He’s finally gone.
Is it possible she was dreaming? Or that she somehow missed the sound of footsteps padding away from her? The zip of a tent flap?
She looks right, and startles.
He’s not gone. A pair of sandal-clad feet peek from behind the angled rainfly of her tent. If she reached out, she could touch them.
Thick, dark hair covers the knuckles on the big toes.
Aspen’s pulse ticks faster. This is not okay. It’s a small beach, but this person is practically wedged against the side of her tent. Is he trying to scare her? Because at this point, he’s succeeding. Her pulse pounds harder in her ears, almost drowning out the crickets.
“What are you doing?” she hisses, still quiet enough that she won’t wake Jenny, the guide in the closest tent.
There’s no need to make a fuss, she tells herself. Because surely this is just a misunderstanding. It has to be.
No reply. But she can hear that breathing again, heavy and fast.
Aspen’s skin prickles with gooseflesh as she pulls on the zipper to open her tent flap all the way, suddenly desperate to get out. She ducks, her head just clearing the tent flap as she emerges.
And that’s when he strikes.
He moves like a coiled snake, so unexpectedly fast she doesn’t even make it past the tarp at the threshold of her tent, barely has time for one choked, squeaky scream as he shoves her backward through the open flap.
Something sharp breaks the skin on the side of her neck, slicing through flesh and muscle until it lands on bone with a sickening thud, cold then hot then wet. Liquid gushes from the wound, pouring down between her shoulder blades and throat.
Aspen tries and fails to scream as the blade twists. It’s then that she feels something vital give way, and her legs go numb beneath her.
Instinctively, she flails into the wall of the tent, desperate to get out, rolling against the thin nylon again and again until it partially collapses.
He follows easily, crashing on top of her. The tent poles snap and the canvas floor turns slick as she thrashes, trying to fight back as he brings the knife down again and again until the night explodes into stars behind her eyes.
SEVEN YEARS LATER
“The Garnet River—the so-called ‘River at the End of the World’—earned its nickname honestly. Once you put in at Boundary Creek, there is no road access for over one hundred miles.”
—Backcountry River Running: A Primer
1
JULY 11, 2025
By the time the blue ten-passenger van skids to a stop in a cloud of dust, the snarl in my stomach has tightened beyond undoing.
We’ve been driving for nine hours straight on potholed rural roads and rocky two-tracks so narrow that tree branches scratch the sides of the van. All to skirt our way around the three-million-acre Big Basin Wilderness surrounding the remote Middle Fork of the Garnet River.
And this is just the beginning.
“Kaia,babe, wake up! We’re heeeere!” squeals Macy, the cute-as-a-button blonde rafting guide who’s buckled into the middle seat beside me.
I keep my eyes squeezed shut a few seconds longer.
I’m not actually asleep. More like playing dead, so I won’t have to participate in the nonstop “group bonding” and ice-breakers that began the second the van’s engine started nearly ten hours ago.
“We’re gonna need all you ladies to work together as a team out there on the river. Let’s dig deep so we don’t flip on the Devil’s Stairs,” said Gracie, the second guide in our van—an adorable carbon copy of Macy, right down to the rhyming name. Then she asked conspiratorially, “If youcould have any substance come out of your belly button when you press it, what would it be?”
“Chloroform” was the answer on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t want to hurt either Macy’s or Gracie’s feelings. So I kept my eyes squeezed shut, leaning my head against the vibrating side of the too-warm van, listening to the other women laugh about how they’d choose ketchup or toothpaste or, in one curious case, glue.
When I booked this trip with Idaho Rapids Unlimited ages ago, it hadn’t been this trip, exactly. I’d originally booked the couples’ retreat—which would have happened last month. If things were different, if I’d been on that trip instead, I probably would have participated in all nine hours of twenty questions. Because my husband Parker would have made everyone laugh so hard with his goofy answers, I couldn’t have pretended to be asleep. And I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any of it.