Rose called my name from where she stood by the pumps, but I didn’t answer right away. Then she called for me again.
I turned and pressed a smile on my face as I peered over the top of the Pathfinder. “What’s up?”
“Where’d you get those sunglasses?”
I shrugged. I knew the glasses were flashier than what I normally wore—they were these oversize black-and-gold wraparounds—but I’d found them in the break room at work a few days earlier and had no intention of returning them.
“Really, Ben?” she said.
I smiled wider. “Did you need something?”
“Could you get me an iced tea?”
“Yeah, sure.” I was happy to be useful. I darted across the pumps and made my way into the market.
An older woman with bleached hair and a septum piercing sat behind the counter watching television at roughly the same volume as a Learjet. The news was on and she was clearly riveted. From what I could gather, two inmates all the way down in Napa had escaped from the state mental hospital and were now on the run from the cops.
“They’d better catch those assholes,” the woman muttered as I set Rose’s iced tea on the counter in front of her.
“Hope so,” I said brightly, although deep down, I hoped the fugitives would get away with it because you know they never do.
“Hey!” the woman barked suddenly, rising out of her chair to yell at someone behind me. “You gotta be eighteen to look at those!”
Twisting to peer over my shoulder, it would be a lie to say I didn’t feel a stab of pleasure to spy Tomás cringing in embarrassment near the very back of the store. He had a cardboard box in his hands but I couldn’t see what was in it.
“You eighteen, kiddo?” the woman shouted.
Tomás dropped the box and bolted.
“What’s in there?” I asked her.
“Porn,” she said with a cackle. “But nasty stuff, like pregnant ladies.”
“Really?” This was fascinating, to think that’s what Tomás had been looking at. A part of me wanted to peek in the box myself and see what else was in there, but I resisted. I wasn’t eager to be humiliated.
When I got back outside, Rose wasn’t taking in the view or the fresh air or anything. She was staring at the TV screen mounted over the pump, which was showing the same news station as inside, while putting on sunscreen. She rubbed the lotion on her face and arms like a punishment, then checked herself for white spots in the Pathfinder’s side mirror. Satisfied, she stepped back and I handed her the iced tea.
“God, it’s hot out here,” I said because the sun was beating down on us.
“Mmm,” Rose said.
“I’m already sweating.”
Rose didn’t answer. Instead she leaned back against the car and stretched her arms above her head like a Y. She knew I liked the way her back arched when she did that. Feeling a quick pulse of desire, I reached out, put my arms around her waist, and pulled her to me. She was short. I was tall. Her head cupped beneath my chin.
She looked up at me, smiling a lazy smile. It was one I hadn’t seen in a while, and I met her gaze eagerly, welcoming bliss.
“That’s pretty stupid, don’t you think?” she said.
I tipped my head. “What are you talking about?”
Rose pointed behind me. I turned to look. There was a bumper sticker affixed to the back of the silver F-150 parked at the next pump over. Adorned with stars and stripes, the shiny sticker pronounced: FREEDOM ISN’T FREE.
“What’s stupid about it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I mean, I didn’t have to fight to come here. And I’m never going overseas to fight in some endless war. So for me freedom is free. Because, you know, I’m not the one paying.”
“Why, I guess that’s called a gift, Rose.”
“Well, it’s not one I asked for.”
I raised my eyebrows, more than a little taken aback. Up until that point, I’d always been able to overlook Rose’s occasional acts of entitlement for her other, better qualities. Who wouldn’t? Girls like Rose didn’t come around every day of the week, girls who were pretty and smart, and who just up and decided one day that you were going to be their boyfriend so that you didn’t have to do any deciding of your own.
But I mean, goddamn.
“Sounds like you’ve got a lot of things all figured out,” I said stiffly.
Rose wriggled around and kissed my cheek, her bright eyes fixed on mine. “Yup.”
—
Then it was time to get back on the road and head for the nearby campground. Mr. Howe hollered for everyone to get in their respective vehicles, and Rose started honking her horn like a wild lady. That got everyone to move their shit, even Tomás, who’d pretty much perfected the art of passive-aggressive slow walking. He didn’t dare look at me as he got in the car to sit beside his sister.
Archie and Dunc came sprinting around from the back of the market like a pair of dogs caught digging in the trash. Archie skidded up to the open Pathfinder door, took one look at me, and burst into red-faced laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I snapped. My mood had soured, thanks to the stupid bumper sticker thing. I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“You,” he said, still laughing. “You’re funny.”
“What’s funny about me? Did I say something funny?”
“It’s your sunglasses.”
I scowled. “What’s wrong with my sunglasses?”
“Two words,” he said, motioning for me to take the middle seat again. “Lady Gaga.”
I flipped him off, but Dunc, who’d been watching us, gave me a goofy grin and a thumbs-up before getting into Mr. Howe’s truck.
“I like your glasses, Ben!” he shouted. “I really do!”
At least someone did.
11.
