Page 18 of Wandering Wild

It’s been hours since Charlie last spoke to me.

At first, the silence was natural while we processed the unexpected change in plans, but as we squelched our way through the forest, it grew to the point that it’s no longer comfortable.

I’ve tried to engage her in conversation, but there might as well be a gaping chasm between us. I desperately want to clear the air by sharing my full story, but her defenses are so solidly built right now that I can tell she won’t be receptive to anything I say. My only consolation is that there’s no rush anymore—the cameras are gone, so there’s plenty of time for me to explain what really happened the night of my DUI. Until she’s ready to listen, I can deal with the tension between us, even if it does mean there’s nothing to distract me as we head toward the route marked on Hawke’s map.

When we finally stop for lunch, I’m tired, hungry, and aching not only from the physical strain of the last few days, but also from all the bumps and scrapes I received as we slid down the mountain. I’m also itchy as heck and chafing in places that should never be chafed, thanks to the dried mud covering every inch of my body. Charlie must be feeling the same, because when we halt upon reaching a small, clean stream, she immediately kneels on the bank and begins scrubbing her flesh. I join her, both of us washing as best as we can without risking hypothermia. We’re not particularly successful, but when we stand, shivering, we can at least see each other’s faces again.

“I think I spotted a lilly pilly bush back there.” I point in the direction we came from. “Berries for lunch?”

Charlie nods, then utters her first words in what feels like years: “I saw some wood sorrel as well.”

I grimace at the thought of having to choke down more of the bitter weed, but since beggars can’t be choosers, I say, “Lead the way.”

Together we scavenge as much food as we can carry, and we’re just about to sit and eat it when Charlie reaches deeper into the lilly pilly bush for some riper berries hiding at the back. The next thing I know, she’s yelping and cradling her hand to her chest, hopping up and down with her eyes squeezed shut.

“What? What? ” I cry, dropping my pile and lunging for her. I frantically search the area for danger—a snake or spider or anything else that might have bitten or stung her—but there’s nothing.

“No—it’s—I’m okay,” Charlie hisses through her teeth.

She opens her palm, and relief hits me when I see the source of her pain, though I also wince at the thorn sticking out of her skin.

“I didn’t notice the vine until it was too late.” She scowls down at the prickly weed next to the lilly pilly bush that must have spread into the berries. “Stupid thing.”

“Here, let me see.” I reach for her hand, and she reflexively curls it tighter against her body. I step closer, gentling my voice. “Please, Charlie. Let me have a look.”

She bites her lip, uncertain, but I just hold her eyes—and my breath—as I wait.

Finally, she lowers her hand, allowing me to take it in my own. I try not to show how elated I am that she’s granting me this small amount of trust. I only wish I didn’t have to do what has to come next.

“We need to remove this,” I say, examining the thorn. It’s not deep, at least, more like a splinter than anything else, but it’ll hurt like hell until it’s pulled out. “You ready?”

“Just do it quick,” Charlie says, turning her face away.

“On three,” I warn, bracing her hand with my left, while I clasp the thorn with my right. “One?—”

I yank the barb from her flesh.

Charlie curses and tries to jerk free of my grip, but I hold firm.

“You said on three!” she accuses, her eyes like lightning.

“And you said to do it quick,” I return. “Now stop tugging and let me clean it.”

Before she can argue, I smush some lilly pillies and smear the juice over the shallow puncture wound.

“Um, what are you doing?” Her tone tells me exactly what she thinks about me gooping up her hand, but I don’t stop.

“Hawke said they have antibacterial properties, remember?” I use his hunting knife to cut a strip from my thermal shirt, then wrap it around her palm. “You don’t want this to get infected.”

“I can barely feel it now. It’s not even bleeding, so this really isn’t necess?—”

“Better safe than sorry,” I murmur, concentrating on my task. Once I’m satisfied that I can do no more, I release her and finally glance up to see her watching me, her face unguarded for the first time all day.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, examining her freshly bandaged hand. It’s overkill, given how superficial the wound is, but I meant what I said about being cautious.

“Don’t mention it,” I reply, then realize how close we’re standing and step back quickly, running my fingers through my tangled, mud-dried hair.

We gather our fallen lunch and return to the stream, finding a damp log to sit on as we eat. I hate this awkwardness between us, and I hate that I don’t know what to do about it. I also hate that it’s forcing me to wonder if every interaction between us over the last couple of days has been fake. I know our bargain is the reason Charlie agreed to play nice for the sake of the cameras—and I now understand why that was such a sacrifice for her—but I thought...

I guess I hoped it wasn’t all an act. That maybe there was something growing between us. Now, however... I have no idea where we stand.

