Page 95 of Charlie and Her Sweet Escape
“Yeah, well. I’ve never been good at doing what was expected of me, have I?” Dad met my eyes, and the glint of fear I saw in them did more to make me realize how bad this was than anything else. “When I say go, you throw yourself to the ground.”
I nodded, going tense when I heard another throaty hum behind me.
“Go!” Dad yelled, and I dropped to the ground just as the gun went off. The weight of something rancid-smelling and warm dropped on my legs, followed by a warm wetness that had me scrambling away, even as my dad yelled for me to stay where Iwas. Nothing could compel me to lie on the ground with a dead animal on top of me.
I sprawled out beside the fire and dropped my head to the dirt. My entire body shook as I gasped in air. I peered back to see a wolverine the size of a large dog bleeding out on the dirt only inches from where I lay.
Dad nudged it with his boot and then crouched down beside it. “I believe we should eat what we kill, but this one looks diseased.”
“How can you tell?”
Dad used his flashlight to get a better look. “Its fur is ragged and patchy, with large patches of scaly skin showing. Its eyes are yellow and full of infection, and there are gnats in his ears too. I’m certain if we cut him open, he’ll be filled with infection or parasites.”
My stomach rolled, and I fought not to dry heave the small handful of almonds Dad had given me earlier.
“We’re going to have to move on. This is going to attract all kinds of predators tonight.” Dad looked around pensively. “We’ll to need to move fast.”
Dad helped me untie the tarp and rolled it back into his pack while I stamped out the fire.
It felt like we walked all night before he declared that we were far enough away to safely set up camp. I belatedly realized I hadn’t been watching for ATV tracks.
If we were even following the right path in the first place.
“Is this safe?” I asked.
“Nowhere out here is safe,” Dad said. “But I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep. We can keep searching in the morning.”
I shouldn’t trust him. He’d given me zero reason to do so. But sleep, hunger, and fear were making it hard for me to think straight. I knew better than to rely on him. He could easily leave me in the middle of the night, and I’d wake up alone, lost, andfacing down another wolverine. Wasn’t that basically what he’d done my whole life?
He’d had his five minutes of fame. He’d get paid for being on the show. People would probably love watching him take down the wolverine. He was a hero.
My heavy eyelids blinked, blinked, and then remained closed.
If he left, he left. It wouldn’t be the first time.
42
CHARLIE
Rosie’s brothers have been gone a lot, so I’ve been staying over at her house on the nights when she’s home alone. This morning, around four am, I heard a noise and went to go see what it was. Bennett was just getting back from a fishing trip that had gone south. The couple on board started fighting, to the point of things getting physical. Bennett had called the police on the SAT phone, brought them back to shore, and spent a good portion of the evening down at the police station. When I walked into the kitchen, he was standing at the sink, completely exhausted, his eyes heavy. He rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “Why are people so awful to each other?” he asked me. I walked forward, tipped my head onto his shoulder, and whispered, “I don’t know.”
—from the journal of 18-year-old Charlie Savage
“Are you there? Can you hear me? Charlotte!” Greg’s voice was muffled as he spoke to someone else. “I don’t think she can hear me.”
I dropped onto my bed of moss in shock. “I can hear you.” It hurt to speak, but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to end the call, turn the phone off, and tuck it deep into the backpack.
“Good,” he said, sounding relieved. His voice was distant, as if through a tunnel, but still as familiar to me as it had ever been. “Why didn’t you say anything? We’ve been trying to call you for hours.”
“We?”
“Me. And the show. Charlotte, I have wonderful news. It’s time to come home.” He said it like he was announcing I was the winner.
“What?” I felt incapable of saying more than one or two words to him. I was hungry, tired, emotionally wrung out. This felt like a dream and not reality.
“You’ve won! Just say the word, and I’m on my way.”
“How did I win?” Bennett hadn’t come yet. I was still all by myself. A spider crawled out of my moss bed, and I shuddered. I thought I’d smacked it free of critters, but a few must have clung on in there.