WE SET UP our tents on the very edge of the Salmon River. It was decadent really, that first campsite, considering what we were in for. That night, we had wood and a fire ring and running water and toilets and pay showers—all things we’d sacrifice the minute we stepped foot on the mountain—not to mention, the campground was basically deserted, which meant we had the run of the place until morning.
Dusk approached. Tomás and the girls wandered down to the riverbank to watch Clay fish. The trout were jumping, sending ripples across the water in the reedy light, and Clay had a thing for fly-fishing; apparently he was some kind of prodigy at it, if you could be called a prodigy for being good at tying a bunch of feathers together and sticking a pole in the water. Dunc and Archie went off walking, and while everyone else was otherwise occupied, Mr. Howe and I sat together at a picnic table to go over the next day’s itinerary. I also asked him to check over my contour map and elevation profiles for what felt like the billionth time.
“You seem a little anxious,” Mr. Howe said.
I squirmed around on the wooden bench I was sitting on, hard enough to get a splinter to poke my ass through the back of my shorts. “It’s just, I’ve never actually been backpacking. Or overnight camping even.”
“You mean, at all? Ever?”
I shook my head.
“And you’re worried about what it’ll be like once we’re out there?”
“I’m worried I’ll do something wrong.”
Mr. Howe rubbed his beard before answering. “Ben, when have you ever done something wrong?”
I laughed, a strangled sound. “Oh, I can think of one or two times.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Mr. Howe picked up my notes and my maps, folding them all neatly before tucking them into my trail book. “You have nothing to worry about. Trust me, I’ve never seen anyone this prepared. You’re going to be fine. It would be hard not to.”
“But what if I’m not?”
“The
n I’ll help you. We’re not climbing Everest, here, kid. Okay?”
I nodded, and we sat there in silence, with darkness coming down and the soft hush of the river echoing off the canyon walls both above and behind us. It wasn’t long before the others returned, led by a swaggering Clay who’d managed to snag a decent catch of rainbow trout. He threw his rod down and gutted the fish right there on the table. Fallen scales glimmered in the moonlight.
We ate around the campfire, sprawled on blankets in the heavy warmth and flickering glow. When I finished my food, Mr. Howe urged me to get up in front of the group and explain what we were going to be doing over the next two days. I was nervous, but it turned out when I spoke, everyone listened (for the most part). That was cool, being seen as a voice of authority. I don’t know. I felt good at that point in the trip, is what I’m trying to say.
But see, that’s the thing about feeling good. It builds you up and makes you care and then you end up feeling like crap when someone or something tears the good thing down, which they inevitably do. That’s exactly what happened later that evening; Mr. Howe begged off to bed before the dishes were done and I was supposed to be the one in charge, keeping things under control and making sure people followed the rules and didn’t do anything stupid. Instead everyone promptly abandoned me, leaving me to clean up on my own while they snuck into the woods to get piss drunk and make asses of themselves.
For her part, Rose stayed with me, watching as I dried the dishes and sulked by the fire. But she didn’t want to. I could tell.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go hang out with everyone. Let’s do something.”
I glared at her while jabbing at the flames with a crooked marshmallow stick. “Do what exactly? Are you just dying to spend the evening hanging out with Duncan Strauss?”
“No.”
“Shelby Sawyer, then?”
“You wish.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t give a damn about Shelby Sawyer.”
I jabbed at the fire some more. “You don’t?”
“No. The only thing I care about is not sitting here like an asshole.”
Well, that was good news about Shelby, I supposed, but I hated the antagonism between us. In that moment, Rose and I were flint and steel, each going for the strike meant to spark the other. But I took a deep breath, jutted my chin toward the woods. “They’re the ones who’re assholes, you know. They all heard what Mr. Howe said. We’ve got to get up early tomorrow. He’s gonna be pissed if everyone gets trashed.”
Rose dug at the ground with heel of her shoe. “I’m pretty sure Mr. H. is well aware of the things high school students are capable of doing when their chaperone goes to sleep. He’s not an idiot.”
I set my jaw. “Fine. You go, then. I’m staying.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re different, Ben.” Rose leaned back as she said this, swaying out of the fire’s light, as if trying to get a better look at me.
“Different from what?” I asked.
“Whoever you were.”
“Maybe I am.” I agreed, but I wanted to tell Rose that she was the one who was different—that she’d been different ever since she’d come back from Peru, all distant and moody in ways I couldn’t help her with because she didn’t want my help—and also, that I really hated what she’d said at the gas station earlier and maybe that was the real reason we were sniping at each other. Because nothing in my life had ever been free. Not shelter or safety. Or even self-worth. All of those things, each of them, had come with a cost. And I was the one who’d paid.
Always.
But then Rose went and changed tack. She grew soft suddenly, running her hand down my back, across my thighs, kissing my lips, and whispering in my ear to screw the rest of them, that I was right; they were assholes and she wanted to be with me, just me. She also wanted to do it beneath the trees, she said with a grin. Right then. No one would see us or hear us, and anyway, who cared if they did?
