Addis didn’t know if she believed him entirely, but what he said made sense, so she tried to trust he was telling the truth and not just saying what she wanted to hear.

After using butterfly bandages to close the gap in Emerson’s skin, Tony pointed to her shoulder. ‘This is going to hurt. I’m sorry. On the count of three. One. Two…’

Emerson’s howl echoed off the canyon walls when Tony stopped counting at two and popped her dislocated shoulder back into place. Streams of moisture spilled down her cheeks.

Too bad Tony couldn’t fix her best friend’s right ankle as easily. Addis’s eyes drifted down, wincing at the black and blue swollen joint that was easily twice its normal size. The way Emerson explained it, it wasn’t the tripping and falling over a rock that caused the snap; it was when the rest of her body decided to go the opposite direction as she flailed to the ground. As a result, her foot had become wedged.

When she’d finally untangled herself, she’d thought she might have a sprain, but when she tried to stand, even the slightest pressure sent her reeling back down. She said her biggest worry at that moment was not the broken ankle, but the fact that she had struggled to stave off the waves of dizziness so she wouldn’t faint.

‘If you fell over there,’ – Tony hitched his thumb over his shoulder – ‘then how did you end up all the way over here?’

‘Well, I couldn’t stay out in the open, so I dragged myself over and between these bushes because they seemed to offer the best shelter.’ Because Addis knew Em as well as she knew herself, she detected the faint tone of pride in her voice.

The wind shifted, ushering in the foul stench of rotting insides from a dead animal they, thankfully, couldn’t see. ‘And then I passed out from the pain – you know, after I got dehydrated from eating those leaves that had me purging every meal I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.’ She peeked up at Addis. ‘Don’t all those wilderness shows tell you that you can survive on that kind of stuff?’

‘How should I know any better than you?’

‘Well, just so you both know, they freaking lied!’ Emerson mumbled.