Surviving Bear Island Read Online Free Page A

missed Heather. We were the same age and our moms were best friends, but they moved away three years ago. Right after Mom died. Me and Heather even used to take baths together when we were little, and I’ve got pictures to prove it. They’re planning on coming back after Heather’s dad finishes law school. We get a card every year with a photo. In the last one Heather had her braces off.
    A spruce branch bounced up and down just back in the forest. I took a step back, my heart pounding.
    â€œDad?”
    Something dark flickered between the branches.
    Bear. I took another step back.
    Then two blue-colored birds with black crests atop their heads, flew toward me and landed in a tree closer to the fire.
    I let out a sigh. What if that had been a bear?
    Take a breath, Tom. Whenever you see something move. Just take a breath, focus and then respond. Alert but calm.
    Alert but calm, I thought. It might sound easy but it’s not, especially when you hope that every little sound, or movement is your dad, and not some animal that might try to eat you.
    Get some green alder.
    I turned back to the fire. “Green alder? Screw that. I’m starving. I’ll just use the wood I’ve already collected.”
    My stomach was an empty pit and I needed to fill it.
    I crisscrossed some thin branches on top of the coals and laid the fish carcasses on them. Instead of alder leaves, I ripped handfuls of beach grass from the ground and used them to cover the fish. The beach grass stalks were stiff and about an inch wide.
    I heard hissing from under the beach grass. I hoped it was bear drool burning off.
    After a few minutes I started to smell cooked fish, a smell that never excited me at home. I spied a little orange flicker under the beach grass. Then the orange reached through the beach grass. I blew on the flames, which disappeared for a moment, then came back stronger. Again I blew, with the same result.
    The beach grass caught; it turned black and started to curl. Flakes of ash drifted upward, and a wall of heat hit my face as an explosion of orange and red engulfed the fish. I grabbed a stick and knocked three of the carcasses out of the flames, then snatched the other two by the tails and flung them out, and they sat there steaming and smoking on the rocks.
    I touched one and it wasn’t as hot as I thought it’d be, so I picked it up by the backbone, turned the charred side toward my mouth and took a bite.
    Burnt fish. Not bad. In fact, under the crispy skin it wasn’t so burnt, just cooked, even a little juicy, and, seasoned with bear drool. But the unburnt side was still raw, so I gnawed on the charred sides of the other fish, then placed each one back on the coals to burncook the other side. As tasty as it was, I wanted to singe that drool off.
    But there wasn’t much meat, just a little below the heads, some flakes along the backbones, and a hunk by the tails. I sucked the backbones like a high-powered vacuum cleaner—the kind my dad used on building sites—until every speck of meat was gone. And then I wished for more.
    â€œI want to burncook a whole fish, without bear drool.”
    A fish that I’d caught.
    I crossed the stream and hiked north, along the edge of the forest, calling out for my dad, but I’d strained my voice yesterday and after a while I could barely speak. So I walked just inside the forest dodging Devil’s Club, peering behind the trunks of massive trees, hoping to find my dad leaning against one. My heart thumped in my raw chest, my eyes hungry for any sign of him. A scrap of clothing, a paddle, a dry bag.
    When I reached the next point, I turned and retraced my steps. Maybe he’d swum to shore south of where I’d washed up. The wind and waves had pushed me south, so maybe he’d been pushed south even farther.
    But now, the water was turning gray. And the pale red outline of the sun, barely breaking through the clouds, was sinking toward the