Lost at Running Brook Trail by Sheryl A. Keen Page A

thing.”
    They didn’t discuss sleeping arrangements, but the cave seemed as good a place as any. Inside or outside, it was the same danger.
    “Cave? Who says? I’m not sleeping in there.” Susan was adamant.
    “Okay, okay,” Elaine said. “We’re wasting time. Let’s take a vote. By a show of hands, who wants to stay here for the night and sleep in the cave?” Miriam had her hand up before Elaine had finished talking. Kimberly, who was in the process of checking the Storm, slowly hoisted her hand. Elaine already had her own hand up. Susan folded her arms over her breasts and looked away.
    “The tribe has spoken, I guess.” Kimberly walked away and spat on the ground. Her blonde hair swished into some of the spit as it left her mouth. She fingered it out and wiped it on her shorts.
    “Are we sleeping on the cold ground?” Kimberly walked back. “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep under these conditions.”
    “That makes two of us,” Susan said.
    “Nobody’s going to sleep on the cold ground.” Elaine scratched her cornrows and looked around. “We have to make a bed from branches and whatever else we can find, such as leaves and … whatever.”
    “More S urvivorMan .” Kimberly sighed. “And what are we going to cut these branches with, pray tell?”
    “We’re going to use our imagination and break them off at the joints. Plus, I should have a knife.” Elaine searched around in her bag.
    “Why do you have a knife anyway?” Miriam asked.
    “My silly brother was having a laugh at my expense for being sent on this fun trip. So he says ‘E’—he calls me E for short—‘you may need this and this and these for your forage into the woods where you’re going.’ He tosses me a Swiss Army knife, a lighter, a little first aid kit and some other stuff in a bag that I haven’t even looked at. He does and says all this while guffawing and carrying on.” Elaine finally retrieved the knife from the bag and unfolded all the blades, nail file, corkscrew and other tools from the handle. It was an abnormal apparatus with all the various parts sticking out.
    “The knife seems like a good idea now,” Miriam said, “but why would he give you a lighter?”
    “His exact words? To roast deer meat.”
    “He’s a comedian. But yet you took all the stuff he gave you.”
    “I don’t know. I like to pack stuff up. I’m always afraid I might need something and not have it.”
    “You’re a pack rat.”
    Elaine shrugged.
    They started to break off and gather the branches, leaving them near the mouth of the cave. Elaine tried to saw her way through the branches, which was difficult work when you only had a small blade. She alternated frustrating cutting and breaking off limbs with her bare hands like the others.
    Susan worked slowly, breaking off one or two branches and then stopping to stare at the cave.
    “You have to commit to this, Susan,” Elaine told her, “we’re all doing it.”
    “I didn’t vote to sleep in any cave.”
    “Sleeping in the cave or outside it, we would still be making a bed so that we don’t lose all our body heat.” Elaine was having enough trouble with blisters she was developing on her index finger from the knife pressing into it without arguing with Susan about her vote.
    “You know, Susan”—Miriam dragged three branches behind her—“this vote was done in a democratic way. Three out of four is a majority. It really doesn’t get any fairer than that. That’s how they decide on some activities at school. They say, ‘Here are your two or three choices.’ We all tick the one we want and stick our preferences in a suggestion box. They tally the suggestions, the most votes win and we all go on a trip to the zoo when all I wanted was to go to BMO Field to watch soccer.” Miriam dropped the branches and kicked them closer to the growing pile.
    “I wanted to go to the zoo,” Susan said.
    “Well, it worked out for you that time. That’s how it works. Sometimes