The man smoking the pipe just glanced over the items in her hand without looking at the individual prices. “Four dollars,” he said.
“But this one alone is four fifty,” Bella said, holding up a deluxe box of Oreos.
“Okay,” the owner said. “Five fifty.”
Bella dug out a ten-dollar bill and shook her head as she tossed it on the counter. “Keep the change,” she said as she walked towards the door.
“Wait,” he said as she opened the door and hurried out. “You forgot your worms!”
“This is far enough,” Bella said as she dropped her heavy bag on the ground.
She had been hiking into the forest for two hours and was already missing the comforts of home. It was hot, she was sweaty, and the goddamn bugs were relentless. She slapped a mosquito off of her arm as she sat down on a large rock.
“Alright,” she said, pulling out her binoculars. “Where are you owls?”
Probably sleeping. Only you would do a dissertation on a species who sleeps all day and flies all night. How am I supposed to observe them in the dark? Bella was embarrassed to admit that she hadn’t even thought of that until she stepped foot into the forest. Some researcher you’ll be.
She shoved the binoculars back into her bag and opened up the box of Oreos. “Oh great,” she said, tossing the box onto the ground. “Mold. I should have taken the worms.”
What was she doing out here?
She belonged in the city going out to indie rock concerts or meeting her friends at O’Connor’s Pub. She was a student, not an adventurer. Why was she out here acting like an unpaid Bear Grylls?
Everybody said that she couldn’t do it. Her teacher, her friends, her ex, and even her parents. But she was young and stubborn and stupid and wanted to prove them all wrong.
“Ah!” she screamed, leaping up off the rock when a grasshopper jumped on her knee. “Maybe I should have listened to everybody.”
She was having serious second thoughts and as it got darker and darker she started having triple and quadruple thoughts as well. I want to go home. I want my bed. I want Netflix.
“No,” she said, catching herself. “It’s only a month. Your ancestors lived in the forest, you can do a month.” But her ancestors didn’t know the comforts of a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle, they never got addicted to their iPhone, which had no reception up here and was on the last bar of power, and they never knew how delicious a Big Mac with french fries tasted when you were starving.
Bella did know all of those things and she was quickly learning that living without them sucked balls.
She opened a can of beans for dinner and cursed when she couldn’t start a fire. She had never been camping or made a fire but she did study by watching videos on YouTube. The guy had crumpled up paper, placed little sticks on it, then placed some bigger sticks over that and arranged it like a little wooden teepee.
Bella did exactly the same but when she tried to light it, it just fizzled out like her motivation to be out in the woods. “Damn it!” she cursed kicking the little tee-pee over. I wish I had a computer so I could give that guy’s video a thumbs down.
After trying again and failing again, Bella sat down with a huff and ate the disgusting beans straight out of the can. They were even worse than they looked. Two cold bites and she shook her head, her not-so-stubborn mind made up. “Fuck this shit! I’m going home!”
She tossed the can of beans into a nearby bush, grinning evilly at the fact that she wasn’t recycling it. She was such an environmentalist, sharing every Save the Earth post that came on her Facebook feed, and always lecturing people on the importance of limiting their carbon footprint. But after a few hours out here, she was ready to burn the place down just to watch it die.
She stood up and grabbed her backpack, taking a deep breath as she looked around. “Fuck you tree. Fuck you rock. Fuck you bush. I’m out!”
Quitting never felt so good.
She grinned as she walked back the way she came, coming up with the lies that she would write in her school dissertation paper about the beautiful snowy owls, which she definitely did observe.
Bella already knew how she was going to finish the paper: “The sleepy owl is a magnificent creature and observing the majestic species over my four weeks of living in the wilderness taught me so much about life, love, myself, our roots and of course, about mother nature and all of her wonderful creatures.”
She could already see the impressed professor scratching an A+ onto the top corner of her paper. It was going to be great.
“Now where is that fucking tree?” She scratched her head as she looked around. Bella was careful to remember visible markings on her way in to ensure that she could get back out. The tree that she was looking for had two branches sticking out like a Y. Or was it three?
She swallowed hard as she walked a little further and looked around. Why is there a river here? There wasn’t a river on the way in.
“Crap,” she muttered, her shoulders dropping under the weight of her heavy backpack and even heavier worries.
She was lost.