by Alex Flinn
“Well, just this one annoying girl. But surely she won’t be there a second time.”
“Why are you leaving so early?” Meredith tilted her head back to survey the sky. “I thought you and Ruthie were staying for August.”
Spider shrugged. “I know. But my mom wants to look at colleges in New York that have good film schools. But mostly, I thought it would be nice to leave Ruthie some time to get to know Janet without me underfoot. I’m coming back for Harmon’s family barbecue.”
“That’s so cool. I mean, about Ruthie. Well, the barbecue too.” But Meredith looked sad.
“I know, right?” Britta stood and fairly skipped to the edge. “Hello, world!”
They all laughed, but it was beautiful with the summer sun and light breeze and four friends, real friends.
A cell phone buzzed. Britta’s. “Your phone,” Spider called to her.
“Guess there’s reception here.” Britta ran back to check.
“Just ignore it,” Spider said.
“That’s weird. It’s Rick.”
“Your mom’s pervy boyfriend?” Kate said. “I’d ignore it.”
“What if something happened to my mom?” Britta clicked to answer. “Hello?”
She paused, a weird look on her face. After a moment, she hung up, looking rattled.
“What was it?” Spider hoisted herself up. “Is everything okay? Britta? Is your mom okay?” Britta looked really freaked out.
“It was a pocket call,” Britta said. “He was with a woman. Like with a woman.”
“Your mother?” Meredith asked.
“Not unless my mom changed her name to Caitlin.”
Britta’s phone buzzed again. She started to pick up it. “It’s him again.”
“No, don’t,” Meredith said. “Let it take a message. For evidence.”
“Good idea.” Britta stuck the phone into her backpack. “But what do I do now?”
Spider shook her head. “Report the sleazeball.”
“She’ll feel so bad,” Britta said.
“She probably sort of knows,” Kate said.
“Maybe,” Britta said. “I’m not going to think about it right now. I’m not even going to listen to it. It’s too beautiful here.”
“Good idea.” Meredith patted Britta’s shoulder.
“Let’s climb the tower.” Spider stretched her legs. She could do this. It wouldn’t be that hard, at least no harder than you’d think climbing six flights of steep stairs over sheer rock when you’ve already walked over a mile uphill would be. She could rest tomorrow—and all of August.
Eventually, they made it.
“Wow, it’s like flying.” Britta held her hand up, as if testing the breeze.
“It’s so blue,” Kate said.
“Thank you for bringing us here,” Meredith said to Spider.
“Yeah, we definitely have to do all of them,” Britta said. “Even if it takes twenty years.”
They stood there a long time, staring at the mountains below, the clouds all around them, not really wanting to come down, not really wanting the day or the month to end.
71
Kate
THE TOWN OF Hadley was, Kate thought, identical to every other sweet little town around here, identical welcome sign, town hall, post office, white-steepled church, like the Christmas village at her grandmother’s house. But as Kate drove through, Britta yelled, “Look!”
Ahead, above them, painted on whitewashed slats with space between for the sky to show through, was a poem:
I took the Road
Less Traveled
By
And That Made
All the Difference
“Robert Frost,” Meredith said.
“It’s just there,” Britta said. “Speaking to us.”
“And to hundreds of other people.” But Kate pulled over. Britta would want to photograph the moment and memorialize it, probably post on some kind of social media.
“It’s like a prophecy,” Kate said, realizing it was. She would take the road less traveled, not the road of her parents, grandparents, and every one of her classmates at Bradley Prep. Her own road. She was already on it. Would it make all the difference?
“So we have to get a picture.” Britta opened her door. “And find someone to take a picture of all of us under it. And then ask them where Stewart’s is so we can get ice cream.”
“What happened to your diet?” Spider asked.
Britta took out her phone, glaring at Spider. “A, don’t fat-shame me.”
“I wasn’t. You just said—”
“And B, where am I supposed to get mint cookie crumble in Miami? I have to have it while I still can.”
Spider had no answer, so she followed Britta, though Kate could tell from her stiff gait that she was barely able to walk now. Kate had, at first, seen Spider as a fussbudget. She now realized she was a fighter.
Kate wanted to be a fighter. She got out too, to take a picture. She wanted to remember these girls, this moment, because she was pretty sure this was the month her life changed forever. But she couldn’t keep up with Britta, who hopped toward the sign quick as a rabbit. Then, suddenly, Britta tripped and face-planted on the pavement.
“Britta!” Spider lurched toward her. Meredith followed.
Britta didn’t move.
72
Meredith
Essay topic: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to future success. Recount a time when you experienced a challenge, setback, or failure. What did you learn?
HEAD INJURY.
Headinjuryheadinjuryheadinjuryheadinjuryheadinjuryheadinjuryheadinjuryheadinjury.
She was just lying there, eyes slightly open. But there was nothing behind them.
“Britta?” Spider’s voice sounded like it was coming through water.
Nothing.
“Britta!” Meredith got down next to Britta and grabbed her wrist. There was a pulse.
Freshman year, when Meredith had still thought she wanted to be a doctor, she’d joined HOSA, the club for students interested in health professions. It hadn’t gone well. She tried to remember what they’d said to do for a head injury. “Someone call 911,” she told Spider and Kate.
