Lily Ryder watched the grizzly bear of a man who’d come out of the neighboring cabin stalk off into the woods skirting both their cabins. He cut a striking figure even from afar, tall and muscular with broad shoulders, a clean shaven face, and short dark hair. Must not be very friendly though. Never once did he look in her direction.

Weren’t folks from this part of the state supposed to be welcoming? Ruby, the campground owner, had been more than warm toward Lily, and the cashier at the local convenience store in Greendale, where she’d stopped to pick up a few frozen dinners on the way, had been more than willing to say hello and ask a few questions.

Apparently, friendliness wasn’t a prerequisite of the campground, because Mr. Grumpy did not seem very neighborly. She knew he’d seen her, and he must have heard her car. But instead of coming over to make her acquaintance, he’d scurried off toward the main lodge. Fine by her. She wasn’t here to make friends.

As she watched his progress, she opened the passenger-side door of her rented SUV. She’d suspected that her Mini Cooper wouldn’t have been able to navigate the mountain trails, and after the bumpy and narrow ride up to Pinecrest Lodge, she felt validated in thinking ahead and snagging the rental. So far, she’d done everything right for this spur-of-the-moment trip.

How long would that last?

She silenced her nagging inner voice.

The moment she reached inside the vehicle to snag the grocery bag off the floor of the car, her furry Pekingese waddled to the ground. With a mighty sneeze, Wookie shook her floppy beige ears and tried to sneak under the SUV’s high bottom.

“No, you don’t.” Juggling the bag in one hand, she bent and scooped up her dog with the other. When she straightened, the hot new neighbor was nowhere to be seen. She shut the door to the car with her hip, placed Wookie on the ground, and pointed to their cabin. “Come on, girl. Inside.”

Wookie waddled toward the tree line of tall evergreens with pale trunks separating Lily’s cabin from the neighbor’s. “Oh, no.” Lily expertly clasped her dog by the middle and lifted her off the ground.

With a big doggy smile, tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, Wookie tilted her face up and wheezed.

“Our cabin is this one,” Lily informed her, even though the dog didn’t understand her. Wookie’s tail thumped her side, a testament that Wookie didn’t have to understand in order to be pleased. Smiling to herself, Lily strode up to her cabin and inspected the door. Maybe this impromptu week-long excursion wouldn’t be so bad.

Maybe she would spontaneously become an expert outdoors-woman. She’d heard time and again that everyone had a natural affinity for some talent or another … even if she had yet to discover what her talent was.

As she placed the bag of groceries on the packed dirt in order to open the door, a mosquito bit her exposed neck. She slapped it, missing the offending bug. Then again, maybe hers was that she was good at attracting bloodsuckers.

She couldn’t wait to go home.

Binge-watching Star Wars movies for an entire weekend while she worked overtime and nibbled on frozen pizza? That was more her style. This camping, outdoorsy, one-with-nature manure was not.

“You only have to last one week.”

That’s what her boss had told her. And she would. With a promotion up for grabs, she had to win this silly little competition, one way or another. Even if she’d never won anything in her life before. There was a first time for everything.

Stepping inside the cabin, she retrieved her grocery bag and kicked the door shut before she set Wookie down. As her dog plopped her bottom to the floor, tail thumping the rustic hardwood, she gazed up at Lily expectantly, almost as if she knew that Lily had to go back outside to retrieve the other bags she’d packed.

Lily sighed. “Do I trust you not to run away, or do I have to dig out your leash?”

Wookie continued to wag her tail, as if the faster she did so, the more trustworthy she would seem. In the end, Lily couldn’t say no to that adorable face and opened the door.

The moment Wookie stepped outside, she turned toward the neighbor’s cabin.

“No!” Lily lunged, stumbling before she managed to catch her dog around the middle. When she straightened, she glared at the disproportionately happy dog. “You have to stay here. Stay,” she stressed. She slowly put Wookie down on the ground.

For a moment, it seemed as though the Pekingese would obey. However, as Lily turned to the car, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Wookie waddled away from the cabin again. Lily wobbled on the conservative two-inch heels she’d worn for the drive as she chased her pet.

“Come back here. Wookie, come.”

The dog paused, glancing over her shoulder. It gave Lily enough time to stagger close enough to retrieve her pet.

“I can’t trust you at all, can I?”

Wookie wagged her tail, looking cute.

Lily shook her head. “I don’t care if you are the cutest thing in the world. Clearly all that hair is messing with your sense of direction. Can you even see?” Lily carefully combed the long locks of hair away from Wookie’s eyes.

The silly dog leaned in as if pleased with the grooming.

“I’m sorry. I can’t trust you out here while I’m unloading. Back inside you go.”

Lily’s heart broke a little at the forlorn look her dog gave her upon being deposited into the entry of the cabin once more. Resolute, she shut the door in Wookie’s face. Wookie was usually good about sticking beside her and she rarely had to put her on her leash, but with new places to explore, she didn’t dare let her loose while she brought her belongings inside at the same time. The one person in the world who didn’t judge her for writing what she felt was another insignificant and subpar article was her dog. She couldn’t lose Wookie in the woods, it would devastate her.

