by Jamie Kain
I take a long drink myself and then offer the bottle back to her. She takes another drink, tentative at first.
“It takes some getting used to, I know.”
She smiles then, barely. “It’s not terrible.”
Laurel has stripped down to a pale green crocheted bikini and stops beside us. “Coming in the water?”
“I will in a few,” I say.
Nicole shrugs. “I think I’m going to check out those rocks first,” she says, nodding at the opposite side of the cove, where rocks jut out of the water below a low cliff and a shallow cave.
“C’mon,” I say. “I’ll show you.”
I’m eager to get away from Laurel and the wary look I can see in her eyes. Even though we’ve never dated, never been a couple, I know she still feels a little possessive of me. Like she doesn’t want me but no one else is allowed to have me, either.
“Suit yourselves,” she says, then turns and walks to the water’s edge, where she pauses for a moment before jumping in.
Everyone is in the water by the time we make our way across the beach and over the rocky area to the cave. “When I was a kid and we came here, I used to pretend I was a caveman living in prehistoric times,” I say.
“How far back does this go?” she asks as we peer into the darkness.
“Not far. I come here and camp every once in a while. It’s so quiet out here at night.”
Just then, Pauly yells and does a cannonball into the water, and the girls screech at getting splashed.
“Not quiet now,” she says.
“When I heard you were invited, I figured I should come along to save you from the obnoxiousness.”
“Do I look like I need saving?”
“No.”
“What makes you think I would have even come along if you hadn’t been with them?”
I look over at her then to see if she’s serious, and she smiles, almost shyly, as if flirting is a thing she’s never done before.
“I haven’t seen your parents around,” I say. “Will they mind you being gone when they get back?”
Her expression goes tense. “No, they won’t mind.”
“Are you sure?”
I don’t want her dad getting pissed and not letting her come around us at all.
She sighs and sits down on the edge of the rocks near the water, her feet dangling. I sit down next to her.
“If I tell you something, can you keep it to yourself?”
“Sure.”
She’s quiet for long enough that I think maybe she’s not going to tell me after all. I watch her as she stares out at the kids in the lake, and finally she speaks.
“My parents are gone, and I don’t know when they’re coming back. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but…”
“But?”
“It’s really hard. There’s, like, no water in the house, and we’re running out of food, and we have no easy way to get to the store, and I just hate not being able to talk about it to anyone.”
“I thought you were going to call a plumber about the pipe.”
She shakes her head. “Not enough money to pay one. I sort of stopped the leak with a rag in a glass jar sealing off the pipe, and a bunch of duct tape holding it in place. But I have to re-do it every day.”
“I can help. I mean, maybe I can fix the water problem, or else I’ll know someone who can.”
“No, I can’t let anyone know we’re there alone.”
“We’ll make something up to cover for you.”
She sighs again. “I’m tired of lying to people, too.”
“I can take you to the store. I can borrow someone’s car, at least. Will that help?”
She looks at me, her brow furrowed, but she doesn’t look as stressed out. “Yeah, thanks.”
I wish we were here alone, so I could reach out and touch her. Maybe kiss her. Maybe more.
I definitely want to do more than kiss her. I’ve been thinking about it constantly since our swim in the Yuba River. Memories of her body, wet, glinting in the sun, moving so easily in the water, haunt me. I’m just not sure she’d ever want me to kiss her or touch her. And I mostly don’t want to scare her away. I want to keep her near, so I can get to know her better, so this can comfortably become something more.
“Where did your parents go?”
“I don’t know. My mom got mad and left, and my dad went to find her.”
“So you don’t know when he’s coming back?”
She shakes her head, her expression one I can’t read.
“Doesn’t he call you or anything?”
“Telephones aren’t really his thing.”
“Too convenient?”
“Something like that.” She picks up a stone and weighs it in the palm of her hands. “He wants to see that we can survive without his help.”
“Survive what?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“Like, Armageddon?”
She smiles at this, but her expression is somehow grim too. “Maybe.”
“Is your dad one of those survivalist types?”
“He prefers to be called a prepper.”
“A what?”
“You know, like, preparing for the worst—prepping. I guess the survivalist label has gotten too much negative press or something.”
“So that’s why you hunt, and live in the middle of nowhere?”
“You live in the middle of nowhere, too.”
“I live at a spiritual center my mother was one of the founding members of. They chose to buy land out here because it was beautiful and cheap and they thought it was conducive to spiritual reflection.” I say all this without quite meaning to sound serious, but Nicole nods gravely, staring straight ahead.
“My dad’s plan is to turn the property into a sort of off-the-grid fortress. He’s even going to build a bunker.”
“In case of nuclear war?”
“It could be used for any disaster.”
“Do you believe in all that doomsday stuff?”
She shrugs. “We all have to die somehow, right?”
