Page 19 of Wild About You
I manage to suppress my weary sigh as I follow his careful footsteps through the patchwork of grasses, weeds, and open dirt beneath us. If I have to deal with this stuff again today, at least I’m better rested. I slept alone in the tent, which was assembled by Finn before I realized he was doing it, and he took the hammock. Camping in the same space as the rest of the group—lots of other humans, therefore lots of cans of bear spray on all sides of me—I found my mind could actually quiet itself, and I slept like a rock.
Someone else on this team must not have had the same luck, or he just woke up on the surly side of the hammock. At the supply exchange and food restock with the other teams, his catchphrase was “We don’t need that”—to all my suggestions of gear we could barter for and half the food I tried to put in my pack. I wanted to tell him that what we really don’t need is his attitude, but figured that would only exacerbate the problem. We did get headlamps, fortunately, and an extra bear canister since, as Finn said, “you carry around so much scented junk.” He’ll be lucky if I don’t smear some on his face tonight, then drop a trail of delicious scents to lead the bears right to him.
At the same time as I want to use him as bear bait, though, I’m extremely aware that our fates are tied. My wagon is hitched to his, for better or worse. Helping him, I think as I hear his grumbles and huffy breaths increasing in frequency, is helping me, too.
“Tell me what’s in your head,” I call out, the words surprising us both. From a few yards ahead, he peers over his shoulder at me, looking baffled, like I’d shouted “Make out with me!”
But he does finally stop walking and speaks. “I’m just—I feel like I’ve been looking for our third mushroom for hours. It’s frustrating.”
He did it! Expressed an emotion by stating it aloud! I want to give him a gold star on his emotional maturity progress chart.
“I get it. But you’ve found two already, so I know you can do it again.” His shoulders still have a defeated slump to them, so my mouth keeps on running. “Hey, listen. When I was little, I was kind of, uh, scattered. Okay, don’t give me that look,” I say to his twitching lips, and they go still again. “Anyway, I used to lose things all the time, usually to the abyss of my messy room. And I would get so mad, angry to the point of tears, knowing whatever toy or homework assignment I’d misplaced was somewhere right under my nose, but I couldn’t see it. My parents had no patience for me when it happened, but my grandma…” I look at pink wildflowers dotting the green expanse of forest floor, an involuntary grin pulling at my own lips as I remember. “If she was around, Granny Star would stop me in my tracks. She’d hold my hands—”
Before I can talk myself out of it, I offer my hands to Finn, palms up. His gaze darts from them to my face and back, and if I was any less sincere about this, I’d make another cooties jab. Finally, he slides his hands over mine, his palms warm and slightly rough. A little zap of awareness runs through me, one I don’t let myself consider as I close my fingers over his in a loose clasp.
“She’d do this and say, ‘Natalie. You’re not going to find it because you’ve got the feelings fog clouding your vision. It’s hard to see through, makes everything blurry, then the problem is so much worse. So let’s close our eyes…’ ”
I close my eyes, hoping Finn takes the cue to do the same. As soon as I do, I’m a decade younger, in a different place with a different person.
“ ‘…and we’ll take a big, deep breath, one…two…three…four…’ ” I count on a slow inhale, and hear him do the same, hands subtly tightening their grip on mine. “ ‘And let out the feelings fog, one…two…three…four.’ One more time, okay? One…two…”
After I count out another deep inhale and exhale, I open my eyes, blinking away images of gray hair, rosy cheeks, and a mischievous smile with sixty-something years of laugh lines creasing the edges. I focus instead on the sandy lashes that flutter open. Finn looks marginally less frustrated, but there’s a new emotion on his face, something I can’t quite interpret.
“Think you can see any clearer now?” I ask, and it comes out in a near whisper.
“Maybe, yeah,” he murmurs back, but the only thing his eyes seem to be taking in is me. Our gazes hold for a prolonged moment. But in a second, his focus is gone, as are his hands in mine, and I wonder if I imagined the intensity in the whole thing. Too swept up in the emotions of a cherished memory, maybe.
“We should keep moving,” Finn says.
“You’re right.” I don’t even wince saying the words! Growth. Giving him the most confident, optimistic smile I can muster, a final strike to try and banish the feelings fog for good, I add, “I bet you’re about to find something, any minute now.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he says as he turns on a heel and starts walking again. “And, uh, for the fog clearing.”
We walk on slowly, making our way out of the mountaintop meadow and into a forested area. Finn’s gaze darts every which way as he looks for that last mushroom we need, and I keep quiet for once. I’m in the middle of closely perusing his oddly clean-looking form from behind, wondering how he seems to be avoiding pit stains and B.O. completely, unlike some of us, when his shout of “Aha!” startles me.
He crouches by a log with a bunch of mosses and plants growing over and around it. Mosses, plants, and, Dolly Parton bless America, mushrooms.
* * *
“I don’t know what you want to be when you grow up, Finn,” I say, hurrying to keep up with his speed-hiking once more. “But I think you have a promising future as a truffle pig.”
His short snort-laugh doesn’t exactly disprove my point. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
My new bestie Ginger was the producer who’d shown up to check our mushroom findings, and I momentarily feared she might harbor a grudge from yesterday. But she quickly confirmed that we had, indeed, found a chanterelle, a chicken of the woods, and a bolete, then handed us our map to the checkpoint. We have no concept of where all the other teams are, if everyone else finished foraging hours ago or if we were the first, so all we could do was hit the trail and hope for the best.
Finn kicks up his pace another notch, and I think not for the first time that it would’ve been convenient to randomly pair with a partner with legs closer in length to mine. I can, however, acknowledge that I’m probably better off for having one who makes me push this hard. Makes me treat these hikes as the race for $100,000 that they are, even when my feet are screaming at me to take it easier. Regardless of whether I leave Wild Adventures with the money, at least I know I’ll be leaving with some banging thighs.
After only a couple miles—and no, I can’t believe that I’ve so quickly become someone who will put the word “only” with the words “couple miles”—we hear the voices and general commotion that let us know we must be close to the checkpoint. Finn breaks into a jog, and though my every muscle moans and groans about it, I follow suit.
When the checkpoint comes into view, I take in more details than I can process at once, nearly stumbling in my attempt to do so. Like the fact that the orange Wild Adventures flag that marks every checkpoint isn’t there, next to Burke Forrester. Some of the other teams are. But rather than everyone standing around the host in a semicircle waiting for each new arrival, the teams are each standing by what look like larger, fancier versions of the camp stove in my pack.
Finn looks equally bewildered beside me, and we both approach Burke Forrester, who is mischievously smiling as if he’s playing a prank on us.
“Natalie and Finn,” he says, rubbing his hands together in a decidedly criminal mastermind gesture. “Welcome to the next leg of your challenge.”
Chapter Eight
I should have known, from my lifetime as a reality TV viewer, that today was too easy for me. They might as well call it “Part Two: Natalie Hasn’t Suffered Enough Yet.”