Should she check Britta’s airway? She wasn’t choking, but Meredith guessed she might have been chewing gum. Meredith turned her over gingerly and checked. Nothing. She was breathing, which meant she didn’t need mouth-to-mouth. But why wouldn’t she blink? “Britta?”
“Maybe put something under her head?” Spider’s voice was shaking.
“Yes!” Elevate the head, but don’t move her. “Good. Can you . . . ?” But Spider looked rattled. Meredith decided to run to the car. Kate was on the phone, and Meredith grabbed Harmon’s hoodie off the back seat. She ran back and wadded it up under Britta’s head.
“They’re coming!” Kate said. “Is she okay?”
Meredith didn’t know. It was weird, how her eyes were still partly open. But she said, “I think so. God, I hope so.” What would she do if something happened to Britta? What would she tell Britta’s mother, who thought she was safe at some Girl Scout camp in North Florida?
This had been a terrible idea.
“She’s still not moving?” Spider leaned closer. “Britta!”
A distant siren’s wail broke through the perfect summer day.
“It’ll be okay,” Meredith said. “It has to be!”
“It has to be,” Spider echoed.
Meredith spotted Britta’s phone a few feet away, on the ground, still open to Instagram. She crawled over and grabbed it. She might need it if she had to call Britta’s mother, which it seemed like she might have to. Oh boy. The siren came closer. Thank God!
Then it was there. Two paramedics rushed forward.
73
Britta
WHERE THE . . . ?
The last thing Britta remembered was a poem. “I took the road less traveled by.” Then her ankle twisting as her toe met a roc
k.
Now she was lying on a bed with someone over her. A stranger. Her head felt foggy. It dimly occurred to her that she was in a truck . . . was she being kidnapped? No. It was too comfortable. People were speaking in soft voices, as if they were coming through a wall.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard a girl’s voice, saying, “Is . . . coming out . . . ?” But in pieces, like a phone breaking up. The voice was familiar, though.
“Who is that?” she said. But she didn’t think they could hear her, these weird, helpful kidnappers. “Who . . . ?”
“Please . . . Britta . . . okay?”
“Meredith . . . is it . . . ?” Britta could barely hear her own voice.
“She’s awake.” A woman’s voice, a stranger. Louder. “Britta? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
Oh, shit. She was in an ambulance. Were they going to close the doors and keep her back here? Would they take her to a hospital? Would they tell her mother? It was all sort of coming back to her now, the hike, Meredith, Spider, and Kate.
She’d hiked uphill all day and then fell on a stupid pebble on the road. It was Little Women all over again. Shit. She heard the word hospital.
“Can I ride with her?” a voice was saying through the cotton stuffed in Britta’s head.
“Only family.”
“Oh, I’m her sister,” the voice said.
Wait, what? Foggy as Britta was, she was pretty sure she didn’t have a sister. Did she? But someone was sitting beside her, squeezing her hand. She could barely make out a “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt.
“Are you okay?” Spider. But her voice sounded weird. Britta couldn’t really pay attention. She closed her eyes. “Is she going to be okay?” Spider asked.
Britta heard something about a concussion. They started moving. She tried to open her eyes, tried to speak. She had something she wanted to tell Spider. What was it?
“Spider?” She could barely hear her own voice.
But a second later, Spider whispered back. “Yeah?” Her voice broke.
Britta whispered, “I told you I fall all the time.”
Silence. Then, a giggle. Maybe it wasn’t Spider. Spider never giggled. Who was it then?
Then, “You did what Theodore Roosevelt said. You failed while daring greatly.”
Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah, that was Spider.
They were on the road awhile, and the world became more real. That was good. Britta was pretty sure she was flaky enough without brain damage.
“What happened?” she asked Spider.
“You just . . . fell. Boom!” Spider mimed it. “And then you were lying there. Meredith tried to revive you, but . . . nothing.”
Spider sounded normal now, but Britta remembered her weird voice before. “Were you, like, crying?”
“I thought you were dead! Or dying, at least. Would you want me not to be upset?”
It was true. If Meredith couldn’t figure out how to fix Britta, things must have looked pretty grim. “No, it’s just c—” Britta started to say cute then pictured herself getting another head injury if Spider punched her. “Sweet that you were so concerned.”
“You really looked dead,” Spider said.
At the hospital in Glens Falls, they put her in a room to await a CT scan. Meredith and Kate had followed them there.
“I, um, had to call your mother.” Meredith handed Britta her phone. “They needed permission to treat you.”
Britta had recovered enough to swear. “What did she say?”
“Well, I told her I was a friend from school, and I was sort of vague about where we were. But I’m guessing she’ll figure it out when she sees New York on the form they send.”
“Unless she’s too engrossed in Rick to notice.” Now that the emergency had passed, Britta realized her head hurt. A lot. She wasn’t sure if it was hitting it or worry.
“Rick’s not with her right now.” Kate said. “Remember?”
It was starting to come back, the pocket call on the mountain. The climb seemed far in the past. Had it really been that day?
