The Runaways

Prologue

May

I racked my brain to try to remember all that I had learned about edible plants. I couldn’t remember much. No matter how hard I tried, the memories evaded me. Think, I ordered myself, but still, the memories of what plants were edible and which were not would not resurface.

“This is a timed test, Ms. Fullman,” my instructor, Mr. Andrews reminded me.

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Andrews,” I mocked.

Mr. Andrews just shook his head, and then left me to my work. Everyone in the class had their own station and had to identify which plants, out of thirty, were edible and which were not. Some I recognized immediately, like a strawberry. Others I couldn’t place even if I could use all of my resources. I need to pass this test! If I don’t, that would be $30.00 that I don’t have down the drain! I thought.

I categorized the ones I did know, which totaled to be a whopping 14. The others I played with, smelled, and compared to the ones I did know. Eventually, I got them all sorted, and just in time, too, because just as I finished, the timer went off, signaling the end of the test.

“You are dismissed for an hour and a half break. Use your time to your advantage; study for the next test,” Mr. Andrews advised.

I was the first one out of the lab, practically running and pushing people out of the way to get out of the suffocating classroom. Freedom called, if only for a minute, and freedom was something that I had never really possessed. I made my way outside to the area we used for lunch. It was a little area, in the shade of trees, in back of the hunting club and shooting range in which we were taking the classes. It was set up with loads of picnic tables. My best friend Cory was out there, sitting at a table, eating a Nutella and marshmallow fluff sandwich.

His curly, longish brown hair hung in his green eyes. He was bent over a book about natural disaster cases, in which the victims of the storm got stranded in a remote place where they had to fend for themselves.

“Hey,” I said, sliding onto the bench across from him, and taking out my own lunch.

“How was the test?” he asked, smiling. He knew that I had trouble with the edible plants portion of the class.

We were essentially taking a wilderness survival class. We lived in White Sulfur Springs, Montana, and living off the land was a way of life for those who had lived there for generations. Many men were self-proclaimed ‘mountain men’. I had moved there just before third grade, and had lived there ever since, but I had fortunately never met one of those ‘mountain men’. Even so, I was training for a life off the land.

A class like this was a little out of the ordinary. It was a new addition to the Sulfur Springs Hunting Club. It was for youth in case they were out hunting and something terrible happened. We were taking it for a different, slightly more planned, reason.

“I almost wish that I had gone down the weapon track like you,” I joked. I was a firm believer in the disuse of weapons, and Cory knew that. I wasn't afraid to voice my opinion around Cory, who shared most of the same opinions as I did. Even so, we sometimes got into arguments over differing beliefs. Especially when it came to weapons.

“You wouldn’t last two seconds in my weapons class,” he teased.

“Oh really? Well you wouldn’t last two seconds in my Edible Plants class or my Basic Emergency Mountain First Aid class,” I teased right back.

“You got me there,” he admitted, but went on. “ I find it slightly funny that you live in Montana, and yet you have never touched a gun or a bow,” he sneered. “Some life.”