by Amy Reed
FIFTEEN
Hunter and I didn’t even kiss last night, but when I wake up in his arms I feel like we did much more. When I open my eyes, his are right in front of me, inches away, blinking away sleep just like mine. For a brief moment, I panic—did something else happen? But no, we are still in our own sleeping bags. Our clothes are still on.
“Good morning,” he says, a little unsurely.
“Good morning,” I say, discomfort starting to spread through me. My body stiffens and he lets go, scoots a few inches away so I can no longer feel him against me.
We’re both a little embarrassed as we pack up, a little too polite and careful with each other. As we drive away, Hunter leans over; I think he’s going to kiss me, and my body tenses in anticipation. His face is close and I can smell the toothpaste on his breath. My lips part a little—to say something or kiss him back, I’m not sure which. But he just smiles, reaches over, and pulls a twig out of my hair.
“Make a wish,” he says, holding the twig in front of me.
“On that?” I laugh, still giddy from the almost-kiss.
“Sure, why not? It’s like making a wish on an eyelash. It’s a tree’s eyelash.”
“Okay,” I say, and scrunch my face into a caricature of serious thinking. But even though this is a joke, it somehow seems important. I really do need to make a wish. But what do I even want?
I close my eyes and send my wish to God or the universe or whatever’s out there listening: I want to know what I want.
I open my eyes and blow on the twig in Hunter’s fingers. He flicks it out the window. “What’d you wish for?” he asks.
“It’s a secret,” I tell him.
“You and your secrets, Kinsey Cole.”
The mountains of northern Wyoming turn to rolling hills as we go south. The landscape is yellow with dried grass, dotted with mountains of straw bound in swirls like giant cinnamon rolls.
“Look at those things,” I say. “They must weigh at least a ton.”
“Let’s find out,” Hunter says, and jerks the car to the side of the freeway.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to go check out this straw.”
“Why?”
“Just because.”
“Because why?”
“Not everything you do has to have a reason.” He grins. He leans over and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. Before it has a chance to register, he’s out of the car and running around the field.
So I follow. I feel the rush of cars on the freeway as I make my way over the embankment and into the field. The rolls are massive, at least twice my height. I walk in and out of them, calling for Hunter. The wind plays with his voice, makes it come from all directions, and I feel like I’m going in the circles trying to follow it. “Where are you?” I call.
“Here!” he says, but I don’t know where here is. I run and weave, chasing his voice. The straw towers above me and I can’t see the car anymore; I don’t even know which direction the freeway is. I’m lost in a maze of yellow. The paths from here are infinite. I look up and the blue sky towers above me. But it doesn’t feel heavy; it feels expansive, limitless. Amid all this unknown, I don’t feel scared. Maybe being lost isn’t such a bad thing.
Arms grab me from behind and I scream. Hunter wraps me in a bear hug. “Where are we?” I say.
“I was hoping you knew.” His breath is warm on the back of my ear. We stand for a while like that, looking up at the sky. In this moment, everything feels so simple, so perfect. There is only us; there is only here. It doesn’t matter that we are lost.
Somehow we find our way back to the car. As soon as I see the freeway, see the cars rushing to their destinations, feel the harsh wind of their speed, my bliss is joined by an uneasy doubt. Is this the real world—this freeway with its hostile speed, this straight, hard path? What I felt out there in the maze, was that real too? Or was it just the result of chasing a beautiful boy, of having his arms around me?
This trip will soon be over. Whatever this is brewing between Hunter and me will end. Or will it? My plans for the future never included him, not like this. Maybe once I thought we could be friends, but now do I want him to be something more? How could that be possible while working full-time and going to school? How would I make room in my life for something like a relationship?
Is that even what I want? Do I want to be in a relationship with him? I care about Hunter, I know that. I feel alive when I’m with him. But does that automatically need to translate into something long-term? Am I supposed to re-envision my path as something in tandem, something defined by “us” instead of me? Should we aspire to become like Eli and Shelby? Should we make a home together? Should we plan on forever?
Hunter hums as he starts the car and gets back on the freeway. How can he be so calm at a time like this? How can he not be terrified? I must do something. I must say something.
“Did you love Camille?” is what comes out of my mouth.
I feel the car jerk a little. “Whoa, where the hell did that come from?” he says. I have no idea. Probably my instinct to say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time.
“It’s an obvious question.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“If you were me, wouldn’t you want to know?”
Silence.
“Well?” I say after a few unbearable moments.
“I don’t know,” he finally answers.
“‘I don’t know’? Isn’t that what I’m not allowed to say? That’s not an answer.”
“It’s my answer.”
“But it’s not an answer.”
“My answer is ‘I don’t know,’” Hunter says softly after a long silence. “That’s my honest answer.” I hold my breath, waiting for him to say more, waiting for something definitive. But he just says the same thing again: “I don’t know if I loved her. I’m sorry if that’s not the answer you wanted.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Am I supposed to tell him it’s okay, as if it’s my place to give him permission for his feelings?
