by Trish Doller
Matt is standing outside his tent. He’s still wearing last night’s clothes, and his hair is scruffy and more than a little bit sexy. My own hair is beyond dirty. After sleep and river water, I’m afraid to even look at it.
“You’re up early,” he says.
“Occupational hazard,” I say. “I have a little brother who thinks six a.m. is a reasonable time of day. I’m heading to the bathroom. You?”
“Same. I’ll walk with you. How old is your brother?”
“Almost four.”
“My little sister, Lily, just turned five,” he says. “She was, um—unexpected.”
I nod. “Danny was an oops baby, too, but I can’t even imagine what life would be like without him.”
“Lily’s pretty adorable,” Matt says. “She used to wear these star-shaped sunglasses and tell me she was a movie star, only she said ‘moobie.’ Cracked me up every time.”
My brother is probably up already, and I wonder if Dad’s handling the morning routine okay. It’s not as if they’ve never been alone together, but not usually overnight, and I don’t trust Dad to make the eggs right. I can’t even remember a morning I haven’t been there. My phone is in my knapsack back in Noah’s tent, so I can’t call to check in.
“What are you guys doing today?” I ask.
“The plan is to do some paddling on the Santa Fe River and then spend another night,” he says. “But we need to head to town for some groceries.”
“That works out kind of perfectly because I need to get to town and my dad owns a grocery store,” I say. “So if you’ll drop me off, I’ll get you the family discount.”
“You’re not sticking around?” Matt asks, as we come up on the Kendrick brothers’ campsite. “I was serious about the Disney thing. I mean, Noah hates the idea, but Lindsey seems stoked.”
People are crashed out in sleeping bags and in the back of pickup trucks, and Justin’s parents’ pop-up camper is popped at the back of the site. I kick a beer can, scattering the little plastic Jell-O shot cups that litter the ground.
“Yeah, I don’t think she’s ever …” My words trail off when I see Jason propped naked against a big oak. It’s not completely unreasonable for him to get drunk and take off his clothes, but on second glance it looks as if he’s tied in place. “What the hell?”
There’s a slash of silver duct tape across his mouth. A clothesline, wrapped several times around the trunk, holds him against the tree. As I kneel in the dirt beside him trying to untie him, I can see his body is covered with insect bites. Big puffy pink ones from mosquitoes. Tiny red pinpoints made by no-see-ums. And the angry blister bubbles left by red ants. There are even a couple of ticks in the forest of hair on his arms. I don’t even want to think about the other places he may have suffered bites.
Matt unfolds a camp knife and moves behind the tree to cut the rope as I lift Jason’s head. “God, Kendrick, you big dumb hick,” I say, trying to keep from crying. “What did you do?”
I pick carefully at the corner of the tape, and Jason’s eyelids fly open so suddenly I nearly jump clean out of my skin. My heart is racing as he makes muffled sounds at me, his eyes desperate and wild. “Let me just—”
Matt reaches down and rips away the duct tape fast, taking a bit of skin from Jason’s lower lip and leaving a bloody patch in its place. Jason yelps in pain and covers his mouth with dirty hands.
“Jesus, Matt, why did you do that?” I know it’s too early in the morning for shouting, but I can’t help myself.
“It would have hurt more doing it your way,” he says, pulling a blanket out from under Sammy Presley and throwing it over Jason. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Tears cut tracks in the grime as they trickle down Jason’s face, and he’s crying the way Daniel Boone gets when he can’t stop. Ragged. Choking. My cheeks burn with embarrassment for Jason, especially when people around us are waking up and he’s an entirely different boy than the one we all know. Matt steps away to phone for help.
“I can’t remember. I just—the ants kept biting me.” Jason dry-heaves, and the tears keep coming. My heart breaks a little to see him like this. “I tried to call for help, but no one could hear me.”
“An ambulance is on the way.” Matt gently squeezes my shoulder as I rub Jason’s back through the blanket, assuring him over and over that everything will be okay. Everyone is awake now, and Justin comes over, squatting down beside his brother.
