Unscripted

by Nicole Kronzer

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You listen to me. You take me seriously. You love me.”

  He shrugged.

  I pulled back and gave him a half smile. “And you gave up sneaking away in the woods with your gorgeous boyfriend to help out your dumb sister.”

  “You’re not dumb.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I punched his shoulder. “I just hope Jonas—”

  The door banged open. “Hi!” Jonas and his grin bounded into the cabin. Then he noticed me. “Aren’t you meeting that hot Boy Scout?”

  I cocked my head at Will. “Jonas knows about Jesse? And what time I’m meeting him?”

  Will had the decency to look chagrined.

  “No secrets between boyfriends.” Jonas laced his fingers with Will’s.

  “I’ll keep that in mind with my future secrets.” I smirked, slinging my backpack over my shoulders.

  “And with your future boyfriends.” Will smiled.

  I rolled my eyes, but smiled a little, too.

  I had not given myself a luxurious amount of time to get to the rock—our rock—according to Jesse’s note—so even though I ran a lot of the way, it was 11:35 by the time I arrived.

  Jesse wasn’t there.

  I clambered up onto the rock to try and see down the path, but like last time, the foliage was too thick. My stomach dropped. Had he already gone? Or was he not here yet? I filled my lungs with air. “Jesse!” I bellowed.

  Some birds chirped and flew out of their tree. I had a quarter of a thought about birds and threats and instinct and togetherness, but the rest of my thoughts were focused on something else.

  No Jesse.

  Putting my hands on my hips and staring at my boots, I bit my lip. Had he been waiting so long he started without me, thinking I wasn’t coming? Or did he change his mind and decide not to come at all and this was just the way it was going to be with me and boys forever? Disappointing?

  I’m not Catholic, but I read somewhere nuns are, statistically speaking, really happy. And they live super long lives. With other women. Caring for one another, not worrying about boys—well, except for Jesus. But—

  “Zelda?”

  My heart leapt. Jesse’s smiling face came clomping around the corner. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, offering his hand to help me off the rock. I started to decline it, then thought, You know, that’s an awfully good excuse to touch him. His grip was warm and sure around my hand, and I jumped to the ground.

  “Hi,” he said, still holding my hand.

  “Hi.” I returned his smile. After that leap, my heart was lodged somewhere in my throat. “I thought you’d left already,” I said, swallowing around my heartbeats. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Me, too. I’m sorry I’m late. My campers, the Webelos—” He shook his head, cutting himself off. “It’s not important. Well, it was important to them. But if you aren’t ten years old, it’s, like, super boring.”

  I laughed, watching worry lines appear and dance on his forehead and nose. “It’s okay. Let’s go,” I said.

  Alert lines replaced the worry ones. “You don’t have much time before you have to be back, I bet.” His hand twitched in mine.

  I shook my head and dropped his hand. “Rehearsal at one.”

  “Okay then.” He cinched up the straps on his backpack and pointed us down the opposite path from the one we took during the lunchtime hike. “That’s us. We’re looking to make sure the rock cairns are in place and spaced close enough so people don’t get nervous thinking they’ve lost the trail. You’ll be useful because you’ve never been here. So, look for the cairns.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this all-business Jesse and tried to match his tone. “Rock cairns. Piles of rocks, right?”

  He nodded. “Little stacks. They look human-made. If you start to feel like it’s been too long since you’ve seen one, tell me, and we’ll make more.”

  He peered over my shoulder and down the path, and my stomach dropped a little. Is that all I was? Useful because I hadn’t been on this hike? I knew I was overthinking this whole Jesse-liking-me thing. Will was just trying to make me feel better after all the crap with Ben and the team.

  Something must have shown on my face because Jesse touched my arm. “You okay?”

  I looked up at Jesse. His deep brown eyes were pools of concern.

  And then I decided. After all of the conversations with myself in my head surrounding Ben, the doubt, the interpreting, worrying about the past and the future—I didn’t want to do that anymore. I wanted my present back. Be in the moment, Jane Lloyd would say.

