Explorers

The hike was an all-morning affair. It was physically demanding, a total of three and a half miles, first up to the peak of Little Bear ridge and then down again. Both Sydney and Megan remembered how awful the mosquitoes were when they did the hike years ago. They really caked on the bug repellent, and made sure that their campers did as well, so that by the time they headed out to the parking lot they smelled like a roving heard of citronella candles.

Some campers invariably fell behind the pack, and so it was that Sydney had to stay behind with them while Megan and Susan lead the rest of the group along the trail. It was a brilliant day. The sky was deep blue and filled with white clouds, though the air was hot, and the mosquitoes apparently immune to the bug repellant. Sydney kept smacking her legs, arms and neck, silently cursing herself for not wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt. Up ahead, in front of the mass of little bodies chugging along, she could make out the upper halves of Sydney and Susan. They were walking close together, and appeared to be in conversation.

After thirty minutes the pack stopped. Susan jogged down to Sydney.

"I think it's time for a break," she said. She had a sparkle in her eyes, though it wasn't anything that Sydney had remembered seeing before. It was contradictory; it had a way of looking both vital and non-vital at the same time. She wondered now what Susan and Megan had been talking about.

The girls helped dispense the trail mix and fruit juice to the campers, and found a seat for themselves at the base of a large rock outcrop ten feet from the trail.

"So is everything cool with Sue?" Sydney asked.

"I guess so." Megan was tracing a shape into the earth with a stick.

"You're not still upset with me, are you?"

Megan looked up at her friend.

"It's just an awful lot to ask, Meg."

Instinctively, Megan looked around for Susan, fearing that their conversation might be overheard.

"Hey, where is she?"

Sydney responded. "Susan? Probably went off for a pee."

Megan looked down to the ground again, picked up her stick. Sydney could sense the question coming.

"If you could . . . you know, take off from school and come with me . . . I mean if you were free to do so, would you?"

Sydney closed her eyes. "I don't know, Meg."

Only seconds later the scream came. The two dashed off into the woods to find Susan's limp body resting in a patch of Wood Nettle. Her smile drooped like the tiny streams of blood flowing down her wrists, but she looked peaceful, like a traveler who had been out in the hot sun all day long and was now laying down for a nap in the cool shade.

Many years later, that afternoon would come to the girls as a terrifying dream, and would wake them up in the middle of the night. Megan would open her eyes and reach out to her side, feeling around for a body, whoever happened to be sleeping next to her, whoever she happened to have picked up at the bar that night. She would feel their body gently rising and falling with each unconscious breath, and this movement soothed her. Sydney would wake up and reach out for her husband, invariably waking him. And when he rolled over and asked her what was wrong, she would come up with some white lie.

But it wasn't the grizzly discovery that haunted each of them into their womanhood. Instead it was that feeling of helplessness, that feeling of futility that they both so viscerally experienced that afternoon, as they gazed at Susan's corpse while the children around them cried.