“What’s the first thing you should do if you realize you are lost in the woods?” Reed asked the group.

Several tiny hands shot up in the crowd.

“Yeah, you. What’s your name?” Reed asked a little boy in the front row.

“Tim.”

“Okay, Tim. Whatcha got?”

“Try to find your parents,” Tim said.

“Nice guess, and I’m glad you said that. Who else thinks that is the right answer?” He surveyed the crowd, but his sweeping gaze didn’t include her.

Almost all hands went up, including her own before she could stop herself.

Luckily no one seemed to notice.

“Come on up here, and I need a few other volunteers...” Reed selected several other kids from the crowd and with their help, he set the stage. Parents at a campground. Kid lost, out of sight...and how he might head in the wrong direction if he started wandering.

“So, we see that’s probably not the safest thing we could try,” he said. “But it was a great suggestion, Tim. Anyone else have an idea?”

Tank’s daughter raised her hand when no one else did. “Hug a tree?”

“Exactly!” Reed said. “So, everyone let’s practice. On three...hug a tree!”

Thirty kids rushed toward Woodsy on Reed’s count, and Erika hid a grin as the guy inside the suit went wide-eyed as the wind was knocked from his lungs on impact.

“Stay with your tree. Make yourself as big as possible by lying down on the ground. Helicopters circling overhead have a better chance of seeing you if you lie down.”

And fan out your limbs... Wave them around when you see the helicopter... Erika’s heart pounded, a long-repressed memory spiraling back.

Reed had said those exact words to her.

Years ago. The day she’d found out that her mother’s kidney transplant had failed and she was living on borrowed time. The antirejection drugs had failed to help her body accept the new organ, but they’d been successful in weakening her immune system. Within weeks after her surgery, her mother had pneumonia and her body was refusing the transplant. The family’s worst fears were coming true. They were losing her mom.

She hadn’t wanted to go on the overnight camping trip with Cassie and her family, but her mother had insisted, saying it would help take her mind off things.

Terrified and sad, not wanting to leave her mother’s side, she’d continued to refuse, until her father had asked her to give them that night alone. She’d felt even worse at the idea that she was being shut out. She’d felt the most alone she’d ever been. Her parents had one another to cope with the devastating news that day, but neither of them were there for her.

Cassie was.

She wouldn’t have known how to get through that day or the others to come without her friend...or her friend’s family.

Of course the trip hadn’t taken her mind off her mother and when she’d needed some time to herself and had wandered down an unfamiliar trail, she hadn’t even noticed Reed following a few feet behind. Adrift in her sadness and fears over losing her mom, she hadn’t realized she was lost until the sun had started its descent over the mountains and she hadn’t recognized her surroundings.