Phoebe scratched the side of her nose (this one was third mosquito bite since the start of the trip!) and looked at the new sign on the trail warily. There wasn't another fork - thank goodness - but the message did look ominous. The sign looked rather new too, like it had been put up recently. The post it was nailed onto, however, was quite moldy and covered in age old moss. She heard the crunching of dry leaves and a gasping breath and felt Arnold come up behind her.

"Beware of - bears?!" he asked, hushed. He was a bit out of breath and he spoke with a voice suggesting a stuffy nose. Phoebe guessed it was from all the pollen in the air. "I knew it. I knew there was something to worry about!" He sighed in frustration and collapsed on a large rock next to the rotting, wooden post.

"How much longer do you think it's going to take us," Phoebe asked him, sitting down in the dirt next to the boulder. She leaned back against the cool rock face and looked up at the sky poking through the thicket of trees. "The sun looks like it's setting..." And indeed the sky was beginning to turn as orange as Arnold's hair.

"Knowing my luck, it'll be dark long before we make it to the resort," Arnold said glumly, putting his chin in his hands.

"Hey cheer up Arnold," Phoebe said gently. "We'll be there soon." She suddenly realized that her hand had been reaching up to touch his shoulder to comfort him, but she quickly thought better of it, and brought it back to her side.

It was all too obvious he wasn't enjoying the trip so far, which disappointed her slightly. Sure things hadn't gone according to plan, but Phoebe for one, was very glad they didn't.

How could anyone feel miserable in a place like this? Phoebe breathed in the earthy air deeply; it was fresh and very piney from all the evergreens. Here they were, alone with nature. It was quiet too. Very peaceful. Now that she was away from Wanda and her shrill voice, she could enjoy the serenity even more. She could hear the gentle gurgling of the tiny stream running next to the boulder she was sitting on. The birds were whistling softly, their voices mixed into the gentle breeze.

But she knew she wouldn't have been enjoying this half as much if her companion had been another. Here she was, alone with Arnold, with no Wanda to distract him, and for how much longer she didn't know. Phoebe sighed morosely. Why did she have to be shy with things like these? Wanda could have could have touched his shoulder. That strong, comforting looking shoulder... Rising up and down slowly beneath his beige shirt... Phoebe wondered what it would have felt like to rest her head against it... would it be soft... comforting... and what if he put his arms around her too...

"Hey," Arnold said suddenly, lifting his head out of his hands. "Does your cell phone still have a connection? Maybe we can call Wanda and see if she made it yet."

Phoebe was unwillingly snapped back into reality. "You mean Keesha," she corrected. "Keesha has the cell phone."

Arnold shrugged and removed his glasses. "Doesn't matter, they left together didn't they?" he wasn't looking at her; he was looking down at his glasses while he cleaned them with the bottom of his T-shirt.

Phoebe turned away from him and pulled her phone out of the pocket. She looked at it for a moment before sighing. "No... no we lost the connection."

"Great!" Arnold exclaimed, standing up. Phoebe quickly followed suit. "We lost the connection, we lost our friends, and we're lost in the mountains!"

Phoebe placed the phone back in her pocket and looked back at her distraught companion. "It could be worse you know Arnold."

"Yeah? How?" he sighed and gestured at the continuing dirt path. "We should keep walking if we don't want to be lost here at night."

"Well you could be completely alone," Phoebe said, following him. Or you could have ended up alone with Wanda, she thought to herself as she pulled back a few branches out of her path. The trees were getting thicker and thicker and the path narrower and narrower. Sometimes it didn't even look like there was a path. Phoebe felt one of the branches scratch her arms as she made her way out of the thicket and crashed into Arnold as soon as she was free of the brambles.

"Sorry," she jumped back. "I couldn't see where- " she suddenly stopped speaking. Now it became clear as to why Arnold had stopped so abruptly in his path. It was that there was no path to continue on. There was a large obstruction now directly in front of the two of them in the form of a large rock. Arnold walked right up to it, placed his hands on the grey formation, and looked up.

The rock looked around three times as tall as him, and looked like it would be a slippery climb. Phoebe looked down at her feet. At least her hiking boots had a good grip. She turned back to Arnold and wondered if he was thinking the same thing as her.

"Should we climb it?" Phoebe asked. "It doesn't look like we can go around." She turned to her left first, and then her right. It wasn't a cliff, but it was fairly wide. Going around it might have been too much trouble. The trees grew thickly around the edges and - were those prickle bushes?