Walking back to the car, Lily fished her cell phone out of the pocket of her jean shorts and dialed the number of her best friend. Tonya Fielding worked at the Penny Gazette along with Lily. From the moment Lily had been given the desk squashed up alongside the bubbly, ever-optimistic redhead, they had become the best of friends. Despite the fact that her brother owned the newspaper and his godfather, Rob, was the Managing Editor—in other words, their boss—Tonya took as much flak as any of the other reporters, Lily included. She was good company on a Friday night when they needed to commiserate about the work week.

The line crackled as Lily pressed the speakerphone button. For a moment, the static overwhelmed the ringer, but as another bar of signal flashed into being, the connection cleared of all but the occasional crackle.

A moment later, Tonya answered the phone. “Isn’t this cheating?”

A pang of guilt pricked Lily but she knew Tonya would never tattle to Rob. Tonya was on her side.

“Hello to you too,” Lily answered as she opened the trunk of the SUV. It revealed a duffle bag stuffed with clothes and other essentials for this trip, along with another smaller bag of food for Wookie.

“Sorry. I didn’t expect to hear from you. Aren’t you supposed to be free from modern conveniences and technology all week?”

Yes. Lily already hated it.

“In a manner of speaking. I need access to some technology, if I’m going to write daily logs of this challenge. Plus, I still have some modern conveniences like toilets and showers and stuff. This promotion would not be worth it if I had to stink all week.”

Lily was lying. She had been gunning for a position reporting real news rather than the “Dear Abby” column she had been hired to fill. The first step of any career path was to get her foot in the door. However, she had been patching together silly little self-help articles for four years. It was time to move up in the world.

Or was the way her boss flippantly ignored all her article suggestions a reflection on whether or not she could do it.

I am destined for better things than the Dear Abby column. It was not showing off her best work, and it was slowly killing her enthusiasm for her chosen career path. She needed a change.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only person completing this ridiculous camping challenge in the hopes of a promotion. Now that their main reporter had decided to semi-retire, Dave, the writer of the culinary column, wanted to report something more substantial as well. The important, headline news. And since their boss apparently didn’t have an opinion of his own, Rob had concocted this little challenge.

Reality News Articles. What a laugh. But if Lily had to camp for seven days and provide daily progress updates as to the experience, that was exactly what she would do. She was a good, engaging reporter. At least, she thought she was. After writing bad self-help articles for four years, had she lost the edge that college had given her?

Even if she wasn’t the best, certainly she could beat out a man who spent most of his working time eating off the company dime. Never mind that she had never camped a day in her life and didn’t know a compass from a pocket watch. She had this in the bag.

She hoped.

“Besides,” Lily added, “I haven’t brought all my stuff inside. This challenge doesn’t begin until then.”

Tonya’s laugh crackled over the line. “If you say so.”

“Trust me, this is going to be a piece of cake. I bought all the food I need while I was in town. I’ll just do some soul searching in the woods—” Another mosquito jabbed her behind the ear. Weren’t they all supposed to be dead by September? She slapped it and grabbed for her duffle bag, scowling. Lamely, she ended, “It’ll be fine.”

She had a lot less conviction in her voice during the second repetition. Looping the plastic bag containing Wookie’s essentials over her wrist, she picked up the duffle bag and tried to wrestle the trunk closed with both hands full. Screw it, she would come back for the hatch after she deposited the bags inside.

“Why didn’t you sign up for this competition? You’ve been writing fluff pieces for longer than I’ve been around. Don’t you want to report real news?”

“I do report real news,” Tonya said, her voice sharp.

“You report things like the first baby born each year and firemen rescuing kittens from trees.”

“I report extraordinary things accomplished by ordinary people. We don’t all have to be world-class athletes or filthy rich in order to make a difference in the world.”

Said the woman whose brother was filthy rich from retiring as a world-class athlete. But Lily had to admire Tonya’s zeal for her job. Maybe what she reported wasn’t real news in Lily’s book, but Tonya thought it was important. She treated the everyday heroes she wrote about with love and respect. She seemed happy to ferret out those stories if not a little bit restless herself lately.

“If you say so. I want to report something that people will actually read, for once.”

“People read what you write. We keep getting emails asking for advice, don’t we?”

Lily kept her opinion of the sort of people who wrote in to her to herself. Tonya, who always saw the best in everything and everyone, would only argue that she was being unfair.

“I’m at the door now.” She paused, staring at the woods. “It’s going to be weird, not talking to you for a week.”

“You can do this,” her best friend said encouragingly. “I believe in you.”

Tonya believed in everybody. If only Lily had the same faith in herself.

Perhaps it was better that the guy in the cabin didn’t want to give her the time of day. Lily needed to be at the top of her game if she was going to prove to herself—to everyone—that she could do this. She could survive a week in a cabin in the woods all by herself.

She was good enough to earn this promotion. She had to be. And no one—not Mother nature, a horde of mosquitoes, or even a weird neighbor who seemed more at home with the bears than in civilization—would stop her from realizing her dream.