“Who did this?” Justin asks, but Jason shakes his head.
“I don’t know. I did some Jell-O shots and then … I can’t remember anything.” He goes quiet for a moment, then looks up at me and gives me a little smile that’s half-sad, half-regular Jason. He wipes his face with his oversize LEGO-block hand, streaking more dirt across his forehead. “Please, Sparkles, tell me we had sex.”
“You stupid jerk,” I say, but inside I’m relieved he’s going to be okay.
Chapter 6
The ambulance arrives with no lights or sirens, but a crowd, made up of campers from around the loop, still gathers. Jason’s ego has been kicked around plenty for one day, and the last thing he needs is an audience, but he’s in pretty bad shape. The EMTs decide his bites should be seen by a doctor, but they don’t put Jason on a gurney or anything like that. He just climbs down from the picnic table where we’ve been waiting together.
“Hey, um, Cadie,” he says, tightening the pink floral blanket around him as he looks at the ground and then up at me. His eyes are rimmed red, and the spot on his lip has turned dark where the bleeding has stopped. “I’m sorry about your dress.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I say, and a smile breaks through the dirt on his face as he steps up into the back of the ambulance.
“See ya, Sparkles.” The doors close behind him, and a minute later they drive off, leaving the rest of us wondering what exactly happened. Speculating on how Jason ended up tied to a tree and who might have done it. Except no one saw it happen, and now that he is gone, Chris Gannon and Sammy, both of thick neck and small brain, start snickering behind their hands like a pair of kindergarteners.
“Did you guys do this?” I gesture toward the oak, where the clothesline is puddled at the base and the imprint of Jason’s backside is pressed in the dirt. “Because it’s not remotely funny.”
“Dude, no,” Chris protests. “I was passed out in the back of Kendrick’s truck, but come on, Cadie, he had it coming. You have to admit it’s kind of hilarious.”
Only it’s not, because when Matt tore off the duct tape, I could smell the vomit on Jason’s breath. He’d gotten so hysterical in the night he’d thrown up in his own mouth and couldn’t do anything but swallow it. My eyes burn, and I have to count to ten so I won’t say something terrible. Even then, what I do say is not very nice. “You guys are such dicks.”
The park rangers move through the people at the campsite, asking questions about what happened. Even though they’re local guys—which is why they typically just break up our campfire parties instead of arresting us—they still have to do their jobs. Everyone buttons up, though, not wanting to get in trouble for underage drinking. Every single person at the campsite, including me, denies tying Jason Kendrick to a tree. Most of us aren’t lying when we say we have no idea, but someone is.
My bladder has just about reached critical mass when the rangers let me go. I’m halfway to the bathroom when Justin catches up with me on the road. “Hey, Cadie,” he says. “Thanks for taking care of my brother. You are, um—I miss you.”
For months after he broke up with me I’d have given everything to hear those words come out of his mouth and to see him standing in front of me with his eyes all soft and sweet. But not today.
“Do you really? Or is it because you saw me kissing another guy?” I say. “Because now is the wrong time to be talking about this. You could have called me two months ago or maybe—maybe you could have not dumped me. What I did for Jason is what any decent human being s
hould do. It wasn’t about you. And—I just really need to pee, so you should go back to your girlfriend and pretend we never had this conversation.”
I don’t wait around for Justin’s reply.
Matt comes out of the bathroom building just as I get there, and he waits outside while I take a hobo bath in the sink using paper towels and pink liquid hand soap. Face. Chest. Underarms. Girl bits. It doesn’t really help because my dress is smeared with Jason’s snot and tears, and I hate wearing denim shorts without underwear, but at least I’m a little less grungy.
“So that was a bizarre start to the day,” Matt says, as we head back to the campsite. “You doing all right?”
“I think so, yeah,” I say. “I mean, who would do something like that?”
Around here we all know the stupid pranks Jason Kendrick pulls don’t mean anything. He’s a harmless goofball. A clown. And, really, if anyone had been out for revenge last night, it would have been me. Except I would never do that because I love Jason like an annoying brother. He drives me crazy, but never to the point of revenge.
