Read Hatchet (9781442403321) for Free Online

enough.
    I was flying to visit my father and the plane crashed and sank in a lake.
    There, keep it that way. Short thoughts.
    I do not know where I am.
    Which doesn’t mean much. More to the point, they do not know where I am— they meaning anybody who might be wanting to look for me. The searchers.
    They would look for him, look for the plane. His father and mother would be frantic. They would tear theworld apart to find him. Brian had seen searches on the news, seen movies about lost planes. When a plane went down they mounted extensive searches and almost always they found the plane within a day or two. Pilots all filed flight plans—a detailed plan for where and when they were going to fly, with all the courses explained. They would come, they would look for him. The searchers would get government planes and cover both sides of the flight plan filed by the pilot and search until they found him.
    Maybe even today. They might come today. This was the second day after the crash. No. Brian frowned. Was it the first day or the second day? They had gone down in the afternoon and he had spent the whole night out cold. So this was the first real day. But they could still come today. They would have started the search immediately when Brian’s plane did not arrive.
    Yeah, they would probably come today.
    Probably come in here with amphibious planes, small bushplanes with floats that could land right here on the lake and pick him up and take him home.
    Which home? The father home or the mother home. He stopped the thinking. It didn’t matter. Either on to his dad or back to his mother. Either way he would probably be home by late night or early morning, home where he could sit down and eat a large, cheesy, juicy burger with tomatoes and double fries with ketchup and a thick chocolate shake.
    And there came hunger.
    Brian rubbed his stomach. The hunger had been there but something else—fear, pain—had held it down. Now, with the thought of the burger, the emptiness roared at him. He could not believe the hunger, had never felt it this way. The lake water had filled his stomach but left it hungry, and now it demanded food, screamed for food.
    And there was, he thought, absolutely nothing to eat.
    Nothing.
    What did they do in the movies when they got stranded like this? Oh, yes, the hero usually found some kind of plant that he knew was good to eat and that took care of it. Just ate the plant until he was full or used some kind of cute trap to catch an animal and cook it over a slick little fire and pretty soon he had a full eight-course meal.
    The trouble, Brian thought, looking around, was that all he could see was grass and brush. There was nothing obvious to eat and aside from about a million birds and the beaver he hadn’t seen animals to trap and cook, and even if he got one somehow he didn’t have any matches so he couldn’t have a fire . . .
    Nothing.
    It kept coming back to that. He had nothing.
    Well, almost nothing. As a matter of fact, he thought, I don’t know what I’ve got or haven’t got. Maybe I should try and figure out just how I stand. It will give me somethingto do—keep me from thinking of food. Until they come to find me.
    Brian had once had an English teacher, a guy named Perpich, who was always talking about being positive, thinking positive, staying on top of things. That’s how Perpich had put it—stay positive and stay on top of things. Brian thought of him now—wondered how to stay positive and stay on top of this. All Perpich would say is that I have to get motivated. He was always telling kids to get motivated.
    Brian changed position so he was sitting on his knees. He reached into his pockets and took out everything he had and laid it on the grass in front of him.
    It was pitiful enough. A quarter, three dimes, a nickel, and two pennies. A fingernail clipper. A billfold with a twenty-dollar bill—“In case you get