He Took Jude's Money, Ken Won His Heart novel · Chapter 3 of 40
Chapter 3: Wrong Trail
The trekkers move the markers and leave Jude in the forest in the rain; the boy from the bus, Ken Bronze, finds him and carries him out, and the only tent left is Ken's.
By noon on the first day, Jude's pack felt heavier than any pack had a right to be.
He had packed it himself, from the checklist, and it should have weighed half as much.
He didn't say so, because the three fleece jackets walking beside him were being so nice about it.
"You're doing amazing," the tall one said. "Most people would have quit by now."
"Keep going, champ," said another.
The third, the one who had typed on his phone at the registrar's table, only smiled.
The guide led twenty seniors up a steep trail through the pines, and the group stretched out into a long, tired line.
At two o'clock the tall one touched Jude's elbow.
"There's a lookout just off the path. Best view of the whole trek. The guide told us to take a photo there and catch up."
"Didn't he tell the whole group?"
"He told us. Come on, you'll love it."
Jude did love it, for about a minute.
The lookout was a flat gray rock over a drop, with the whole valley spread out green and silver below.
"Wait here," the tall one said. "We'll get the guide so he can take a group photo. Don't move."
They went back into the trees laughing.
Jude stood on the rock and smiled at the valley.
He waited ten minutes. Then twenty.
At forty minutes, he went to look for the trail.
The orange ribbons that had marked the path were gone from the trees.
The few he found pointed three different ways.
He called out, and the pines threw his voice back at him.
At a quarter to four, the sky turned dark gray.
At four, it began to pour.
Jude walked as fast as a man in a loaded pack could walk down a wet slope, which was not fast.
On the third stream crossing, his left foot found a loose stone and went sideways.
He fell hard on his hip, and a hot, white pain ran up his ankle.
"Okay," Jude said to the forest, panting. "Okay. That's fine."
He sat in the mud while the rain came down through the branches.
For the first time in two days he cried properly, with his mouth open.
He hadn't let himself do that in front of his parents.
He cried until he ran out of it.
Then he sat with his forehead on his knees and said, to nobody, "You're such an idiot, Jude."
"No, you're not," said a voice above him.
Jude looked up.
A boy in a soaked gray hoodie stood on the bank with a flashlight in one hand and a coil of rope over his shoulder.
He had a patched backpack and a quiet face.
"The bus," Jude said, stupidly.
"The bus," the boy agreed. "Ken Bronze."
He came down the bank in three long steps and crouched beside Jude's leg.
"Can I look at that?"
"Sure. Why not. It's been a day."
Ken unlaced the boot with sure, careful fingers, and slid it off.
The ankle had already swollen to twice its size.
"Not broken," Ken said, after he pressed along the bone. "I think. Probably a bad sprain. Can you wiggle your toes?"
Jude wiggled.
"Good."
Ken wrapped it tight in a strip of cloth from his own pack, and the hands that did it were hard and warm and in no hurry.
"How did you find me?" Jude asked.
"I saw them leave you at the rock. I was behind them on the trail."
"And?"
"By the time I got up there, you'd gone." Ken's jaw moved once. "I've been looking for two hours."
"You saw them?"
"I saw them take the ribbons down, too."
Jude stared at him.
Ken held out his hand for the pack. "Let me carry that."
"I can carry my own."
"You can carry it after you stand on that ankle. Give it to me."
Jude gave it to him.
Ken swung it up by the strap, and stopped.
Then he opened the top flap and began to take things out.
Water bottles. A tin of beans. And six round river stones, each as big as a fist.
Ken set them in a row on the wet ground, one by one, without a word.
"They put those in there," Jude said.
His voice broke into a laugh and then into something worse.
"I carried a bag of rocks up a mountain, and I said thank you."
"I know," Ken said.
"Everyone knows. Everyone on this whole stupid campus knows I'm the guy who thinks his boyfriend loves him."
"Ex-boyfriend."
"Ex-boyfriend."
Ken tossed the last rock into the stream.
"I think you're the guy who walked up a mountain in a storm after the worst week of his life," he said.
"That doesn't sound stupid to me."
Jude opened his mouth and closed it again.
Ken crouched with his back to him and pulled Jude's arm across his shoulders.
"Up," he said. "I'll take you down to the road. It's one mile."
"I'm heavy."
"You're fine," Ken said. "Up."
It was the calmest voice Jude had ever heard, and it did not have a single question in it.
He climbed onto the boy's back.
Ken stood with a grunt and did not stagger.
He did not say another word about weight.
They crossed one mile of dark forest like that.
At the end of it, Ken set him down at the edge of a clearing.
The beam of the flashlight swept across the trees.
No bus waited on the road. No campfire.
The clearing was empty, and the trampled grass was already filling with rain.
"They moved camp," Ken said.
"They left?"
"They left us the packs on the ground." He kept the light on a single patch of dry soil under a tree. "And they left one tent."
It lay in its bag, small and green, with room in it for exactly one.
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