alone with a dead body?
“As soon as we get to the inn,” Jack says, “we’ll send somebody to… collect her.”
“Collect her?” How could he be so cold? “What if they can’t find her?
Or what if it’s too late and she’s already been…”
I can’t even bring myself to say the words. I can’t think about scavengers ripping apart my best friend’s dead body. I try to look into Jack’s brown eyes, but he averts his eyes.
“Let’s get moving,” Warner says. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”
Jack shifts his backpack on his shoulders and follows Warner. Michelle does the same. I stand there, looking down at Lindsay’s motionless body. I can’t just leave her. I can’t.
“Hey.”
I turn my head and see Noah standing behind me. Somehow, I’d almost forgotten he was with us. He backed away when I was clinging to Jack. If he says a word about that, I swear to God, I will lose it completely.
“Hey,” I manage around the lump in my throat.
“Listen.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “If you want to stay behind, I’ll stay with you.”
I blink at him—it’s the last thing I expected him to say. “You will?” He nods. “Yeah, you… you shouldn’t be alone here.”
I look ahead. The others have gained a lot of distance on us already. If we wait much longer, we won’t be able to catch up anymore. Whatever I decide, I have to decide right now.
“Do you think I’m being stupid for wanting to stay behind?” I say.
Noah shakes his head. “Lindsay was your best friend. I don’t blame you.” He sighs. “It all doesn’t feel real, you know?”
I nod. I look ahead again to the others. I feel awful about what happened to Lindsay. But it could’ve easily been me lying on the ground right now. I dodged a bullet.
For now, at least. The scary reality is we don’t have much water. And we can’t survive long without water. I imagine Penny telling my children
that their parents didn’t make it home. That they’ll have to grow up without us. I imagine the way their faces would crumble.
I have to keep moving. For Emma and Aiden.
“I think we should stay with the others,” I finally say. “Okay,” he agrees.
I pick a wildflower from the ground. It’s Lindsay’s favorite color— purple. I gently lay the flower down on her chest. I kiss my fingertips, then gently press them against Lindsay’s cheek. She still feels warm, but in another hour or two, her body will be cold. I don’t want to think about it. I straighten up and start walking in the direction the others went. Noah follows beside me, although keeping a respectful distance.
“Thanks for offering to stay,” I say to him.
He’s quiet for a moment. “I’m really glad you didn’t eat any of those berries.”
Me too.
