The Last One Page 3

  She scans her surroundings as she breaks the tree line and emerges into an open field. She sees a man waiting at the center of the field.

  Beyond the man, across the field, Air Force steps into the sunlight.

  For their military selection, the producers wanted a classic, and the man they chose is just that: close-cropped blond hair that glitters in the sun, sharp blue eyes, a strong chin perpetually thrust forth. Air Force is wearing jeans and a long-sleeved tee, but he walks as though in formal dress. Boardlike posture makes him appear taller than his five feet eight inches. His navy-blue bandana—a shade darker than official Air Force blue—is knotted around his belt at his left hip.

  Air Force will be touted as a pilot, but his portrayal will include a careful omission. No mention will be made of what he pilots. Fighter jets, most viewers will assume—which is what they’re meant to assume. Air Force is not a fighter pilot. When he flies, he moves cargo: tanks and ammunition; batteries and metal coils; magazines and candy bars to stock the shelves of the shopping malls the United States is kind enough to erect for her deployed men and women. He’s a lean, year-round Santa Claus, bearing care packages from dear Aunt Sally. In an organization where fighter pilots are deities and bomber pilots fly the sun itself, his is a largely thankless job.

  Air Force and Asian Chick meet at the center of the field, nod a greeting, and stand before the man waiting for them there. The host. He will not be featured until he speaks, and he will not speak until all twelve contestants have gathered.

  Tracker slips from the trees behind the host. Rancher appears to the east, and with him a tall thirtysomething red-haired white man with a lime-green bandana. Soon contestants are appearing from all sides. A white woman in her late twenties with light hair and glasses, a sky-blue bandana around her wrist. A middle-aged black man, a white man barely out of his teens, an Asian man who could pass as a minor but is really twenty-six. A mid-thirties white man, and a Hispanic woman whose age is irrelevant because she’s young enough and her breasts are huge and real. Each has a uniquely colored bandana visible on his or her person. Last to appear is Waitress, who is surprised to find so many people already in the field. She bites her bottom lip, and Air Force feels a throb of attraction.

  “Welcome,” says the host, a thirty-eight-year-old B-list celebrity who hopes to revive his career—or at least pay off his gambling debt. He’s nondescriptly handsome, with brown hair and eyes. His nose has been described in several prominent blogs as “Roman,” and he pretends to know what this means. The host is dressed in outdoor clothing, and any shot of him speaking will include his upper chest, where a sponsor is proudly declared. “Welcome,” he says again, in a deeper, excessively masculine voice, and he decides that when they record the real greeting, this is the voice he will use. “Welcome to The Woods.”

  A soft buzzing sound catches the attention of the contestants; Air Force is the first to turn around. “Holy shit,” he says, an uncommon slip and the first profanity to be censored. The others turn. Behind the group, a five-foot-wide drone with a camera lens at its center hovers at eye level. Cue an additional smattering of awed profanities and a muttered “Cool” from the light-haired woman.

  The drone zips silently up into the sky. After only a few seconds it’s far enough, quiet enough, to be nearly invisible.

  “Where did it go?” whispers Waitress. By the time she finishes the question Tracker is the only one who can still distinguish the drone from clouds and sky.

  “One of the many eyes that will be watching you,” the host informs the group. His voice is rich with implication, though the truth is there’s only the one drone and since the contestants will be under tree cover most of the time, it’s being used primarily for establishing shots.

  “Now let’s begin,” says the host. “Over the next weeks, your skills will be tested and your fortitude pushed to the limit. You do have an out, however. If a Challenge is ever too tough, or if you can’t stand another night being nettled by mosquitoes, simply say ‘Ad tenebras dedi,’ and it’s over. Remember this phrase. This is your out.” As he speaks, he hands a notecard to each contestant. “Your only out. We’ve written it down for each of you to memorize. Ad tenebras dedi. I want to make this clear: Once you say this phrase, there’s no coming back.”

  “What’s it mean?” asks Rancher.

  “You will learn its meaning,” replies the host.

