Oh, man. Oh, shit.

The search party hasn’t come back yet. No wonder. They’re still out there looking for Keith, probably.

I found him.

I didn’t have to look far, either. Just up.

Here’s what happened. Since there was nobody around, and I’d been holding things in for a while, I decided to take advantage of me privacy to answer nature’s call. I took a paperback book with me. Not for reading purposes. I figured I could start ripping out pages from the first half, which I’d already read. (It’s not that great a book anyway.) I went wandering over to the area that our group has been using since our arrival yesterday—in the jungle and a pretty good distance south of the stream. It wasn’t very far to walk, and the foliage in there was thick enough so that you could disappear after just a few steps.

Most everyone had gone in, at one time or another.

It was the first place that Kimberly and the others had searched, too.

But they’d missed him.

I didn’t stop at the first likely trees, but went in a little deeper. After all, no telling when the searchers might return.

I found a good place, and did my business.

I had taken off my swimming trunks to make the job easier, so then I had to put them back on. The problem was, I hadn’t taken off my shoes. When I stood on one foot and tried to slip the other into the leg hole of my trunks, the heel of my Nike got caught and I lost my balance. I hopped and tried to work my foot loose. All of a sudden, though, I was out of control. My shoulder slammed into the trunk of a tree in front of me. The blow turned me, and I landed flat on my back.