by Jenn Bennett
“I don’t feel sorry for you. I’m angry for you. I want to cut off your dad’s arms with rusty hedge clippers. I want to chainsaw his feet off. I want to—”
“Okay! I get it, I get it.” Jeez. It’s my dad, after all. Though, admittedly, I’m secretly pleased he’s indignant. “If anyone’s going to Texas Chainsaw Massacre him, it will be Joy.” And I think she’d be going for something other than his feet.
He’s quiet for a moment. “No one forced me to come on this trip. I wanted to. I was hoping . . .” He stops suddenly, groans, and shakes his head.
“What?” I say. “You were hoping what?”
He hesitates. “Don’t you ever miss us?”
His words are a jab to my ribs. I’m surprised I don’t fall out of my chair.
I want to scream, YES. I also just want to scream. How many nights did I lie awake in tears over Lennon? I wasn’t the one who caused our downfall. The Zorie and Lennon show was going strong until the stupid homecoming dance, and its ending can be easily outlined in four steps. Trust me. I’ve literally outlined it hundreds of times in my planner.
(1) On the final week of summer vacation, Lennon and I accidentally kissed on one of our late-night walks. And before you ask how a kiss can be accidental, let me just confirm that it can. Laughter plus wrestling over a book can lead to unexpected results. (2) We decide to conduct the Great Experiment, in which we tried to incorporate intense make-out sessions into our normal relationship without telling anyone, in case it didn’t work out, so that we could still salvage our friendship and save ourselves from gossip and meddling parents. Mainly one parent: my dad, who has always hated the Mackenzies. (3) A few weeks later, the experiment seemingly going great, we agreed to come out of the nonplatonic friendship closet and make our first public appearance as an actual boyfriend-girlfriend couple at homecoming. (4) He never showed. Never gave a reason. Didn’t answer my texts. Didn’t show up at school for several days. And that’s where we ended. Years of friendship. Weeks of more than friendship. Gone.
He ended us.
And next to my birth mother’s death, losing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure. Now he wants . . . what? What exactly does he want from me?
I stumble over my answer several times, starting and stopping, unsure of what to say, and end up sounding like a fool. “I—”
A cheerful server walks up to us holding a tray filled with coffee in insulated cups. Lennon and I each accept one while the server makes small talk. I’m grateful for the intrusion, but it doesn’t allow me enough time to formulate a response to Lennon’s question.
Of course I miss us. You don’t care about someone for years and then just decide to quit. Those feelings don’t disappear on command. Believe me, I’ve tried. But other intense emotions are tangled up with our old friendship. At least, on my end. And that makes it complicated and confusing.
I like things that make sense. Things that follow identifiable patterns. Problems with solutions. Nothing I feel about Lennon fits any of that. But how do I tell him this without a repeat of the homecoming dance happening? I don’t. That’s how. I already had my heart broken once. Never again.
And yet . . .
Hope is a terrible thing.
“No worries,” he says and stands. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Wait!” I tell him, jumping up to stop him as he’s walking away.
He swings around, and suddenly we’re closer than I intended.
I blow out a hard breath and stare between us. “Do you . . . um, maybe want to walk with me to the lodge store so I can get a bear-proof food storage thingy?”
A long moment stretches, and my pulse is going crazy. I scratch my arm through the sleeve of my jacket.
“All right,” he finally says, and I let out a sigh of relief.
All right, I repeat inside my head.
If I can’t have what I want, then maybe we can find a way back to when things were simpler. When we were just friends.
* * *
I end up getting a few things from the store: a bear canister, a pocket water filter, and a multitool gadget that has a tiny shovel. Lennon says I’ll need it for digging fire pits and cat holes. I’m not exactly sure what a cat hole is, though I have a bad feeling about it.
The walk back to the camp is mostly quiet but not entirely awkward. It’s still nippy, but the sun is burning away the fog, and according to Lennon, it should be a nice a day. I was too fixated on our breakfast conversation to utilize the Wi-Fi.