  Jane Lloyd would have also told me to Say yes, to Jesse’s question, but that didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Maybe Say yes was more complicated than I’d thought. Or maybe it was time I just focused on the first rule: Trust yourself.

  I opened my mouth and blurted out, “I like holding your hand. Can I do that?”

  His eyes lit up. “You can definitely do that. You have a hand preference?”

  I grinned, all relief. “Let me look.”

  He made a production of presenting both hands to me, front and back. I examined them with mock solemnity.

  “Left,” I proclaimed.

  He bowed a little and presented his left hand. I took it in my right.

  “Ready?” he asked, his grip firm.

  “Uh . . . one other thing.” I couldn’t meet his eye, but I had to know. “Did you ask me on this hike because you needed someone who hadn’t been on it, and I was the only person you could think of, or—”

  He tugged on my hand. I looked up at him.

  “I asked you because . . .” With his free hand, he rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted . . . to spend time with you. Just you. But I also know you like to be useful. And so . . .” he trailed off.

  I dropped my head to hide the pleased grin blooming on my face. We’d only seen each other a few times, and yet, it already felt like he knew me.

  “Is that okay?” he asked, his voice strained.

  I met his eyes, still beaming. “More than okay.”

  “Okay.” His smile was back. “Lead the way, new hiker.”

  We were quiet for a while. I concentrated on the feeling of holding his hand and of my hand being held by his. Apparently, he was doing the same thing.

  “You have soft hands,” he said. “Well, this one is anyway.”

  I laughed. “They both are,” I assured him. Then I thought about Curley in Of Mice and Men and how he keeps one hand gloved with Vaseline to keep it soft for his wife, but as I have this tendency to make literary references no one gets, I swallowed it down. Then I shook my head. I didn’t want to have to hide part of who I was, just to make sure someone liked me. Another thing I wasn’t going to do anymore. So, I took a deep breath. “Have you read Of Mice and Men—”

  “Oh yeah,” he cut in. “Who is that guy. Curley? I always thought that was so gross. The glove thing, right?”

  I stopped walking and nearly tackled him. “Yes!” I shouted, much too loud.

  He laughed and wrinkled his forehead at me, probably a little confused at my reaction.

  “I always thought it was gross, too,” I amended in a more normal volume.

  As we were stopped, I pulled his hand up and held it with both of mine so I could take a closer look. “Your hand, however, is not soft. Not super rough, but definitely not creepy-Curley-soft.”

  “It’s summers here,” he said, sliding his other thumb under his backpack strap. “My hands are much softer during the school year. All that paper-writin’.”

  “But here you get calluses from all that ax-swingin’,” I joked.

  He nodded, and his eyes crinkled when he grinned.

  The way he was looking at me made it hard for me to breathe suddenly, so I returned his hand to my side and pulled him forward. A few steps later, I called out, “Rock cairn!” and pointed at a small stack of flat rocks.

  For a quarter second, he looked like he had no idea what I was t
alking about, but he quickly recovered. “Good! Seem visible enough?”

  I nodded.

  “Great.” He cleared his throat. “There should be another at the next crossroads.”

  I nodded again, my heart beating a bass drum in my chest.

  “You know, I started to tell you this on our last hike, but the subject got changed,” Jesse said. “Ricky and Murph and I are from Minnesota, too. A bunch of people from our troop come here every summer.”

  I whacked him in the chest with my free hand. “Shut up! Where in Minnesota?” I asked.

  Laughing, he clutched his chest where I had whacked him. “St. Louis Park. It’s west of—”

  Now I pushed his shoulder. “I know where St. Louis Park is! How have we not talked about this yet? I live in South Minneapolis!”

  “Really?”

  “We’re practically neighbors,” I said, swinging our hands between us, “especially if one of us has a car.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, no.”

  He laughed. “Thank goodness I do then. I’d hate for us not to be neighbors.”