I was less than inspired. Nothing felt good or right between us. But she knew what to do: how to touch me, nuzzle me, nip me, convince me. She could make up, if not always my mind, then the rest of me—the parts that were simple and untortured and impossible to ignore. So I did it; I let Rose take me by the hand and lead me from the campground into the woods, where empty beer cans littered the forest floor.
She brought me to a place far from the others, past the run of the river and the hum of the road. It was a spot where the white pines loomed above us. Their limbs tossed and dipped with wind, and Rose was right—those trees never bothered to notice as we tumbled at their feet, twined and gasping, naked and moonstruck.
After, we lay back in the needles and stared up at the heavens. Drowsy and drained, I longed to sleep-drift in the autumn air, right there, with my clothes half off and her head on my chest and my hand on her stomach. I felt closer to her than I had in a long time because sex did that. It made me feel like she loved me and I loved her back. But right then an airplane flew overhead, a slow flicker of lights pulsing across the stark night sky, and Rose turned and asked me what the saddest thing I’d ever read was.
I hesitated. She knew how I was with decisions, how I hated being wrong so much I rarely let myself be right. But after some thought, answers began spilling out of me, lots of them, one after the other, since I didn’t like to choose. First I mentioned Never Let Me Go, then The Book Thief and Watership Down, all of which broke my heart in different ways. Then I started in about Native Son and The Sandcastle Girls and The Bridge to Terabithia and that story about the girl in Japan with leukemia who makes all those paper cranes and then dies.
“Oh,” I said, “and Old Yeller. I bawled like crazy when I read that one in fourth grade. It made everyone in our class cry.”
“But you don’t cry,” Rose said.
“I can’t cry. That’s different. But I read Old Yeller before I got hurt.”
“Well, that book’s not sad anyway.”
“It’s about a boy who has to shoot his dog.”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“That’s what makes it so sad!”
Rose shrugged. A careless shiver of shadow and moonlit bone that made me ache. I could taste her on my lips yet felt like I barely knew her.
“Well, what do you think’s sad?” I asked.
“Being alive.”
“Oh, come on.”
“What do you want me to say? Death and loss aren’t sad. They’re all life is. But most people can’t deal with that, so they convince themselves of lies. Like the idea that faith can bring salvation. Or that war can deliver freedom. But those aren’t truths. They’re just fancy ways of dressing up death.”
“Freedom’s definitely not a lie,” I countered.
“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean it looks like what we’ve been told it does. Freedom can take different forms for different people.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Rose reached to touch my chest, fingers tapping against breastbone. “That’s because you’re sentimental. You believe everything means just what it’s supposed to.”
“I’m not sentimental,” I said, and this was a truth I was sure of. From an early age, my existence had been forged by loss and suffering, some of which was circumstance and most of which was my own damn fault. Trust me, there was nothing, not one thing, in my life to be sentimental about.
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But I think you want to be.”
“Okay.”
“Being stuck is sad, too, though. Maybe that’s the saddest thing of all.”
“Stuck how?”
She frowned. “I don’t know how to explain it. Just . . . stuck. Trapped in a place of your own making and not knowing how to chang
e.”
Pulling her close, I longed to share Rose’s point of view, to see things exactly the way that she saw them. But her words confused me. I knew what it was like to be trapped and how helpless a thing that could be—how it made trying to do anything feel pointless, until inertia was indistinguishable from active revolt. But in my mind, there was no comparison—death and loss were infinitely more frightening than being stuck somewhere I couldn’t get myself out of.
I tried explaining this to her, my rambling thoughts, but Rose rolled away from me, right as I was talking, as if she weren’t one bit interested in my thoughts on death or stuckness or sadness or anything. But she was listening. I know she was. She listened to every word I said that night, and in hindsight, it’s clear that this was the beginning of the end. In hindsight, it’s clear I should’ve known that fate, wild and inescapable, was readying itself to gallop out of the gates after us both.
But back then, on that warm October night, as I lay with my Rose after screwing her for what would be the very last time, beneath the fluttering trees and the glowing swell of the stars above, I swear to God, I had no idea.
DAY TWO
12.
LATER, MUCH LATER, after we’d drifted and dreamed in separate worlds, Rose and I found our way back to the campsite. Stumbling around with a flashlight, I took a quick head count, relieved to see that everyone else had returned safe, if not sober: Tomás, Shelby, and Clay were all in separate tents, while the rest lay sprawled in sleeping bags around the darkened fire ring. The wind blew, and pieces of ash fell softly on their hair like snow. We slid into our own tent. Our own sleeping bags. I held Rose in my arms.
We drifted again.
Then dawn came. Too soon. And it seemed Rose’s intuition about Mr. Howe’s awareness of what us teenagers could get up to without him was right. That went a long way in explaining why he got Archie and Dunc up at the crack of daybreak—well before anyone else—to start the fire and get breakfast going.
When I Am Through with You Page 5