When we round a curve and enter our camp, Lennon says, “Hold up.”
My eyes follow his and spot the problem. Candy and the ranger we ran into last night are heading down the steps that lead into the girls’ tent. They turn and walk north, headed in the opposite direction. We wait for them to disappear into the trees before continuing.
“What do you think that’s about?” I ask.
“Don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. Listen.”
That’s when I hear Reagan. Her raspy voice carries, and she’s angry. We jog toward the tent cabin and rush into the middle of an argument.
“No, I won’t calm down,” Reagan’s telling Summer. “Do you understand how much trouble I’m going to be in when my mom finds out?”
Kendrick and Brett aren’t doing anything, so Lennon gets between the two girls. “What the hell is going on?”
“Everything’s ruined,” Reagan says, backing away from Summer to drop onto the sofa, head in her hands. “That’s what’s going on.”
“They found the wine,” Kendrick elaborates while Brett paces behind the sofa. “We’re being kicked out.”
“I thought you were going to go back for the wine last night,” I tell Brett.
A look of distress passes over Brett’s face. Instead of answering me, he groans and pounds a fist on the console table. “This is so ridiculous. They have their wine back. No harm, no foul. I don’t understand why they’re being such hard-asses.”
“Because you pissed on a yurt,” Reagan yells at him.
Umm . . . what?
“For the love of Christ,” Lennon mumbles, shaking his head slowly.
“I was drunk, okay?” Brett says before pleading to Reagan, “We both were.”
“You were out together last night?” I say, alarmed.
Reagan rubs her head roughly. “We drank the bottle Brett smuggled back.”
The one he stuck in his pants, I suppose.
“And we were going to go back together and get the other bottles, but . . .”
“But we were buzzed,” Brett says defensively to the group. “We forgot to take an empty backpack with us to carry the bottles. So we just took two and—”
“We planned to come back for the rest,” Reagan says. “We just . . . got distracted.”
This is not like Reagan. She’s not a big drinker. I’ve been to parties with her, including the party—when Brett kissed me—and she never drank. It affected her cross-country running times, and she was always training for the Olympics.
Guess things are different now.
“Were all of you out drinking?” I ask, wondering now if this could explain some of the noises last night that kept me up. I’m also irritated and hurt that I was left out. But I guess Lennon was, too.
“Don’t look at me,” Summer says. “Kendrick and I went to the sauna, and then I came back here and fell asleep.”
“Same,” Kendrick says.
“Does it matter?” Brett gripes, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re on vacation, and Reagan and I were just unwinding. It’s not like we’re criminals.”
“Technically, since you’re both underage . . . ,” Lennon says.
“And the destruction of property,” Kendrick adds, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You know, with the pissing on the tent.”
Brett sighs heavily. “Not my proudest moment, for sure. But what’s done is done.” He plops next to Reagan on the sofa and rubs his head. “This is all so stupid.”
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“Oh, I’ll agree with that,” Lennon says, voice dripping with contempt. He turns to Kendrick. “What exactly did Candy say?”
“That the compound could lose its license to serve alcohol if they knowingly let this kind of thing happen and didn’t take action. She said if it had just been the janitorial crew who found the bottles stashed in the garbage, they might have let it slide. But another camper reported it—I suppose it was the family inside the yurt.”
Oh. My. God. There was a family inside the yurt when Brett . . . ?
“It could have been the other campers that complained about noise in the woods at two in the morning,” Summer adds.
Reagan groans and rubs her temples.
“So, yeah. It looks bad for the compound,” Kendrick finishes. “And we have until noon to vacate the tents, or they’re calling the police.”
“My mom is going to murder me,” Reagan says.
“Maybe Candy won’t tell her,” Summer says, putting on an encouraging face.
“Don’t you get it?” Reagan says. “My parents don’t leave for Switzerland until tomorrow. That means if I come home tonight with my tail between my legs, I’m going to have to tell them why I’m back so early.”
