At some point along the way, Dunc got a blister.
He started to complain.
Avery said she had some moleskin in her bag, so we stopped to let him take care of his foot.
Around this same time, Archie announced he had low blood sugar and needed to eat. I was doubtful—he’d been snacking the whole time we’d been walking, since breakfast, actually—but I didn’t argue. Something about Archie seemed off. His neck was pink, his eyes rimmed red, and he was breathing harder than anyone, like a winded dog. He collapsed his large body in the dirt next to Dunc and pulled out a protein bar.
Since it didn’t appear either of them planned on getting up any time soon, I asked the rest of the group if they wanted to go on ahead without us.
“You can even be the navigator,” I told Tomás in what I hoped was a patronizing tone.
He failed to take the bait, licking his lips and nodding like he was doing me a favor. “Sure. Where’re we going?”
I held the map out. “Hunters Camp. It’s not far at all. All you have to do is follow this trail. You’ll head west when you reach the junction. There’ll be a sign, so you can’t miss it. After that, the camp’s only a half mile or so farther on your left. You’ll pass over the creek to get there, but it should be low this time of year. That’s where we’re meeting up with Mr. Howe for lunch, but we’ve got plenty of time. He won’t be there for another hour or so, so don’t worry if you don’t see him. You’re still in the right place.”
Tomás looked around, pushing his dark hair from his eyes. “All right. So who’s coming with me?”
Dunc and Archie both smirked. I noticed this, then watched as a look passed between the two of them. It wasn’t a nice look, is what I’m trying to say, and for the first time I felt a twinge of sadness for Tomás. Not sympathy, really, or compassion.
Just sadness.
“Rose, you’ll go with your brother,” I offered. “Won’t you?”
She nodded, dropping my hand at precisely the same time Shelby announced that she’d go with Tomás, too. That didn’t make me feel so great, her being with Rose, but then Clay said he’d also go, and that was better. Inwardly, I prayed for Avery to stay behind so that I wouldn’t be left alone with dipshit city, and to my surprise, she did.
“Thanks,” I told her once the other four had continued on, vanishing around a steep bend in a flash of sunlight and dust.
Avery shrugged as if to say, I’m not doing this for you, which, you know, point taken. Then Archie started moaning again about how tired he was, and Dunc rubbed his bare feet like a baby. Avery turned and asked if I wanted to take a walk with her through the nearby woods while we waited for them to get motivated, just to get a feel for the terrain and take in the scenery. Just to do something.
I said sure. “Don’t go anywhere,” I told the other two sternly. “We’ll be right back.”
“Oh, we’re not going anywhere,” Dunc said, in a way that was more threat than promise, and as we left, I glanced over my shoulder to see Archie slide a bottle of what looked like Wild Turkey out of his backpack. The expression he wore was one of both guilt and blissful serenity.
—
We wandered into the trees. It felt nice to walk without purpose. To not be in charge or have my nose stuck in a map.
Avery was quiet as we hiked. I didn’t mind. She had a camera in hand, a Canon DSLR that I knew she’d borrowed from school—she couldn’t afford something expensive like that any more than I could. I watched as she focused the lens on a large bird that sat way up in the top of a cypress tree.
Shutter click.
“Hawk?” I ventured.
She turned. “Eagle. A golden one.”
I nodded. Shoved my hands in my pockets. “Hey, so what’re you going to be doing after graduation? You going to school anywhere?”
Avery squatted to take a picture of a glittering toadstool growing at the sappy base of a cedar tree. “Me? No. I’ll just be working for my dad next year. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why not? You’re smart. You do that theater stuff. You could get a scholarship for sure. Any school’d be lucky to have you.”
She stood again and there was that smile of hers. Easy as always. “Smart’s not all that matters.”
“I know,” I said.
“What about you and Rose?”
“Oh, Rose . . . She’ll be off at college, for sure. She’s in the middle of applications at the moment. She was going to do poli-sci but now she wants to study math.”
“I hear it’s the only field that’s honest.”
I glanced at Avery in surprise. “You’re right. That’s exactly what she says. How’d you know that?”
“She told me.”
“She told you?”
Avery caught my eye. “We’re lab partners, remember?”
I nodded. “Oh. Right. How’s that going?”
“Good. I really like Rose. I like her a lot.”
“I’m sure the feeling’s mutual,” I said, although I actually had no idea.
“What about you?” Avery asked. “Where will you be going?”
I tried out my own smile, one that felt neither easy nor honest. “Same place as you. Which would be nowhere.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, staying at home, working. That’s not the worst thing in the world. It’s gonna suck, though, when Rose dumps me for some rich frat guy during rush week or whatever.”
“You really think Rose is going to dump you?”
It jarred me to hear someone else say those words out loud, but the truth was, I did think that. Didn’t I? It would explain a lot. It made sense, too, that Rose would be looking ahead, at a life without me, especially given our recent distance and friction. But in response to Avery, I shrugged, noncommittal, as always. “Sometimes it feels like she’s destined for better things. But I get it. All I want is for her to be happy.”