  Black Doctor is shorter and rounder than Tracker, with a goatee. His mustard-yellow bandana covers his head. One of his white-flecked eyebrows perks as he looks at the notecard in his hand. Then a close-up confessional, trees behind him, a hint of scuffed stubble surrounding the goatee. “It’s Latin,” says Black Doctor’s future self. “ ‘To the night, I surrender.’ Or ‘darkness,’ I’m not sure. It’s a little pretentious for the circumstances, but I’m glad there’s a safety phrase. It’s good to know that there’s a way out.” He pauses. “I hope everyone can remember it.”

  And then the host, sitting in a canvas camping chair by a day-lit fire, directly addressing the viewers. “The contestants don’t know everything,” he says, his soft tone and downward-tipped chin inviting the viewers to share his secret. His body language reads: We’re co-conspirators, now. “They know no one gets voted off, that this is a race—or, rather, a series of small races during which they accumulate advantages and disadvantages. What they don’t know is that this race does not have a finish line.” He leans forward. “The game will continue until only one person remains, and the only way out is to quit.” No one knows how long the show will last, not the creators, not the contestants. Their contracts said no less than five weeks and no more than twelve, though a fine-print footnote actually allows for sixteen weeks in the case of extenuating circumstances. “Ad tenebras dedi,” says the host. “There is no other way. And regarding this, the contestants are truly In the Dark.”

  A series of confessionals follow, all with generic wilderness backgrounds.

  Waitress, who knows her only chance of cashing out is to win Fan Favorite: “What will I do first if I win the million dollars? Go to the beach. Jamaica, Florida, I don’t know, somewhere really nice. I’d take my besties with me and sit on the beach all day, drinking cosmos and anything on the menu that ends in ‘-tini.’ ”

  Rancher, with an honest shrug: “I’m here for the money. I don’t know what they got in store for us, but I don’t plan on saying those words. I’ve got my boys back home taking care of the ranch, but I want them to go to college and there’s no way I can pay for that and afford to lose them as workers. That’s why I’m here, for my kids.”

  The light-haired woman with the brown glasses. She held a spiky yellow lizard in her application video and the editor sees more to her than her hair. “I know this sounds ridiculous,” she says, “but I’m not here for the money. I mean, I won’t say no to a million dollars, but I would have signed up even without a prize. I’m almost thirty, I’ve been married three years, it’s time to take the next step.” Zoo exhales nervously. “Kids. It’s time for kids. Everyone I know with kids says it’s never the same, that it changes your life, that you lose all your me time. I’m prepared for that, I’m okay with ceding some of my individuality, and, yeah, my sanity. But before that happens, before I exchange my name for the title of Mom, I want one last adventure. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I’m not going to quit, no matter what.” She holds up the slip of paper with the safety phrase and tears it in half. The action is symbolic—she has the phrase memorized—but no less sincere for the drama of the gesture. “So,” she says, looking at the camera with sly intensity, a smile hiding behind her straight face, “bring it on.”

  3.

  I lie in my shelter well into the night, but can’t sleep for the tightness I feel everywhere—legs, shoulders, back, brow, eyes. The arches of my feet are screaming, as though only the pressure of movement kept them silent throughout the day. My rehydrated body thrums, changed and needing something more.

  Fi
nally, I push my backpack out of the front of my shelter and crawl into the night. Leaves crunch beneath my palms and knees, and my loosened bootlaces drag like snakes. Cold air pinches my cheeks. Pausing, I hear crickets and chirping frogs. The brook, the wind. I think I can hear the unseen moon. I stand, leaving my glasses folded through a strap on my pack. Without them, my vision is a pixelated blur of alternating grays. Held at breast height, my palms are pale, their edges nearly crisp. I rub at the base of my left ring finger and relive the uneasy flutter of my heart when I removed the white gold band. I remember slipping it into its velvet-lined box and placing the box into my top dresser drawer. My husband was in the bathroom, trimming his beard into the even stubble I like best. He spoke more than I did on the drive to the airport, a role reversal. “You’re going to be amazing,” he said. “I can’t wait to watch.”

