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Back The Wilderwomen Save as PDF
Chapters (37)
  1. Copyright Notice
  2. Dedication
  3. BEFORE
  4. AFTER
  5. ONE THOUGHTS ON SUN HATS
  6. TWO TIME FOR CAKE
  7. THREE TWELVE MONTHS
  8. FOUR PSYCHIC KARAOKE
  9. FIVE A SECOND SLEEPING BAG
  10. SIX SIX MONTHS
  11. SEVEN THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE PANCAKE
  12. EIGHT SIX MONTHS
  13. NINE FOLLOW THE MUSIC
  14. TEN THE STARS ARE BRIGHTER IN THE DESERT
  15. ELEVEN SIX MONTHS
  16. TWELVE EVERY STAR HAS A SONG
  17. THIRTEEN PSYCHIC KARAOKE
  18. FOURTEEN ONE MONTH
  19. FIFTEEN A WELL-TRAVELED HAT
  20. SIXTEEN JOEL VS. THE VOLCANO
  21. SEVENTEEN TWO WEEKS
  22. EIGHTEEN HOUSE OF MEMORIES
  23. NINETEEN IF TREES COULD TALK
  24. TWENTY THREE DAYS
  25. TWENTY-ONE SEARCH PARTY
  26. TWENTY-TWO NOT THE SAME ZADIE
  27. TWENTY-THREE WAVES OF SMOKE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR THE DAY OF
  29. TWENTY-FIVE THE SKY IS FULL OF BIRDS
  30. TWENTY-SIX NEST
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. EPILOGUE
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT A SONG ABOUT A BIRD
  34. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  35. Also by Ruth Emmie Lang
  36. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  37. Newsletter Sign-up

Finn woke with a start, but not wrapped up in her sleeping bag. She felt pine needles underneath her, glimpsed the moon through a web of branches. I must have sleepwalked. How far was she from camp? It couldn’t be that far. She could still smell the lingering scent of their campfire. Hopefully, she could find her way back before Zadie noticed she was missing. If Zadie knew that on top of her echoes, Finn was now sleepwalking, she would probably drive them back to Texas first thing in the morning, and she couldn’t let that happen.

It occurred to Finn that their mom’s gift—if that’s what it was—was a lot like sleepwalking. Where did she go in those in-between moments? Did she go backward as Finn did or forward like Zadie? Or did she lose time because she was somewhere in her own head, somewhere no one could follow?

It’s getting worse. The phrase sent a chill through Finn’s bones. She had found herself thinking about it more often since the echo at the bar, not just out of a desire to know what her mom meant by it, but because she’d started to feel something like it herself. She would never admit it to Zadie, but the moment she’d touched that bike, she’d felt like a different person. In the echo, she was no longer Finn, the casual observer. She wasn’t just feeling her mother’s memories. She was living them.

Zadie’s heart had nearly stopped when she woke up to find Finn gone and the tent flap open. Her heart nearly stopped a second time when she saw a dark shape emerging from the woods.

“Gah!” Finn shielded her eyes with her hands as Zadie aimed her flashlight at her sister’s face. “Are you trying to blind me or something?”

“Sorry. I thought you were a bear,” Zadie said, lowering her flashlight. She looked agitated. “Where were you? I was freaking out.”

“Bathroom.”

“Oh,” Zadie said, relaxing a little. “I thought you’d run away again. I was about to go in there looking for you.”

“Nope. Just had to, you know—”

Zadie raised her hand, preventing her from elaborating further. “Got it.”

Finn waved a hand in the direction of the tent, and said, stilted, “Well, I should probably…”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Zadie stepped aside to let her pass, but something was gnawing at her. She looked down at the flashlight in her hands. Why hadn’t Finn taken it with her? Surely the forest was too dark to see where she was going without it. To test her theory, Zadie clicked off the flashlight and stumbled her way back to the tent in the dark.

SIXTEEN JOEL VS. THE VOLCANO