Carter spots an unlikely jewel, points. “There’s a lake.” A smudge of gray-blue in a sea of green.

  “I remember one on the map,” Grace says uncertainly. “That must be it?” Her intonation rises at the end, transforming a declarative sentence into a question.

  “Seems far,” Carter says. “Maybe that’s not the one. I thought ours would be closer.” He turns in a full circle, trying to absorb the entire landscape, create a map in his mind. North, south, east, west, up, down, near, far: It’s meaningless now. In this imposing wilderness, he can’t tell one from the other—here from there. Carter knows his shoulders ache from the pack. His feet hurt; the boots aren’t broken in. There’s a blister forming on his right heel.

  Carter and Grace explore along the rock outcrop, past two upright halves of a split rock that towers above them. They pass over and under rocks, ledges, fissure caves. Where the path turns sharply back into the woods, they decide to rest. Carter drains the last drop of water from his metal canteen. Unshoulders his pack, lets it drop at his feet.

  “What now?” he asks.

  “Wait for Dad?” Grace asks. “He’s carrying the sandwiches.”

  In answer, Carter grabs his pack by the loop strap, carries it to a nearby rock slab, sits down. He unzips the pack and pulls out a package of red Twizzlers. He pulls off two, separates them, holds one out for Grace as he bites into the other.

  “At least we came prepared,” Grace jokes. She sits beside him, leans back, likes it, and decides to recline on the warm, smooth rock. The sun feels good on her face; her muscles relax. Wispy clouds in the distance remind her of mares’ tails. Sitka comes by, curls down beside her, snuffling her nose into Grace’s ribs.

  Carter finds a basic first aid kit, unzips it, extracts a Band-Aid. He considers the whole major hassle of taking off his boot, etcetera. “Grace, will you do it for me?” he asks.

  Grace opens her eyes. “Seriously?”

  “Blister,” Carter says, just the hint of a whine in his voice. He holds out his booted foot in her direction. “Please?”

  Without complaint, Grace sits up, unlaces her brother’s boot, pulls it off.

  “Ow,” he protests.

  She peels off his sock. “You’re as tough as an old banana,” Grace teases. She examines his sore heel, gingerly pokes the red area where the skin has ripped off. In the kit she finds pieces of precut moleskin in the shape of a doughnut, selects one, and presses it against the boy’s heel. Grace is careful that no sticky part touches the raw skin. “There,” she says. “That’s tons better than a regular Band-Aid.”

  “Thanks,” he replies.

  She nods and leaves him to lace up his own boot.

  “There’s jerky in here,” Carter says, holding up the bag.

  Grace shrugs. “I don’t trust that stuff.”

  “It’s fine,” Carter counters. He bites off a piece. “It’s just dried meat.”

  “I don’t know, it seems so … fake,” Grace says. “Processed-food stuff, weird preservatives.”

  “More for me,” Carter concludes.

  The dog rises, comes closer to the boy, nostrils flaring, to investigate the smell.

  “Here you go, Sitka.” Carter sets a piece of jerky on the rock. The dog sniffs, chews thoughtfully, swallows. Steps closer, tail wagging, mouth loosely hanging open, asking for more.

  “Sorry,” Carter says. “Maybe later.”

  Grace hands a nearly full water bottle to her brother. “Pour some into my hands,” she says. “Not too much. We have to make it last. Here, Sitka. Drink.”

  The dog laps up the cool water, tickling Grace’s fingers with her whiskers and tongue.

  Finally, Carter stands, restless. “Okay. I’m bored, let’s get going,” he announces. He accidentally drops a piece of jerky between two rocks. It’s stuck there, a waste. Left for some critter to discover.

  Grace yawns, blinking in the sun. It feels as if she could relax there forever. Sitka stretches, downward dog, yoga-style, moves off the rock, sniffs the breeze with an uplift of the snout, ready to explore. The dog’s attention focuses primarily on the two kids, searching for signs and signals from her human companions, anticipating their next move. Grace rises to her feet, rubs the heels of her hands against her eye sockets, reaches for the sky, tippy toes. Sets off in a hurry. She calls back teasingly, “Try to keep up, Carter, if you can.”

