by Siera Maley
“Look, I like you,” I finally blurted out. Chloe tripped over a root and nearly fell, and I attempted a feeble catch that only made things worse and sent us both sprawling to the ground.
“Whoa!” Dad called out behind us, and I heard him up his pace. Ahead of us, Deborah stopped walking, but I was too busy trying to push myself up off of a wide-eyed Chloe to see either of them until they were at our sides.
“Sorry, that was my fault,” I mumbled.
“I’m okay. We can keep going,” Chloe agreed, and shot me a sideways look. The four of us moved as a tight-knit group after that, which was absolutely painful, and I thought wryly that at least the day couldn’t get any more awkward.
We found our campsite not long after that and got the tent parts laid flat on the ground. Deborah moved toward me like she wanted to help me out with mine, but I grabbed Dad before she could reach me, so she mercifully went to work on her and Dad’s tent with Chloe’s help.
They finished first. Dad and I were kind of pathetic. Our tent fell over every which way before Deborah finally felt sorry enough for us to come help. As I watched her, I had to admit that she seemed like a pretty cool woman. If she were a teacher of mine rather than my dad’s girlfriend, I knew I’d like her. But as it was, I couldn’t help but have trouble warming to her, and this morning certainly hadn’t helped.
We spent a few hours by a nearby lake after that. Deborah knew how to fish, which wasn’t surprising, but she wanted to try and teach me and Chloe how to do it too. After giving us instructions, she set us up a decent distance from her and Dad, which I knew was her way of giving us time to talk. I didn’t appreciate it.
Chloe and I sat in silence for a long time while I half-assed a cast out into the water with an un-baited hook. I didn’t like the idea of catching fish. The catching part sounded fun, but I couldn’t get past the idea of some poor unsuspecting fish getting a hook in the mouth.
Chloe seemed to put some genuine effort into it, but I got the impression it was out of some combination of her usual “try everything once” philosophy and of her wanting something to focus on other than me, rather than out of a genuine urge to learn how to fish. For that half-hour or so that we spent sitting together without speaking, I jokingly thought about how easier this conversation would’ve been if one of us were a boy. Boys were used to initiating conversations.
She cleared her throat at last, and I nearly let out a sigh of relief when I realized she was actually going to speak.
“Sooo… this is awkward.”
I grimaced. “This whole trip is awkward.”
She wrinkled her nose and nodded her agreement. There was a pause. “…Do you think your dad and his girlfriend are going to do it in their tent?”
“Oh my god!” I screeched and started whacking her over and over on her shoulder while she shook with quiet laughter. “Why would you say that? Why would you put that into my head?”
“It broke the ice, didn’t it?” she countered, grinning at me when I finally gave her a reprieve. “It’s better than not talking.”
“That’s not for you to decide. Eww.” I shuddered and set my fishing pole down on the ground next to me.
“It’ll be okay,” she reassured me. “If we hear any shenanigans coming from their tent, we can fight back with some of our own.”
“You…” I opened and closed my mouth for a second, horrified, and then finished, “You need to be on some sort of medication.”
“Who’s worse: the crazy person or the person who likes the crazy person?”
“The crazy person who likes the person who’s crazy enough to like the crazy person,” I muttered, and she looked at me like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to kiss me.
For a moment, I thought she might do both, but then she arched an eyebrow, murmured, “Touché,” and then went right back to fishing.
Chapter Eight
Given that our fishing abilities were pretty abysmal, and given that I didn’t even like the taste of fish in the first place, there wasn’t much for me to eat come nighttime. Dad built a fire in a pit that came with the campsite, and I ate canned fruit, then roasted some marshmallows and had them with graham crackers. At one point, Chloe offered me part of a Hershey bar, then got a horrified look on her face and quickly withdrew her offer with a sympathetic shake of her head. I hid a grin as I took a bite of my chocolate-less s’more.
Dad told scary campfire stories and I pretended like they actually crept me out, all while Chloe cracked up and Deborah stared at Dad with the same expression I caught Chloe watching me with every now and then. I toyed with the idea of calling a truce with her at one point, but then Chloe took my hand and squeezed and my mind was elsewhere.
At last, we retreated to our tents to change clothes and go to bed. Chloe and I had a simple setup: two sleeping bags, side by side, with our feet by the door to the tent. Our pillows were cold from being exposed to the air while we’d eaten by the fire, but the longer I rested my head on mine, the warmer it became. As Dad and Deborah drifted off to sleep in their tent, the sound around us faded. Soon, we were left with just the crickets and each other, Chloe facing me with droopy eyelids and a light smile on her lips.
“I like the idea of falling asleep next to you,” she told me and burrowed deep into her sleeping bag like she was embarrassed, until I couldn’t see any part of her face below her eyes.
“Me too,” I said simply and reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. I hoped she couldn’t see my hand trembling. I felt way too nervous for someone with a crush I knew was mutual. My stomach sank when I remembered what made our situation less than perfect, and then I marveled at the fact that I’d so easily forgotten, even for just a few hours.
“We should make sleeping side by side our thing,” she told me, her voice muffled by her sleeping bag. “Like, forever.”
