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I can’t believe it.
The rain is pouring down, drenching me to the skin, and meanwhile I’m stuck on the top of a mountain with the last man I want to look at right now.
“They left us!” I exclaim. “How the hell could they just leave us here?”
The rain starts coming down harder, if that was even possible, screening the valley around us in a thick mist. “Come on!” Josh grabs my arm, and pulls me back into the jungle, to take shelter under a dense thicket of trees. Not that it matters, I’m already drenched through.
I dump the picnic supplies and pull out my cellphone, but I still have zero service. Josh checks his, too. “No bars,” he reports.
“Me either.” I tap out a text to Anna, but I just get sending error messages. I sigh, frustrated. “What are we going to do?”
“Maybe we can get a signal further down the mountain?” he suggests.
“You want to take a hike in this?” I ask dubiously. The rain is still pouring down, turning the trail to a muddy puddle.
“You want to stick around up here?” he counters. “They might not realize we’re gone for hours, and a storm like this, there could be lightening strikes.”
I hear a distant rumble of thunder and gulp. “OK. Let’s go!”
I stuff my backpack with a bottle of sparkling water and a napkin of picnic snacks, then hit the trail down the mountain, retracing our steps the way we came. Only this time, it’s more like a slip ‘n’ slide, the dirt track turning to mud under the torrential rain. I grit my teeth. In no time at all, I’m soaked and cold and grumpy.
“I should never have let you talk them into this hike,” I mutter, trying to pick my way safely along the trail without triggering some kind of mudslide. We’re out of the dense jungle now, on a more open stretch of trail that has zero shelter from the pouring rain. “This is all your fault!”
“How?” Josh demands, slipping along behind me. “I don’t control the weather!”
“If you weren’t distracting me, we wouldn’t have been left behind.”
He huffs. “Distracting you how?”
By being impossibly hot.
“By being so annoying,” I retort, instead.
Josh makes a noise of frustration. “Look, let’s just be quiet, and focus on getting in range of a cell signal.”
“Are you telling me to shut up?” I ask, my mouth dropping open.
“Would you do it if I was?” Josh shoots back. “Wait a minute,” he says, pausing as the trail winds to the left. “I think I remember passing a park ranger hut, just past those trees.” He nods in the other direction. “We can shelter there until the rain eases up.”
“No way.” I shake my head. “I’m not leaving the trail to go wandering around in this! We’ll get lost, and I’ve seen that horror movie, thank you very much.”
Josh sighs. “We won’t get lost, I know where I’m going.”
“And I know I don’t want to be walking around in circles until they have to send in Search and Rescue.” I retort.
“Hazel, would you please stop being so damn stubborn and just listen to me?” Josh rakes a hand through his soaking hair, looking pissed. “I was captain of my high school navigation club, we did outward bound adventures all the time. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Navigation club? That’s tragically nerdy,” I reply. “But still, I’m sticking to the trail.”
I turn, and head to the left, marching determinedly through the rain as I?—
“AAAIIIIGHHHH!”
The muddy ground gives way beneath me, and I let out a scream, going over heavily on my ankle before I hit the ground with a SPLAT.
“Hazel!” Josh is by my side in an instant. “Are you OK?” he demands, and when I manage to roll over in the mud to look up at him, I find his dark eyes are searching mine with genuine concern.
“I’m fine,” I exhale. Besides taking a swim in the mud, that is. But as I take Josh’s offered hand, and let him haul me to my feet, I realize that’s not true. “OWWWW,” I yelp, as pain shoots through my ankle.
