Wildfire

Sam wakes, thinking about his mother. He reveals that she developed an opioid addiction after sustaining a neck injury. One day, Sam came home from school to find her “passed out on the floor, barely breathing” (30). He called an ambulance, and his mom was taken to the hospital. At the hospital, a social worker suggested that Sam go to a summer camp during his mother’s substance abuse rehabilitation to avoid having to go into a foster-care program.

Sam, who is growing hungrier, searches the cabin and finds cans of food. He eats a can of cold beef stew and comes up with a plan to use birch saplings to spell out “HELP” in big letters so that passing planes will be able to see it. He goes to a shed in search of an axe to chop the trees, but he finds something else.

In the shed, there is an old Jeep, “like from the wars in the last century” (33). This kind of Jeep was Sam’s dad’s favorite car; before he died, he promised Sam that one day, the two of them would fix one up together. In the glove compartment of the Jeep, Sam finds a map, as well as documents identifying the owner of the vehicle: Aldrich Brown, who served in the Korean War.