  Later, on the short flight to Pittsburgh, I sucked back sobs and pressed my forehead to the window, sharing my anxiety with the sky but not the snoring stranger to my left. It didn’t used to be so difficult to leave, but it was different before I met my husband. Before—leaving Stowe for college, that summer hiking hostel to hostel across western Europe, six months in Australia after graduating from Columbia—my fear was always tempered by excitement enough to tip the scales. Leaving was always scary, but it was never hard. But this time I not only left familiarity behind, I left happiness. There’s a difference, the magnitude of which I didn’t anticipate.

  I don’t regret New York, or Europe, or Australia. I’m not sure I regret coming here, but I do regret leaving my wedding ring behind, no matter the instructions I was given. Without my ring, the love I left feels too distant, and the plans we’ve made feel unreal.

  At the airport he promised me the retired greyhound we’d been talking about adopting ever since we bought our house. “We’ll find a good one when you get home,” he said. “Speckled, with some ridiculously long racing name.”

  “It has to be okay with kids,” I replied, because that was what I had to say, that was the reason I gave for leaving.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ll scout while you’re away.”

  I wonder if he’s scouting right now. Working late but really scrolling through Petfinder or checking the website of the greyhound rescue organization we saw at the farmers’ market a few weeks before I left. Or maybe he’s finally getting a drink with the new guy, who he keeps saying seems a little lonely.

  Maybe he’s sitting home in the dark, thinking about me.

  Standing alone in the gray night, watching leaves whisk in the wind, I need him. I need to feel his chest beat against my cheek as he laughs. I need to hear him complain of his hunger, a pain in his back, so I can put aside my own discomfort and be strong for us rather than for just myself.

  Out here I have nothing of him but memory, and each night he feels less real.

  I think of my last Clue. Home Sweet Home. Not a destination, because I can’t imagine they intend for me to walk the almost two hundred miles home, but a direction. A taunt.

  My stomach rumbles—louder than the crickets or the frogs—and suddenly I’m remembering what it is to feel hungry instead of just knowing I should eat. Glad for the distraction, I fish the bag of trail mix from my pack and open it. I pour about a hundred calories’ worth of nuts and dried fruit into my palm. A pathetic amount, a toddler’s handful. I twist the bag closed and slip it into my jacket pocket. I eat the stale raisins first, pairing them with peanuts, almonds, and shattered cashew halves. The four chocolate candies I save for last. I place them on my tongue all together, press them to the roof of my mouth and feel their thin shells crack.

  I used to fear that my need for him was weakness. That any concession of independence was a betrayal of my identity, a compromise of the strength I have always used to propel myself away from the familiar and toward the unknown. Out of the sticks and to the city, out of the city into a foreign land. Always pushing—until I met him: an easygoing, athletic electrical engineer raking in six figures while I scrambled for forty grand a year explaining the differences between mammals and reptiles to packs of shrill, ever-squirming schoolkids. It took me two years to recognize that he didn’t care, that he would never lord the difference in our incomes over me. By the time I said “I do,” I understood there’s a difference between compromise and cooperation, and that to rely on another takes a distinctive kind of strength.

  Or maybe that’s just what I needed to tell myself.

  A fragment of candy shell jabs my gums, almost painful, then melts away. I taste cheap milk chocolate, more a sense of sweetness than actual flavor. I bend over, stretching my hamstrings. A knotted mass of hair that was a ponytail once upon a time falls over my shoulder, and my fingers stall about twelve inches above my feet. It’s been years since I’ve been able to consistently touch my toes without bending my knees, but I should be able to get closer than this. My inability to reach even my ankles feels like failure, and in a weird way like unfaithfulness. Every night for weeks before I left home, my husband and I held “strategy sessions,” curled together in bed, brainstorming what I might do to succeed. Stretching was one of the things we discussed—the importance of staying limber. Tapping my shins, I tell myself that I will take the time to stretch each morning and evening from now on. For him.

  I wanted to do something big. That’s what I told him last winter, the statement that started it all. “One last adventure before we start trying,” I said.

  He understood, or claimed to. He agreed. He was the one who found the link and suggested I apply, because I like wilderness and once said that debris huts were cool. Offering a solution, as always, because the mathematically minded think all problems have solutions. And even if it’s growing ever harder for me to feel him, I know he’s watching. I know he’s proud of me—I’ve had my moments, but I’m doing my best. I’m trying. And I know that when I get home, the distance I feel now will evaporate. It will.