“For most of us it’ll be when we’re old, gray, and lying in bed.”
“And the zombies climb through the window.”
I laugh and look over at her to see if she’s joking. She flashes a wry smile.
“So your dad has taught you how to survive in the wilderness? That’s pretty useful, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, it is, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. I feel pretty stupid with the house falling apart around me.”
“That house was falling down long before you got there, so you don’t have to take credit.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel all better.”
“I’m kind of handy with a hammer and nails, if you’d like some help doing repairs.”
She glanced over at me, her expression wary. “Why would you want to help?”
“Why not?”
She says nothing to that.
“You know, I could use an extra pair of hands at my tree house for a few things, too. Maybe we could do a work trade.”
“Maybe.”
“How about I come over tomorrow and see what you’re dealing with?”
She shrugs. “If you want to.”
I look out at the lake, where the others are splashing each other, yelling and laughing, in some kind of boys-against-girls game. As if she can sense being watched, Laurel looks up at us then, and something about her expression shifts. Her mouth is still smiling, but her eyes aren’t.
Nicole must have seen the same thing, because she asks, “Are you and Laurel, like, exes or something?”
“No. We’re just friends,” I say, unsure how to explain the whole relationship accurately.
“I get the feeling she doesn’t like me.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. She’s a little possessive of things that don’t belong to her, if that makes any sense.”
“So you’ve never, like, messed around with her or anything?”
“Oh god no. That would feel like messing around with my sister.” I actually get a little nauseous at the thought, but I don’t say so, for fear it’ll make me sound like a freak.
Everyone is attracted to Laurel. She’s like the mini version of my mother, only without the serious addictions.
“I know it doesn’t make much sense,” I continue. “But she’s the same when it comes to my mother. It’s like she wants my mom all to herself and gets annoyed whenever my mother wants to spend time with me.”
“Wow.”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. She grew up without a family, so maybe since I’m the closest thing she has to a brother, she’s afraid someone will steal me away? Same deal with her possessiveness over my mom.”
“You feel like swimming yet?” she says.
I don’t. I want to kiss her, to show her that Laurel’s weird possessiveness doesn’t make any difference, but I know it’s not the right time, not the right setting.
So I take her hand. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get wet.”
Thirteen
WOLF
I show up the next day at the farmhouse, where it’s still and quiet in the early morning. Only birdsong can be heard from the nearby trees. I’ve tried on the walk over to imagine what it must be like to live here alone, for two teenage girls. When no one was here, over the years, I’ve poked around this place, just curious. It was a nice house once, but it hasn’t been cared for in decades.
I knock on the front door and wait. A minute later, Izzy opens the door and gazes sullenly at me. “What do you want?”
“I came to see Nicole. Is she around?”
“I don’t know,” she says, and closes the door in my face.
I wander around the side yard to the back and spot Nicole carrying a bucket of water across the field from the woods, so I go over and relieve her of it.
“Thanks,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“I said I’d come help out, remember?”
“Oh god, that’s nice of you, but there’s really nothing to be done other than maybe burn the place down and start over.”
“Careful what you wish for,” I say, nodding at the smoke on the horizon. The winds are blowing away from us again today, thankfully, so we don’t have to breathe it in, but reminders of the summer fires are never far away.
“Hey, you know,” I continue, “if you don’t feel like sticking around here today, we could head over to my tree house and you could help me with a few things there. I need to sand the floors and a couple of other spots before I start painting.”
“This was all just a way for you to get free labor, right?”
“Pretty much.”
She smiles and shrugs. “Okay. It’ll be nice to get away from here. My sister’s in a mood.”
As we walk through the woods she tells me about their hitchhiking trip to town for pizza.
“You should have let me know. I can always borrow my mom’s car and give you a ride, you know.”
“Thanks. I guess it was good at least this time to do something with Izzy, just the two of us. She’s not handling things very well.”
“So who picked you up on the road?”
“A nice family in a minivan. We got lucky, and I knew it, so I wasted twenty dollars for us to take a cab back home, since it was dark by then.”
We reach the tree house and she stops to stare up at it.
“Here we are. Home sweet home,” I say.
“I guess I was so surprised to see you here before, I didn’t really notice how pretty this place is. I mean, it’s weird but beautiful, you know?”
I smile. “You’re the first person who’s seen it, far as I know.”
“Really?”
“I never intended to show anyone this place,” I say.
She turns and gives me a look. “Why not?”
“I wanted to be alone.”
“You want to live out here by yourself and never see anyone?”
“If I want to see someone, I’ll go visit them.”
“Oh, so you don’t want visitors.”
“No.”
“Does that mean I can’t come visit?”
“I showed you the place, right?”
“Not really. I found you here by accident, remember?” She crosses her arms over her chest and turns back to the tree house, regarding it as if it’s a work of art in a museum.