“Maybe it was a prank that got out of hand,” Matt says. “Or payback. You can’t tell me that of everyone at the party last night, there aren’t a few of them who’d like to tie him to a tree.”
I want to defend Jason, but there’s probably a waiting list of volunteers. “I guess you’re right. Yesterday I’d have been one of them.”
“So would his brother.”
“No way.” The idea is so absurd I have to shake my head. “Jason was basically tortured last night. Justin would never do that.”
Matt shrugs. “Everyone has their breaking point, Cadie. Maybe he humiliated Jason as punishment for embarrassing you.”
“No. I don’t believe that.”
He doesn’t say anything more, so I change the subject. “Even after a wash, I still feel pretty gross. I’m ready to go home and shower.”
“Does this mean you’re not going to Disney World with us?”
“Haven’t decided yet,” I say. “But if I’m hanging out with you guys today, I need a change of clothes.”
Matt smiles, and the rabble of butterflies that seem to have taken up residence in my stomach since I met these boys from Maine go on a fluttering spree. My mind travels back to last night, to what Noah said about Matt liking me. My skin doesn’t feel crowded to near-bursting the way it does when I’m around Noah, and maybe if I’d stuck around at the party with Matt … I don’t know. Maybe.
“Thanks for helping me this morning,” I say.
“It was the least I could do.” The wattage on Matt’s smile amps up, and the butterflies do another crazy little dance. “So maybe you know this already,” he says. “But Bar Harbor, where we live in Maine, is part of a national park called Acadia.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“What you might not know is that back in the sixteenth century it was a much larger area that included parts of Canada and was named Arcadia because it was considered an unspoiled wilderness, a kind of utopia. Later, the French dropped the letter r and it became Acadia.”
“I didn’t know that part.” The geography nerd in me loves this trivial tidbit of information, especially since it relates to my name, and I can’t say I’m not a little charmed. “Acadia, huh?”
“Yep,” he says. “The sunsets there are some of the best, especially when the sky turns red over Cadillac Mountain. “You should see it.”
“I’m adding it to my mental to-visit list as we speak.”
“Put Disney World on the list, too,” Matt says as we reach the campsite. “Because I really hope you’ll come with us.”
Noah sits on a log beside the fire, drinking coffee out of a blue-speckled camp mug and prodding at the smoldering wood with a stick. Lindsey is hunched over her own steaming mug at the other end of the log, her hair tangled around her shoulders. She looks tired, and it occurs to me that it’s still really early. Barely seven.
“Hey.” Noah hands me his mug as I sit down beside him. I take a sip, then hand it back. Our shoulders and upper arms press together as if they’re made of Velcro, and I want to kiss his sleepy face. “Where ya been?”
I tell him about Jason.
“That’s some messed-up shit,” Noah says. “Any idea who did it?”
“No one’s talking.”
“My money’s still on the brother.” Matt pours himself some coffee. “He didn’t look happy when you two left the party last night.” He gestures toward Noah and me with his mug. “And he was pretty pissed off at the river yesterday.”
“So was Noah.” Lindsey’s face turns pink when all three of us look at her. “I didn’t mean—oh my God, I’m sorry. I don’t mean you would do that. I meant that I don’t think Noah or Justin would hurt Jason.”
“I wouldn’t.” There’s a sharp edge to Noah’s denial. “I didn’t.”
Still, I think about the way his fist curled and uncurled as he stood on the dock yesterday. Like he really wanted to hit Jason.
“Cadie.” The quiet way Noah says my name makes me turn in his direction. He looks me in the eye and says the words again. “I didn’t.”
He was with me all night in the tent, and I woke with his tattooed arm curled around me, the same way it was when we fell asleep. There were dents on my skin this morning from where the wooden mala beads pressed against my arm. Molly would have stirred and tried to follow him. I would have felt the wobbly mattress shift if he left, wouldn’t I?
