Rating: T for now.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hannah Montana. Based on the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
Note: More material/dialogue was borrowed from Stranded for this chapter as well. I'm not feeling very original. Any of you watch American Idol this week with Miley? I've never watched a single episode of the show until this season, but because I'm a fan of Ellen's I've been watching this season from the beginning and I was happy to see Miley both nights this week. I thought she was great.
4
Memories flashed before her, all centered around one theme, one person.
Miley Stewart.
She had been sitting at Rico's with Oliver. They had been arguing over who got to eat the last of the nachos they were sharing as they both didn't have enough allowance left to buy their own. Lilly remembered everything in incredible detail. It had been late afternoon, about 4:30, and the temperature on the late summer day - the day before their first day of middle school - was in the low 80's. Every bit of that afternoon was ingrained in her, all of her life since then was part of that memory.
Oliver had just turned to smile and attempt flirting with a passing, unsuspecting victim, and Lilly looked over his head and saw her. Miley. Of course, at the time she had no idea who the girl was or her name.
She was walking toward her, glancing about nervously as she made her way to Rico's. Apparently she knew the new employee because they began talking as she sat in the stool at the counter. Lilly had wanted to approach her, smile at her and ask her name. She felt a strange desperate need to know this girl. But something stopped her. The short blonde guy behind the counter made a face at the girl and she stormed off angrily, leaving her unfinished smoothie behind.
Lilly saw this and more, but the memories were coming back in pieces, in small scenes. Miley.
***
Lilly opened her eyes and blinked.
For seconds she did not know where she was. She heard birds singing. Why were birds singing? Then she heard faint sobs. Someone was crying?
Her body felt like it had been run over by a truck. She tried to move, but pain hammered into her and made her breath shorten into gasps so she stopped.
Pain. The crash.
She turned again and sun came across the water, cutting into her eyes and making her turn away. It was low over the lake, it must be late afternoon. She closed her eyes and lowered her head back to the ground, for what she thought were minutes. But when she opened her eyes again, it was late evening. Some of the sharp pains had abated and she found she could move again without total agony.
She was alive. Miley was alive.
Miley.
She raised herself into a sitting position and glanced around, looking for her best friend. When she didn't see her at first, panic swept through her body as worst case scenarios began playing in her mind. Had it been a dream? Did Miley share the same fate as the pilot? Did she drown? Did a bear eat her?
A flash of pink caught Lilly's eye and she looked back, training her eyes to the trees behind her. There. Miley was curled up at the base of a pine tree, asleep. Relief flooded through her body.
Lilly tried getting to her feet then, intent on getting to Miley. Her body had other plans though and she fell back to the ground immediately. Her legs were on fire and felt like Jell-O while her forehead felt as if somebody had been pounding on it with a hammer. But she could move, and she began crawling on her hands and knees until she was at Miley's side. Then she went down, this time to rest and save something of herself. She lay on her side facing Miley, her body as close as she could get to the other girl, and put her head on her arm and closed her eyes because that was all she could do now, all she could think of doing. She closed her eyes and slept.
***
There was almost no light when she opened her eyes again. The darkness of night was thick and for a moment she began to panic. She couldn't see anything. But she turned her head without moving her body and saw that across the lake the sky was a light gray and the sun was starting to come up. The thickness of sleep left her, and she remembered it had been evening when she went to sleep. She was still in pain, her legs were cramped and drawn up, tight and aching, and her back and shoulders hurt when she tried to move. The worst was a keening throb in her head that pulsed with every beat of her heart and Lilly remembered falling on it as Miley freed her from the seatbelt.
"Must be mornin' now," mumbled Miley's voice in a hoarse whisper.
Lilly turned her head back and her eyes met blue-grey ones. Her breath caught in her throat at the intensity of Miley's gaze. She couldn't tear her eyes away. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just dizzy."
Lilly nodded and rolled onto her back, feeling her sides and her legs, moving things slowly. She rubbed her arms and nothing seemed shattered or sprained. Just battered around a bit. The soreness was a painful reminder that she was alive. It could have been different, much different. Lilly shuddered at the thought and tried to sit up, managing to come to a sitting position on her second attempt.
She looked back over, and Miley didn't resist when Lilly smoothed the unruly hairs from her face and her fingers danced across the many cuts scarring her beautiful features. "No, you aren't okay." She broke the gaze, looking her over in the dim light and groaned when she found that the lower half of one leg and the corresponding shoe was stained solid crimson. Fear made her heart clench.
Shit. Lilly berated herself for not taking care of Miley the second they got out of the plane. But between her body's exhausted state and the fact that the world had felt like it was spinning upside down, she hadn't noticed anything besides the solid ground just before she'd passed out.
"Miles, I think you've lost too much blood. No wonder you're dizzy," she said as she looked back into stormy, pain-ridden eyes.
