Page 79 of Play With Me

“You’re crazy! It can’t get any worse.”

She stopped, turned around, and waited until I caught up to her. Remaining leaves high above the canopy decided to tilt, one after another, and spill all the water they held, turning the heavy raindrops into streams that poured down on us.

“What?” I asked.

“Do you see a tornado?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then it could get worse. Now stop delaying us, and try to keep up.” She took off again, and all I could think about was how nuts Lola could get and how much I loved every time her level of nuttiness spiked.

I didn’t stop her again, and an hour later, exhausted, drenched, and longing for heat, we saw the back of our campsite. Timed perfectly by Mother Nature, the rain had stopped minutes before we arrived, but our troubles were only beginning.

“Brook, Lola! Thank God you’re back!” Anna ran out onto the trail.

“Where’s Sophie?” I asked.

“It’s that bear again. She was saying that she heard it crying. I only turned around for one minute to hang a soaked cloth, and Sophie was gone.”

Chapter 18

Lola

My head whipped back and forth, desperate to pinpoint Sophie’s location in the woods. All I heard were the last rain drops rolling off the leaves when the wind picked up. “How long ago?” I asked.

“Five minutes, ten at most. It was after the rain, so she should be semi-dry.”

“I’ll go this way. Brook, you search along the river. Whistle if you find her. Anna, you need to stay here in case she comes back.”

I dashed into the woods, while Brook headed toward the river, praying she wouldn’t have gone there. The water must have been raging after the storm, and right now I couldn’t handle the thought of Sophie heading out that way. The nice thing about working with someone like Brook, though, was the ease with which we could communicate. He wouldn’t question me. I could count on him.

Feeling my pants stick to my skin, I pushed forward and concentrated on the forest sounds instead of the clinging cold at my thighs. I stopped after about a minute, closed my eyes, listened again, and then continued on.

Come on, Sophie, where are you?

I wouldn’t lose another child. Not again. I followed the same trail Sophie had taken before to pick berries, and I prayed that she wouldn’t have ventured down to the raging waters, where Brook had gone, on her own.

“Come on, Sophie, where are you?” I mumbled to myself, and then caught a clump of leaves gently swoosh in the bushes to my left.

“Sophie?”

The twigs moved again, and I crouched down to a set of brown eyes peeking out from between a cluster of branches.

“Lola? Is that you?” Her tiny voice was the best thing I’d heard in a long time.

“Sophie, what are you doing here?” I pushed the twigs aside, piercing my finger on a thorn. A dot of blood began to swell on the tip.

“Be careful. It’s prickly here,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, I noticed that. How in the world did you get in here?”

“Boo.” Her eyes welled up, and she sniffled a bit while trying to move backward. Her hair had gotten tangled in the branches. To make the matter worse, there was burdock all around her.

“He found you again, didn’t he?”

She smiled through her tears and gave me a gentle nod. I pulled out my Swiss Army knife and sighed. “Do you want to tell me how this happened, honey?”

“There was a very large rosehip berry that was calling out my name.”

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