“Have we considered that he might have accidentally tangled himself up?” Noah asks, echoing my initial thoughts when I first discovered Jason.
“Totally plausible.” Lindsey giggles, because she knows that tying himself to a tree is within Jason’s wheelhouse of stupid.
Except the rope was wrapped too tight, too neatly, for him to have done it himself. And knotted at the back of the tree where he couldn’t have reached. Not to mention the duct tape on his mouth. It couldn’t have been an accident.
“Well, it wasn’t one of us because we were all here together,” Matt says. “And since the paramedics said your friend will be okay, why don’t we head into town, grab some breakfast, and then do something fun. Lindsey, are you in?”
“Definitely.” Her face shines with adoration as she nods, making me wonder exactly what the two of them were doing last night while Noah and I were sleeping. Not that it’s any of my business, but I’m curious.
“Cadie?” Matt directs the same question at me, and I snap back to reality.
Dad’s going to be expecting me at home—even though it is Rhea Chung’s morning to open the store and he doesn’t have to go in until two—but I’m not ready for this to be over yet. “I’m in.”
“This is it.” I lean between the front bucket seats, between Noah and Matt, and point to my house. Noah parks the Cougar in our empty driveway—strange, considering the early hour—and they all follow me to the front door, including Molly, who pauses to squat on the lawn. Her back half practically disappears in the embarrassing grass. Viewed through the eyes of a pair of well-off strangers, yesterday’s shabbiness seems even worse. I notice the dirt around the doorknob we touch every day. How the bottom of one of the wooden roof supports has broken off. One of Uncle Eddie’s cigarette butts, smashed out among the overgrown hibiscus shrubs, glares at me like neon. I don’t even know if Matt and Noah see these things, but I can’t unnotice them, and I wonder if they think of me as some kind of white-trash girl.
Inside is better. I vacuumed a couple of days ago, there are no dirty dishes in the sink, and the door to the laundry room is closed, so they can’t see the mountain of clothes on top of the dryer. I find a sticky note on the refrigerator door from my dad, telling me he took Daniel Boone—it makes me smile that he actually wrote Daniel Boone instead of Danny—to the IHOP up in Lake City for pancakes and that I should enjoy my day off. Not sure what happened to make Dad’s attitude do a one-eighty, but I’m not questioning it.
Matt and Lindsey hang out in the
living room, looking at the collection of artwork hanging above the couch. Mom dabbled in photography, so there are some black-and-whites of me and of Dad, and even one when my brother was learning to crawl and she was getting too sick to take pictures. There’s my first painting of a trio of red and yellow tulips, and a scribble Danny made with chunky crayons before he could talk. And a framed Charley Harper print of an opossum mother carrying her babies on her back that’s actually a page from an old calendar. I think possums are satanic fur-covered skeletons, but my mom thought they were crazy adorable.
Noah follows me into my room.
“So this is where the magic happens, huh?” The ordinarily normal-size space seems so small around him as he sits on the edge of my bed, unbothered that it’s a rumpled mess of sheets and quilt. I don’t even remember the last time I made it. And there hasn’t been a guy in my room since Justin.
“If by magic you mean sewing and collecting names of places I’d like to visit before I die”—I open my closet door and rummage around on the floor for my favorite cutoffs and through the hangers for a crochet and cotton tank top that used to belong to my mom; I’ve always been a little afraid I’ll ruin it if I wear it, but I want Noah to see it—“then yes, this is the most magical place on earth.”
He removes the redheaded pin from New York City on my someday map. “Nothing wrong with having a dream, Cadie.”
“Yeah? What’s yours?”
“Not sure yet,” he says. “I mean, I wanted to go to college but I’ve accomplished that, so now I have to figure out what’s next. I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind being a park ranger.”
“I’ve never really wanted to go to college, but I’m not going to marry my high school boyfriend, have kids before I’m even old enough to drink, and never leave High Springs, either.”
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” he says, pushing the pin into the map all the way out in Montana. I wonder if there’s any significance to the placement, but before I can ask, Noah speaks again. “You’ll find the in-between.”