It was only three days ago we had made the foolish mistake of splitting from our fellow classmates and the supervisor. My sister Kelsey's friend, Tina, saw a squirrel; out of stupidity, the girls, me, and my friend, Ed, went to follow it. My sister wanted to take a quick picture of it on her phone, but the damn animal was faster than a bullet! We ended up losing sight of the little pest and by the time we gave up trying to look through the forests for it, we ended up losing sight of our group! Call us the four morons if you want. I've been calling us that for the past three days we've been struggling to ration food, it makes me feel a little better.
What turned out to be a fun grade twelve field trip, ended up being a test of survival. I never thought I'd say this but, I'd gladly take a math test over living on more night in this hell-hole of a wilderness. To be honest, it isn't as bad as I describe it. The lack of food I've been consuming in order to make sure my sister got her full was getting to my head. Being with my friends and my sister kind of sparks just a little bit fun. Just a tiny bit. It's a good thing that I watched a lot of survival TV shows back in the day because it has proven really useful. It's the main reason why they labelled me as the 'leader', or at least treat me like one. Hey, I guess all you need to do in order to become one is make a fire. Fire.. I remembered burning things as a child with my sisters. Things like paper, rubber-bands, and a whole lot of other materials. Now we actually rely on fire for survival, and not for entertainment purposes. At least looking at the fire at night, while on the cold and sometimes wet ground, under a leafy tree, brings back those great childhood memories; it puts a smile on my face, something that really fuels you to push on.
Today was day four of survival. I just woke up and it's not a surprise, everyone else is still asleep. The fire must've went out last night.. It's hard to man a fire when you're the only one manning it! It's the price you pay for being the mature one in the group. To be fair, my sister's maturity is along the same level as mine. I had told her from day one of our fuck up that she didn't have to worry about things like this; that I'd protect her and take care of her and the others.
Sleeping arrangements were strange, you could say. My sister slept with me, it was her decision and being that she was my sister and I was her brother, I wanted to make her feel safe, so this was an easy choice. The nights are extremely cold. It was appropriate that we snuggled together to transfer the warmth of ours bodies to each other. I sure as hell wasn't going to let her do that with Ed, not that she would do it to begin with. Tina slept about six feet away from us usually, and Ed slept about 6 foot away from her. We were all in close proximity to the fire, and it was fair game.
I got up, slowly removing my sister's arms from my waist, and got on my feet. The air was damp, the sky was grey and I felt like shit, the usual. I walked over to the fire pit and was greeted to a nice puff of smoking filling my nostrils. I coughed really loudly and it woke up my sister. Works for me, I thought.
"You okay, Zacky?" my sister Kelsey said, using her hands to push her tired body off the cold, soft earth.
My sister Kelsey is probably the nicest girl on this planet. She's always been there for me as I for her. We always got a long, and that's actually an understatement. Back when we were in civilization, we texted each other every minute of the day, literally. After school, we'd hang out with her friend, Tina, at the plaza beside our school. Me and my sister are glued together, you could say. We are very much alike. Especially in appearance; well, at least in the fact that we have the same colored hair, dark brown, and hazelnut eyes. She's got long hair and I've got short. The differences are apparent, but anyone could pick out that we are brother and sister.
"Oh, yeah," I said, trying to force the smoke out of my nose, "Just inhaled some of this damned smoke."
Kelsey was already up on her feet. She walked towards me and gave me a great big hug, just what I needed.
"Just another day we'll conquer, sis," I said, embracing in the warmth of her hug.
"Zack," she said, releasing the hug, now giving me a serious look. "You haven't eaten in two days. Take my granola bar."
She reached into her jean pocket and pulled out a shriveled up granola bar, holding it out to me. I looked at it and then back at her, pushing it towards her chest.
"No, Kel, I want you to eat. I might as well drop dead now if I knew you were starving," I said, giving her a sad, caring smile. "Don't worry, today we're going hunting and I plan to find food."
"No!" Kelsey yelled quietly. She ripped open the granola bar wrapper, and held the broken pieces of granola in her hand. She took a piece, about a quarter, and held it towards my mouth.
I could tell she wasn't going to let up, so I opened my mouth and ate it.
Gosh.. The feeling of finally having something sweet and sugary in my mouth made my nerves cringe. Me eating the piece of granola bar made my sister smile and I smiled back, nodding in appreciation.
"Mmmm," I said, swallowing the granola. "That one piece made me full already. You eat the rest."
Obviously, I was far from full. But, like I said before, I might as well drop dead knowing that I stoled food from my sister's mouth. The two others, while I did care for them, I didn't treat them as special as I treated Kelsey. She is my sister. Mom and Dad would kill me if something happened to her, but then again, I'd kill myself if it did.
I turned away before she could argue with me. That didn't pan out because she grabbed my arm, pulling me back to face her. I sighed and looked to see Tina and Ed still sleeping. I took my sister and motioned her over to our little 'shelter' and we sat next to each other, cross-legged.
"I take a piece, you take a piece.. Deal?" I said, giving her a serious but caring look.
"But Za- aah," I stopped her from talking by putting a piece of granola bar in her mouth.
We eventually finished eating it and we lay back down next to each other, resting until one of the two got up.
Ten minutes had passed and Tina and Ed had gotten up; my sister was asleep. I didn't want to wake her up but I had to, we needed to find food.
"Sweety, wake up.." We had nicknames for each other. One of them was 'sweety' because she likes candy; it makes sense.
We were all finally on our feet and surprisingly, the sky was clear of clouds, the dampness gone; it might actually turn out to be a good day.
"You guys sleep good or what?" Ed said, stretching his arms.
Ed is an asshole, nothing more, nothing less. Cold, I know, but true. I'm friends with him because he does have a heart in there somewhere, I've seen it. He shows it when he wants to, but most of the time, he's just a plain jerk. This whole getting lost and being forced to fend for ourselves until unforeseen help shows up has changed him. He's grown to be just a little more appreciative, at least for me and what I'm doing to help us survive.
"It was incredibly cold, so no," Tina said, putting her rain jacket on. "I wish I had a brother I could cuddle with for warmth.."
Tina is a sarcastic sweetheart and sometimes it does get on my nerves. For the most part she is nice company and certainly more welcoming than Ed. I could see why Kelsey is friends with her. And, if it isn't obvious, she has a bit of a crush on me. I don't see us being more than friends, plus, I don't want to ruin my relationship with my sister. Relationships are sort of the least of my worries during our little dilemma and really, my sister's company is more than enough to fill up any lonely gap that I may have during our stay in hell.
"Too bad you don't!" Kelsey said, sticking out her tongue playfully, while hugging my left arm.
"Alright, alright, enough with the jokes. We really need to get moving. We're going hunt for food today." I said, gathering up my bag-pack. "Anything that's edible, we take it. We could try our luck down at the river for fish; make some spears out of tree branches."
"Sounds good to me. I'm all packed up, hurry it up, Tina," Ed said, bag-pack already on his back.
After a minute of getting our stuff ready for travel, we headed off south, towards a river.
The walk's going to be at least ten minutes I thought. During the way, me and my sister got two sturdy branches and started sharpening the ends of it with our wilderness knives. Ed made the right decision by picking up a couple stone to throw at any moving meal. That would have proven useful if we saw that fucking squirrel that may have well cost us our lives. I noticed Tina was freakishly shivering and had to say something.
"Tina, are you okay. You must be freezing!" I said, worryingly heading over to her.
"Yeah, the night was colder than usual. It was only early in the morning I got good sleep," she replied.
That's right, the fire went out, I thought.
