16
I freeze.
The snake is unraveling faster. I’ve disturbed its hidey-hole, and now it’s lifting up its head, looking around for the person who dared to wake it up.
I have no idea what to do. I quickly flick a glance at the tunnel ahead, but I don’t see Lennon’s headlamp right away, and I’m too scared to take my eyes off the snake.
Maybe I should stay still, as Lennon instructed during the bear incident. Do snakes have good eyesight? It can’t smell me, right? Maybe I’m blinding him, and if I stay super still—
My headlamp flickers. This catches the snake’s attention.
WHERE IS LENNON?
“Bad shrimp,” I call out softly as the snake’s head lifts. Its tail shakes, slapping against the rocky floor. That seems . . . not good. “Bad shrimp!”
The snake’s head strikes.
I jump away.
My headlamp flickers out.
Panicking, I scramble backward and bump into the wall behind me. My foot feels caught on something. I jerk it, and it doesn’t help. It’s heavy and . . .
Oh sweet God, I’m dragging the snake! It’s wrapped around my ankle, and I can’t tell what’s going on. I shake my foot around and that’s when I realize that the snake is biting me. Its mouth is clamped onto my leg, just above my sock. I can barely feel anything—why can’t I feel it? Is that poison, numbing me?
I scream.
Lennon’s light bobs into view. He’s running toward me, and now I can see the banded snake wrapped around my ankle. It’s huge. I’m going to die.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lennon says, holding up his hands. “It’s okay. Calm down. Stop kicking.”
I take in a sobbing breath and nearly fall down.
“It’s only a kingsnake,” he tells me in a calm but firm voice, dropping in front of me. “Only a California kingsnake. Let me get it off. It’s okay. He’s just scared. I want you to stay still while I get him to release you.”
I don’t know what any of those words mean. He might as well be speaking in tongues. And maybe he realizes this, because he softly shushes me—or maybe the snake, I’m not sure. But his fingers are digging inside the snake’s tightly wrapped coils, searching for the head, which is firmly attached to my leg.
“Shit,” Lennon mumbles.
“What?”
“Hold on,” he says. “Are you in pain?”
“Maybe. Yes. I don’t know,” I say. It’s sort of pinching me. Smashing me. Like my ankle is being slowly crushed. “Get it off of me. Please, Lennon.”
“I’m trying. It won’t let go. I’m going to need to—”
“Kill it!”
“I’m not killing it,” he says, unbuckling his pack and shrugging it off his shoulders with a grunt. “I can get it off. Just hang on. I need something.”
He quickly unstraps the bear canister from the top of his pack and opens it, dumping out some of the contents until he spots a tiny plastic bottle of blue liquid. It isn’t until he’s got the cap unscrewed that I recognize the bottle’s contents. Mouthwash.
Angling the bottle against my leg, Lennon pours a small amount in the side of the snake’s mouth. The sharp scent of mint and alcohol fills the air. Nothing happens. Is he trying to freshen its breath? What the hell is going on?
He pours another few drops out. And suddenly, I feel the snake’s mouth release me. Its black-and-white stripes shift, and it stiffly uncoils from around my ankle as Lennon holds it behind its head and forcibly helps to unwind it.
I gasp and start breathing faster. A lot faster. It sounds like I’m about to give birth, but I don’t even care. I’m just so relieved. The second Lennon lifts it away from me, a terrible animal-like sound comes out of my mouth.
“It’s okay,” he tells me. “I’ve got it.”
I smell blood. I see blood. It’s dripping down my ankle onto my sock and staining it bright red.
I’m going to pass out.
“You’re not,” Lennon says.
Did I say that aloud?
“You’re just hyperventilating,” he says. “Sit down and slow your breathing. I need to take this somewhere and put it down, or I can’t help you.”
Take it far, far away. Better yet, take me and leave the snake.
“Breathe slower,” he says again.
I close my eyes for a moment and try to calm down. I hold my breath until my lungs feel like they’re about to burst. Then, after a few unsteady inhalations, I get myself under control.
“Okay?” he says.
I nod.
“What happened to your headlamp?” he asks.
“I don’t know. It went out.”
“Try to turn it off and back on again,” he says.
My fingers fumble for the switch. “It doesn’t work,” I tell him.
“It’s fine. You have a backup.”
“It’s in my pack,” I say. But I really don’t care about that. I just want the snake he’s holding to stop moving.
“Okay. I’ll get it for you as soon as I get back.” He adjusts his arm as the snake’s tail tries to wind around it. “I’ll be gone just a second. Right where that first tunnel veers off to the left. See it?”
