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school counselor told me it wasn’t my fault. After a while I agreed with him so he’d shut up and quit talking about it. And sometimes I really believed that I had nothing to do with her dying. But deep down, I still felt responsible. I still felt the ache in my gut. A burning ache.
    Just before sunset, as I gathered wood for a fire, I discovered fresh bear scat spotted with whole blueberries.
    This place is full of bears.
    I turned around and peered into the forest. “Dad,” I said. “Dad? Is that you?”
    His voice boomed in my brain. I didn’t understand it. It’s not like I was thinking about what Dad thinks—his words were just popping in there and echoing around whenever they pleased. But maybe it was a sign. A sign that he was out here. Somewhere.
    â€œSorry, Dad.” I hesitated. “Sorry I didn’t do my part.” I waited. Sort of hoping he’d answer, but heard nothing.
    I faced the water and saw a couple of sea lions surface and then dive. I kicked at the ground and then bowed my head. Apologizing didn’t make me feel any better, but what more could I say? And what difference would it make?
    I stomped off into the forest and collected more wood and ate blueberries as I found them. As the sun set, I watched the high clouds, which had moved in, turn red and orange.
    Using dead hemlock twigs and splinters of driftwood, I tried to build a little teepee of dry sticks to start my fire but my hands kept shaking and I couldn’t place a stick without knocking over what was already there.
    â€œThis is all your fault, Dad.” I yelled. “Coming out here was your idea. Not mine.”
    I grabbed a fire-starter stick and fed it small dry wood and got a fire going even though I wanted to save them for when I didn’t have dry wood.
    By the firelight, I looked at what I had:
    2 emergency blankets
    2 lighters
    2 small boxes of waterproof matches (40 total)
    4 pixie fishing lures with treble hooks
    fishing line (two small bundles)
    2 lock-blade pocket knives with four-inch blades
    12 small pieces of rope
    2 small pieces of flint
    4 two-inch fire starter sticks
    In addition to my own clothing I had Dad’s life vest.
    But no tent, no sleeping bag, no food—except for the Meal Pack bars, but those were for my dad.
    I waited for his voice to come, but it didn’t. I hoped for a sign, any sign that would give me a clue to where he was, or what I should do, but none came. I stared into the fire. Faces came and went as the flames curled around fat sticks. Not faces I recognized, just blurry images that kept appearing and disappearing, one fading into another.
    As my possessions lay before me in the flickering firelight full of faces, I battled with the thought that no matter how much I wished things weredifferent, I was alone, all alone, and with what supplies I had lay in front of me. And wherever my dad was, right now, he was alone too.
    I glanced down the beach to where a small, rocky point jutted out into the water. At the base of the point, where I’d collected some of my firewood, were two enormous trees.
    Trees, I remembered. Big trees. “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
    And now I knew where I had to go if I wanted to have any chance of getting off this island alive. It’s the place my dad would go to, too. The Sentinels.

    Long red rays from the sun stretched across the water as we paddled into the protected cove on the southern tip of Bear Island. We’d just made a five-mile crossing from the main land.
    â€œGood job on the crossing,” Dad said. “You were strong. Didn’t die.”
    â€œThanks,” I said. We’d been out for over a week and even though my arms were sore, I was getting stronger from the daily paddling, just like Dad said I would.
    It was quiet in the cove. Like it was part of a different planet where the only sounds that existed were our voices and the sound of our paddles slicing through