“I think I loved lots of things about her,” he says, and I’m surprised to feel a squeeze in my chest. Is that jealousy? “Her laugh,” he says. “Her enthusiasm. The way she always saw the positive in something. The way she saw the positive in people. In me.”
“I loved her hope,” I say, but the last word gets tangled in my throat. Heat rushes to my face, and my eyes well with tears and I have to clench on tight to keep my heart from bursting.
Hunter looks at me briefly from the driver’s seat. “Yeah. Exactly. It felt good to be around her. I loved how she made me feel. We had a lot of fun. But I don’t know if that’s love. I think love has to be something more than that.”
“So what is it then?”
He doesn’t even pause to think. “Someone knowing every piece of you, from the top all the way to the very bottom. All the light and all the dark.” He says this with such confidence, as if he’s absolutely certain. “And they love it all, even the shitty stuff. And you let them, even though it’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done. And you want to keep doing it forever.”
“Wow,” is all I can think to say.
“Wow, what?”
“You’ve thought about it a lot.”
“Not really. I don’t know. I guess I’m secretly emo.”
“Not so secret,” I say.
He laughs a little, and it lightens the car just enough. “What about you?” he says then. “Have you ever been in love?”
Does he want me to say yes? Does he want me to say I’m in love with him? I look at his face and realize no, that’s not what we are. I don’t know how to define what we’re doing, who we are to each other, but I know that whatever it is it doesn’t include these one-word definitions, these standard labels, any of the bullshit dating games,
those half-truths and slow reveals, all those fears of letting someone in bit by bit, the lying to keep them interested. We are beyond all that. Maybe because we were thrown together by a tragedy. Maybe because we are two people who would never have crossed paths otherwise. Maybe because we never planned this.
Or maybe because we know it’s only temporary, because we know it’s going nowhere. Maybe that’s what frees us—we can tell the truth only because we have no future.
So I answer truthfully. Have I ever been in love? “No.”
There is no sign of hurt on Hunter’s face. He doesn’t want me to be in love with him. “But you’ve had boyfriends?”
“Yeah, a couple. It was fun for a while. Then it wasn’t.”
He chuckles. “How romantic.”
“Yep, that’s me. Miss Romance.”
“Are you a virgin?”
“Oh my god! That is so none of your business.”
“Oh, come on,” he teases. “I’m sure Camille told you way more about our sex life than I’m comfortable with.”
“Not really.”
“Oh.”
“She hardly told me anything.” The truth of this is too big for this moment, too big for me. I suddenly feel so lonely, but it’s a loneliness that goes back in time and erases my denial, erases Camille from my memories of all the times I told myself that things were fine, that we were fine, back all the way to the beginning of when she started pulling away and I refused to see it, refused to let her change, refused to let her go. Truth erases Camille until all that’s left is me, standing alone, with an empty space next to me where she used to be.
“No, I’m not a virgin,” I say.
“You didn’t have to tell me,” Hunter says.
“I know,” I say. “I wanted to tell you.”
I’m sick of hiding. I’m sick of secrets.
I want lightness. I want truth.
* * *
Something feels off. Tilted. On the verge of spilling over.
We’ve barely spoken during southern Wyoming and into Utah. We are so close now. Only Nevada stands between us and California.
I am not ready. The car is suddenly suffocating. Hunter takes up too much space. It is crowded with him, with us, heavy with these new bonds that tie us together.
The suburbs are turning into desolation. We are outside of Salt Lake City, back on the 80 after avoiding it for so long. “Fuck my dad,” Hunter said. “He was bluffing. He wouldn’t go through the trouble to hunt down this car. He can buy a new one. And he sure as hell doesn’t want me back.”
My mind keeps returning to the same thought—what’s going to happen when Hunter and I separate? Maybe it won’t happen right away, but I know that whatever this sweetness is between us right now, it’s not meant to last forever. I cannot see him in my future. I cannot see our lives in tandem. He stepped into my life and gave me something beautiful, but he will step back out when our time together is done.
Some things are not meant to last forever. Some relationships are meant to be intense and vast and life changing, but also short, also temporary. And after the person is gone, you’re left with what they’ve done, how they’ve changed you. And it stays with you forever, even if they don’t.
So we will touch each other’s lives, we will change each other’s course, and then we will move on. And then what? Who’s going to protect me from my dreams? Who’s going to protect me from my own loneliness? Who’s going to keep me safe? Who will I be without him?
Who am I without Camille?
I turn the radio on to fill my head with something, anything besides my own thoughts. The newscaster is saying something about a forest fire in the mountains east of Salt Lake City. The sky is thick with its smoke, red and sickly as the sun makes its slow way down to the horizon. I can smell the fire in the air, the destruction, all those trees burning.
A sign says something about salt flats. There is nothing around us but white, flat nothingness, a dry, ancient seabed, too salty for life. Dead.
