'Don't start that,' she said, and unbuckled the pack's flap. She took out the stuff she had brought to eat and drink, laying the items out before her in a neat line. At the sight of the paper sack with her lunch in it, her stomach rumbled more fiercely. How late was it? Some deep mental clock attached to her metabolism suggested it might be around three in the afternoon, eight hours since she'd sat in the breakfast nook slurping up Corn Flakes, five since she'd started off on this endless idiotic shortcut. Three o'clock. Maybe even four.
In her lunch-sack was a hardboiled egg still in the shell, a tuna fish sandwich, and some celery sticks. There was also the bag of chips (small), the bottle of water (pretty big), the bottle of Surge (the large twenty-ounce size, she loved Surge), and the Twinkies.
Looking at the bottle of lemon-lime soda, Trisha suddenly felt more thirsty than hungry . . . and mad for sugar. She spun off the cap, brought the bottle to her lips, then paused. It wouldn't be smart to go chugging half of it down, she thought, thirsty or not. She might be out here awhile. Part of her mind moaned and tried to draw away from that idea, just call it ridiculous and draw away, but Trisha couldn't afford to let it. She could think like a kid again once she was out of the woods, but for the time being she had to think as much like an adult as possible.
You saw what's out there, she thought, a big valley with nothing in it except trees. No roads, no smoke. You have to play it smart.You have to conserve your supplies. Mom would tell you the same thing and so would Dad.
She allowed herself three big gulps of soda, took the bottle away from her mouth, belched, took another two fast swallows. Then she recapped the bottle securely and debated over the rest of her supplies.
She decided on the egg. She shelled it, careful to put the pieces of shell back in the Baggie the egg had come in (it never occurred to her, then or later, that littering-any sign that she'd been there-might actually save her life), and sprinkled it with the little twist of salt. Doing that made her sob briefly again, because she could see herself in the Sanford kitchen last night, putting salt on a scrap of waxed paper and then twisting it up the way her mother had shown her. She could see the shadows of her head and hands, thrown by the overhead light, on the Formica counter; she could hear the sound of the TV news from the living room; could hear creaks as her brother moved around upstairs. This memory had a hallucinogenic clarity that elevated it almost to the status of a vision. She felt like someone who drowns remembering what it was like to still be on the boat, so calm and at ease, so carelessly safe.
She was nine, though, nine going on ten and big for her age. Hunger was stronger than either memory or fear. She sprinkled the egg with salt and ate it quickly, still sniffling. It was delicious. She could have eaten another easily, maybe two. Mom called eggs 'cholesterol bombs,' but her Mom wasn't here and cholesterol didn't seem like a very big deal when you were lost in the woods, scratched up and with your eyelids so swollen by bug-bites that they felt weighted down with something (flour-paste stuck to the lashes, perhaps).
Trisha eyed the Twinkies, then opened the package and ate one of them. 'SECK-shoo-al,' she said-one of Pepsi's all-time-great compliments. She chased everything with a gulp of water. Then, moving quickly before either hand could turn traitor and stuff something else into her mouth, she put the remaining food back in the lunch-sack (the top rolled down quite a bit further now), rechecked the seal on her three-quarter-full bottle of Surge, and stowed everything in the pack. As she did, her fingers brushed a bulge in the pack's sidewall and a sudden burst of elation-perhaps partially fueled by fresh calories-lit her up.
Her Walkman! She had brought her Walkman! Yeah, baby!
She unzipped the inner pocket and lifted it out as reverently as any priest has ever handled the eucharist. The headphone wire was wrapped around the body of the Walkman and the tiny earbuds were clipped neatly to the sides of its black plastic body. Her and Pepsi's current favorite tape (Tubthumper, by Chumbawamba) was in there, but Trisha didn't care about music just then. She slipped the headphones on, nestled the earbuds into place, flipped the switch from TAPE to RADIO, and turned it on.
At first there was nothing but a soft rush of static, because she had been tuned to WMGX, a Portland station. But a little further down the FM band she came to WOXO in Norway, and when she tuned up the other way she got WCAS, the little station in Castle Rock, a town they had passed through on their way to the Appalachian Trail. She could almost hear her brother, his voice dripping with that newly discovered teenage sarcasm of his, saying something like 'WCAS! Hicksville today, tomorrow the world!' And it was a Hicksville station, no doubt about that. Whiny cowboy singers like Mark Chestnutt and Trace Adkins alternated with a female announcer who took calls from people who wanted to sell washers, dryers, Buicks, and hunting rifles. Still, it was human contact, voices in the wilderness, and Trisha sat on the fallen tree, transfixed, waving absently at the constant cloud of bugs with her cap. The first timecheck she heard was three-oh-nine.
At three thirty, the female announcer put the Community Trading Post on hold long enough to read the local news. Folks in Castle Rock were up in arms about a bar where there were now topless dancers on Friday and Saturday nights, there had been a fire at a local nursing home (no one hurt), and Castle Rock Speedway was supposed to re-open on the Fourth of July with brand-new stands and loads of fireworks. Rainy this afternoon, clearing tonight, sunny tomorrow with highs in the mid-eighties. That was it. No missing little girl. Trisha didn't know whether to be relieved or worried.
She reached to turn off the power and save the batteries, then paused as the female announcer added, 'Don't forget that the Boston Red Sox take on those pesky New York Yankees tonight at seven o'clock; you can catch all the action right here on WCAS, where we've got our Sox on. And now back to-'
Now back to the shittiest day a little girl ever had, Trisha thought, turning off the radio and wrapping the cord around the slim plastic body again. Yet the truth was that she felt almost all right for the first time since that nasty minnow had started swimming around in her midsection. Having something to eat was partially the reason, but she suspected that the radio had more to do with it. Voices, real human voices, and sounding so close.
There was a cluster of mosquitoes on each of her thighs, trying to drill through the material of her jeans. Thank God she hadn't worn shorts. She would have been chuck steak by now.
She swatted the mosquitoes away, then got up. What now? Did she know anything at all about being lost in the woods? Well, that the sun rose in the east and went down in the west; that was about all. Once someone had told her that moss grew on the north or south side of a tree, but she couldn't remember which. Maybe the best thing would be just to sit here, try to make some sort of shelter (more against the bugs than the rain, there were mosquitoes inside the hood of her poncho again and they were driving her crazy), and wait for someone to come. If she had matches, maybe she could make a fire-the rain would keep it from spreading-and someone would see the smoke. Of course, if pigs had wings, bacon would fly. Her father said that.
'Wait a minute,' she said. 'Wait a minute.'
Something about water. Finding your way out of the woods by water. Now what-?
It came to her, and she felt another burst of elation. This one was so strong that it made her feel almost giddy; she actually swayed a little on her feet, as one will at the sound of catchy music.
