The small truck picked up speed as they drove down the remote mountain highway. Tessa was squished in the middle seat of the single cab pickup truck between her older brother Andrew, who was driving, and his best friend Travis. She was trying to ignore her discomfort by watching the trees whip past the window in flashes of green and brown. 
 
The three of them were from Syracuse, New York, and they were on their way to the first camping trip they’d ever been on without any of their parents. Their destination was a remote area in the Adirondack Mountain Range in upstate New York over two hours away from their homes. The truck slowed as they pulled off the paved highway and onto a rutted and unkept bumpy dirt road winding through the trees like a river of earth.
 
Tessa could feel her excitement building, she was lucky to be on this trip at all. Since their father's death months earlier, she and Andrew hadn't been able to be out of their mother's sight. They along with their father had been planning this trip with the two of them before his deployment to the war in Afghanistan earlier in the year. Then the phone call came that changed their lives and their father was gone forever.
 
Andrew and Tessa decided soon after they received the news that they wanted to go on the trip they had been planning, in memory of their father. Their mom was against the idea, but as a compromise Travis’s mother had offered him, who was about the same age as Andrew, to go with them so they wouldn’t go alone. Travis jumped at the chance to go with them, but Andrew’s and Tessa’s mother was hesitant. What if something happened to them too? She couldn’t bear the thought.
 
Finally, she relented for Andrew to go, but dug in her heels with Tessa. She just wasn’t willing to let her teenage daughter go traipsing off into the woods without a parent.
 
“I’m going to be going off to college next year, and we won’t have much time to spend together once I’m gone. Also, let’s be honest, Tessa won’t always want to spend time hanging out with her older brother. Isn’t it better for us to spend time together now when we aren’t having to force us to?" He had reasoned with their mother, but she still held strong.
 
Tessa was just as persistent, much to her mother's bewilderment. Why would a fifteen-year-old girl want to go hiking with her brother and his friend during summer vacation? It would make more sense for her to be hanging at the mall or cooling off by a pool somewhere. She just couldn't understand it.
 
Andrew knew though that Tessa wasn’t like the other girls her age. While other girls were into boys, fashion, and makeup, Tessa was a tomboy who would rather sport torn jeans with grass stains on the knees than a skirt. Their mother had always wanted her to be more girly, but that just wasn’t who she was. Tessa and Andrew got along so well because she knew that he would never try to change her or pressure her to try and be someone she wasn’t.
 
In an extra bid to calm her nerves, Andrew marked on a map the route they were planning to hike and where they were going to be setting up camp each night. Finally, after weeks of pleading, reasoning, and planning, it was Travis’s mom that finally tipped the scales in their favor. She argued that having the boys there to keep Tessa safe was more than enough, and should anything happen they would only be a phone call away.
 
Now, three weeks later, the three of them were winding their way down a bumpy dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Andrew finally came to a stop off to the side and shifted the truck into park.
 
"Here we are," he said, "are you guys ready for this?"
 
"I'm more than ready," Tessa replied excited, "I've been dreaming about this trip since we started planning it with dad."
 
"Well I hope it lives up to your expectations, I'd hate to have you disappointed and never go camping with me again," Andrew said with a smirk.
 
"I guarantee that isn't going to happen," Tessa smiled at the two of them. "Can we get out of the truck now?"
 
"Well this is where we're camping for the night and I’m pretty sure we didn't come this far to sit here in the truck," Andrew joked back.
 
Tessa gave Andrew an excited grin as she fidgeted in her seat while Travis took his time getting out just to annoy her. Once out of the truck Andrew looked across the truck bed just in time to see Tessa’s shoulder-length brown ponytail disappearing into the trees. "Don't go too far, we need to find a good spot to set up camp for the night," he called out to her.
 
“I won’t," came Tessa’s voice in reply from somewhere behind the thick line of trees. Andrew moved to the back of the truck and looked at the pile of hiking packs loaded up and ready for any adventures that could come their way.
 
"Hey you guys, come over here," Tessa called out, "I found the perfect spot."
 
Andrew and Travis grabbed their packs and swung them onto their shoulders, adjusting their straps to make them fit on their backs. He then lifted Tessa's pack out of the bed of the truck and set it on the ground in front of him. He stretched and took in a deep breath of the fresh mountain air before calling out, "Where are you at Tess."
 
"Over here, not far off the road," Tessa’s ringing voice came calling back over to his right, "I'll come and grab my pack."
 
"Don't worry about it," Andrew shouted in response, "it doesn’t sound like you’re too far off, so we’ll just bring it for you."
 
