Free The Player's Club: Scott by Cathy Yardley

boring.
    Well-behaved women rarely make history.
    “Now, we’re going to enter the mindset of the vision quest. Please take a deep breath, and listen to the sounds of nature,” the dreadlocked guide, Rebecca, said in her best earth-goddess impersonation. There were seventeen other people there with Amanda and Scott. From what Amanda could tell, there were several people who had done this particular camping adventure several times. Their backpacks were well-worn, their hiking boots covered with dust. A few wore tie-dye T-shirts and sported pleasantly vacant smiles, suggesting either a state of camping Zen or perhaps an herbal enhancement. Other people were more like Amanda. Several looked like business types—they had brand-new camp equipment and kept sneaking peeks at their watches. They did not look amused by Rebecca’s encouragement.
    Amanda tried, she really did. She closed her eyes. The stillness was startling. She heard all the other campers’ slight shifts of movement, nervous coughs.
    After what seemed like forever, Rebecca sighed. “All right. You’ve picked your camping spots. Today, I’m sending you out to go three days and nights into the wilderness. Some of you will find wisdom. Some of you may even have visions.”
    Amanda glanced at the guy to her left, who smiled at her with low-lidded, red-rimmed eyes. Ten bucks says this guy already had a vision, Amanda thought, then shook her head.
    “Drink your water. Blow your whistle if you run into any trouble, and remember, you’ll be leaving a check-in note with your camp buddy every morning, to ensure that you stay safe all three days. All right? Great! Get to it!”
    Scott walked alongside Amanda, not looking directly at her. “Doing okay, camp buddy?”
    She nodded. They’d scouted sites together the day before, and she’d tossed and turned her way through the night in her new sleeping bag. “Hanging in there,” she said.
    He nodded, and they kept walking silently.
    Why couldn’t he have gotten a four-star hotel in Bali as an adventure?
    But of course, she didn’t have to be here. She’d forced, connived and coerced her way here. There was a big, fat “Be careful what you wish for” proverb here, but she didn’t want to think about it.
    They reached the canyon that split their two “camp” sites. “I’ll leave a note checking in,” she said woodenly, starting to strike out toward her solitary plateau.
    “My site isn’t too far from yours,” Scott called to her, stopping her. “So yell if you get into any trouble, okay?”
    The fact that he actually said it warmed her. “I won’t get into any trouble,” she answered him, lacking the confidence to mean it.
    She went off to her campsite, watching with concern as he vanished through a canyon not far away. He was camped on top of a small mesa, but one of the conditions of the vision quest was that they couldn’t be in eyesight of each other. So once he disappeared, she was completely alone.
    She frowned. Okay. Three days and nights. No music. No, er, food. She put down her gallons of water and her backpack, and got to work setting up camp.
    After an hour, she’d already cut her thumb on a sharp rock. The tarp she was supposed to be using as a tent had become an unwitting parasail, dragging her across the desert before she could get it under control. Her stomach yowled in protest at all the exertion without food. She wished she’d smuggled in a few energy bars or something. Maybe chocolate.
    Her stomach really yowled when she thought of chocolate.
    By the time the sun started setting, she was sweaty, dirty and miserable. She’d taken the tarp and folded it up like a burrito, weighing it down with rocks, then wiggled inside it with her sleeping bag.
    She’d done all this because she needed, desperately, to change. To do something that proved her life was more than what it had been.
    How’s that working out for you?
    She fell asleep, sweating, curled up on her sleeping bag, the wind