Oh.
Oh, I get it.
Ha.
I see now.
He blabbed, didn’t he?
No, wait. I bet it was Cora. Cora and her mouth. Which I swear is just fucking typical. She knows it’s completely irrelevant, that it has nothing to do with what happened, but even so she can’t let it go.
So what did she say exactly? Just so I know what I’m being accused of. I mean, I have that right, don’t I?
Wait, what? No, that’s . . . You don’t know, do you? You’re just . . . you’re judging me and you don’t know the full story. I mean, do you even know what it is we found?
ABI
MY PHONE.
That’s what we found.
Except . . . except it wasn’t. What I mean is . . . or rather, what I thought was . . .
Right. Right.
From the beginning.
So we left the clearing. And the idea was we go home. Because of the water situation and also because it was a stupid idea in the first place. The search party, I mean. The only thing we’d managed to achieve was to argue, and basically to give ourselves the creeps. In fact, it was worse than that, because it was obvious even then that something wasn’t right. It’s like, I know I heard something out in the woods that time, and that it wasn’t some stupid bear. Or a wolf for that matter. And somebody must have taken our phones, right? And drunk all our water?
But anyway, we were walking along, and nobody was really talking. We were going single file, Fash up in front, then—
Fash. That’s who was leading. I remember now, because I remember the look on his face when he passed me. What I figured was, he must have had an argument with Mason back in the clearing.
After Fash, it was Cora, then me, then . . . Luke, I think? Mason was definitely at the rear.
We were following the stream, which cut diagonally back toward the river. If I’d had my phone I could have seen how far we’d come the day before, but I guessed that, because we’d been weaving back and forth, we couldn’t have been more than five miles from the footbridge. The stream met the river farther north, but Fash reckoned it would only take us half as long to get there, just because the way was clearer, and we wouldn’t need to hack through the trees.
Personally, I didn’t really care which route we took. I just wanted to get home. The sound of the stream was like mental torture, and something weird was going on with the weather. It was still hot, but it had got darker, as though we’d gone the footbridge way after all, right through the middle of the forest. Which was strange, because last time I’d noticed, we’d been walking in sunlight. But when I looked up I saw the sky had turned white. Not white, like, fluffy-cloud white. White like . . . like frosted glass. And even though I was sweating, for some reason it made me shiver.
I felt bad for Sadie, though. Because basically what we were doing was giving up, and I didn’t want to leave her all alone. Which is what it felt like we were doing. So I kept looking, is my point. The others didn’t, obviously, otherwise they would have spotted it first.
“You guys,” I called. “Wait up!”
Cora was just in front of me, and she turned.
“Abi?” said Fash, from up ahead. I’d started down the bank toward the stream. It was dry, but it was still slippery, and I had to grab at the tree roots to stop myself falling in. “Seriously, Abi,” said Fash. “We’ll be out in three or four hours. We can get a bottle of water or something then. If you drink the stream water you’ll get ill. Didn’t you hear what Luke said before?”
I didn’t answer because I was trying to concentrate. And I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.
Mason had caught up by then, and I heard his voice from up on the path. “What’s she doing?” he said.
“Going for a swim, it looks like,” said Cora. And there was the sound of her sparking up a cigarette.
“Abi . . .” called Luke, like a warning, but when I got down level with the water, I surprised them all by hopping to the other side.
“Look!” I said. “There! Do you see?”
There was a pause while the others looked where I was pointing.
“Is that . . .” said Fash.
“It’s my phone!” I said. “I’m sure it is.”
I recognized it from the cover, you see. It was lying there, right beside the stream, right on the edge of the water, like whoever had taken it had dropped it without knowing, and it had slid from the path down the bank. And the cover was bright pink, so it stood out like . . . like a bright pink thing lying in a patch of mud, I guess.
There were some rocks on the path side of the stream, which is why I’d jumped to the other side, and I had to lean across the water to pick it up. I remember I was grinning . . . right up until the point I felt it in my hand.
“No, wait, this is just . . . shit,” I said, because I’d realized the phone wasn’t mine after all. It was just some cheap-arse Nokia. A smartphone, but the sort I wouldn’t be seen dead with.
“What’s the problem?” said Fash, who was standing nearest. He’d started down the bank himself, and when he got close to the rocks, he held out a hand to help me back to the other side.
“It’s a phone,” I told him, “but it isn’t mine.” I held it up for him to see. When I did, I realized the case was different, too. It was the same color as mine, but there was also a pattern on it, like little daisies.
“So whose is it?” said Fash. “Is it Cora’s?”
But Cora
