Starry Night

fourteen

I reread Seolhyun's note again and again, but it's still not making sense. Did they . . . ? I mean, are we . . . ?

"They left us," Jungkook finally says.

"All of them?"

"All of them."

"I don't understand," I say. "Where did they go?"

He carefully arranges sticks in the shape of a teepee around the pile of tinder. "Back to the glamping compound."

"They told you that?"

"Seolhyun and Bogum had a fight after you went to your tent last night." Jungkook keeps his eyes glued to his task, but his body posture looks . . . uncomfortable. "Long story short, he said this trip was too much drama for him. Seolhyun agreed. They decided to go back home."

Is this a joke? It must be. Right?

Carefully, he props up larger branches over the sticks. "Seolhyun was going to leave last night, which was crazy. Minjun and I had to convince her to stay until there was light to hike, and that we'd go back together. Earlier this morning, I thought I heard a noise, but it wasn't loud, so I fell back asleep. By the time I'd woken up again and gotten dressed, they were gone."

He's serious. This isn't a joke.

I feel dizzy, so I sit on a boulder. "They left us? Hyejeong and Minjun too?"

"The last thing Minjun and I talked about last night before I turned in was trying to estimate how much it would cost to hire a car at the glamping compound to drive him and Hyejeong to his parents' vacation home." He brushes off his hands and digs a lighter out of his jeans pocket. "But I didn't think they'd just take off like that."

"Without us?"

"Bogum left me a note on the inside of that pack of cookies the bear ate. He basically said it was best we all parted ways to avoid further drama, and that he knew I could find my way back. Then I found the other note Seolhyun wrote outside your tent."

Find your own way home.

He gestures toward the riverbank. "They left Bogum's destroyed tent and a bunch of the supplies. Guess Seolhyun is officially over camping. Nice of her to just leave a huge mess behind for us to clean up."

"How long have they been gone? Can we catch up to them?" Why is he calmly building a fire?

"Suzy," he says, "if what I heard the first time I woke was the sound of them leaving, then they've been gone a couple of hours. We'll never catch up."

"You could have woken me up! We could have hustled!"

"I've only been awake for fifteen or twenty minutes. Don't you get it? It was too late an hour ago. By the time we hike to the parking lot . . ."

They'll have driven away already.

Okay. No need to panic. Just think. Maybe a new plan. What do we do now? It took us four hours to hike here from the parking lot. Another hour or so to drive back to the glamping compound, where we could catch a taxi or bus home. But we don't have a car. "How long a hike on foot is it from the parking lot back to the glamping compound?"

"There aren't shoulders on some of those mountain roads we drove. They aren't made for hiking. Christ, they're barely made for vehicles. You remember the drive here on that twisty main road."

We nearly hit a couple of other vehicles coming in the opposite direction when rounding switchbacks. It was sort of scary, and I definitely wouldn't want to be on that road in the rain or fog. Especially not on foot.