Phoebe rubbed the side of her arm; she would prefer it if there were no itchy cuts on her pale skin.

"Hang on..." Arnold said, examining the rock face. "Phoebe, look at the texture of this thing! It has the same pattern as a Chickadee egg!"

"Arnold..." Phoebe looked back up at the sky. "The sun..."

"Right, right. Hang on, let me just get a sample," he slipped his backpack off his shoulder and started to dig inside of it. He pulled out a plastic bag and a small pick. "You can go ahead and start climbing it," he said to Phoebe without turning around. "I'll catch up."

"Alright," Phoebe agreed, and she placed both hands on the smooth surface of the rock face. Her shoes had a better grip than she thought, but she still slipped a few times on her way up. Bits of the rock crumbled under her weight and tumbled down to the dirt below. Phoebe turned anxiously around to see if Arnold was in the way of any of them, but she didn't see him down there.

"Hey."

She jumped and turned around quickly to her left. Arnold had already caught up and, when she had flinched, Phoebe had slipped down a little further. Arnold held out a hand for her.

"Do you need some help?"

Phoebe felt a little hesitant about taking it. She knew her own hands were covered in dirt and now had tiny bits of rock sticking to the sweat. But in the end, Arnold made the decision for her and he helped haul her up to the peak of the rock. His hand was warm, Phoebe noted, all too aware of how red her face was getting - he'd mistake it for the strain in exercise she was sure - and the hand was also very secure and strong.

"Now we just slide down I suppose," Phoebe said, face still very bright, after Arnold had released her hand.

"You first," Arnold said, and he gave her a little push downwards. Rock having substantially more friction than ice or the plastic of a slide, Phoebe only slid down a few feet. Her and Arnold therefore ended up using some sort of variation of the crab walk to get themselves down the rest of the way.

"Awn... I snagged my shirt on it!" Arnold said sadly, looking at the bottom of his shirt when the two of them had both their feet on the dirt trail again. Phoebe saw there was indeed a tear, not too big, but big enough for her to catch a small glimpse of his stomach. Feeling the heat rush up to her cheeks again, Phoebe quickly turned away from him and in the direction the path was going. She suddenly gasped.

"Arnold! Look!"

Beside her, Arnold looked up from his shirt next to her. He yelped and jumped backwards into the rock face. "Phoebe," he said, quickly and so quietly that Phoebe had to lean over to him to catch it. "Phoebe, I think it'd be wise if we started running about now."

"But Arnold," Phoebe protested. "It's just a baby - "

"Don't go near it!" Arnold suddenly jumped forward as Phoebe made a motion to move closer to it. "It's still a bear!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"It's all alone," Phoebe said, turning back at him. Her eyes widened in panic. "What if it's lost it's mother?!" She looked at the cub again. It looked very young and it was still relatively small for it's species. The combination of light brown hair around the long nose and beady eyes made it even cuter than Arnold was in her eyes.

"It didn't lose it's mother!" Arnold said desperately, still trying to convince her to slowly slink away into the trees with him. "It's mother's here and ready to eat us because she thinks we'll attack her cub!"

"You don't know that Arnold!" Phoebe said crossly. She looked back at the cub and bit her lip. It was pulling berries off a nearby bush and paying them no attention. "No sign of a mother!" Phoebe declared angrily. "Where is she Arnold?!"

"I don't know! But she must be here somewhere!" Arnold looked at Phoebe pleadingly. "We have to get out of here before she comes!"

"But - "

"Phoebe - " he stopped. Phoebe saw all the colour drain from his face and herself felt a knot tighten in her stomach. She could suddenly hear the trees behind them rustling violently. He was right. The mother bear was here, and she was getting closer by the minute.

Phoebe whimpered, suddenly feeling very afraid, and clutched onto Arnold's arm as tightly as she could.

xxx

"This was the stupidest idea you've ever had," DA growled angrily as she climbed carefully over a nurse log lying in the middle of the autumn meadow. "And you've had some pretty stupid ones in the past. Take the left fork here, it's going to get us to the cabin first DA. Those aren't prickle bushes!!"

Carlos didn't say anything at first. He had to disagree with her on this one - like most of what she believed in. Sure, the prickle bushes had been annoying, that was true, but he was sure this trail was shorter. However, he didn't mention that at present; they had already had three arguments since the group had split up and Carlos didn't feel like going through another one right now. So he merely said, "Can you hand me the cell phone."

