A Series of Small Maneuvers by Treichel Eliot

Author:Treichel, Eliot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult, YA, teen, grief, loss, canoe, kayak, camping, outdoors, father, daughter, Ooligan Press
Publisher: Ooligan Press
Published: 2015-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Seven

Once we got to camp, Alex directed me to the chair I’d first seen her sitting in. She pulled a sleeping bag out of her tent and draped it across my shoulders. Kellen brought over a larger first-aid kit, dropping it in front of her. “Hi,” he said to me.

“Hi,” I said back.

While Alex washed out my scrapes and cuts and dabbed iodine all over them, Dan unfolded a topo map out in front of me. He asked me if I could point to where I thought I’d left my father.

“Here’s where we are right now,” Dan said. He pointed with a sliver of wood, which he then held out for me. “And where do you think you were?”

I traced the pointer upstream along the blue line, past the spot where I thought I’d lost the canoe, past Big Sluice, around one bend, and then another, until I finally got to our camp, whose features I recognized right away. I told him I was pretty sure, even though I was positive.

“We camped there ourselves,” Dan said. “Nice spot.”

He made the call. The satellite phone looked like an old, huge cell phone with a really thick antenna. He’d stepped away so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. While he was on the phone, Alex made a bottle of instant Gatorade. She kneeled in front of me as I drank, plopping down right where the map had been. The water bottle smelled a little musty, and the Gatorade was really diluted.

“Drink in sips,” she said. I’d been chugging. I only slowed down when she reached to take the bottle from me.

“Sorry,” I said, gasping.

On the outside, the water bottle was covered in stickers, most of which were gouged or scratched or smeared in some way. One was just a white oval with the letters “GCNP” printed on it, which I knew meant Grand Canyon National Park. We had the same sticker at home, plastered on the old refrigerator in the garage. Every national park we visited, we had to get a sticker.

When Dan finished on the phone, he came back over to Alex and me. Kellen had joined him during the call, but he’d split off to the kitchen, where he was boiling some water. Dan got down in front of me, wiggling himself into the sand a bit.

“First off,” he said, “I just talked to some people who are very glad you found us, and who are very glad to know you’re okay.”

Both he and Alex smiled at that, and I could tell that I was also supposed to smile, that this would be the appropriate time for that, but I couldn’t manage one. When I didn’t say anything, Dan told me the rest of what he’d learned: the sheriff had already begun searching for my dad and me. My mom had called us in. She knew we wouldn’t be over a day late without checking in from the road first. The deputy sheriff had actually been down to Piedra Gulch the day before, had found our van, but not us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.