Caroline and Kayla stood over her, watching her wipe sweat from her brow and neck.
“Here, take this,” Kayla said, holding out a bottle of water. Emma took it, smiled a thanks and drank deep. If she had known this was going to be a hike, instead of a swim in a lake, she would have brought her own water and snacks. As it was she was at the mercy of her friends.
“How much longer are we going?” Emma asked, looking around her. Even the water was green here, covered in a blanket of dense algae.
Caroline scanned the surrounding area as well. “Not far, I think. You’re going to like what we found. It’s, like, the coolest thing that’s out here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a-” Kayla started. Caroline elbowed her sharply in the ribs. “Ow!”
“It’s a secret, you’ll see,” she said. “Just wait. It’s killer.”
They were moving again in no time. The boardwalk gave way to land again, and this time it didn’t transition back. They walked on wet grass that squeaked under their sneakers. A clearing revealed a huge lake to their left, and Emma fought off her desire to jump in and cool off. Caroline’s words about snakes and alligators came to her, and she squished the urge to run and jump.
They walked until the trees closed in, then the path they walked on curved sharply right. “This way,” Caroline announced. Instead of following the path she stepped into the underbrush to the left. Kayla entered the tree cover with her, and the two were immediately thrown into shadow.
Emma didn’t move. Her feet were glued to the white chalk of the path.
“Well, are you coming or not?” Caroline asked. There was the slightest hint of cruelty in her voice.
Emma thought of everything that could be in the knee-high grass. They had no terrain like this in Arizona, and an entire world of unseen fears hid in the ten inches of green below her.
“What about snakes?” Her voice quivered slightly, and she hoped that they wouldn’t notice.
Caroline rolled her eyes dramatically. “If there were any snakes here do you think I would be stomping down here?” Emma still didn’t move, and Caroline made a frustrated noise deep in her throat. She stomped her feet on the ground, making squishing noises. “Hey, snakes! Are there any snakes in here? Spiders? Gators? Anything that wants to eat Emma? Hey Bigfoot, you in there?”
The three girls stood, listening to the woods. “There, see? Nothing in here cares that you’re walking through the woods. Now would you come on, before some tourist sees us walking off the path and finds out where we’re going?”
Emma stood still for a minute longer, staring at the disappointed face of Caroline and the downcast face of Kayla. These were the first friends she had made since moving clear across the country, and she sure wasn’t going to let them down because of her irrational fear of snakes.
She stepped off the path, into the gently sloping high grass. Below her Caroline smiled.
Walking through the woods was harder than walking along the path. For one thing there were roots and grass tangles that tried to trip her every few steps, and then there were the shadows. The trees overhead created a canopy that blocked out almost all of the sunlight, so they were walking in a gloom that was broken occasionally with solid beams of sunlight.
The worst was the disorientation. After only a dozen steps Emma couldn’t see the trail behind her. A dozen more and even the woods seemed unrecognizable. The three girls would walk in a straight line for awhile, then turn to avoid a tree or tangle of thorny bushes in their way, and Emma wasn’t sure if they corrected their direction. In the dense woods there was no way to know if they had been walking in a straight line or constantly changing direction.
Her legs, already tired from the hike to the woods, started to ache with weariness. She thought of Caroline’s face, disappointed and impatient, and said nothing.
“Caroline, are you sure this was the way?” Kayla asked after some time.
Caroline high-stepped over a fallen, rotten trunk. “Yes…I know it was here. It was right over here.” The girls continued walking.
The brush grew thicker. Long, sharp leaves reached out to scratch against Emma’s arms and legs. The woods were closing in around them, and the girls continued to walk in single file until Caroline pushed through a wall of green, sharp leaves. They closed behind her, blocking her off from the other two. When Kayla and Emma pushed through the wall of green Caroline was not there.
“Caroline?” Kayla asked, her voice breathy.
“Caroline, wait up,” Emma called through the trees. There was no answer. “You know where she’s going? You know where this clearing is?”
Kayla shook her head. “It wasn’t like this last time. Last time it was right off the path. Last time…” her voice trailed off as she looked around her with wide eyes, near panic.
“You mean we’re lost in here?” Emma looked behind her. The way they had come was as dense as ever, and there was no trace of any sort of path.
“Kayla!” Caroline’s call came from their left. Far to the left. “Hey, I found it! It’s over here!”
The girls looked at each other before pushing through the foliage to the left, toward their friend’s voice. They shoved through a green wall into a wide clearing. The outside was ringed with leaves that were crowned with sharp points, and the ground was a rotten mixture of leaves and pine needles. Caroline was standing next to a wooden, high-backed chair, the wood of which still looked wet. Animal bones littered the ground around it.
“Told you I knew where it was,” Caroline said.
Kayla walked to
