Wild by Alex Mallory

he could reduce anything to the most negative interpretation possible.
    Admittedly, there had been some people out there who’d frightened her. The ones that talked too loud and too close. Or the ones who liked to show off their guns and knives. It seemed like their stories always had police in them, or jail. Usually both.
    But there had been several people on the trail who lived there because they wanted to. One was a guy not much older than them. Soft-spoken, his blond hair twisted into braids, he liked to quote from Walden.
    Then there was a couple who’d met hiking there in college and spent every good weather day on it. They had a dog with a bandanna, and banana bread in their packs.
    Those were the people Dara meant. The ones who had decided that city-job-tech kind of life wasn’t for them. The boy at the river reminded her of them. He had to be a survivalist or something.
    There wasn’t a stitch on his body that came from a retail store, as far as she could tell. Seriously, the clothes were just bizarre. Like he walked out of an old movie about the frontier.
    Then there was the bee pendant. She still didn’t know what it was made of. When she rubbed it with her thumb, it felt buttery and warm—not plastic, not glass. And finally, who fished with a sharpened stick? Only somebody who wasn’t planning on getting into town for new hooks and bobbers, was her guess.
    Everything about him fascinated her, from the dark, wary tilt of his eyes, to the thick fall of his dreads. “He needs water like anybody else,” she mused aloud. “And he’s probably going to avoid the river. Where are the maps?”
    Now irritated, Josh frowned. “Just leave it alone, Dara. Some crazy guy in the woods is following you around, and you want to find him? Have a sense of self-preservation.”
    â€œDon’t start with your mom and dad’s actualization stuff,” she retorted.
    It was a low blow. Josh couldn’t help his weird parents any more than she could. The new agey, attachment-parenty stuff was totally out of Josh’s control. Already, Dara felt bad for saying it. Flushed, she stopped knotting her bath curtain. “I’m sorry.”
    Lips flattened, Josh turned his back on her and poked at the fish. “How am I supposed to know when these are done?”
    Swallowing down her guilt, Dara shook her head. “I don’t know. Let me find the guidebook. It had a chapter about cooking in the wild.”
    With a quick tug, she unzipped the tent and ducked inside. Sinking to her knees, she felt the cold in the sleeping bags, and the cold outside pressing in.
    Their unseasonably warm spring had turned into just plain spring. Damp, chilly, grey. This wasn’t the trip she’d hoped for. No doubt, Josh felt the same way. Their mismatched edges didn’t line up any better in the forest than they did back in Makwa.
    A surge of emotion tightened her chest. Josh was a good guy. He was generous and friendly. He was thoughtful and steady and true. He was exactly the guy she’d fallen in love with freshman year. What had happened to the rush of infatuation she used to get when she looked at him?
    Smoothing her hands over his sleeping bag, she pressed her face against his pillow. It smelled like him, and once, that would have given her such a thrill.
    She had a whole drawer at home, filled with pilfered sweatshirts. She tucked them into her bed, to breathe and dream against. Even when they lost his scent, she couldn’t bear to give them back.
    But lying there with her face on his pillow, she realized something. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken one of his sweatshirts home.
    There was a time when lying on his sleeping bag would have driven her nuts. She would have had to flail around just to handle it all. At that moment, she felt nothing but a wistful pang.
    Probably just the weather , she told herself. The fact that raccoons had eaten all