Miley didn't argue. With clumsy fingers, Lilly rolled Miley's pant leg up, inspecting the cut. It was about 3 inches long and gruesomely deep and Lilly knew it needed stitches, something she definitely couldn't provide. She untied the bandanna around her wrist and gently touched Miley's leg. "We need to stop the bleeding," she said as she cinched the cloth around the gash in her leg, wincing as she heard Miley hiss in pain. "Is this okay?"
"Yeah," she grated, her jaw clamped shut so tight Lilly was surprised any sound emerged at all.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?"
Miley only shook her head as she battled to keep fresh tears from falling.
Lilly crawled up next to Miley and leaned against the same tree. There was a faint chill and she wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulders to share what body heat they had, despite her own shoulder screaming in protest. "It'll be okay," she said, more to herself than to Miley. Then she pressed her lips to the top of Miley's head. Despite everything, her hair still smelled clean, like soap and vanilla, and was baby soft. Lilly brazenly allowed her lips to linger.
Miley wrapped her arms around Lilly's waist and hugged her close. It hurt like hell, but Lilly wouldn't have traded it for anything. Both of them were alive, and that's all that mattered. They sat facing the lake, watching the sky get lighter with the coming dawn as the sun came over the end of the lake. This was really happening.
It took an hour or two for the sun to get halfway up. Lilly was unsure of the time, she couldn't measure its passing and she didn't really care. With the gentle rays came warmth, small bits at first as it filtered through the trees, trying to defeat the harshness of the northern air. But with the sun came insects – thick, swarming clouds of mosquitoes and black flies that flocked to their bodies, clogging their nostrils when they inhaled and poured into their mouthes when they opened them to take a breath. Was this some kind of sick joke?
This was unbelievable. Yes, they had survived a plane crash, but the insects were impossible. Lilly coughed them up, spat them out, sneezed them out, closed her eyes and kept brushing her face, slapping and crushing them by the hundreds. But as soon as she cleared a space, more came, thick, whining, buzzing masses of them, all biting, chewing, and taking from her.
She heard Miley cry out in frustration, and in moments her eyes were swollen shut and her face was puffy and round. She tried covering her face by pulling up her t-shirt, but that exposed the skin of her lower back and the mosquitoes and flies attacked the new soft flesh so viciously that she quickly pulled the shirt back down.
In the end she sat with her face in her arms and took it, almost crying in frustration and agony. There was nothing left to do. But when the sun was fully up and heating her directly, bathing her in warmth, the bugs disappeared. That swiftly. One minute they were being eaten alive; the next minute, the suckers were gone and the sun was on them.
"Isn't this where you'd normally say sweet niblets?"
"Can't. Swallowed a bug," Miley coughed. "Dang vampires."
"Nobody ever mentions bugs, only the beautiful scenery and animals frolicking in the water. I don't think I like Alaska, or Canada, or wherever the hell we are." As soon as the words left her mouth, Lilly's stomach dropped and she truly grasped their situation. They had been off course. For several hours they had been flying in a direction that wasn't the original flight plan. And they had crashed down somewhere in a vast uninhabited wilderness…
Miley sighed. "We're screwed, aren't we?"
If Lilly could have found her voice, she would have agreed. Instead, she pulled herself up to stand against the tree and stretched, bringing new aches and pains. Her back, neck, and shoulders felt as though the bones were rubbing together wrong and were painfully stiff. The backs of her hands were puffy and her eyes were almost swollen shut from the mosquitoes, and she saw everything through a narrow squint.
Not that there was much to see. The lake stretched out before her, blue and deep. They were at the base of the L, looking up its length with the short arm to their right. The water was perfectly still in the morning calm. She could see reflections of trees at the other end of the lake, almost like a mirror. And as she looked out, a large bird – she thought it looked like an eagle – flew from the top of the trees, out over the water.
It was Miley who broke the silence first. "We need to make a plan. We can't just sit here doin' nothin' and wait to die."
Lilly was like a deer in the headlights. Her heart hammered. "I don't know what to do."
"Dang flabbit, Lilly! Me neither! But we need to start thinkin' of somethin'."
"I-I-I..."
Concern etched across Miley's face. "What's wrong?"
A sudden urge to cry overwhelmed Lilly and she bit her lip to keep the tears back. "I just can't! I can't make any more decisions! I don't know what the right answer is! I don't want this to be in my hands anymore!" The tears she had tried to hold back were now streaming down her face.
Miley sat in shocked silence, deciding how to reply. Elbow on the knee of her good leg, she braced her chin with her hand. "I'm sorry for fussin' at you Lil, but I don't know what the right answer is either." She looked at her with what looked like compassion and gratitude. "You did good Lilly. If I'd have been in your place in that cockpit, I wouldn't have been able to land us safely. Well, you know what I mean." Her smile was small and a tad shy. "You were amazin', and I've got my life to thank you for."
Lilly looked into her tempestuous blue eyes and saw the strength and determination she knew she needed to find within herself again. She also saw something else, something she had never seen before. Someone needed her.
