We Are Unprepared. Meg Little Reilly
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abuse prescription drugs in front of him and can’t be bothered to keep a damn thing in the fridge. They’re not monsters. They love him. But they’re selfish and irresponsible and getting worse all the time. I first started coming around here a year ago when August’s ‘treks’ started. That’s what he calls it when he goes off into the woods. He always has some important mission or something in mind and just takes off with a backpack. But it’s usually just for four to maybe six hours. Once, it was eight. But he has never been out overnight and this is just... These goddamn people... I’m sorry. I’m mostly mad at myself. I should have removed him months ago.”
My toe caught on a root and I nearly fell over as I tried to wrap my head around what she was saying. “He’s been out here overnight? What could have happened to him? What does he do out here? We’ll find him, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know. I think we will. August is a real adventurer, but he’s not stupid. This is really bad, Ash.”
“Wait, you said ‘remove him.’ Are you going to take him away from his parents?”
She shook her head, still walking quickly ahead of me, and said, “Forget that for now. Let’s just find him. We have to just find him.”
My head was spinning now, on top of my churning stomach. August had been out there all night long. I tried to imagine him smiling, sitting at the base of a tree with a piece of beef jerky in hand, talking to a chipmunk. But I couldn’t hold on to the cheerful image. Unwanted pictures kept flashing before me: August, shivering in the dark; August, injured and crying; August, facedown in the fall leaves. The feeling was unbearable, like no other concern I’d ever felt. That wasn’t even the word for it: concern. It was heartsickness and desperation—and I had known August for only a few months. I wondered how his parents were feeling at that moment. Desperation mixed with guilt. Those motherfuckers. I felt guilty now, too, for not seeing it all sooner. All of a sudden, I wanted to find them and push them into the forest floor, make them stay there all night. Whatever happens to them will be deserved, I thought. But August, we have to find August. Stay focused.
“Ash? Ash!” Bev was right beside me, yelling to break through my nightmarish thoughts.
“What?”
“You look pale. Are you okay? I need you to stay with me here.”
I rubbed my face with my hands. “Yeah, I’m okay. Should we be shouting his name? Let’s do that.”
“Yes, okay,” Bev said. She seemed at least as frightened as I was, but not as confused. Bev had seen families like this, cases like this, no doubt. She was probably fighting back her own images of what had become of August, but hers would be more vivid and plausible because she’d seen it all before, I imagined.
We watched our feet as we walked along the uneven forest floor, veering close to each other and then back out again. I shouted August’s name, loud and hoarse. It hardly sounded like my own voice and I wondered if the boy would recognize me if he heard it from afar. As I walked, I had a strange realization that this was the longest I’d gone in weeks without thinking of The Storms. The weather seemed insignificant all of a sudden. And then it didn’t. What if the weather changed tomorrow, before we find August, and he’s trapped out here without a coat? What if the cloud cover gets so bad that he can’t use the sun for direction and time? This was fear compounded by fear.
I wanted to ask Bev how this works. How long do we look and what clues can we search for and where were the police... But we just kept going. Step, step, shout. Step, step, shout. After an hour, I excused myself to pee behind a large tree and check my phone, hoping to see a message from Pia. I wanted to tell her what was going on and ask her to join me. This was too hard without her. She would be a help and a comfort. But she hadn’t called. As far as she knew, this was still a normal day in which she could stay mad for hours and wander back when the feeling faded.
I sent her a text: August is missing. Please come home. I’m sorry for everything.
Within seconds, she responded: I can be there in twenty. That’s horrible.
I felt a small, unsatisfying flash of relief as I pushed my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, but then I was back in reality, looking for my lost seven-year-old friend. He was my friend. That was the word, I suppose. Or was I his mentor? His surrogate big brother? It wasn’t the sort of friendship I’d had before, but I wasn’t a parent, so what else could I have been?
I looked up to find Bev talking to August’s parents. I wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying, but she was moving her hands around, giving them instructions.
When I approached them, Bev said, “These guys are going to go back to the house in case August shows up there. The police are moving toward us from the far end of this forest. Ash, if you’re up for it, you and I can just keep pressing forward until we meet the cops. Hopefully, one of us will find something before that happens.”
Find something. It sounded like a compromise in expectations and it made my head hurt.
“Yes, of course. Let’s keep going.”
I sent Pia one more text explaining that we were too deep into the woods for her to meet us and that I would be back when I could. I wanted to hear her voice, but the reception was too poor for anything more than that. I looked back up at Bev The Social Worker and nodded. Let’s keep going.
We walked for another hour. More yelling his name, mixed with feet crunching on branches, but no talking. There was nothing to say. It was starting to get dark and we didn’t want to acknowledge what that could mean. I was hungry, or I would have been if I could feel anything other than panic and sickness. We just had to keep going.
“Hello?” a deep man’s voice called from somewhere to our left.
“It’s Bev and Ash,” Bev yelled back.
“We’ve got him,” the voice said.
Bev and I broke into an awkward run toward the voice until a large police officer came into focus. At first, we couldn’t see him, but then the officer turned to reveal a tired, dirty August clinging to him piggyback-style. The boy’s too-short pant legs wrapped around his torso. A smaller cop stood next to them, holding August’s blue backpack and a large water bottle.
When August saw us, he released his hold and dropped to the ground, landing on his feet and sprinting toward us. For a moment, I wasn’t sure who he was running to, but it was me. He gave me one quick squeeze around the neck as I crouched down and I wrapped my arms around his little body so hard it made him squirm. He was happy to see me, but a little confused by all the adult dramatics. He seemed fine.
“I made a sweet fort, Ash! But then it got so dark and I lost my compass and I had to stay in one place. That’s an important rule of ranger safety: stay in one place if you’re lost.”
I smiled. “Yes! Good thinking, buddy. Are you okay? Were you scared?”
August shrugged. “Yeah, I was a little scared.”
And that was it. We would get more from him later about where and how he made it through the night, but none of that mattered at that moment. We walked back through the woods in a long line with the officers at the front, followed by Bev The Social Worker, then me with August on my back. It took over an hour and my legs ached, but I was so grateful for the weight of his body and the sound of his soft breath near my ear. I was surprised he let me carry him like that for so long. We had never before touched beyond the occasional high five, but this felt perfectly natural. August fell asleep like that for the final stretch and I wondered what his parents would think when they saw me deliver him to them, his body melting into mine, in all its trusting vulnerability. “Attachment issues” is what Pia once called it. She said August seemed to have some attachment issues with his parents, which may have explained some of his neediness with me. It made more sense now, though I’d thought she was overreacting at the time.
August awoke as we approached his house and I watched his parents run out to make a big show of hugging him in front of us all. They had been terrified, no doubt, and were so grateful