  Still, I wish I had my ring.

  I crawl back into my shelter. Hours later, as I watch the sky gradually lighten through the opening of my debris hut, I know I didn’t sleep—except that I remember a dream, so I must have. There was water in it; I was on a dock or a boat and I dropped him, my squirming, gurgling baby boy who didn’t quite fit in my arms, and why did I have him to begin with? He slipped out of my hands and my legs wouldn’t move and I watched him drift into the depths, bubbles rising from his mouth as he cried a sound like static and I stood by, helpless and unsure.

  Exhausted, I ease out of my shelter and rekindle the fire. While the water heats I eat what’s left of the trail mix, stare at the flames, and wait for the dream to fade, as they always do.

  I was in college when I first started having nightmares about accidentally killing accidentally conceived children. I was new to sex, and underscoring every experience was my worry that the condom would break. A one-night stand would result in weeks of sporadic dreams in which I forgot my newborn child and left it somewhere like the baking interior of a car, or it rolled off a table onto a concrete floor while I wasn’t looking. Once one tumbled out of my sweaty hands on a mountaintop and I watched it fall all the way to the worm-sized road below. It was worst when I was actively dating someone, when it wasn’t a one-night stand but an act of love, or at least affection. The nightmares grew less frequent as I entered my mid-twenties and stopped altogether within a year of meeting my husband, the first person with whom I’ve ever thought I might someday be ready.

  They resumed the night after the cabin Challenge. Not every night, not that I remember, but most. Sometimes when I’m awake too. I don’t even have to close my eyes, just lose my focus, and I see him. Always him. Always a boy.

  After I’ve filled my Nalgenes, I kick apart my shelter and quench the fire. Then I return to the same weather-cracked backcountry thoroughfare I’ve been following roughly east for days. I hang my compass from my neck and check my direction from time to time.

  I’ve been walking an hour or more whe
n a pain in my shoulder reminds me that I didn’t stretch. A few hours of maybe-sleep is all it took for me to forget my promise. Sorry, I mouth, looking up. I pull my shoulders down and back, straighten my posture as I walk. Tonight, I think. Tonight I will stretch my every aching muscle.

  I round a curve in the road and see a silver sedan ahead, parked askew with all its tires save the left rear beyond the shoulder, resting in dirt. I follow its skid marks uneasily, water bottle thumping against my hip. It’s clear that the car has been placed here. There must be supplies inside, or a Clue.

  My stomach tightens. I’m trying to keep my face empty of nerves—I can’t see the cameras, but I know they’re tucked into the branches overhead, and probably in the vehicle itself. They probably have one of those surveillance drones up high, hovering.

  You are strong, I tell myself. You are brave. You are not afraid of what might be inside this car.

  I look through the driver’s-side window. The driver’s seat is empty, and the front passenger seat cradles only fast-food detritus: wrappers stained with grease, a bucket-sized foam cup sprouting a gnawed-on straw from a brown-stained lid.

  There is a rumpled blanket spread over the backseat, and a small red cooler wedged behind the passenger seat. I try the back door, and the sound of it opening is something I haven’t heard in weeks: the click of the handle, the release of the seal, so distinctive and yet so ordinary. I’ve heard this sound thousands of times, tens of thousands. It’s a sound I’ve come to associate with departure—an association that was unconscious until now, for the moment I open that door, hear that release, I feel my fear fade into relief.

  You’re leaving. You’re getting out of here. You’re going home. Not thoughts, but wordless assurances from myself to me. You’re done, my body tells me. It’s time to go home.

  Then the smell hits, and a heartbeat later: realization.

  I recoil, stumbling away from their decaying prop. I can see it now, the vaguely human shape beneath the blanket. It’s small. Tiny. That’s why I didn’t see it from the window. The orb of its head was resting directly against the door, and now hangs slightly over the edge of the seat, a slick of dark brown hair slipping from beneath the covering. The nubs meant to approximate feet bulge only halfway across the seat.