Page 46

The next morning—our last day to make it to the wishing well—gets off to a dismal start.

It’s drizzling when we wake, no one has a rain cheater, and Radhika’s hair poofs in a way I haven’t seen since my mom’s Polaroids from the nineties.

We’re all bleary-eyed and stiff, and my calves revolt even walking a little bit away for a pee.

Tayla doesn’t fare much better; she groans through every minute of her morning stretches.

Breakfast is maple-and-brown-sugar oatmeal ripped out of brown sachets, topped with a handful of walnuts and raisins Evan picks out of the trail mix.

Tayla finishes her oatmeal and gnaws on a piece of licorice, offering me the rest of the bag when she sees me using my finger to swipe clean the last of the oatmeal from my bowl.

We hastily pack up camp, none of us willing to waste time beyond what it takes to cram everything back in our packs.

While the others take down the tents and douse the fire, I check in with Austin and Caroline.

I don’t tell them anything about Kiara’s disappearance—let alone the dangers Tayla and I encountered in our search for her—just that there are some sketchy dudes in the forest and we’re giving them a wide berth.

They’re not thrilled, but we all know the full moon is tonight.

Whatever happens, the Fellowship of the Fling will be for sure heading back first thing tomorrow. We don’t know if we’ll find Kiara or the well in time, so for now I simultaneously dread the deadline and look forward to all of us going home. Is there a word for that feeling?

There is: foreboding.

“Good luck,” Austin says, and I hear his worry and his hope and his love over all these miles separating us. “Be safe.”

“Your mom keeps asking for pics of you and Kiara, by the way,” says Caroline. “I took one of me and Austin instead and sent it from you. Apparently she was rooting for us?”

So there is an us now? This is the best news I’ve had in days. “Her and me both,” I tell them before we say our farewells.

The happiness stays with me for only a few moments before the somber surroundings remind me where I am, what we’re doing, and what’s at stake. Doom and gloom doesn’t hang over everyone’s head, though.

“A burger,” Keiffer says wistfully.

Tayla blinks. “What?”

“I could really go for a burger right now.”

“Keiffer, it’s eight a.m.”

He continues like he hasn’t heard her. “Extra pickles, extra onions, extra mustard, hold the ketchup.”

Radhika wrinkles her nose. “Hold the kissing, too, if those are your condiments.” She grins to show she doesn’t mean it, and they both laugh.

That’s the last joyful sound we hear for hours.

Every unexplained noise sends us straight into panic mode.

We can’t go more than ten minutes without someone asking if the rest of us heard that, though what the that could be is anybody’s guess.

At this point, I’m pretty sure all of us would rather cross paths with a bear than whatever else we think is out there, dogging our steps. Human or animal. Friend or foe.

Not that we’ve met many friends out here. Scratch that, any friends.

And Tayla tricked the only two allies we possibly could count on. So.

“This is it here!” she calls out when we reach the drop-off.

Evan peers over the edge. “I thought you said the steps disappeared?”

“Yeah, they—” I break off, jaw dropping in utter disbelief. “Came back?”

“Convenient,” Tayla says in a tight voice. “Right when we needed them.”

“Radical thought. What if we don’t do what the forest so obviously wants us to do?” asks Keiffer.

I get the reluctance. I’m not keen to go back down there myself. “I’m with you, Keif, but this place is huge, and we don’t even know where to start looking, so it makes the most sense to—”

“Walk through the pit of snakes?” He raises a sardonic brow.

I roll my eyes at his antics. “To go to the last place we know she was for certain. Where she fell.”

It’s the right move, even though the prospect fills all our hearts with dread.

The terrain is soft with groundwater, our boots making unhappy wet squelches as we plod our way back to the edge where Kiara was taken.

The puddles suck at our feet, and more than once we’re forced to stop and shake sopping-wet mud off our boots.

“You don’t think there are mud snakes in here, do you?” Tayla asks.

“Well, now I do,” says Keiffer.

“Hey!” Radhika makes a face as a clump of mud flies free from Evan’s boot and onto the knee of her jeans. “Nova, as our resident snake expert, wanna answer that?”

“Honestly? No.” My feet sink into a particularly gloopy mess of mud. “I don’t think we should dwell on the danger. Who knows, maybe the forest can sense it, feed off our emotions.”

“A mind-reading forest is an even scarier notion,” says Evan. “Just so you know.”