  She breaks into a run, backpack and all.

  6

  [TROUBLE]

  This hike is kicking my butt, Mr. Taylor thinks. He pauses, his right foot up on a rock, hunched over, resting his right hand on the bent knee. He tries to catch his breath. Takes a bandanna from his back pocket, mops it across his brow, the back of his neck. He can’t remember ever sweating this much. He shivers at a light breeze, feels cold and clammy.

  His gaze follows the trail. There’s only one direction now: up and up.

  He thinks:

  Grace is a good girl, always looking out for her pa. She would have stayed with me the whole way. But that’s what being a parent is about, right? You push them out of the nest. I couldn’t hold her back. Not with Speed Racer up there, practically running up the trail. That boy, still young, only thinks of himself. Growing up takes time.

  When Mr. Taylor returns the bandanna to his back pocket, his hand brushes against the trail map. Probably not great that he’s the one with the map—the caboose pulling up the rear. He hopes the kids know enough to wait where the trail splits. Damn, he should have told them. But there should be markers, cairns. They’ll be fine. It’s not their first time on a hike. He just needs to catch his breath. Weird how his shoulders ache. Like there’s a thick rope around his body, squeezing tight. Should not have eaten those burritos last night. Ah, regrets. Refried beans will repeat on a guy. His chest, right at the bottom of his rib cage, feels full, tight, pressure building.

  The sacrifices a father makes.

  Smart to go midweek, not another soul on the trail. Nice and peaceful, far from the madding crowd. He takes a step, and another, pauses again when he feels a momentary dizziness. He massages his jawbone with his left hand. A cavity? Loose filling? Should make an appointment with the dentist when I get back. Add it to the list. Toothaches hurt so much because they are near the brain. Great, another bill to pay, another five hundred balloons down the drain. Probably more. Doctors, bah.

  He thinks of his children, those two up there somewhere, happy on the mountain, a beautiful day. It makes him feel good. Wish they did this more, but: life. At least I did this, he thinks. Hell, I made those two. A lot of mistakes—more than he cares to count—but at least he got them right. Those two. A troubling worry persists: sure hope they have sense enough to stop where the trail splits. A moment’s worry flickers across his consciousness. He gives a soft burp—burrito gas, he guesses—and determines to pick up the pace.

  Up and up.

  A moment later, he’s throwing up on the side of the trail. What the hell? he wonders.

  7

  [HOLD UP]

  The day gets colder, dampness clings to the air, but Grace and Carter don’t notice. Sitka, of course, does—it’s as plain as the nose on her face. She has no way to communicate this knowledge. But she assumes they know it, too.

  “Remember what Dad would say whenever we got bad grades or did something wrong?” Grace asks Carter.

  The boy laughs. “Let’s walk and talk,” he says.

  “Yeah,” Grace laughs. “There was nothing worse than getting that text from Dad. ‘We need to have a walk-and-talk.’”

  Carter smiles at his sister. “And every single time, we took the exact same walk.”

  “Past the Harts’ house, around the block, and up the driveway,” Grace said.

  Carter puts a hand on Grace’s right shoulder. In a deep, fatherly voice he says, “‘I’m glad we had this chance to talk.’”

  Both of them snort out loud, their voices carrying across the humps and cols of the saddleback ridge. They come to a spot that makes Carter stop. The trail seems to be vanishing before his eyes. The trees lean in, a breeze kicks up.

  “Um, hold up,” he says. “Shouldn’t we be, like, there by now?”

  8

  [UNWORRIED]

  They aren’t worried yet. Not quite to the point of worry, exactly, but getting there. Their senses strain. They think harder, look closer, run calculations in their heads, assign blame, and then, suddenly, their bodies speak: hunger, thirst, weariness, and the first hint of fear.

  Fear is a chemical that rushes through the veins like a flash flood after a heavy rain. Suddenly, the dam bursts and it’s on top of you. A wild, rising torrent. Fear changes everything, especially the way the brain works. The brain sends out chemical signals to various body systems. Adrenaline brings blood to the skin’s surface. The body begins to sweat. The heart palpitates rapidly. Muscles tighten. Breathing picks up.

