The Girl in Red

They found a good place to pitch the tent, a nice cozy clearing with trees all around. Red worried, as she always did, about the possibility of the smoke from their fire being spotted from the road. They were getting closer and closer to the town. Still, the town was necessary now. The kids would need a lot of supplies that they didn’t have.

This, Red thought, was what life was now. It wasn’t an exciting adventure, or even full of the banality of a daily routine. It was about logistics—finding food, carrying food, adequate shelter, stressing about the weather, fretting about people she might encounter. She’d never worried so much before, and she knew very well that the addition of Sam and Riley to her party (such as it was) would just make her worry more. But there wasn’t a chance she was going to leave them in the woods with nothing but some granola bars and a pile of dirty blankets.

She built a fire, and made the spaghetti with tomato sauce, and then realized she only had one fork and one plate and one spoon.

So that’s more things we need, Red thought, and decided to write down a list after supper so she wouldn’t forget anything.

Both kids were looking at the pot with the kind of longing that they might have given to a toy store or a Dairy Queen, back when the world was sane. But now they just wanted something that was hot and would make their stomachs full and it made her so sad to see that, because kids should be able to save that look for something stupid like an ice cream cone or a new video game.

She pulled out the fork and the spoon and the plate, then decided the plate was extraneous and put it aside. She held up the fork and the spoon in her fist and said, “Who wants what?”

Sam was quicker off the mark and grabbed the fork, leaving Riley with the spoon.

“No fingers,” Red said. “I have to eat out of that pot when you’re done.”

They reached toward the pot at the same time, scooping up as much pasta as they could get and shoving it into their mouths.

“Don’t choke,” Red said, alarmed at the quantity of spaghetti stuffed into Riley’s cheeks. “Chew your food.”

She didn’t think they even heard her. They were in a kind of sharklike feeding frenzy; their only awareness was that there was food in front of them and they needed to eat it. Red thought sadly of the food she’d left behind in that cabin. At the time she thought it would be too much extra weight, and that she could get two or three dinners out of one package of spaghetti. The way that Riley and Sam were gulping down her prized discovery meant she probably wasn’t going to get a single bite.

She shrugged to herself, because she had eaten well (all things considered) for most of the trip and it wouldn’t hurt her to have a can of soup again. Red pulled out her notebook and pen and started composing a list of things she needed to find for Riley and Sam when they got to the next town.

After a surprisingly short amount of time both children seemed to reach their stopping point. In unison they dropped their utensils into the pot and leaned back, holding their bellies.

“I’m so fuuuulllll,” Riley said, pointing to his stomach. “Look at how fat I am.”

“You’re not fat,” Red said, peering into the pot. There was enough left for her, maybe a tennis-ball-sized portion. “But you will probably have the mother of all poops in a little while.”

Riley giggled at that and Sam did a kind of half-smile, half-frown. “Mama said we’re not supposed to talk about bathroom things at the table.”

“My mama said the same thing,” Red said. “But do you see a table?”

“That’s right, there’s no table,” Riley said. “So we can say ‘poop’ and ‘pee’ and even burp if we want to.”

Red held up her hand. “No burping. Burping is gross.”

“Especially your burps,” Sam said, shoving Riley’s shoulder. “They’re like the grossest things you’ve ever heard.”

And so naturally Riley felt compelled to share his super gross burp, which was long and loud and wet and made Sam and Red shudder and shout at him to quit it.

Later they all squished into the tent, Sam and Riley in the sleeping bag and Red wrapped in two of the space blankets that she’d packed just in case and she was feeling pretty smug about it just at that moment.

Riley watched with interest as Red rolled up her pant leg and unclicked her prosthetic and removed the socket and liner. There wasn’t a lot of light in the tent, just a small flashlight’s worth while everyone got settled down, and he squinted at her stump in the gloom.

“It looks kind of like Frankenstein,” Riley said.

“I guess it kind of is like that,” Red said. “They had to cut off the bottom part of my leg and then seal it up.”

“So the rest of your leg wouldn’t squish out,” Riley said.

“Why are you so disgusting, Riley?” Sam said. “And anyway, Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, not the monster.”