Glancing at the stream, memories of my birth parents unconsciously flood my mind. I wonder if this is what it’s been like for Charlie the whole time we’ve been together—if, in the same way that I see a creek and think of what happened to my family on the day of our ill-fated camping trip, she’s triggered to think of her mother whenever she looks at me. The idea that I might be causing her emotional distress makes my heart ache, and I long for a way to help soothe her pain. My parents died over a decade ago, and while I will never stop missing them, time has dulled my grief. Her mom has only been gone for six months—I don’t know how she’s even functioning right now.

All of this keeps rattling around in my head as we finish our lunch and continue onward, pausing every so often to lick raindrops off eucalyptus leaves in an effort to stay hydrated. Around mid-afternoon, the clouds that have been threatening all day finally begin sprinkling lightly down on us. It’s nothing like the deluge from yesterday, though it’s steady enough to make our hike more arduous. The only benefit is that it helps clean more of the muck from our bodies without us having to risk washing in the icy mountain water, so if nothing else, I’m grateful to have some relief from the chafing mud.

But my relief slowly turns to anxiety as the hours pass without any sign of the creek Hawke said we need to find. I know there’s plenty of time before tomorrow’s extraction, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover between now and then, and we can’t risk falling behind. Because if we do?—

No, I won’t let myself consider it. Hawke and Bentley are relying on us, and we won’t fail them. We can’t fail them.

“Should we check the map again?” I ask Charlie, despite it being less than ten minutes since she last pulled it from her pocket.

“What’s the point, when neither of us can read it?” she returns.

I almost correct her, since technically, we can read the map—or at least, we can follow the dotted line, even if we can’t decipher the landmarks—but there’s enough of a bite to her voice that I sigh and let it go.

When the rain grows heavier, I start to become genuinely nervous. It’s still nothing like yesterday’s downpour, but the drizzles are now weighty droplets, and the sky is darkening, warning us that we’re running out of daylight. I check my watch and realize with some alarm that sunset is just over an hour away, and if we don’t look for shelter before then, we’ll be stuck searching after nightfall.

But then?—

“Do you hear that?”

Charlie and I ask the question at the same time, and we hurry forward through the trees toward the sound of flowing water. I should be relieved, since it has to be the creek Hawke mentioned, but the noise keeps getting louder and louder until we step out of the forest to find the source, and any excitement I feel swiftly turns to dismay.

“Small?” Charlie splutters, staring at the raging torrent before us. “ Small? ”

My voice is strangled when I reply, “Hawke did say the rain might have swollen it.”

Charlie is too horrified to respond, her face as pale as the gurgling rapids.

“Hey, we don’t have to cross it, remember?” I say, trying to ease her dread. “It doesn’t matter that it’s larger than expected—this changes nothing for us.”

Her gaze finally leaves the water only to focus incredulously on me. “If this is what it looks like here, what do you think the ‘narrow waterfall’ is going to look like? Do you really think it’s going to be the trickle Hawke implied?”

I blanch, acknowledging her point. But the waterfall isn’t visible yet, and with any luck, the river—definitely not a creek—will shrink before then.

“Let’s just wait and see,” I tell her. “It might not be so bad.”

Turns out, I’m right.

It’s not bad.

It’s whatever comes after bad.

Because when we follow the river around a bend, the roaring grows ever louder until we finally stagger to a halt at the view of the immense waterfall plunging out of sight.

This time, it’s Charlie who sounds strangled. “You were saying?”

I’m lost for a reply, unable to do anything but gape at the colossal amount of water streaming over the cliff. At any other time, it would be beautiful, one of nature’s hidden wonders, but knowing we have to find a way down it makes me feel like there are ants crawling around in my stomach.

I try to muster some reassurance for us both, and I settle on saying, loud enough to be heard over the roaring falls, “Hawke seemed confident there’d be enough rock for us to rappel down without getting wet, so let’s move closer and see what we have to work with.”

On the plus side, the rain has paused, almost like the heavens have decided to give us a break for a change. Either that, or they’re laughing because they know we’re about to get soaked in a different, much more thorough way. My apprehension is at an all-time high as Charlie and I carefully approach the cliff, but I exhale in relief when I see that Hawke spoke true about the spacious rock face. The torrent is strong enough that we won’t be able to avoid the spray—I can see the sandstone we’ll be descending is darkened by water—but we won’t have to battle the deluge itself.

“Ugh, that’s high,” Charlie moans, placing a hand over her eyes. “I was never afraid of heights before this trip.”

I don’t think she’s afraid of heights now—it’s more that everything about our situation has us both brimming with unease. Even I feel a wave of dizziness as I look toward the base of the waterfall, where the river continues raging on a white-water current around a bend and out of sight.

“There’s about an hour left of usable light, so I figure we have two options,” I say, still having to speak loudly to be heard. “We can follow Hawke’s instructions and rappel down this now, then find shelter for the night once we reach the bottom. Or we can backtrack and search for a place to sleep up here, and tackle this”—I jut a finger out over the edge—“tomorrow.”