I reach over and turn the radio off. The only sound is the wind whipping through the open windows. Even the breeze is hot. This place could be the moon, a distant planet, and yet recognition throbs inside me, like I’ve been here before, like I knew I’d return. The pressure in my chest builds as we drive deeper into the sterile desert, as color drains from the world, leaving only the heavy orange of the sky and the ashy white of the salt flats. The setting sun is a huge puncture in the sky, a gaping red wound, a cotton ball collecting blood.
I can’t keep living like this, living in fear, running from myself, dependent on Hunter to keep me safe. That’s not what friendship is, not what love is. It’s not dependence, not desperation, not falling apart the moment we’re separated, not seeing ghosts because I’m so afraid of being alone. And now here I am, in the blank space between earth and sky, where the horizon is forever away, where all color but fire has been completely bled out of the world. This is the place where Camille is lost, where I am lost, the place of infinity, the place of nowhere.
“Stop the car,” I say.
“What?”
“Just stop the car.”
“Here?”
“Yes. Pull over.”
“Why?”
“Just pull over.” My voice is fire.
He doesn’t question me. Before the car even comes to a complete stop, I jump out, barefoot, and start running. The air is thick and hot, the wind hard and screaming, shoving the heat like a bulldozer, huge heavy mountains of it. I jump over broken glass and garbage, all coated with the same dingy white dust, all these discarded things that used to be colorful, now just bleached trash on the side of the road. My feet find the flat white clay—sterile, empty, dry, and dead, with no rocks, no plants, no hills, nothing for as far as the eye can see. The ground is springy, like gym mats, perfect for running. I could run forever on this and never get injured. I could just keep running until the end of the world.
So I run. Somewhere in the wind, I can hear Hunter’s voice calling my name, but I have crossed over, I am a ghost, I am so far away his voice just barely reaches me. I run and run until he is gone, the road is gone, the sound of cars is gone, everything but the clouds at my feet and the bloody sky darkening into night.
“Camille!” I scream into the void.
I hear her laughing.
“Camille!”
I conjure her into being.
Her footsteps padding beside me.
Her long legs and thin waist, her graceful arms pumping.
Her face, smiling. But it is not her smile.
I run as fast as I can, track team fast, star of the soccer team fast. Camille could never run as fast as me. I feel like I’ve been running for miles, like if I turned around I wouldn’t even be able to see the road anymore. But the view in front of me hasn’t changed a bit; the horizon is still forever away. There is no end to this. There is no destination. I could keep running and running forever and never get anywhere. I could run until I died, and I’d still end up here anyway, a restless ghost like Camille.
Is that what I want? To just keep running? To keep going nowhere? Even out here, in this alien place, I carry everything from home with me. I carry Camille. I carry fear and sorrow and emptiness. I carry myself. As fast as I run, I will always carry myself.
So what happens if I stop running? What happens if I stop being scared?
Take away fear, and maybe Camille will just be a memory; maybe she will stop being a ghost. Memories still hurt; they can rip you apart with loss and pain. But they’re not monsters. Not things that kill.
I stop running.
Every muscle in my body burns and my lungs scream from pumping the smoky air, but I am not dying. I turn around and Camille’s ghost is standing in front of me with dark nothingness behind her. The sun has set. There is no moon. The red of the sky has been replace
d with black. But Camille is perfectly illuminated, dressed in the same jeans and tank top she was wearing the night she was killed, the same thing she was wearing when she led me to the top of the quarry and asked me to join her.
“This isn’t you, Camille,” I say.
“Who am I?” She smiles.
“It’s not you.”
“Who am I, Kinsey?”
She stares at me and I look deep into her eyes. I see right through them, into the blackness behind her. She is transparent. She is nothing.
“If I’m not Camille, who am I?”
All of a sudden, it’s so obvious.
The image of Camille in front of me flickers. Like bad reception, like faulty wires.
It’s not her. It never was.
The girl in front of me is only a hologram, projected out of my own mind. She is a shadow puppet made out of fear. There is only one person who could ever hate me this much, only one who could be capable of causing me so much pain.
“Kinsey!” the voice pleads. It crackles like radio static.
“You’re not real,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” The ghost laughs. “Then why are you talking to me?”
“I’m done talking to you.” I start walking. I walk right through her. She is not real. She cannot hurt me.
“I’m ready to let you go,” I say.
“What if I’m not?” says the voice, wavering in the darkness.
“You have no choice.”
The image of Camille flashes in front of me. Her face goes in and out of focus. Her screams whip through the air with wind, but they have lost their sharpness. I close my eyes and breathe. I inhale and my chest opens to memory, to the real Camille, the one I’ve been trying to escape.
Images flash through my mind— Camille in her jeans and tank top; Camille in her favorite yellow bikini, with curves I will never come close to having; Camille in her prom gown, stunning and elegant; Camille at twelve, gawky and only just turning beautiful. Here we are playing dress-up as little kids; here we are staying up late and gossiping in the darkness. Here is Camille’s first love; here is Camille’s first heartbreak. Here I am watching her life, saving mine for later, always later. And here is her patience, her love, her loyalty, despite all my demands.