  I drew in a warm, buoyant breath. He had a car. We practically lived in the same town. I was trying hard not to look too far down the proverbial road, but . . .

  “My sister drove it in high school,” Jesse continued, “but she’s going to college in New York, so she doesn’t need it.”

  “Just an older sister?”

  He nodded. “Micky. For Michaela. But don’t ever call her that.”

  I smirked. Then I met his eye for a second. “Jesse and Micky. I like it.”

  “She’s at art school. People say she’s really good.” He shrugged. “She’s just my big sister who dyes her hair a different color every week and who always got paint everywhere growing up.” He smiled again, and I broke apart a little inside.

  I coughed, trying to pull it together. “Parents?”

  He nodded again. “Two moms. Micky and I are both adopted.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “I am, too, on one side. Will and I each have one bio parent and one adoptive parent.”

  Jesse nodded and then frowned. “How . . . how does that work?”

  “My biological father died before I was born.”

  Jesse raised an eyebrow.

  “After Mom got pregnant with me, before I was born,” I clarified.

  “Back firmly in the realm of science.” He smiled.

  The wind started to pick up, whooshing around in the treetops. “What about you?” I asked, “Know your biological parents?”

  Jesse shook his head. “Naw. And not interested. Parents are the people who raise you. Not the people who give you chromosomes.”

  “Totally. Sometimes I wonder about my biological father, but I love my dad. I can’t imagine a different one.”

  He made a sympathetic sound. “I feel that way now. But early on in high school, I suddenly got really sad about being adopted. Angry, for a while,” Jesse confessed. “My moms are white and Micky is biracial—African American and white, but she can pass for white. Or sort of ethnically ambiguous.” Jesse pulled a smooth, flat rock out of his pocket—probably one Ricky gave him—and moved it through his fingers. “It’s not always easy being a brown-skinned guy in Minnesota. Or in the Boy Scouts. And no one in my family could really understand.”

  I nodded.

  “But freshman year I had Mr. Grinage for English. He was the first black male teacher I’d ever had. He just—it was nice to have someone in my life who knew how it felt to face some of the same stuff I was facing. He helped me a lot. And our new Scout Master is black, and that’s been . . . awesome.” Jesse chuckled and repocketed the rock. “I can’t believe I just told you all that. After my moms and Micky, you are the fourth.”

  My stomach felt warm. “Thanks for making me the fourth,” I said.

  He gave me a half smile. “You’ve got some kind of witchcraft in you, Zelda . . . what’s your last name?”

  “It’s hyphenated—Mom and Dad’s last names together: Bailey-Cho.”

  “Bailey-Cho,” he repeated. “Zelda Bailey-Cho. I like it.”

  “So do I.”

  He smiled.

  My heart leapt into my throat again. “And you?” I swallowed.

  “Also hyphenated. Rose-Eerdmans.”

  “Jesse Rose-Eerdmans.”

  “Everyone thinks my middle name is Rose.”

  I giggled. “Poor middle school you . . .”

  “Yeah. Micky always said it shouldn’t matter that everyone thought I had a girl’s name as my middle name as,” he made finger quotes with one hand, “ ‘Girls are awesome and things associated with them shouldn’t be insulting to boys.’ ”

  I laughed, already liking this Micky Rose-Eerdmans.

  “But not all of the students at St. Louis Park Middle School had caught up with her progressive values, so I finally decided I had two choices: beat up everyone who laughed at me, or let it go.”

  “And you picked Elsa.”

  He chuckled. “I let it go . . . I like that you could already guess that.”

  We grinned at each other. But then he looked up over my shoulder, and his face fell.

  I whirled around, sure it was Ben.

  Relief flooded in. Just rocks and trees and the wind.

  “I don’t like the color of the sky,” Jesse said.

  I looked straight up. The heavens were suddenly a deep slate blue. “Where did that come from?”

  “Storms come up fast in the mountains.” He checked his watch. Then he peered at the sky again. “Trust me?”