“I don’t like either of those options,” Charlie states. “But if it rains more in the night, there will only be more water in the morning, and we’ll also have to make up the time we lost. So let’s just get it over with.”

That’s my thinking as well, so I nod and unwind the rope from around my shoulders. “Help me find somewhere to tie this.”

We seek out a thick tree trunk as close to the edge of the cliff as possible, neither of us forgetting Hawke’s warning about the rope’s limited length.

“You first, or me?” I ask Charlie once we’ve both double-checked the knot is secure.

She glances over the edge, her voice shaking as she answers, “I don’t mind.”

The lie is clear to see—as is her fear—so I wrap the rope around myself the way Bentley demonstrated, and say, “I’ll shout once I’m as far as I can go, but keep an eye out in case the water is too loud for you to hear me.”

“Are you—Will you—” She swallows, then tries again. “You’ll wait for me before you continue climbing down?”

I wish I could give her a comforting hug without her wanting to shove me away. Instead, all I can do is say, “Of course I’ll wait for you. We’re in this together, Charlie.”

She swallows again, and this time it looks painful. But then she nods and says, “See you soon.”

I truly hope that’s the case, since it will mean Bentley’s no-harness rappelling technique has worked and neither of us has plummeted to a watery grave. I don’t say what I’m thinking, though, and only offer a slight smile—the best I can manage—before I shuffle in reverse toward the cliff, then slowly lean my weight out over the edge.

It’s an entirely new kind of terror, relying on the rope to hold me while knowing I’m not clipped onto anything. But I force my breathing to remain steady and my mind to stay clear as I work my way into a horizontal position perpendicular to the rock face, not allowing myself to think of the panic attack I had during our last rappel, since one here would be disastrous. The water is gushing only a few feet away from where I’m hanging, the spray like little icy daggers spearing my skin, but that’s not my only concern. I didn’t anticipate how hard it would be to keep my hands from slipping on the rope and my feet from sliding on the wet, mossy sandstone. It takes all of my concentration just to keep lowering myself safely, my muscles straining and body screeching as the rope digs into my flesh. Hawke wasn’t wrong about his “nut cracker” warning, and when I finally reach the end of the rope and find a narrow ledge to rest on, I grimace and wonder if I’ll ever be able to walk properly again.

“I’m clear!” I shout up the waterfall. “Your turn!”

I don’t think Charlie hears me over the roaring, but I can see her head peeking out at the top of the rock, and I wave my arms to indicate I’m free of the rope. She disappears, and the next thing I see is her tangled up like I was and leaning backward over the edge of the cliff.

My heart is in my throat as I watch her, more nervous now than when I was navigating the descent myself. If she loses her grip—if she slips—if anything happens to her?—

Every part of me is tense as I wait for something awful to happen, but Charlie is rappelling like a pro, and she soon sets her feet down on the ledge, trembling but safe.

“Let’s never do that again,” she says, freeing herself from the rope and pressing her back against the sandstone, moaning when she sees how far we still have to go.

“Hawke was right about the hand- and footholds,” I say, trying to keep positive. “See? There are heaps of places we can use to climb down.”

What I don’t mention is how little confidence I have in those hand- and footholds, given the crumbly nature of the sandstone. And that’s ignoring the slippery moss and lichen covering the rock, the water spray making everything more perilous.

I realize we’re both stalling as we glance down at what’s ahead, so I stand taller and say, “We’re committed now. As you said before, let’s just get it over with.” Her throat bobs, but she doesn’t argue when I add, “I’ll go first again; stay close enough to watch what I grab onto.”

With that, I lower myself down from the ledge, searching with my boot for a hollow in the rock wall, then a place to grip with my hands. Carefully, ever so carefully, I begin the downward climb, uttering a warning to Charlie whenever I encounter a crumbly or slippery hold. It’s slow going, and my shoulders feel like they’re tearing out of their sockets, but I finally land on another ledge that’s large enough for us to pause and rest, with her joining me a moment later. We’re both panting and sweating despite the frigid spray hitting us, and I take a second to massage my arms and neck, seeing Charlie do the same.

When our breathing returns to normal, I peer out over the ledge in search of the next foothold, my stomach sinking when I see that the nearest one is going to be a stretch for me, and there’s no way Charlie will be able to reach it with her shorter legs. I keep looking for something else that might work, but there’s nothing in range. There’s only one solution I can think of, and I already know she’s not going to like it.

“I’ll have to lower you down,” I tell her, showing her how far away the foothold is. “It’s our only choice.”

Her eyes widen and she backs away from me, before stopping quickly as she remembers how narrow the shelf is that we’re standing on. “Nuh-uh.”

I knew that would be her response, but her lack of faith in me still stings.