“You’re going to have to tell her the truth at some point,” Kate added. “Secrets only keep for so long, and they eat you up inside.” She was talking about her father.
“Yeah, probably. My head just hurts so much. Don’t they have any Advil here?”
As if on cue, Britta’s phone buzzed. Mom. Britta looked around. “Anyone want to get it?”
No takers. Meredith said, “I’ll go see if there’s Advil.”
“You can play the injury card better if you answer now,” Kate said.
“And she’s, like, ten states away, so she can’t do much,” Spider added.
Good points. Britta answered. “Mommy?” She tried to make her voice sound weak, not difficult because she really felt that way.
“Britta, where are you? Where is Glens Falls? Were you human trafficked?”
Oh God. Britta hadn’t thought her mother would think that. But of course she’d go to the very worst-case scenario. Human traffickers didn’t call your mother.
But Britta didn’t say that. “No, I’m fine. At least, I think I’m fine. They’re doing a CT scan. I just . . .” She tried to think of a good lie to explain how she got to New York from North Florida. Field trip from the Girl Scout camp? She came up empty.
“I lied about where I was going,” she finally admitted. “I’ve been in New York . . . on vacation.”
There were times when Britta wished she had one of those stereotypical television Latina mothers who let forth a string of Spanish when they were angry. Britta didn’t speak or even understand much Spanish, so it would be easy to tune out. Unfortunately, Britta’s mother also didn’t speak much Spanish, not enough to come up with the eloquent stream of criticism that now issued from her throat. She let Britta know—in English—that she was the worst daughter in the world and it was a wonder she wasn’t at the bottom of a ditch somewhere. But Britta noticed that a recurring refrain was how worried she was.
“I know, Mom,” Britta said over and over. “I know it was stupid . . . No, I’m fine . . . I mean, my head hurts because I hit it, but . . .” She remembered what Kate had said about the injury card. They were looking at her with huge pity.
“Why did you do this?” her mother demanded.
“I’m sorry. I just had to get out of there. I couldn’t stand it with Rick.” She remembered the pocket call, the phone message still waiting for her, someone saying that the best defense was a good offense. Britta had always wondered what that meant. Was that what it meant? Should she throw Rick under the bus to get attention off herself? But she felt bad doing that. Maybe her mother deserved to know, but would she want Britta to tell her? “He’s just so gross, Mom. He bought me that bikini and kept asking when I was going to try it on.”
Silence. Britta’s head was pounding. Where was Meredith with that Advil? She’d almost died, and now, she couldn’t get Advil.
“You didn’t tell me he said that,” her mother said.
“I didn’t want to . . .” Britta tried to put the words together. “I wasn’t sure you’d take my side.” She remembered the story she’d told about the pond and realized it was true.
“You didn’t . . . ? How could you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just—”
“I think he’s seeing someone else,” her mother said.
He is. But Britta didn’t say that. She said, “I’m sorry. About everything.”
“Are you okay? I should come up and get you.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll be home . . .” She looked around at her friends, trying to remember how much longer they had. “The thirty-first. It would cost a lot to change it.”
“You’re sure?” Her mother seemed calmer now.
“Yeah. You can talk to Meredith. She’s, like, really responsible. Look at my yearbook, Meredith Daly. She’s president of everything. And I’ll send you my flight information.”
“You’re grounded the rest of
the summer,” her mother said.
“I know.” She already had no car and had to do online math.
“And other things. I’ll think of the things.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m fine. I’ll send a photo to prove it—of my friends and me.” She hoped she looked okay.
Finally, she got her mother to hang up. She looked up at the pitying faces of Spider, Kate, and Meredith.
“Wow, that sounded bad,” Kate said.
“Brutal,” Spider agreed.
“You know it was. I guess I shouldn’t have done that.”
Meredith smiled and handed her a cup of water. “It was worth it, though.”
Britta laughed. “Yeah, it was. I don’t suppose anyone got a shot of the poem?”
“You mean of you lying there under the poem, unconscious, while the ambulance came?” Spider said. “No.”
“We’ll just have to take one here, in the hospital,” Britta said.
They did, and Britta sent it, along with a photo a hiker had taken of them at the summit of Mount Hadley, four friends in the waning days of summer, looking forward, the whole world ahead of them. Britta knew she was in huge trouble. She probably wouldn’t drive until she was thirty. But, as Meredith said, it was worth it.
74
Spider
EXT. CABIN — NIGHT
The four girls plus Ruthie are gathered around an open fire. They are happy and laughing, but a somber air pervades the scene.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE it’s our last night,” Meredith said.
“I didn’t think I’d last this long with the bats and the owls.” Kate’s voice was high, imitating a southern belle, maybe Scarlett O’Hara, “And the company! My word, the company!”
“Yeah, this place gives a lousy Swedish massage,” Britta joked. “And no room service.”
Kate punched her in the shoulder.
Britta had suggested a final campfire with s’mores and songs. They’d planned it for two days after the big hike, to give Spider, and all of them, a chance to recover. Spider had invited Harmon and Janet, but they’d declined, saying it should be a housemates’ night. The last one. Spider shivered over the fire.
“I wrote a song about us, guys,” Britta announced. “But you can’t make fun of it.”