Miley might be strong and independent and fully capable, but she needed Lilly. They wouldn't survive this alone. The odds were fully stacked against them.
She turned back to the lake, taking a few steps toward the shore. Everything was so green here. The forest appeared to be made up of pine and spruce, with stands of some low brush speckled in every now and then and thick grass all over. The country around the lake was somewhat hilly – small rolling knolls – and there were very few rocks except to their left where a sheer ridge stuck out overlooking the lake, about twenty feet high.
Thank God the plane didn't come down to the left. They would have been truly smashed. Destroyed.
Luck, Lilly thought. She had good luck here. But she knew that was wrong. If she had good luck, the man she called her father wouldn't have fought for her custody and she wouldn't have been flying out here with Miley and a pilot who had a heart attack. She wouldn't be here at all if she had luck.
If it weren't for bad luck, she thought, I wouldn't have any luck at all.
She shook her head again – wincing. Another thing not to think about.
Miley limped behind her and nearly rested her chin on Lilly's shoulder. Her sigh sent warm air dancing over Lilly's skin. "Are you okay?" she whispered, her lips close to Lilly's ear.
Lilly nodded and forced a tight smile.
"How's your headache?"
Lilly slightly turned her head to the side, her eyes searching for Miley's. "How do you know I have a headache?" She asked. "I haven't said anything."
"Your lips get thinner and you squint more…although that could be from the swellin'. So?" she prodded. "Your head?"
Lilly sighed, turning back to the lake. "It hurts."
She felt Miley nod her head against her shoulder, then nuzzle her face in Lilly's neck. When she spoke again, her lips moved against Lilly's skin, causing goosebumps to appear on her arms and a delicious sensation run through her body. "I wish I could make it go away."
"I wish you weren't hurt. I wish we weren't here at all. I wish…I wish a lot of things," her voice faded away as she thought of home and her mother, and Oliver.
Miley was quiet for a few minutes as they both stared out at the lake and pondered their circumstance. "So what's next?"
"Next you need to take a nap."
Miley drew in a breath to protest, but Lilly wasn't in the mood. "Stop being a pain in the ass and lie down." She gentled her voice, but only because when Miley was this close her knees wanted to melt. "You've lost a lot of blood, and later or tomorrow or sometime soon we need to figure out what to do, as you said. I need your help, Miles. And that means you can't pass out on me. Please."
Lilly felt Miley's lips against her cheek in something that might have been a kiss before she withdrew. "You win," she murmured. Her voice was filled with pain and Lilly's stomach clenched nervously. She hoped Miley wasn't injured too badly. She knew she needed a doctor.
The skin Miley had touched tingled, and Lilly had to force herself not to lift her hand in wonder and feel the spot. She turned back to her inspection of the lake as Miley limped back to the shade of the trees.
The rocky ridge to the left was rounded and seemed to be of some kind of sandstone with bits of darker stone layered into it. Directly across the lake from it, at the inside corner of the L, was a mound of sticks and mud rising up out of the water a good eight or ten feet. A small brown head, what must be a beaver building a dam in the mass of tree limbs, popped to the surface of the water near the mound and began swimming off down the short leg of the lake leaving a V of ripples behind.
A fish jumped, splashing near the beaver, and as if by a signal there were suddenly little splashes all over the shore of the lake as fish began jumping. Hundreds of them, jumping and slapping the water. Lilly watched them for a time, in a daze. The scenery was very pretty, there were new things to look at, and its vividness was almost too much. This was nothing like the grayness of the city. Cars honking, people shouting profanities, the din of electrical activity – the hustle and bustle of the city.
Here, it was silent. Although when she really listened, she could hear thousands of things. Hisses, birds singing, insects humming, splashes from the fish jumping…
She stood in silence for nearly an hour, the warm sun bringing heat back to her body and color to her cheeks. She didn't know what Miley was doing, if she had decided to sleep or not, but Lilly spent her time stewing, hurting, and worrying. They had to make a choice, a plan, figure out a way to survive until they were rescued. If they were rescued. Overwhelmed, she let her face fall into her hands. She couldn't even get the clock on her stereo to stop blinking twelve, how was she supposed to keep from dying out here? She didn't know what the right answer to anything was and she was afraid of making all the wrong ones.
Lilly was tired. So awfully tired, and she supposed she was still in some kind of shock from the crash.
She turned and made her way back to Miley and the tree, a tall pine with no branches until the top, and sat down next to her looking out at the lake with the sun warming her to the core. Within a few moments, she was asleep again.
Questions, comments, or concerns? I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's harder than I thought, adding in another person to the story. I type it up, rewriting the scenes and chopping out things (especially Gary Paulsen's love of extreme repetition), adding in bits of Miley as I go. Then I read through the chapter and find more places I could add her in. Then read through it again and find that it doesn't flow anymore…aaaggghhh!!! What do you guys think? I think I'm missing the essence that is Miley Stewart.