“You can trust me,” I tell her encouragingly.

“No, I can’t.” The words are instant, like she didn’t even have to think about them.

They feel like a slap in the face.

“Charlie,” I begin slowly, “I?—”

I’m unsure what I’m going to say, but she interrupts me before I can figure it out.

“I can’t trust you, Zander. I don’t. I won’t ,” she declares, her voice unyielding. “I know you want me to, not just with this”—she waves a grime-covered hand toward the rock wall beneath us—“but also with everything else, and it’s just not going to happen.”

All day, I’ve been trying to find the right time for this conversation, and if ever there was a wrong time, it would be while we’re resting precariously halfway down a waterfall. But even so, I can’t help the response that leaves me. “Maybe if you’d give me a chance to explain?—”

“No, we’re not doing this.” Charlie gives a sharp shake of her head. “I know there’s some big secret you think will help make everything magically better between us, but I don’t want to hear it. As I said, I don’t trust you. And more, I don’t want to trust you. Not after what you did.”

I jerk backward, stunned—and hurt—by her candor. But she’s not done, everything she’s bottled up until now streaming out in its own toxic waterfall.

“You made a selfish decision, and you could have killed someone,” she states, her expression as hard as her words. “That’s inexcusable. Any explanation you have for it won’t change anything—and it certainly won’t absolve you. And while some people might be able to ignore it or forgive it, I’m not one of them. So let’s just do what we must to get down this cliff and make it to that helicopter tomorrow, and then we can be done with each other. Agreed?”

Her words are ringing in my ears, even louder than the water cascading around us. I know I should let this go, that I should retreat and lick my wounds. She’s unwilling to hear anything I have to say—and I’m no longer sure I want to tell her. But there’s something rising within me, a need to defend myself against the injustice of her accusations, and I don’t have the strength to fight it back anymore.

“I know you’re hurting because of what happened to your mom, and I understand why it’s making you feel the way you do about me,” I say, trying to keep my temper in check. “But there are things you don’t know, Charlie.”

Her eyes flash with warning. “Don’t talk about my mum. Not when it could just as easily have been you who killed her.”

Hearing that, my remaining thread of patience dissolves completely, and I snap, “You aren’t the only one who lost a parent to a drunk driver. I was seven years old when both of mine were taken from me, and there’s no way— no way —I would ever willfully risk doing that to someone else. So stop acting like you know anything about me and my so-called choices, because if you’d only listen , then you’d know I was drugged without my knowledge the night of my DUI, and I only left the party because my best friend was about to kill himself .”

My voice breaks on the words as I remember that horrible, awful night: how I received a text from Maddox that made me know something was so very wrong; how I raced to my car, having no idea why I felt so disoriented but ignoring my lightheadedness in my desperation to reach my friend. The memory returns to me with excruciating clarity, my panic, my dread, my terror that I wouldn’t reach him in time?—

And then the crash.

I’m breathing heavily, hating how everything just poured out of me when I’d intended to share it a much different way. But I’m also hating how angry I am—at Charlie. She has every right to be upset after what happened to her mom, but it’s unfair of her to misplace the blame onto me without knowing my story. I wanted to tell her this morning. I wanted to tell her every moment since then. But now?—

Now I just want to get away from her.

I can’t even look at her, my eyes searching for any other possible footholds so we can get off this damn ledge and put some space between us.

But then she calls my name.

“Zander,” she whispers, her voice wobbling.

I drag my gaze back to her, only to find confusion and uncertainty in her features. And heartache. But it’s not her own pain she’s feeling—it’s mine .

“Zander,” she whispers again, and this time she reaches for me, a slow move of her hand, as if to offer comfort. She steps toward me. “I?—”

But whatever she was going to say turns into a scream, because the moment her weight transfers to her new position, the sandstone crumbles out from beneath her.

I don’t think, I just act, diving onto my stomach and lunging for her as she falls over the edge. I manage to grab her hand a split second before she drops too far, my fingers circling her wrist like a steel clamp.

“Hold on!” I yell, even though I’m doing the holding.

“Don’t let go!” she begs, terror in her violet eyes as she dangles into open air.

Adrenaline is zinging through my veins, my pulse is drumming in my ears, but I still take a moment to anchor myself before I carefully begin to pull her upward. “You’re okay—I’ve got you.”

And then I haul her back over the ledge, where she tumbles straight into my arms.

I’m not sure which of us is shaking harder as we hold each other tightly.

That was close—way too close.

But she’s safe. We both are.

Until—

With an almighty crack , the entire ledge gives way beneath us, and for the second time today?—

We’re falling.

But unlike with the mudslide, there’s nothing to slow our descent as we plummet down the waterfall, down, down, down , until we smash through the surface of the raging, icy river.

And then?—

Pain.

It’s the last thing I know.

Because everything goes black.