I do. But as much as I want that snake out of my sight, I really don’t want Lennon to leave again. A fresh wave of panic rushes over me as darkness envelops my section of the tunnel. I can’t think about it. Or wonder if that snake was a mama and there’s a possibility that other tiny baby snakes are going to swarm in the dark. So I just slowly slide down the wall until my butt hits the cold, rocky floor. And I lean against my pack, watching the moving white light of his headlamp. When he ducks down the branching tunnel, the light disappears.
Total darkness.
Thoughts stutter inside my head, and I’m suddenly remembering being a kid, waking up in a dark house and not knowing where I was. For several seconds, I was panicked, trying to figure out where the door was and how I’d gotten there. But what was worse was the moment I did remember. My birth mother had died two days before, and my father had shipped me off to his parents—people I barely knew. Strangers. And I didn’t know when my father was coming back to get me, or if he ever would, and in that moment, I’d never felt more alone.
It’s okay. You’re okay, I tell myself. You’re in a cave, and he’s coming back.
When Lennon turns around and jogs back to me, the light is like the sun, and I couldn’t be any more grateful.
“Don’t leave me again,” I say.
“I’m not going to leave.”
“That’s what you do, you leave! Without any explanation, you abandon people.” I’m crying, and possibly a little delirious. I feel stupid for being such a coward, and mad at him for dragging me into this stupid cave.
“I’m here,” he says, holding on to both of my arms. “It’s okay. You’re just panicking. That’s normal, but you’re going to be okay. I promise.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Can I look at the bite? Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” I say, angry. “I think.”
His hand is warm on my leg. How are his fingers not cold like mine are in this icebox of a cave? Why are boys always so warm? My dad always tries to freeze me and Mom out of the apartment, cranking down the air-conditioning to subzero temperatures.
He’s pulling up the edge of my sock to wipe away the blood. “Does this hurt?”
A lot less than I would have expected after being mauled by that devil serpent. “It’s a little sting-y,” I tell him.
“He got you pretty good.”
“Am I going to need antivenin?”
Lennon chuckles. “California kingsnakes aren’t venomous.”
Right. I know this. I think. “Are you sure?”
“It’s one of the most popular snakes we sell at Reptile Isle. I’ve handled a couple hundred of these. Been bitten by several too.”
“You have?”
“And much worse. I know exactly what you’re feeling now, and I promise it will go away. We need to get it disinfected, but you aren’t going to die. I have a first aid kit in my pack.” He glances down the tunnel as if he’s wary of something. And that’s when I remember the shadow troll Lennon thought he spotted in the cavern.
Lennon is clearly thinking the same thing.
“Get me out of here,” I say in a shaky voice.
His headlamp shifts back to my face. His stoic features are chiseled and stark under the light shining down from his forehead. “Can you stand?”
I can. And after testing out my foot, I find that I can walk, too. I guess he was right: I’m not dying. But I’m in an intensive state of anxiety, forced to rely on Lennon’s light to see. My muscles are so rigid, I’m in physical pain. And I can’t see directly in front of my feet, which slows me down.
“I found the way out,” he says. “It’s just down this tunnel.”
“You saw the ropes?” Our landmark near the northern exit.
“No, but there’s sunlight. See it?”
I do. Even better than some stupid ropes. A literal light at the end of the tunnel. It quickens my awkward steps. I can do this. We’re getting out of this hellhole, with its attacking snakes and lurking, nonexistent shadow trolls.
The exit is a lot smaller than the entrance we used to get in here. Only one person can fit through at a time, and Lennon has to clear away an old spiderweb before we can pass. But when we emerge into late-afternoon sunlight—so warm, so golden—I’m so happy, I could kiss the ground.
However, there isn’t a lot to kiss.
“Oh, wow,” I say, squinting.
We are standing on a narrow cliff bathed in afternoon light. Only a few meters of land stretch between the wall of mountain we just exited and a fall that would kill any living creature. We are far, far above a sprawling, tree-lined valley. Mountains rise all around us. Some of them are granite; some are green and covered in trees.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I’m awed. Completely and utterly awed.
And then I glance around the cliff, and that awe shifts into wariness. The ground we’re standing on is little more than a balcony that stretches around the side of the mountain. A few trees and shrubs are growing, but nothing substantial. No creek. Certainly no easy path down into the valley below that Lennon promised. A giant bird soars above the trees, circling until it disappears into the canopy.
“How do we get down from here?” I ask.
Lennon is silent. That’s not good. He walks around the cliff, heading past a lonely pine tree, and scopes out our landscape. Maybe the path into the valley is hidden. But even so, we are really far up.
“Shit,” Lennon mumbles.
“What?” I ask.
When his eyes meet mine, I know it’s bad. “I think we went the wrong way.”