“I think they call that marriage,” I laughed, my voice a whisper.
“I’m okay with that,” she mumbled sleepily. Her eyes fluttered shut, and I brushed my thumb back and forth along her cheek, just watching her.
When she fell asleep, I rolled over, trying my best to do the same.
Except I couldn’t. Even with Chloe safe and sound beside me, I couldn’t close my eyes without encountering some horrible vision of her dying a terrible death. This past week, I’d been texting Robbie in situations like these, but my dad had confiscated my phone earlier today to prevent me from texting my way through our camping trip.
Eventually, I gave up on sleeping and moved to grab a blanket and a sweater. Then I left the tent.
I walked a few feet away, careful to be quiet, until I found a patch of grass near the fire pit, inside of which a small fire still crackled.
The ground looked soft there, so I laid the blanket out across the grass by firelight. Once I’d finished, I laid down on the blanket, hands behind my head, and let out a slow exhale as I stared up at the stars.
As if I hadn’t already dwelled on it enough, I thought about the past week and of the revelation that Chloe’s 16 wasn’t going to change with a large pit in my stomach. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I’d been walked through this breathing exercise before, back when I’d had panic attacks as a kid. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow and steady.
My heart rate slowed after a few minutes of this, and at last, I opened my eyes again, feeling calmer but not reassured. We were well into July now, which meant that Chloe’s late-August birthday was getting way too close for comfort. Even if I couldn’t save her, I had to figure out what I was going to do to help her, and quickly. Plus, there was the added matter of deciding what I was going to do about whatever was happening between us. I’d almost kissed her twice today, yet I didn’t feel comfortable calling her my girlfriend. Just the thought of taking that step with the knowledge of what was going to happen to her was painful, and now I felt silly for even entertaining the idea today.
I heard her voice before her footsteps, quiet and a litt
le groggy. “You’re beneath the stars. I’m sensing an existential crisis.”
I sat up and turned around to see Chloe standing just outside of our tent, one hand rubbing at an eye. “I’m sorry. I thought I was quiet enough,” I said.
“It’s okay. I wasn’t ever gonna get a good night’s sleep on the ground, anyway. Mind if I join you? I can pretend to find constellations with you.”
“I don’t know any constellations,” I told her, but moved aside to clear a space for her on the blanket. She sat down next to me, knees pulled up to her chest, and smiled.
“What brings you out here, then?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” I tilted my head back to look skyward again and let out a deep sigh. “I don’t think I like it out here.”
“Me either,” Chloe admitted. “Camping’s not my kind of adventure.” She paused, and then added, “What a day, huh? I can tell your dad’s happy you finally did this with him, though.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“You should spend more time with him,” said Chloe. “He’s your family.”
“We used to. We’d watch old movies together almost every night back when Mom first died. Just the two of us.”
“Ah. So he’s the culprit,” Chloe joked, leaning over slightly to bump my shoulder with hers.
“No, those movies were my idea,” I corrected. “I got really into them right after Mom. Before that it was cartoons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“Why?”
“Uh… because I was eleven and Sarah Michelle Gellar plus lesbians is a winning combination?”
She laughed. “No, why the movies?”
“I don’t know.” I shifted forward and then lay down again, shrugging my shoulders up at Chloe once I was comfortable. “I caught one on TV one day, I guess, and never looked back.”
“I think they’re boring,” she told me honestly, and joined me on her back a moment later.
I forced a laugh. “Yeah, I know.”
“Not enough special effects.”
“Well, I guess I figured it’d be nice to be taken back to the past. You know how when you read a book or watch a show and you get absorbed into it, and it’s like you’re in a different world? I like being taken back into the 40s, the 50s…”
“Not in the literal sense, I would imagine,” she deadpanned. “The rampant sexism and homophobia kind of makes it hard for me to romanticize the past like that.”
“No, I know. It’s not like that.” I struggled for the right words. “It’s just… I guess the more I absorb myself in the past, the less I have to think about the future, or the now. Things seemed… simpler back then. And it doesn’t hurt that some of the movies are actually really good.”
“Throwing yourself into the past to avoid the present and future. That sounds healthy.” She shot me a sardonic smile.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled. “We all have our issues. I just want to be happy. Ignoring things makes me happy. Ignorance is bliss, right?”
“I didn’t get the impression that that’s what you wanted,” she replied idly. “I thought you were more about not being unhappy.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Sure. If you want to be happy, it’s pretty simple: you do things that make you happy. If you don’t want to be unhappy, you’re cool with that safe, neutral, boring zone where nothing good or bad happens.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
“No, I don’t either, if it’s what you want. Staying safe in the laser tag corner, right?”
“I can literally feel the sarcasm,” I said, turning my head to raise an eyebrow at her. “What’s your big goal, then?”
“What, like a life goal?” she asked. I nodded, and she turned away, crinkling her nose as she thought. Finally, she said, “You first.”
“We’ve already established mine,” I reminded her. “To live a boring, uneventful life with as little pain as possible.”