  “What do you think?” Carter asks.

  Grace’s mouth shuts. She doesn’t want to look at her brother, doesn’t want him to see the expression she wears on her face. She turns, searching in all directions for something, anything, a clue.

  Nothing. Not a thing.

  The sameness of the forest.

  They have wandered off the trail but don’t realize it yet. “Keep going a little farther, I guess.” Grace points. “Bushwhack to that rise? Maybe we can see something.”

  It looks to the untrained eye to be twenty minutes away. A little down, a little up, and you’re there.

  Ninety minutes later, they make it, dead tired.

  And the view tells them nothing.

  The sudden fog obscures the details.

  9

  [HEARTBURN]

  He knows he could pee right here on the trail and no one would see. But what if? Or if Grace drops back? He sure doesn’t want to be caught standing out in the open. So he picks a path into the forest. His modesty brings him farther than necessary. Well out of sight. Behind a screen of dense underbrush, he finds a fat pine to take a leak against. He relishes this feeling, like being a little boy again, taking a whiz against a tree. It’s fun to be outdoors, taking aim at bugs or whatever target catches his fancy. A squirrel watches from a distance, tail curled across its back. Hey, fella, give a guy some privacy, Mr. Taylor thinks. Zips his fly. All done.

  So tired. “My get-up-and-go has gone up and went.” A line from a country song he remembers. His heart beats like a drum, a reckless conga rhythm. A shiver of pain ripples down his left arm and shockingly, amazingly, he knows. All the clues come together. The dizziness, the sweats, the shortness of breath. Not heartburn, he realizes. Not old-man syndrome. Worse than that. He triangulates the distances: the kids, the car, a possible hospital, must be at least fifty miles away. Not good. His fingers tingle, the tips of his ears; vibrations sweep through his body like an ocean tide. Fast as bad news. Another shiver of electricity zings down his left arm. His eyes close, and he thinks of his children, his wife, his life, as he drops to the ground. He sees their faces. Marissa, Grace, Carter. Tough marriage, hard times, but they made such great kids together. When his head hits the rock, he no longer thinks anything at all, sleeps the dreamless sleep.

  The squirrel, startled by the thump, climbs a tree.

  10

  [LOST]

  They walk and bicker and walk.

  Lost.

  The reality of their situation presses against them, like walls closing in. A feeling of compression, of claustrophobia. Here in the middle of nowhere, without any idea whatsoever where to turn or what to do.

  Carter looks to Grace for guidance, but she avoids his gaze. She appears stressed herself. Keeps running her hands from her forehead down to the bottom of her skull, pulling tight on her long brown hair. She tries to think, tries to remember every scrap of information she’s ever learned and discarded. All the survival shows she’s half watched on television while doing homework or texting with friends or just blowing through Instagram, bored and scrolling.

  Where’s Dad?

  Maybe we haven’t gone far enough?

  Maybe we should circle back?

  And if Carter hadn’t been in such a hurry …

  “Grace?” Carter says, and her name comes with a question. A sense of urgency, bordering on panic. He wants an answer.

  Minutes pass. It’s hard to see past twenty yards. Grace feels unsure of anything.

  They are standing in a cloud. Mist envelops them. In the gathering gray, the high timber becomes a thick, dark mesh.

  “We must have missed a turnoff somewhere,” Grace decides. “We’ll be okay. Let’s just … figure this out.”

  Carter sinks to his knees, sits back on his heels. He’s fried. Needs a break. His cheeks look pale, his wet hair stuck to his face in clumps. He sneezes. Sitka comes to him, made curious by the boy’s behavior. The dog smells a chemical coming off Carter’s skin. Licks his face. Salt, sweat, anxiety. The boy circles his arms around the dog’s neck, notices her damp fur. “I’m hungry,” he complains.

  Grace reaches into her backpack. Hands her brother what remains of the trail mix. A few handfuls, no more. There are five energy bars left, which strikes Grace as excessive. Some instinct tells her: Not yet. She scours the landscape for a familiar sign: a tree, a rock ledge, anything.

  But there is nothing.

  It is too gray.