Andrew hefted Tessa's pack up into his arms as he and Travis found the same small trail that Tessa had disappeared on. Less than a minute later they were standing at the edge of a small clearing with a stream running along the far side. Tessa was standing in the middle of the clearing with her arms outstretched displaying the scene with a grin on her face. "Isn't this the perfect spot?" she asked excitedly.
 
Andrew and Travis smiled in agreement as they set their packs down on the edge of the clearing. Soon the three of them had their campsite setup complete with two tents, one for Tessa and the other for Travis and Andrew to share. In the middle of the tents, they also had a small ring of stones circling a small crackling fire. They had even wandered the edges of the clearing and found enough dried wood to keep their fire fueled through the night.
 
Afterward, Andrew and Travis then lounged around the fire for the rest of the afternoon while Tessa waded barefoot in the stream. She had her jeans rolled up to her knees and was trying to catch bullfrogs that were croaking at her in the weeds along the bank. They were all much too fast for her and although she got close a couple of times she couldn't ever quite get her hands on one.
 
As the sun started getting low in the sky, Andrew's stomach let out a low hungry rumble, so he ran back to the truck to grab the leftovers from the lunch. They had stopped at a nice little diner that their dad had circled on the map while planning this trip. The food was delicious, and as they ate they enjoyed looking at all the photographs of hikers that littered the walls. About halfway through their meal, Tessa had squealed as she pointed at a picture hanging above the table next to theirs. There on the wall was a younger version of their dad, with the same pack that Andrew was using.
 
The elderly waitress smiled and asked, "You guys are Martin's kids?"
 
"You knew our dad," Andrew asked in disbelief.
 
"Of course I knew him!," she exclaimed, "back in the day he and his friends would come here almost every weekend during the summer. How is he doing these days?"
 
Andrew looked down at his half-finished food and responded quietly, "he died a couple of months ago, in the war."
 
"I'm so sorry," the waitress had said, frowning, "he was a good man."
 
After that neither Andrew nor Tessa had much of an appetite so they all requested to-go boxes and brought the rest with them for dinner.
 
Andrew called Tessa over and they ate the cold bits of hamburgers and french fries in silence as Tessa put her wet toes near the fire to dry and warm them. Less than an hour later twilight had passed and the three of them could see what looked like a million stars in the sky. "Ooh look at the Milky-Way," Tessa said in awe pointing to the glowing wispy line stretching across the sky. "This is the first time I've ever seen it outside of textbooks," she said with a look of wonder gleaming in her fire-lit eyes.
 
"I've seen it only a handful of times," Andrew remarked, "and it has still blown my mind every time I’m able to."
 
“I wish Dad was here with us," Tessa said with tears welling up in her eyes.
 
Andrew leaned over and put his arm around her shoulder pulling her into a tight hug, “me too, Tess, me too.”
 
They sat there looking at the stars in silence for almost an hour, as the fire slowly burned down to an orange glow. "Oh, I almost forgot," Andrew finally said as he reached into his pack and pulled out the puffy plastic bag that he had snuck into it without Tessa seeing.
 
"Marshmallows!," Tessa said.
 
The three of them each grabbed thin sticks from their dwindling woodpile and stabbed them through their marshmallows. Andrew and Travis slowly roasted theirs over the orange coals to get them all gooey and golden brown. Tessa had hers close to the heat and soon it was blackening and about to burst into flames.
 
"Don't eat too many," Andrew reminded Tessa, "we don't need you getting sick and wanting us to carry you and your pack all day tomorrow."
 
“I won't," Tessa said as she pulled her charbroiled marshmallow from the fire, and blew the flame out. Tessa smiled at the two of them as she bit into the blackened marshmallow. “Oh that's so good," she said, her face already smeared with sticky white sugar flecked with blackened burnt bits.
 
They shared stories about their dad as they looked at the stars for another hour. Finally, they banked the fire with some dirt and by an unspoken agreement crawled into their tents and fell asleep.
 
Andrew woke up the next morning and when he crawled out of his tent, he found Tessa sitting on a stump playing a handheld video game. "I thought we said we weren't bringing any electronics?" Andrew said accusingly.
 
"What do you want me to do if I wake up before you? Lay in my tent staring at the roof twiddling my thumbs until you two wake up?" Tessa retorted "I'll keep it put away most of the time, but if I'm gonna be just sitting here, I may as well have something to do."
 
