Freida McFadden

My friend Lindsay literally has an entire room just for her clothing. But she’s not married. So she gets to do whatever she wants without another person criticizing her every move.

“I got us separate rooms,” I blurt out.

Noah slides his foot onto the brake at a red light. He turns to stare at me, his hazel eyes wide. “What?”

“At the inn.” I look away from him, out the windshield. “I booked us two separate bedrooms.”

“You did?” Even though we have been fighting nonstop all morning (hell, all year), he sounds hurt. “But… why?”

“What did you unlock the door for?” she snapped at me.

“It was hot.”

“Well, I hope it was worth it. Now she’s going to report me for being a terrible parent and you’re going to get taken away from us. They’ll put you in a foster home. You’ll never see me or your father again.”

The thought of never seeing my mom again? Not so bad. But the thought of never seeing my father again made me sick. So sick, I had to make her pull over so I could vomit.

Noah crinkles his nose. “What the…” he mutters under his breath.

I clasp my hand over my mouth to suppress a giggle, and for a split second, Noah looks proud of himself for making me laugh. For that half a second, it’s almost like the old days again, before we hated each other. When we could share an emotion without even having to exchange words.

He shifts the car back into drive, but the engine is strangely silent. Noah frowns as he presses his foot onto the gas. What now?

“The car stalled.” He looks at me. “Does your car do this a lot?”

I bite my lip. “No. Never.”

“When is the last time you got it serviced?”

“I don’t know. Six months ago?”

“You don’t know?” he repeats.

“I said about six months ago. Give or take.” I think it was six months ago. I remember taking it to the mechanic right after a particularly brutal fight about why there was no fresh milk in the house. There was snow on the ground, so it was sometime during the winter.

Noah kills the engine, then tries to restart the car. I hear a clicking noise, but the engine doesn’t catch. He tries again with the same result.

“The battery is dead.” He blinks down at the dashboard. “The car won’t start.”

“Walk there?” Lindsay doesn’t sound thrilled about that idea. She’s not exactly outdoorsy either. “I thought if you get lost in the woods, you’re supposed to stay put.”

“Under some circumstances.” Warner nods. “But nobody is going to be looking for us in the near future. We’re not expected back home for a week. And we’ve got a map showing us exactly where to go. It would be stupid not to try to find this place.”

Lindsay frowns. “Yes, but…”

“Trust me on this, Lindsay.” Warner pats her shoulder. “You just don’t know better.”

After I zip my shorts up, I grab onto the tree for balance, the wood biting into my palm. As I pull my hand away, I notice five deep grooves in the splintered bark.

Claw marks.

“Anyway…” Jack takes a step back from the tree. “Most animals that mark trees do it to mark their territory. So if this is the territory of some large animal, we should move on.”

That sounds like a very good idea to me.

Three hours later, we are not at the inn. We are not anywhere near the inn. In spite of Warner’s map and Jack’s compass, we are utterly lost.

And it’s going to get dark soon.

I look up at Noah. He has been privy to all the navigating, and he doesn’t look nearly as confident as the other two guys. Our eyes meet for a moment, and he shakes his head almost imperceptibly. There was a time when I could have gone up to him and asked him to tell me what’s really going on, but that’s not going to happen right now. That head shake is the best I’m going to get. And anyway, it tells me everything I need to know:

We are screwed.