No one says anything. A sense of doom falls over the tent. At least I wasn’t involved, so my mom won’t be mad. But I’m honestly devastated that all of this is suddenly over. I revised my summer blueprint to accommodate this trip. I don’t want to go home and face my dad and his cheating. And what about the star party? It’s not for four more days, so I can’t just take a bus to Condor Peak this afternoon. No one will be there.
If that weren’t enough, I’m also freaking that Reagan was out with Brett last night. Isn’t it kind of weird? They aren’t saying that anything happened between them, and maybe it didn’t. I try to remind myself that they’ve always been friends—just friends. And Reagan knows how I feel about him.
So why I am filled with unease?
Maybe it’s because Lennon and I were “just friends” once too, until we started sneaking out at night together.
“So it’s over?” Summer says. “We have to leave? No horseback riding or hiking?”
“You and I could pick up my car and drive out to my family’s cabin in Napa Valley,” Kendrick tells Summer quietly. “No one’s using it right now. At least we can salvage some of this vacation.” When he sees Reagan’s head turn, he says to her in apology, “I’d invite everyone, but it’s just a one-room cabin. It’s my parents’ getaway house. There’s not even room for people to sleep on the floor, sorry.”
“You guys! We’re being stupid,” Brett says, suddenly reinvigorated. “Why should we go home? Our plan was to hike to that hidden waterfall in King’s Forest, so let’s just do that. We’ll spend the rest of the week there.”
“Our plan was to spend a couple of nights at the waterfall,” Lennon points out. “That’s a lot different from six nights. We’d need more supplies if we were staying that long. Triple the food. And there aren’t showers and flush toilets out there. Do any of you even have the most basic of things, like toilet paper? I gave you a list of stuff we’d need, and you ignored it.”
“I didn’t!” Brett insists. “I passed it along to Reagan.”
“Then why don’t any of you have bear canisters or water filters? You think there’s a sink out there? You have to filter water from the river to drink.”
“I have a water filter,” Reagan says. “I didn’t think we’d need a million of them. And I bought those campers’ freeze-dried meal packets.” She looks at me for confirmation. I have four of them in my pack. “And Brett said we could just hang our food in the trees.”
“That’s ineffective,” Lennon says.
“Dude, it’s worked for centuries,” Brett argues. “You’re being paranoid.”
“Park rules clearly say no bear canister, no backcountry camping.”
“Whatever,” Brett says. “Stop sweating the details. It will be stupid fun!”
“You’re half right about that,” Lennon says.
Brett’s forehead wrinkles. “Huh?”
“There are canisters for rent in the lodge store,” I say quickly, before Brett and Lennon get in a fight. “And more freeze-dried food.”
“Are we even allowed up there now?” Summer asks. “Are we banned from the lodge?”
Reagan pushes up from the sofa. “Screw it. They gave us until noon. Let’s load up on supplies. Brett’s right. So our plans changed. Big deal. We’ll adapt. It will be way cooler out on our own anyway.”
“So we’re doing this?” Lennon says. “You want to spend a week in the backcountry?”
“Why not?” she says. “Better than going home. If Candy tells my parents, I’m grounded anyway. Might as well have fun while I can. I say let’s go for it. Who’s with me?”
One by one, everyone agrees. Even Lennon, though I don’t think he’s happy about it.
New plan: Don’t panic. Everything will be fine. It’s the same as it was, just a few extra days at the waterfall. I can just hike back here and catch my bus to Condor Peak when it’s time to leave. Right?
Reagan looks at me. “Zorie? You’re in, right? Because I don’t need you going home early to tattle, and for all of this to get back to my mom.”
I sort of want to punch her in the boobs.
Anxious thoughts bloom. Of camping in the woods. Of Reagan and Brett spending last night drinking together. Of my conversation with Lennon this morning. All of these things are giant question marks bouncing around in my head.
But when it comes down to it, I’m still left with one indisputable factor.