Andrew smiled and shook his head, "I was an idiot to think that I'd pry her away from video games for a whole week," he thought to himself. "Well fine you can keep it, but if Travis or I see it outside of the tent we’re gonna take it and throw it off the first cliff we find. We're out here in nature and you're not going to spoil it with that thing."
 
"Deal," Tessa said with a grin.
 
Not long after Travis climbed out of their tent and stumbled over into the bushes to relieve himself. Afterward, the trio ate a quick breakfast of cereal and powdered milk that Andrew had packed. After rinsing off their bowls and spoons in the stream they packed up their camp and began their hike. They were able to go close to five miles by way of Andrew's estimates that day. They only stopped to eat lunch and a couple of times to fill their water bottles up in freshwater springs they found bubbling up out of the ground.
 
It was late afternoon when they found a flat spot in a clearing at the base of a large cliff to set up camp for the night. In no time at all camp was set up and ready to go. While Andrew prepared their dinner, Travis worked on building a fire, and Tessa explored the area around camp looking for firewood.
 
Tessa was following the base of the cliff when she found it the mine. It plunged into the mountainside, braced only by a few rotting timbers, and stretched off into ominous darkness. Her heart skipped a beat, "this is so cool," she thought to herself, "I wonder how deep it goes."
 
"HELLO," she yelled into the inky blackness and listened as her echo came reverberating back to her over and over again. She found a fist-sized rock at her feet and threw it as hard as she could off into the abyss.
 
It bounced down the tunnel with a loud clack, clack, clack followed by a sploosh as it landed in an unseen pool of water.
 
Just then she heard Andrew's voice calling, "Tessa, dinner's ready, come back to camp."
 
Tessa had to force herself to back away from the darkness and return to camp. As they ate dinner around the fire, talked all about her cool discovery, "and it just stretches off into the side of the mountain for as far as I can see." Tessa finished explaining. “After we eat I'm gonna grab my flashlight and go back to see what’s inside.”
 
"On no, you aren't," Andrew exclaimed, "it is too dangerous, what if it caved in and killed you? Huh?”
 
Travis interjected, “Our moms would murder us and I’m pretty sure none of us are ready to die yet."
 
"Come on," Tessa pleaded to the two of them, "I'll be careful, I promise."
 
"No," Andrew said flatly with such stern finality that Tessa knew she wouldn't be able to convince him otherwise.
 
"You guys are no fun," Tessa mumbled under her breath.
 
"And you’re being stubborn and need to learn when to shut up and listen to the people who know what’s best for you," Andrew replied annoyed.
 
"Shut up and listen?" Tessa repeated with anger in her voice, she went to her tent and as she climbed in said, "fine, I'm just going to go lay down then."
 
"It's not even dark yet," Andrew said incredulously.
 
"Well if you won't let me have fun in the woods, then I guess I’m just going to have fun on my video game," Tessa snapped back as she zipped the door to the tent closed.
 
"Nobody said that you can’t explore the woods," Travis argued through the canvas, "but traipsing into an abandoned mine shaft is too dangerous. We promised our moms that we wouldn’t do anything stupid, and that’s exactly what that is… stupid. You know for sure that they would never let you go in there, so neither will we."
 
Tessa didn't say anything back, but she stuck her tongue out in their general direction. She knew they were right, but couldn’t find it in herself to admit it to them.
 
After a few seconds without any more arguments, Andrew shook his head before continuing a conversation with Travis from earlier. A while later the fire was burning low into a bed of orange coals when Andrew grabbed the rest of the marshmallows. Travis skewered one on a stick, and Andrew offered some to Tessa through the wall of the tent. She didn’t answer, so Andrew without objection from Travis, poked the last three marshmallows on a single stick and cooked them all at once. “If she isn’t going to answer me now when I’m offering them, then she won’t have any later if she comes out begging," Andrew muttered smugly to Travis. He ate all three of them, and while delicious, they didn’t settle right in his stomach and it made him nauseous.
 
Andrew poked and prodded the coals in the fire for another hour trying to get his stomach to settle. “You should’ve taken your advice from last night," Travis chuckled as Andrew let out a sugary burp. They sat by the fire until Travis noticed Andrew beginning to nod off to sleep.
 
“Go to bed, I’ll tend to the fire." he said, “Just watch tomorrow morning, Tessa will be back to her normal happy self.”
 
Andrew smiled thankfully and forced himself to wake up. As he passed by Tessa’s tent he could see a slight glow from the screen from her game on the side of her tent. Travis banked the fire with a few handfuls of dirt and joined Andrew in the tent.