How I Live Now

24

Now here’s a really amazing fact: My eighth-grade math teacher actually turned out to be right about one thing, namely that someday I was going to need to know the answer to the question where X = Piper and Daisy and Y = three miles an hour and Z = carrying a twelve-pound load and N = a north-northeasterly direction and 4D = four days.

So now go figure how much closer to Kingly did X(Y + Z) + N 3 4D make us?

Our footpath crossed over four single-track paved roads but except for a cow grazing by one of the roads we hadn’t seen another creature bigger than a hedgehog. There was the occasional barn and once a row of little houses but they looked deserted and we didn’t want to risk finding out for sure.

The path seemed to switch directions constantly but overall we were now headed more or less in the right direction. Though for some reason I kept remembering a show I saw on TV about navigation in whaling ships and how the tiniest error could mean you missed the island you were aiming at by five hundred miles.

At one crossing we could actually see a road sign that said Strup 1/4 mile and East Strup 1/2 mile. I was so excited at getting a bearing that my hands were shaking almost too much to open the map, but when I did look more or less where I thought we should be there was no sign of anything like Strup and Piper said There might just be a couple of houses so it’s not worth putting on the map.

For some stupid reason I started to cry then and I felt completely choked with despair and worthlessness and I couldn’t believe I was trying to lead Piper miles across England to find something the size of a microbe on a map when in my real life I couldn’t even find a clean pair of underpants in a chest of drawers. But unfortunately no one else jumped up and volunteered to take over and the way Piper just stood there holding my hand and waiting for me to stop crying made me buck up and start walking again.

After the hazelnuts we found an apple tree and more blackberries but the chances of coming across a nice steak sandwich seemed remote and our food resources, which had started out running low, were now within a stone’s throw of the bottom of the bucket. At least it was raining on and off so we didn’t run out of water but it made walking slippery, and wet sneakers rubbing on blisters isn’t my favorite feeling so that was about the extent of our good luck.

We stopped for lunch that day around eleven in the morning and couldn’t even spread out a blanket to make an event of it due to the ground being wet so we had to perch on rocks, when either of us would have given anything to stretch out someplace warm and dry, and I was unwrapping our last piece of cheese to eat with a few olives and the end of our nuts when Piper said Daisy? And when I looked at her she said What’s that noise?

And I listened and listened but didn’t hear anything at all. But she had that look on her face that I knew from Isaac and Edmond and I knew she was hearing something and I just hoped to god it wasn’t something horrible when her face suddenly burst into a thousand-watt smile and she said It’s the river! I’m sure it’s the river!

And we left all our stuff and ran down the path and sure enough about a hundred yards farther down it came to the river and when we looked at the map we were pretty sure it was OUR river and if we could just manage to follow it without getting too waylaid it would take us more or less exactly where we wanted to be.

Then we did a little dance and whooped and laughed and hugged each other and ran back to our supplies and packed them all up again and set off feeling light-footed instead of just light-headed for the first time in days and we walked till sundown and then camped near the river.

It wasn’t particularly warm but we got undressed and dipped ourselves in the water to wash anyway and for the first time I noticed how skinny Piper was which once upon a time I would have thought was a good thing and now I thought was just what happens when you’re nine years old and don’t have enough food to grow properly.

As the freezing water flowed around us we rubbed the dirt off our bodies and without dirt both of us looked white as ghosts with farmer’s tans on our face and neck and arms. Against the whiteness you could see every mark standing out in bright red hieroglyphics telling the story of our journey. Both of us had feet covered in raw and half-healed blisters and raised scratches on our arms and legs from being too tired to hold back thornbushes that got in our way and insect bites we’d scratched till they bled and nettle rash pretty much all over and I had a wide scrape on one knee that was weeping pus and made me limp because it hurt so much to bend it. Aside from that we were both covered in bruises from sleeping on stones and being too exhausted to get up and rearrange things once we were lying down.

We got out of the water shivering like crazy but more or less clean and tried not to look at each other because it was too depressing to acknowledge what we looked like and we stood for a little while in the cold evening wind to dry off because it had become kind of a fanatic compulsion to keep our blankets dry.

So much for the healthy country life.

The next day we set off again and the path followed the river and after half a day of walking, the river forked off and checking the map we knew EXACTLY WHERE WE WERE for the first time since leaving Reston Bridge.

And that was the second time I cried and Piper laughed and told me to stop wasting water, but I couldn’t because it was for relief and disbelief in equal amounts and although knowing where we were told us fairly clearly that we hadn’t made nearly as good progress as I thought we had, at least we were going in the right direction and knew where we had to go next.

The map showed we had twenty miles to go, and once when I went on a Five Boroughs Sponsored March against poverty or something, I walked twenty-two miles in one day and I wasn’t eating a lot more that day than this one.

That night I slipped into the place in my head where I could talk to Edmond and for once I had good news.