Luckily for Reagan, I don’t want to my face my parents right now either.
“I’m in,” I confirm.
Reagan smiles for the first time since we walked in here. “All right. We’re going camping in the backcountry. But first I’m going to take a shower and get breakfast. I need grease and yeast. I’ve got a wicked hangover.”
11
* * *
“Which way, my man?” Brett says to Lennon, adjusting his backpack at a crossroad. “There’s no sign.”
“That’s the literal definition of an unmarked trail,” Lennon says.
Brett laughs. “Oh, yeah. I guess you’re right. How did you even find this hidden waterfall, if the trail isn’t marked?”
“I read about it. The waterfall isn’t officially listed on park publications because there are bigger falls that are easier for the public to access from the main trails,” Lennon explains. “This one is inconvenient for the casual day-tripper. And when I originally found it, I was hiking from the opposite direction, so give me a second to find the southbound trail.”
It’s midafternoon. We waited until the last possible moment to leave, all of us loading up on sandwiches at the pavilion for lunch and filling up sport bottles with water. Then we had to hike back to Reagan’s car and drive a couple hours on scary, twisting mountain roads to get to a national park parking lot. From there, we began hiking marked trails toward the waterfall.
And hiking . . .
We’ve spent three hours on the trail now. I’ve never walked so much in my life. But that’s not my biggest worry. I’m starting to wonder how I’ll manage to hike back on my own to catch a bus for the star party later this week.
“This trail isn’t supposed to fork east,” Lennon mutters to himself, examining a GPS map on his phone.
“How are you even getting a signal?” I ask. I’ve checked my phone several times along the way to make sure my mom got my last text explaining not to worry if she didn’t hear from me for a few days. But nope. I might as well be holding a brick for all the good it’s doing me.
“GPS runs independently of cell service,” Lennon explains. “All my digital maps are saved on my phone. But this one is glitchy. Sometimes you can’t trust technology. Luckily, I have a backup.” He puts away his phone and digs out a small leather journal, its black cover bulging. Where my journals are neat a
nd slim, meticulously kept, his is . . . not. Removing an elastic band that keeps the pages closed, he opens it, and I spy a collection of things: folded paper maps, park brochures, and pages filled with Lennon’s distinctive block-letter handwriting and the occasional drawing—trees, wildflowers, trail signs, squirrels. I even catch a glimpse of what appears to be a rough anime-style sketch of Sunny and Mac.
I think of all the maps he drew when we were kids. And the map he made for me, sitting in the bottom of my drawer at home. And I feel a hard pang of nostalgia.
He’s changed in so many ways. But not in this.
This is the Lennon I used to know.
Lennon catches me looking at his journal and quickly removes a folded-up paper map before shutting the cover with a forceful slap.
Silly to feel insulted. What’s in there is none of my business. Not anymore.
He spreads the map over a large rock. Deciphering a tangle of topographic lines, he traces invisible paths with one finger. “Oh, wait. I understand now. Left. We go left.”
“How can you even make heads or tails of that?” Brett says. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as you were that a yurt was a urinal, Mr. I. P. Freely,” Lennon says, folding up the map and refiling it inside his journal.
“Low blow, man,” Brett says.
“I’m just saying, if you piss on my tent, there will be disembowelment.”
Brett grins. “I love how gruesome you are.”
“Turn left,” Lennon tells him in a calm voice, but his gaze is hard as steel. “We’ll be there in an hour.”
“We’re headed left, team,” Brett calls out cheerfully to the group, hands cupped around his mouth. He takes the lead with Reagan. Summer and Kendrick follow, and I lag behind with Lennon.
Even with the weight correctly distributed, my pack is heavy and keeps slipping farther down my back. It’s a killer on legs, a killer on feet. I’m so glad I didn’t get hiking boots like Reagan, because she’s already complaining about new-shoe blisters. Besides, I notice that Lennon is still wearing his black high-tops beneath ripped black jeans, so I’m thinking hiking boots are overkill.