The Distance Between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes Read Free Book Online Page A

Rachel won’t help. And anyway, everything will be okay. They’ll spend the night out here, and in the morning they’ll start walking again—the right way—and they’ll be at the campgrounds by lunchtime. And surely there will be someone from their group waiting for them, or someone alerted by their group, like a park ranger. And they’ll be taken back to the lodge to clean up and eat and get yelled at. And then they’ll get sent home. Like they all wanted.
    â€œYou know what would be useful right about now?” Rachel raises her voice to a shout. “Cell phones!”
    Jonah snorts. “No kidding. But reception’s probably bad out here.”
    â€œStill. We could’ve tried.” Rachel kicks at a clod of dirt on the trail. It goes skittering past Hallelujah’s feet. “They should’ve let us be prepared for this.”
    â€œYeah, but we were supposed to stay with the group. . . .” Hallelujah fades off, seeing the clearing to her left. Down from the trail, a spot maybe six feet square with no trees, just soft grass. “Over there,” she says, and points.
    â€œNice.” Jonah heads down, long limbs crashing through the bushes. He looks around, nodding. “This’ll do. I can make a fire over here”—he gestures to one corner of the clearing—“and we can put our bags up in that tree.”
    â€œYou can make a fire?” Hallelujah asks.
    â€œPut our bags in the tree?” Rachel says at the same time.
    â€œI was a Boy Scout,” Jonah says. “And we put our bags in the tree to keep our food away from bears.”
    â€œBears?” Rachel squeaks. “Seriously?”
    Hallelujah wants to lay down more blame: You were a Boy Scout, and you didn’t know we were going the wrong way? But she bites back the words and follows Jonah’s trampled path to the clearing.
    The sun is low. The air is cooler without the light to warm it. Hallelujah pulls on the extra layers she’d shed earlier in the day: long-sleeved shirt, jacket, another pair of socks. Rachel puts on her own jacket, shivering a little. Her bare legs look thin and pale in the twilight.
    And then they sit, feeling the temperature drop and watching the sun slip away.
    Jonah has his back to them. He’s crouched over a pile of wood, striking at a piece of steel with an attached flint. Watching him, listening to stone hit metal, Hallelujah wonders if the flint is a relic from Jonah’s Boy Scout days. Or if it’s some new thing, if Jonah has gone all Man vs. Wild since they stopped talking. She doesn’t ask him.
    Just as the sun drops below the horizon completely, it happens. A spark. A spark that Jonah fans into flames. Small flames. Beautiful flames.
    â€œThere,” Jonah says, looking pleased.
    They huddle around, as close as they dare to get without being in the fire. Jonah pulls on his jacket and rubs his hands up and down his shins and calves, trying to warm his skin. “You’re the smart one,” he says to Hallelujah after a few seconds.
    â€œMe? Why?”
    Jonah gestures at Rachel’s bare legs, and at his own worn cargo shorts. “You’re gonna be a lot warmer than us. Since you wore jeans.”
    â€œOh. Right.” Hallelujah thinks back to that moment this morning when she thought about telling Rachel how chilly it was. When she changed her mind. One more thing to feel guilty about.
    â€œAt least it’s only for tonight,” Rachel says. She’s pulled her knees up toward her chest and is trying to zip her jacket over her shins. The zipper doesn’t quite reach, even with her knees right under her chin. “Just tonight,” she repeats.
    â€œYup.” Jonah pokes at the fire with a stick. Sparks float up. He rubs at his legs a few more times, and then starts popping his knuckles. Hallelujah watches his hands. He always pops his knuckles in this particular way. When