I Am Still Alive

Jess finds the fox dead and torn apart, which suggests that there is a predator in the area. She decides to use the fox for meat and uses its fur to make some mittens, but she also feels guilty and lonely at the same time now that she has one less familiar face around. Jess regrets not yelling out to the pilot and wonders if he was her only chance to escape. She shares her meal with Bo and then thinks about everything that she has to prioritize: gathering wood, finding food, keeping safe, and staying warm as each day gets colder and darker.

Ice starts to form on the lake, and Jess wonders how long it’ll be before she can walk on it and fish again. She is glad to know that the snow is likely to keep her food fresh and certain animals away, but she is starting resent the drudgery and dread of her daily tasks. Hungry and frustrated, she gathers wood and fills jars of water. When she checks her traps, there is no food to be found.

Jess takes Bo out on the lake to check the bait traps and attempt to catch something. Both she and Bo are starving and becoming weaker every day. Jess manages to latch onto a huge fish, but when it tries to escape the boat, she lunges for it and tips the canoe over. Jess is shocked by the extreme cold of the water, and both she and Bo panic, using each other for support in an attempt to stay afloat. Jess manages to tip the canoe back over and haul herself into it, then helps Bo to do the same. They make it back to shore, and Jess’s memory goes foggy; she only remembers sparse moments between then and the moment that she looks up and realizes that her shelter is aflame. As it burns around her, Jess stares blankly at first but then grabs what she can and escapes. She and Bo watch the shelter burn. Now Jess is not only hungry; she is freezing as well. Meanwhile, she notices that the canoe is floating in the middle of the lake, meaning that she did not pull it far enough onto shore.

Jess remembers the stuffed bear she had when she was little. Her father had bought it for her, and she used to sleep with it every night. This was before Jess understood that her father had wronged her by leaving, and she instead saw him as a special, far-away figure.

In the present, Jess huddles underneath the boulder that formed the base of her shelter. She managed to catch one small fish but is still hungry. She also lost her boots when she ended up in the water. As a result, she has to tie pieces of tarp around her feet, which makes walking even more difficult. She knows that as long as she can move and think, she has a chance to survive.

Jess tries to repair her shelter as much as she can. When a storm sweeps through during the night, it takes the tarp with it, and Jess is once again without a shelter. She wonders whether she will starve to death or have to resort to eating Bo, and the thought brings her to tears. Jess feels ashamed for wasting energy on crying and snaps herself back into action when she realizes that her father’s coat pocket had some ammunition in it. Knowing that she could use it to find food, Jess considers the necessity of digging up her father’s grave to access his rifle. She recalls the last time she ever saw him before he left: a distant Christmas when he arrived unannounced, spent the day, and then never came back. Jess feels like she loves her father more now that he’s gone, because her image of him has returned to one of childish adoration. Jess wonders how her father would feel about her digging up his grave and imagines him saying, “A corpse doesn’t get a vote” (202). She knows that her parents would want her to survive and knows what she has to do.

Jess drags the shovel to her father’s grave and begins to dig as Bo watches. It seems to take hours and drains her energy. When Jess finally hits the crate and unearths her father, the smell and sight of his corpse cause her to heave and wretch, and she curls up in the corner of the hole, unable to move. Jess dissociates and feels as though she is watching herself from outside of her body. She gets up and digs around for the bullets, finding them along with part of an energy bar, which she eats. Suddenly, Jess feels foolish and does not believe that she will ever be able to shoot an animal. She devises a new plan for the bullets instead: to take revenge on the men who killed her father. All Jess wants to do now is to live long enough to accomplish this, and she doesn’t care if she survives past that goal. Feeling certain of her own death is oddly freeing, and Jess begins planning again.

Jess sits in the hole. She is out of energy and has decided that she is no longer going to hope to survive; she is just going to try to carry on. When a wolf-dog larger and wilder than Bo appears and starts circling the hole, Jess gets her rifle ready to shoot at it, but Bo is faster and attacks it, chasing it off. Jess considers ending her life with the rifle while she is near her father, but she tells herself that she isn’t going to die that way, thinking, “If the forest is going to kill me, it’s going to have to do it honestly” (216). She reaches into her pocket and remembers a piece of paper that she found in her father’s pocket along with the energy bar. She opens it to find a map that clearly indicates another cabin across the lake. The paper also contains a note from her father. Without thinking, Jess gets up and begins heading toward the shore.

Jess and Bo make their way around the lake, following the map. Jess uses a walking stick to support her and counts each step as she goes. She passes two landmarks on the map, and when she finally reaches the cabin, she can hardly believe her good fortune. Jess opens the door and finds a fireplace, a cot, and stockpiles of canned meats and vegetables. She stares at the supplies and then slowly eats some fish, feeding some to Bo as well. It occurs to her that she now has a chance to survive long enough to take revenge.

Jess wakes up in the cabin and starts looking around. She finds some photographs: a couple of Griff and one of the man she recognizes as the one who landed in his plane days before. Jess wonders if the man was her father’s friend, and when she finds a letter that implies that her father lent the man money with the promise of being paid back before winter, everything starts to make sense. Jess realizes that she missed an opportunity to fly home with her father’s friend, but she knows there’s no sense wasting time or energy on regret. Jess also finds a photo of her mother, which brings up feelings of immense grief.

Later in the day, Jess makes plans to ration her existing food, find new supplies, and develop her strategy to kill Raph, the man who killed her father, and steal his plane to escape the wilderness. She goes into the nearby shed and finds a book on butchering wild game, along with a large sheepskin coat and hat. She puts both on immediately and starts to warm up. With every step back toward the cabin, the thought of surviving becomes stronger and stronger. In the cabin, Jess looks in the mirror and hardly recognizes herself, noting that she looks “like a wild creature” (232).

Recalling the crate that her father was forced to bury, Jess plans to take it and anything else she might need to her new cabin. She creates a harness and a sled out of two wooden poles, some rope, a belt, and some sticks. She trains Bo to walk with the sled and prepares to make one single trip to the other side of the lake and back. Once back at the original site, Jess looks at the boulder that kept her alive and realizes that she is going to miss it. She celebrates when she notices that the canoe has floated closer to shore, and she ties a wooden plank to her rope to hook into the canoe and reel it in. Jess hauls the crate to the canoe, loads everything in the canoe, and ties her makeshift sled to the back. She also grabs her notebook out of the cabin, afraid that Raph might find it and use it to find her. She paddles across the lake and thinks about who else might be worried about her. For the first time, she remembers that people in the world might be thinking of her and looking for her.

Jess finds bolt cutters in the shed and uses them to open the crate. Inside are several documents that she doesn’t understand and a huge amount of money that she has no use for other than as kindling for a fire. Jess finds blank passports for different countries and pictures of people who were clearly unaware of being photographed. Jess starts to wonder why her father never resisted these men. When she finds grenades in the crate, she decides that these men must be terrorists of some kind. Jess carefully removes the grenades, knowing there is a chance that she might need them later. She then hides the crate in the woods and knows she is as ready as she can be for the men’s return.