  My “yes” lodged in my throat. “That’s a . . . bigger question than you probably mean it to be.” I knew Jesse wasn’t Ben, but— “It’s just, Ben—”

  Jesse’s eyes were all concern. “Oh. I—we need to take cover. And there’s a little alcove in some rocks, but it’s off the path. That’s all I mean. Will you follow me? You don’t have to. We can run back. We might make it. Probably make it even. It’s totally up to you.”

  I think it was because he offered me a choice. But that was the moment that I knew in my cells that being with Jesse felt totally different from being with Ben. Trust your partner. I was realizing I couldn’t trust every partner in every situation. But it felt right to trust Jesse.

  So, I did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  We skittered along a very narrow trail that Jesse told me was a deer path. After following it for only a minute or so, we emerged into a small clearing largely taken up by a porch-size rock as tall as me.

  “Over here,” Jesse said as the first drops of rain started to plop onto our backpacks. He offered me his hand, and I took it. We bushwhacked around to the far side of the rock, and it opened into a small cave with enough space for us to climb in with our packs out of the rain.

  He pulled me in after him and slipped out of his backpack. I copied his movements and slid in next to him, and then seconds later, sheets of rain poured out of the sky like water from a pitcher. It took my breath away.

  “Storms are nuts up here!” he yelled over the downpour, looping one arm around his knee.

  “Seems like it!” I yelled back. I pulled both of my knees up to my chest.

  Then lightning flashed across the sky and less than two seconds later, the thunder boomed. Instinctively, we leaned in to close the gap between us.

  “How long do storms normally last up here?” I called over the cacophony.

  His shoulder shrugged against mine. “Hard to say!”

  But before I had a chance to consider our new position in this raging storm, Jesse turned to face me. “Will you tell me about Ben?” he shouted/asked.

  I took in a deep breath.

  He furrowed his brow. “Look—I . . . I like you.”

  My heart ping-ponged in my chest.

  “But he’s—here. I see it when you consider whether or not to say something to me. Whether and how to hold my hand. And before we ran here—I asked you to trust me, and you said his name. The
re’s something about him in the way . . . I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward.” He offered me his hand. I took it in both of mine and laid it palm up. Slowly, I traced all the lines with my finger. His breath hitched.

  I wanted and didn’t want him to know. But I had told Jesse everything in my head so far today, and the hand-holding, the book jokes, even hesitating about trusting him—nothing had scared him away.

  “He’s a terrible person,” I finally shouted.

  Jesse nodded.

  “And I’ll tell you,” I continued loudly, still tracing his palm, “but you have to promise me something.”

  He nodded again.

  I took a breath and met his eyes. “Please don’t stop looking at me the way you look at me.”

  He smiled a little. “And how’s that?” he asked.

  “Like . . . Like I’m not broken.”

  He face dropped. “Did he break you?”

  I considered this. “I don’t know. A bit. Not entirely. He—” I shook my head. “Promise me?”

  He paused and adjusted his knees so he was facing me. “Can I first tell you why I like you?”

  I smiled slowly. “Because I’m the only girl at Boy Scout camp?”

  “No!” he groaned. “I was worried you’d think that. Do you think that?”

  I shrugged and smiled. The wind changed direction and now it was blowing into the cave. We dropped hands and backed up as far as we could. The rain licked our boots.

  “I started liking you when we ran into you hiking that first day,” he confessed. Now that we were deeper in the cave, we didn’t have to shout so loudly to be heard. “You’re funny. I’m sure you get that all the time, but it’s true.” He huffed out a laugh. “And your funny isn’t forced. I don’t see the gears working—it just—flows out of you. It’s not something you put on, it’s something that you are.”

  I bit my lips and blinked back some surprising tears.

  “And you’re pretty. But you said that thing when we were talking about hypothermia. Why don’t you just know this about yourself?”

  I chuckled and shook my head, eyes back on the ground. “I look a lot like my mom, and I like that.” I gestured to my hair, which was currently wound up in a bun under a scarf folded into a triangle. “We both have this insane mane of curls with a mind of their own.”