"It lost the connection an hour ago Carlos," DA said, but reached into her bag and handed it over to him anyways. "We're lost and we've lost them." She exhaled miserably and flopped down onto the rotting wood of the log she had just stepped over. She wearily realized that she had just sat on a mushroom.

"What, why are you stopping? Don't tell me you're getting tired," Carlos teased.

Dorothy Ann glared at him. "No I'm not. I just don't think we should keep walking since we have no idea where we are. How could I have dropped the map in that mud! The librarian's going to be furious..."

"Ah, it's funner this way," Carlos said, turning his back on her. "You'll be telling your grandkids this story one day."

"Oh yeah?!" Dorothy Ann jumped right back on her feet and stormed off through the dry grass after him. "Which part? The one where we saw that squirrel run up that tree, when you stepped on a stick, freaked out, and jumped backwards onto my foot, or when you found that rock shaped like Arnold's head?"

"You did put it in your bag, right?"

DA rolled her eyes. "Not only are we lost, but I'm beginning to think we're not going to make it into the town at all before it gets dark! I'm almost starting to wish I'd stayed - "

"Don't you go turning into Arnold!" Carlos warned. "What, you think we'll have a run in with a Sasquatch or something?" Carlos paused. "Actually that would be kind of cool... Can you hand me my camera?"

DA rolled her eyes, but couldn't help suppress a hint of a smile and gave it to him. "We're not going to find a Sasquatch, Carlos. I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"What, you don't believe in Bigfoot?" Carlos asked, putting the strap of the camera around his neck.

"No," DA said, pulling her new hiking boots out of a patch of mud she had just missed noticing. "And I sincerely hope you don't believe in such nonsense either."

"Well, I don't really believe in Bigfoot," Carlos admitted, walking around the mud Dorothy Ann had just discovered. "but I do believe some pretty crazy things. For example, I think it's possible for a human to travel to all the planets of the solar system in one school day, to shrink to the size of molecules - "

"Ok Carlos - "

"To turn into hawks - "

"Ok - "

"And bats."

"Carlos - "

"And fish - "

"I get it!" DA snapped. "You're right, you're right!"

Carlos grinned. "Course..."

Dorothy Ann glared at him. "Why are you so confident about this path anyway?" she asked curiously as they made their way further through the meadow.

"I've been here a few times - I didn't start at the same parking lot we did today, but as soon as I saw that other fork, I knew this was the path that took the shortest time to get to town," Carlos answered.

"You didn't know the prickle bushes would be there."

"You expect me to remember every little detail?"

Dorothy Ann didn't reply so the two of them walked in silence for the next few minutes. Dorothy Ann was now just concentrating on where to put her feet. There were too many hidden mud piles around and - a little creek she had just narrowly avoided stepping in. Carlos saw it too. He unscrewed the lid of his water bottle and bent down next to it to fill it up. Dorothy Ann joined him on the ground to do the same with hers.

"Do you think we'll make to the bed and breakfast before dark?" she asked him, looking up at the orange sky worriedly.

"No problem," Carlos said, screwing the lid back onto his water bottle. "We'll have time to spare."

"That sort of confidence is going to come back one day and get you Carlos," Dorothy Ann said tiredly. "And that day might just be today."

"We'll see," Carlos said. "Hey, do you think - " he stopped suddenly and Dorothy Ann jumped, reacting to the same sound.

A loud, high pitched shriek had just sounded, moving over the treetops down to the meadow Carlos and DA were sitting in. They both looked at each other, startled, and wide eyed.

"That sounded like Phoebe!" DA gasped. She stood up quickly, followed almost immediately by Carlos.

"Come on," Carlos said anxiously and he started moving quickly over to what he remembered as the direction of the sound. DA hurried after him quickly, wondering what on earth had caused Phoebe - and she was almost absolutely sure it had been Phoebe - to scream like that. She shook her head to get rid of the image of her and Arnold being attacked by a Sasquatch and broke into a run after Carlos in the direction of the trees.

Temporarily blinded with concern for their friend, Carlos and Dorothy Ann unwittingly plunged further and further away from the path until the chances of ever finding their way back, or seeing any of their friends again that day, was almost razor thin.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the other four :)

Next chapter will hopefully come soon.

Review!