Attached at the Hip by Christine Riccio

Author:Christine Riccio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

I crunch over dead leaves as I follow the map line into the jungle. The cameraman walks noiselessly behind me.

Fifteen minutes into the journey I find a tall stick, one I can use for walking and turn into a stabby weapon like I did with Osprey to spear crabs.

Just thinking about that crab makes my stomach cramp. I should have eaten the goddamn tarantula. What am I going to do now? What if I have to resort to pulling up tree roots and eating termites off of them like that one guy in that one season of Survivor?

Ten minutes later, I come to an abrupt halt, blinking amid the greenery.

Fruit. There’s a fruit tree! Nature’s McDonald’s! I hurry toward it.

Upon closer inspection, the fruit is, well, unreachable. My heart dips into the empty vacuum that is my stomach.

It’s fifteen feet off the ground, and there are no branches to cling to along the way.

Cartoon Mulan climbing a massive wooden pillar outside her training camp pops into my head. She takes these two heavy weights on ribbons, locks them together to form a bandlike thing to loop around the pole, and uses it as leverage to help her climb to the top.

The bark of the tree isn’t super smooth; it has ridges that could catch onto something like that.

I put down my stick, take off the machete belt, and remove the knife. This particular trunk isn’t too wide. Maybe ten inches in diameter. I loop the belt around it and hold tight to either side. Then I raise it as high as I can on the tree, lean back, and place my feet against the trunk so I’m pressing into it, leaning on a diagonal.

I maneuver my legs higher, stepping up the trunk. Once I’m good and scrunched in a tight little sideways ball, I straighten my legs and thrust my arms and the belt up, hoping to gain purchase at a higher point.

There’s a moment of weightlessness where I pray to the universe the belt will catch. I fall back into a lean, squeezing my eyes shut as I slide for an everlasting second before it finds a ridge and locks into place.

I exhale, heart pounding in my ears. HELL YEAH. One more round of scrunch into a little ball, spring up, and hope for the best with the belt should bring me within reach of the fruit.

My arms are shaking now, fingers clutching hard at the leather belt. Slipping a bit. I bring my feet up, carefully maneuvering into a new scrunched position. I make the mistake of looking down.

“Whoa—oh man,” I breathe, closing my eyes. I am ten feet off the ground. I redirect my attention upward. The fruit. It’s so close now.

I’m so hungry. I count to five. Exhale. And straighten, throwing my arms upward to find a new, higher groove.

My stomach drops before I do. The leather belt skids down the bark, my sneakered feet scraping uselessly against the trunk. My fingers slip from

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