“She does this all the time,” Tayla whispers conspiratorially to Keiffer.

“Oh, don’t I know it,” he says.

Tayla giggles and looks over her shoulder at me. I screw up my face, but that only makes her more amused. Rats.

“We knew it from day one,” says Evan, gesturing to Keiffer with their thumb. “I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that she doesn’t do it on purpose.”

“Definitely worse,” Keiffer says promptly. “Like so much worse.”

I scowl at their backs, then unfetter myself from the glop with enough energy to stomp past the three of them, spattering them with mud.

Radhika, who looks vindicated that the three of them are as speckled with mud as she is, quickly follows in my wake.

“Don’t think about it,” I command. “Remember, the forest is trying to scare us. Come on, keep moving. It can’t be much farther. ”

Other than the squishes underfoot, I hear a myriad of eerie sounds, too.

Small things skittering out of sight. Murky, undefinable noises in the high branches of the trees, and every time I hear a cackle, I look out for crows.

Twilight is falling quickly, the hazy Blue Ridge sky suffusing us in indigo and pewter.

Once in a while, I catch a silvery shimmer above, a twinkle of something that could be stars, but when I try to peer for them, all I see are branches and branches and more branches.

Finally, we reach the spot we’ve marked with one of Evan’s bandanas tied around an exposed tree root, the red fabric hopefully bright enough for us to see from down here. Luckily, no snakes in sight so far.

“No wonder we couldn’t see much over the edge,” Radhika says, voice taut as she forces herself to slow, to angle her torso back so she doesn’t tip forward. “This incline is steep. Erosion, my ass. This is peak asshole forest behavior.”

Evan purses their mouth unhappily, their arm jostling mine.

“And the lower we go, the less sun we get.” They gesture above, where the canopy is so thick and lush, even in October, that it blots out what little light there is.

“It’s almost like however far we go, there’s still another level to unlock. ”

“And we’re playing in hard mode,” I say gloomily.

Keiffer and Tayla both look disheartened, but whatever they’re thinking, they keep it to themselves.

“Help! Is anyone out there?”

The cry is so faint, so muffled, that I talk myself out of thinking I heard it at all, but then the voice shouts again, louder, nearer. My heart lurches. “Did you—” I begin to ask.

“I did,” Tayla confirms, eyes glinting with hope. She takes off in a sprint before anyone can stop her.

“Tayla!” shrieks Radhika, apparently forgetting we were trying to keep quiet and off the radar. She chases after with another shout of “Wait for me!”

My muscles bunch up. Oh, I’m so not going to be left behind.

Evan gives me a conspiratorial smile. They can probably read the determination on my face.

Keiffer turns to me. “Can’t even go a day without someone going rogue, right, No—Nova? Nova! Evan? Not you, too!” He groans. “What are you all doing?”

“Sorry, Keif,” Evan yips. I hear their footsteps behind me, catching up.

I imagine an aggrieved Keiffer in the background, throwing up his arms, bemoaning how no one listens to him. The visual is an amusing one, but the humor turns to horror when I almost crash into Radhika, who’s half hiding behind Tayla’s shoulder.

The incline has evened out, revealing a verdant glade that could rival any from Snow White’s Enchanted Forest. Paper streamers, the kind you’d decorate a birthday party with, billow from low-hanging branches in faded pastel strips.

Goldenrod and black-eyed Susans grow rampant on the edges of the clearing, gently dancing away.

The forest floor is scattered with an abundance of purple phlox and white bindweed, a plump gray bunny plopped right in the middle.

Birds, so absent from the rest of our journey, twitter excitedly from the topmost branches.

It’s, well…in a word? Idyllic. Absolutely perfect.

Until I note the picnic basket nestled into the goldenrod. Yellow powder has disintegrated onto the weave, most of the bottom layers thick and brown. How long has it been here?

And then there’s the other stuff. Backpacks ranging in size, running a wide gamut of colors and price points.

Some new, some old. A few blue ones, ratty and grimy.

Three pairs of binoculars spanning the last fifty or so years going by the differences between an unwieldy, bulky one and a sleek, compact one.

A grandparent, parent, and child? Three generations out here? Seems unlikely.

Evan pops up next to me, not even out of breath. They slide their hand down my forearm to loosely hold my wrist and squeeze. “How does this place exist?” they ask wonderingly.

“Help!”