This is the 97th installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
The lake is a long way from here. I know it. Ronnie knows it. We can’t even see the lake ahead, and that’s not just because of the thick trees. We put miles between us and them. It seemed like a fine idea at the time.
We won’t make it before dark. We know that too—and yet we’re still walking. Neither of us has suggested we make a temporary camp. I could make that suggestion now, while I’m thinking of it, but I didn’t do it the dozen other times it occurred to me, and I’m not going to do it now. We’ll keep walking.
“They’re fine,” I tell Ronnie periodically. After a while, it feels like I’m saying it on loop—just a point on a record that’s going around and around. Twenty trees. They’re fine. Twenty trees. They’re fine.
He never responds, and by the fifth loop, I realize I’m not even talking to him.
Going on a hike had seemed fine when the sun was high in the sky; we hadn’t worried about leaving his brother and my sister alone. Our parents trusted us to look after them, and we trusted them to look after themselves—just for a couple hours.
A couple hours turned into 9, 10, 11. My parents will freak, and Ronnie’s will, too. We have to get back.
We’ll walk all through the night.
Miles Away 