“But I don’t think you think that’s what it is.” She grinned over at me. “If you could give yourself one life goal… like if you were on your deathbed and if you’d accomplished this, you’d be okay with dying… what would it be? Because I don’t think it’s living a painless life. If that’s your number one, that’s incredibly sad, and I refuse to believe that your thoughts on your own existence are that morbid. There has to be something you want more than that.”
She arched an eyebrow at me, almost challengingly, and I had to work hard not to smile back. “Okay. Do I have to be realistic?”
“Yes. No wishing you’d been able to fly,” she murmured. Her teasing look was gone and she seemed genuinely curious now.
I stared back at her, eyebrows furrowed, and thought back to a conversation I’d had with Robbie at least a dozen times now: Whether or not any of our decisions could make a difference in our lives. Whether or not life was all just predetermined and hopeless. Whether or not it was possible to control our own destinies. After Chloe’s near-drowning, it seemed more and more likely that that wasn’t the case.
I licked my lips before I replied, my voice quiet, “I think that if I knew, for a fact, that a decision I’d made had changed something… like, really changed it… for the better, I think I’d be okay with dying.”
Chloe’s eyebrows furrowed, her face just inches from mine. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I want to know that this isn’t all just meaningless. Like, we aren’t born with our whole lives already mapped out by some omniscient force that’s already predetermined everything we’ll ever say and do and every decision we’ll ever make. That idea terrifies me: that we’re all just ants under a magnifying glass and someone’s poking at us with a stick. Someone who already knows exactly what we’ll do and who we’ll be and when we’ll die. If I could do something that proves to me that isn’t the case, I think I’d be alright.”
“That’s a hard thing to prove. Probably even impossible.”
“Yeah. I know.”
She shifted slightly, tucking her hands under her cheek, and asked me, “Are you religious?”
“Not really. Are you?”
“I haven’t decided.”
I forced a laugh. “Doesn’t that mean you aren’t?”
“No, it means I haven’t picked one out. I guess I’m like… spiritual? I think there’s probably no heaven or hell. But we can’t be the peak of all intelligent life in the universe, because that would be really sad. People are stupid.” She let out a sigh, and then smiled at me. “Okay, anyway, I’ll go. Mine is simple: I don’t want any regrets.”
“That sounds like you,” I agreed, smiling back at her.
“Your mom told me about your grandfather while we were alone at the park last week.”
“She likes you a lot, you know. She told me after we got back. I told her I like you a lot too,” she joked.
We stared at each other for a moment, light smiles on our lips, and then I asked, “So what’s the plan? How do you die with no regrets?”
“You do lots of scary shit, all totally on impulse,” she said very matter-of-factly. I laughed loudly and then hastily covered my mouth, giving my dad and Deborah’s tent a furtive look. When I was sure I hadn’t woken them, I looked back to Chloe with a roll of my eyes.
“Seriously, though.”
“Okay.” She paused for a moment, chewing at her bottom lip, and then explained, “I think I turn off a lot of people. I say what I mean, I do what I like. I try not to waste my own time or anyone else’s. A lot of people don’t like that, but… I kind of see it as doing them a favor. And doing myself a favor. Did you know that one of the biggest regrets dying people have is that they let other people dictate how they lived their lives?”
“I didn’t,” I replied, even though the question was probably rhetorical.
“Like, they wasted their time doing what other people thought they should do instead of what they wanted to do. So… I figure if I basically say ‘screw everyone else’ and live for myself, I�
�m pretty likely to not have regrets. If I want something, I go after it, regardless of what anyone else thinks about me for it.”
“Two things,” I interrupted. “One: so am I just a conquest?”
“You’re a conquest. But you’re not just a conquest.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. I wasn’t even sure whether to be offended or not.
“It means you’re someone I’m interested in. But being a conquest is only a bad thing if the person chasing is only chasing just to chase, right? I’m chasing you, so you’re a conquest. But I’m not chasing you just to chase.”
She sighed. “I’m confusing myself. I think I said that correctly, though. Like… I want you. I’m not hiding that. But I’m not wanting you just to want something. As soon as we hung out and got ice cream that first day I knew you were someone I wanted to get to know. And back where I used to live, there were some girls I wanted to get to know and didn’t have the courage to talk to, and later I regretted it. This was supposed to be a fresh start, so I decided I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Does that make sense?” She looked a little concerned until I nodded.
“Yes.”
“I just… I shouldn’t have said you were a conquest, I meant that-”
“Chloe, I get it,” I laughed, reaching out to touch her arm. “It’s okay. I like that you’re like this: that you ramble and tell me everything you’re thinking, even if you regret some of the word choices afterward. It’s new.”
“New in like a refreshing sort of way?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“Okay.” She paused, seeming to recall something. “Wasn’t there a second thing you wanted to ask?”
“Oh yeah. Um…” I struggled to remember it for a moment. “Oh. I just thought all that stuff you said sounded kind of lonely for someone who thinks I close myself off from everyone else.”
“Putting what I want over what other people think shouldn’t result in my loneliness. That’s other people’s problems.”
“But if a lot of people have the same problem…”
“Look, I don’t want those people around anyway. I don’t need people in my life who don’t want to be around me because I won’t do or say what they think I should. I want people who like me for me. I’m okay with not being the most popular person in the world.”