Page 82 of Charlie and Her Sweet Escape
In all the seasons I’d been watchingIn the Wild, I’d never seen anything like this happen before.
“Did that all get filmed?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Bennett said, still sounding winded.
“Oh. Good.”
“Yeah. People will like that.”
“Maybe not my mom,” I said, my voice still sounding distant as I looked at our fallen shelter.
“No, probably not her.” Bennett sounded as stunned as I felt.
“I wish I could hug a bear.”
That seemed to snap Bennett out of his shock. He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“They look fluffy and soft.”
“Why don’t you hug me instead?”
“I guess it’ll do.” I stepped willingly into his open arms and rested my head on his shoulder. What were we going to do? His fast heart rate was comforting to me, and I listened to it slow down beat by beat, his chest expanding and contracting with steady breaths against my ear.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” I said.
Bennett sighed and dropped his arms. “I guess we should start pulling the walls back up before it gets much darker.” Already, the sun had fallen completely behind the trees, and we were going to be working long into the night. Neither of us had the energy for it, after spending the entire day gathering logs.
But what else could we do? It was starting to get misty with oncoming rain, and it wouldn’t be safe to be out in the weather like this tonight. We had to dig deep and rebuild, even when all we wanted to do was lie down and wish we were already past the hard part.
I guess life was like that, though. How many times did I wish I could teleport past the hard things and go right to where it was easy and calm? But I wouldn’t want to miss the good experiences that were folded in with the bad. The Bennetts and the Rosies and even the cute (but destructive) black bears.
“I’ll help,” I said.
We headed toward the shelter, but I paused. Bennett’s gait was off. He wasn’t putting any weight on his right leg.
“Bennett. You’re hurt.”
He kept walking toward the logs. “I’m fine. Just a little sore from when I fell.”
“We should look at it.”
“Let’s get these walls up before it rains, and then we can look at it.”
I wanted to argue, but a gust of wind that sliced cold right through me shut my mouth. Bennett was right. We didn’t have the luxury of resting, even if he was hurt.
We did the best we could to brace up the logs from the fallen side of the shelter, but neither of us had the energy to lift more than a couple. Splinters cut into my hands, but I ignored the pain as we rushed to finish the job.
Bennett winced when he went to grab another log, and I stopped him with a hand on his arm. His lips were pale, and worry clawed at me. If he were to faint, I’d have a hard time dragging him into the shelter.
“What if we tie the tarp down to the edges of this log?”
“Okay,” he said, his voice subdued. He handed down the paracord edge of the tarp so I could tie a new knot. Then we dida few more ties across the side and edges. There was nothing we could do about the door, so our shelter was going to be open, like a triangle tent, on one side.
It was going to be tight—no space to do more than lie beside each other. But since that was all I wanted to do anyway, I was fine with that. Bennett went inside and collapsed on top of the sleeping bag while I put together a fire with the scattered wooden pieces. I got a small flame started, and the warmth was like a sigh of relief against my skin.
Bennett hissed, and I turned to see him taking off his boot and sock. His ankle was swollen, and it looked stiff when he tried to rotate the joint.
“Is it broken?”