  The fog and rain.

  It all looks the same.

  Grace’s brain struggles to imagine where they are in relation to the parking lot, the main trail, the lake …

  Why didn’t she study the map?

  Where was their father?

  She shivers. The rain no longer misting but now actual drops. She has a flannel in the backpack. Carter has an extra long-sleeve T-shirt. Both are useless in wet weather. She finds one of those silver emergency blankets still in its packaging. Grace opens it and wraps it around her brother.

  “We’ll be okay,” she tells him.

  Carter doesn’t quite believe it.

  Grace’s hand finds a small, cylindrical object. “Hey, Carter, look.” She slides a button. A thin beam of light cuts into the dusky night. She waves it around like a light saber. “We’re in luck. A flashlight. At least now we can see!”

  Carter isn’t buying Grace’s cheerful act. He sits there, glum and shivering. A flashlight. Big whoop. And though she’s trying hard, Grace can’t quite convince herself, either. Yet she knows, down in her bones, they can’t let go of hope.

  11

  [SLEEP TIGHT]

  “We can’t stay here,” Grace says.

  Carter doesn’t move. He sits with his arms around his knees, huddled in a tight ball, baseball cap pulled low on his head. He’s exhausted. Grace’s little brother is shutting down.

  Toughen up, kid, she thinks.

  “Okay, look,” Grace says. “This sucks. Believe me, I know this sucks. But”—she looks to the darkening sky, rubs her neck—“we’re just going to have to, like, hang tough. You know? It’s going to be okay.”

  Movement from Carter’s head. He’s nodding. He hears her. Encouraged, Grace continues: “We’re going to have to find some, I don’t know, shelter. Anywhere that’s dry and safe. I’m thinking we should head down, lower.” She gently kicks Carter on the side of his hiking boot. “Tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, we’ll figure it out and hike out of here. By lunchtime, we’ll be laughing about this with Dad.”

  “How are we going to find him?” Carter asks.

  Grace holds out a hand before his face. Gives a little movement with the bend of her fingers, a come-on-let’s-rise gesture. He reaches up, they clasp forearms, and she pulls him to standing. Grace points the flashlight at Sitka, who is watching them from the base of a nearby tree. “Let’s go,” she says.

  The dog slowly comes to them, as if disbelieving, watching their eyes for instructions.

  The rain picks up. Carter sneezes again.

  Together, they trudge downhill through the timber, following a narrow beam of light. What they do not say, what they fail to admit, is that neither has the slightest clue where they are headed. Nevertheless, it feels good to be moving again. No matter in which direction. They are looking for an umbrella of branches, a cave, something, anything, a place to spend the night. Grace’s bare arms and muscular legs feel wet and cold. She rubs them to keep warm. It’s not too bad, she tells herself. Grace has always been goal-oriented, determined. She makes a decision, fixes on an object, and forges ahead. It’s always been her way. That’s Grace. The blazing arrow after its target. Now fueled by stress and emotion, that inner urge propels her, stumbling in the dark.

  Sitka walks with them, staying close by, head dropping below her shoulders, ears keen to any sound.

  “Slow down,” Carter finally says.

  Grace stops. “What?”

  Carter pauses, blinks. “Let me see that flashlight.”

  He sweeps the flashlight in a slow circle, like a lighthouse on a rocky shore. It settles on a massive tree trunk that lies fallen. Near the upturned root, the trunk is a foot above the ground and stretches out at least fifty feet in a clean line.

  “There,” Carter says.

  “What do you mean?” Grace asks. She wants to keep moving.

  “That’s where we’re going to wait this out,” Carter says. “Under that log.”

  “Carter…,” Grace begins.

  “You’re leading us nowhere,” Carter says. “I’m tired, Grace. I’m hungry. This is beyond stupid.” He points to Sitka, already on the ground, her head resting on her front paws. He bends to touch the dog’s head. “Even Sitka needs a break.”

  They walk toward the fallen tree. “Feel this,” Carter says. “Still dry. And there’s moss. Maybe we could—”

  “Make a bed,” Grace says. “There’s a knife in your backpack. Check the side pockets to see if there are any matches.”