“I brought you here today on purpose.”
“For free labor.”
“It’s actually a labor trade,” I counter. “But you can come visit any time,” I say. “You’re the one exception to my rule.”
She smiles a little, and I realize how rare it is to see her smile. She has a face like calm water, rarely revealing what’s happening beneath the surface.
I like that she doesn’t have an easy smile, because I feel as if I’m witnessing something rare and beautiful when it happens.
“I’m honored.”
“Can you keep my secret address a secret?”
“Of course.”
She climbs up the ladder to the entrance, and I follow her inside. I didn’t design this place to hold two people, didn’t imagine another person ever entering and filling the space I don’t occupy. The small room fills up with us, and I am aware of her closeness.
“What will you do out here all alone?” she asks as she peers out a window.
“Whatever I want.”
Right now, what I want to do is kiss her, but when I lean a bit closer I can see her body tense, like a deer about to bolt. I wonder again if she has ever been kissed—really kissed.
“It’s amazing,” she says. “Like something out of a storybook.”
“What is?”
“This tree house. Last time I was here, I was kind of distracted. I can’t believe you’ve built it all yourself by hand. I’m impressed.”
I suppose that was the point of bringing her here … to impress. But no. That’s not what I want. I just wanted to show her a piece of myself that has nothing to do with the village or my mother or Laurel or anyone else.
I want someone to know who I am, separate from all that. I want Nicole to be that someone.
She looks away, then looks back at me, and I am surprised when she leans in this time and places a tentative kiss on my lips, like a question.
I feel only the fluttering softness of her, but then she lingers, and I pull her closer until she is pressed against me. I slide one hand up into her hair and cup the warm base of her head as the kiss deepens, and slowly we are melting into each other.
It’s some kind of miracle, this kiss.
It goes on and on.
Every little molecule in my body wakes up, and the black fog lifts completely for the first time in recent memory. I am awake, fully here in this moment, alive.
Somehow, eventually, we stop kissing, and Nicole looks at me as if she is just as shocked as I am about this turn of events.
“Wow,” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
“We should do that again sometime.”
“Soon,” I say.
“Yeah, soon.”
“Like right now.”
And we do.
NICOLE
I’m no saint. I’ve thought about what it would be like to kiss a guy I like, to touch him, to lie pressed against someone.
I think about what it would be like to do all that with Wolf.
It keeps me awake at night.
But really kissing him is nothing like what I imagined.
I didn’t realize it would be impossibly soft and hard at the same time. I couldn’t have imagined how I would become electrified by it, dizzy and breathless and so lost in the moment that the rest of the world fades away. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever known. You have to be in the middle of it to understand.
But then he stops and pulls away, and mumbles an apology.
“I really didn’t bring you out here to make out,” he says.
“I know.”
“It’s just I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”
“I’m actually the one who kissed you,” I point out.
He smiles. “Right. I forgot. I kissed you back, though.”
“And then some.”
“I don’t want you to think I invited you into the woods alone just to perve on you.”
“Maybe I’m the one perving on you.”
He laughs. “You’re the opposite of a pervert.”
I shrug. “You haven’t seen what I can do with sandpaper.”
For the first time, our aloneness here feels illicit, and intoxicating.
I think of what my father would say, and then I push that knee-jerk habit away. It doesn’t matter what he would say. What matters is what I want to do, and I want to be here with Wolf right now. I want to stop thinking like a little brainwashed girl and start thinking like I’m my own person with my own mind.
“This floor doesn’t look like it needs sanding,” I say, running my hand along the smooth surface.
“Not here, but over there.” He nods at the other side of the little room.
I start to crawl across a green sleeping bag that’s spread out in the middle of the room, but halfway across I just sort of collapse, and there he is beside me.
“You don’t really want to sand the floor, do you?” I say, as I pull him to me.
I don’t know where this boldness has come from, but it’s not anything my father has taught me.
ISABEL
I’m not really sleeping, just lying in my room, half-awake, listening to the scratching sounds in the ceiling. Mice, I guess—or that’s what Nic says the sounds are. But then there is this crashing sound in the kitchen and I bolt upright, my heart pounding in my ears. I try to get totally quiet so I can listen.
I’ve thought about break-ins, out here in the middle of nowhere, with no one to call for help except my dumb sister. And now I think it’s really happening.
I scramble out of bed and tiptoe across the room when I hear no more noise downstairs. Then I peer out into the hallway, which is still and quiet. That’s when I hear a scuffling sound downstairs. I run on silent feet into Nic’s room and grab her shoulder.
“Nic!” I whisper as loud as I safely can.
“Mmm,” she mumbles.
Somehow she is dead asleep while there is a rapist or a meth addict or a killer downstairs looking for us. I grab her arm and shake her.