What was I doing out here, lying in pine needles? James would be worried half to death. He'd be looking for me, had probably been looking as soon as it got light enough to see. Any moment now, I'd hear his voice, calling my name like they did on TV shows, all those cop dramas where search-and-rescue crews go out into the woods with dogs and flashlights. Leah! Leah! Dogs barking, flashlights panning, any moment now...

I started shaking again as my brain put the pieces back together. I'm king of the world! You're gonna love it up here! Crack, crack, crack, CRACK—

I bit down on my wrist before I started screaming, the sharp pain and the taste of dirt and blood tearing me away from the agonized panic. James was dead. Nobody was looking. I needed to find water and get out of the backcountry. We were four days in, but that was only two days of real hiking, and two days of making our way to crags and spending the afternoons climbing, once the granite had warmed up a bit and we wouldn't freeze our fingers off.

Without a map or a compass, I didn't know that I could find the trail back, and everyone always says that wandering around was a good way to get dead in the wilderness. Search-and-rescue starts where they expect you, but it's a big world out there and it's so easy to get lost. People sometimes die within a fifteen minute walk of the trail, hidden away behind the verdant green of the forest. Maybe the best place for me would be sitting on top of the cliff, out in the open, waiting to be found. We'd left the list of climbs we planned to hit with the park rangers, so they'd know where to start looking.

Six days. I had no food, no water, and no shelter. I'd die within three or four days without water, though I could make it six days without food. I had no idea how cold it had gotten last night; it had been hovering around thirty-five at night the few days before James and I had left, but if a cold snap hit, it could drop down to ten up here.

I sucked some moisture into my mouth and swallowed. I needed water. That was the first thing. Surely the rangers would know that we would... I closed my eyes and bit back a whimper. That I would have to find water. Maybe they'd check the lakes first. There were a lot of lakes in the high Sierra, beautiful alpine lakes.