Free Bear Temptations by Aurelia Thorn

Chapter 1

    “No, no, no. No! Fuck!” I swore as my car pitted to a stop. Who the hell puts spikes in the middle of the road? This just tops the cake. Not only did I now have to walk around the dark forest to find my little sister, but even if I found her, we’d need to walk for miles as there was basically no chance of anyone else driving down this road. When I came home for spring break, I did not imagine it spent trying to figure out where Mary, my sister, went camping with her new boyfriend. Obviously she’d be fine since she was with Brad and I’d heard he was captain of the football team—so basically really popular and liked by everyone and probably a good kid. But since she was supposed to be home two days ago, my mom was freaking out.
    This was probably the worst spring break ever. Thinking I’d make the most of this pointless search for Mary, I’d invited Gordon to come along with me. Hoping that if we were alone… Not that it mattered, he called when I was about to go pick him up to say that he actually couldn’t make it. He had to help his parents build a deck while the weather was still nice and sunny. I mean, seriously? Who would actually choose to help their parents over potentially getting fucked. I was even prepared to blow him—the shit-eating jerk!
    “Well, Mary certainly isn’t going to find me,” I said to myself as I pulled food and drinks out of the cooler I’d brought for the road, filling my oversized tote bag with sandwiches, bottles of water, trail mix, and a small bottle of vodka. No one said I had to stop having fun just because Mary couldn’t keep it together for one weekend! Not sure what else I’d need, I grabbed my phone and the car keys and set off into the forest.
    Fortunately, I had enough daylight to look for her for at least an hour. My control-freak mom had made her send her the latitude and longitude coordinates of where she’d be in case something like this happened, so all I needed to do was use the GPS on my phone and walk towards the numbers she’d given. Starting up the direction finder, I couldn’t help but grin when I saw that it was only a fifteen minute walk from where I was. She’s really going to get it now.
    Trailing along towards her camp, I couldn’t help being happy and annoyed at the same time. Mary was great at bringing those mixed feelings out in me, like she knows how to ruin things in the best way possible. “Mary!” I yelled out hopefully. Since she’s not that far off, she might have gone for a walk.
    My call was met with silence though, except for the snapping of twigs. My hearing sense heightened at the sound, and I was really slow to turn towards it. My parents always told me I was careless and should worry more about what could happen to me, but I always laughed in response. Why should I care? This is Canada! Nothing ever happens here. Now I was starting to wish I’d listened—or at least brought the swiss army knife my dad always keeps in the glove compartment.
    Duh, that’s the number one thing you’re supposed to bring to the forest. Nicole, you’re such an idiot. And it’s spring! Everyone’s always talking about bears in the spring, where else would they be right now, dummy?
    Paranoid, but knowing that I needed to face whatever was out there, I finally gathered the courage to turn towards the sound. It was hard to tell because there was just trees for miles, you literally had to play the find-the-difference game to figure out what’s wrong. From what my blue eyes could see, though, there was nothing there; relieved, I let out a shaky laugh. “Obviously, bears would make more noise than that, Nicole.”
    I carried on walking towards the camp and picked up my pace—especially since my phone apparently only had a few hours’ worth of battery left, and I needed that for the ride home. The camp shouldn’t be much further now, but I couldn’t see any tents yet, which was weird. I figured I’d at least see the peak of the