Gone Wild by Jodi Lundgren

Author:Jodi Lundgren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: James Lorimer and Company Ltd., Publishers
Published: 2016-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Brooke: Relief

In the morning, a synthetic smell wafts from the nylon walls of her tent as they warm up in the sun. Brooke reaches overhead to unzip the door so that cool salt air blows in. As she shifts in her sleeping bag, pain drills into her lower back. It’s no surprise that she’s sore after six hours of hiking with a thirty pound pack yesterday. But she’s bloated, too. She drags herself out of the tent, feeling dizzy. So much for trekking to the outhouse. She checks for other campers, then squats to pee in the bushes behind her tent.

Red smudges are showing in her underwear. Relief pours over her. The worry of being pregnant drops from her shoulders like a shucked-off backpack. The sudden lightness makes her want to shriek with joy.

But she didn’t bring any tampons. Idiot!

She rummages in her pack for her Swiss army knife and her towel. By mistake, she grabbed a medium-sized bath towel instead of a hand towel. Now she’s glad. Dark blue, ancient, and fraying at the ends, it’s not something her mother will miss. She hacks off a strip about three inches wide, folds it in half, and stuffs it into her underwear. There’s nothing to hold it in place, but she doesn’t plan to move much today.

She shuffles onto the beach. All the dome tents from the night before have vanished, like a mushroom patch cleared by pickers. The bare expanse of silver-grey sand will be hers until early afternoon at least, while hikers travel west or east from the neighbouring campsites.

Black in silhouette, granite cliffs nose into the ocean at either end of the crescent beach. The water is a clear, dark turquoise, with crushed white clam shells underfoot. As the sky clears, the day is turning bright. The sun presses down between her shoulder blades like a warm hand. At the western end of the beach, a waterfall cascades off the edge of a cliff. That must be the “shower” the girl told her about yesterday. It sparkles in a welcoming way. She’ll rinse herself off and then retrieve her food from the cache on her way back.

As she nears the waterfall, her skin tingles. She shucks off her clothes and runs into it. Brr. The water falls in clumps, not in an even flow. Freezing cold. But so refreshing. She massages the water through her hair and scrubs her arms and legs. With an automatic glance up and down the beach, she bends over, nose to knees, so that the water can rinse her bum and her genitals.

Her teeth are chattering by the time she steps out of the waterfall. She shakes all over the way a dog does after swimming. With the remains of her bath towel, she wipes herself down and then pulls her shorts and shirt back on.

The empty stretch of beach seemed peaceful just minutes ago. Now it seems spooky. It’s so wide and so deserted. A cougar could be watching her from the trees.

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