Avery frowned. “That’s sad, Ben. Not that you might break up with your high school girlfriend, but that you think she’s better than you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You sort of did.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll live.” I cast a sideways glance at Avery. “It’s not just about the money, though, you know. My staying here.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“I can’t leave my mom.”
Her expression softened. “She’s not doing well, is she?”
“She’s . . . okay. Still sick a lot, though. In pain.”
“Pain?”
“Her back. She hurt it in the accident but it’s never healed right. Some nerve thing. Doctors can’t figure it out.”
Avery paused. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you do a lot for her. More than you should. It’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t about fair,” I said. “She’s my mom. She needs me. You’d do the same for yours.”
Avery didn’t answer.
My cheeks burned. “Shit, Ave. If she were here, I mean! That came out wrong.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “And I get what you’re saying about not being able to leave. Even if I got a scholarship, it’s not like I could go away to school. My dad’s business wouldn’t make it without me. Not with all his debt.”
I nodded, appreciating for the first time all the similarities in our lives. But a restlessness was building in my bones. It was time to turn around, to get back to the others.
Avery, however, had other ideas. She held her camera up.
“Take your sunglasses off, Ben,” she directed.
I took my sunglasses off.
“Now look at me.”
I looked at her.
“Smile.”
I smiled.
Click.
“How
’d it come out?” I asked.
“Blurry,” she said, staring down at the screen. “Shutter speed was too slow.”
“Oh.”
“I’m still learning how to work this thing. Let me take a few more.”
I nodded and stood where she instructed me to go, in front of a twisting oak tree, its branches adorned with sharp-edged leaves. Then she told me to move away from the tree, which I did. And then to take a step back, and I did that, too, although Avery squinted and crouched and moved around so much I started to wonder if she weren’t trying to figure out a way to take the photograph without actually having me in it. When she held the camera up at last, I didn’t bother trying to smile. I stood up tall in an effort to look worthy of a moment remembered.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Finally, I threw my hand over my face. “That should be enough, right?”
“You don’t like having your picture taken?”
“The birds have to be more interesting to look at than me.”
“I like looking at you,” Avery said.
Her words made me stare at the ground very intently. No, I didn’t like having my picture taken, but I also didn’t want Avery to see my face at the moment. That was a weird reaction, I know, considering she’d just said she liked looking at it.
The thing was, I liked that she’d said that.
A lot.
Avery seemed to understand this. Or else she was better with ambiguity than I was. Either way, in the silence that followed, she walked over to me, camera still in hand, and stood by my side, very close. But I didn’t dare look up from my staring.
My heart went after my ribs. I felt what Avery felt, of course—that breathless force draped between us, thick and heavy and undeniable. It was a force far greater than desire because it went both ways, that gravitational pull other people called pheromone heat or electricity or even magnetism. But as I stood there, just drip-drip-dripping with it, the whole thing felt more like time travel: a florid heat that had appeared spontaneously where moments ago there’d been none. To me, that said this force could only have come from the future—a cue not of anticipation, but of fate already foretold.
Still, I didn’t move or make one. When we were fifteen, Rose had been the one to kiss me first. She did it while I was working one afternoon, after prodding me into taking an unscheduled break when my manager was on a call. I snuck out the back of the store to be with her, and Rose didn’t ask my permission or anything. She simply pushed me against the exterior wall and launched herself at my mouth. We were in full view of the street and everything, but I let her do what she wanted and I’d followed her lead, using tongue when she used it and growing hard when she touched me through my jeans. Only Avery wasn’t Rose, I realized, which meant I had to make up my own damn mind for once.
Then again, if this was my destiny, I already had.
15.
LOOKING BACK, I can see nothing foreboding about what Avery and I did in the forest that day. It was an act of pure instinct. I have to believe that. I leaned to kiss her and she kissed me back. Then we kissed some more and groped and slid our clothes off and pulled each other to the ground. We were both thrillingly naked in the leaves as she opened her legs and I crawled between them.
Everything after was all that was needed, heat and friction followed by more of the same—her loose hair sliding like silk against my arm; my breath quickening into labored panting. The only moment of conscious thought came when Avery whispered in my ear not to finish inside her. I nodded vigorously. Rose had always let me, but I did what Avery asked and it was almost better like that, doing it right out in the open, all over her sunlit belly, where both of us could see.
I felt bad about it, though, almost immediately. “I’m sorry,” I said, swiping at her with my wadded-up boxers in an attempt to clean her off.
“Don’t be.” Avery took the boxers from me and did the cleaning herself. “But we should be getting back.”
She was right, of course. Scrambling to our feet, we did our best to straighten our clothes, smooth our hair, and dust ourselves off. Then we began the short hike back to the others, hustling in forced silence, making sure we weren’t touching. There was a bashful look on Avery’s face, and I desperately wanted to do right by her, to tell her I didn’t regret what we’d done.
For a moment that was true. If sex with Rose made me feel like she loved me, then in the brief afterglow of doing it with Avery I felt a little like I loved myself. Okay, I know that sounds bad or cocky or whatever, but I don’t mean it that way. I felt proud, I guess is what I’m trying to say. A little giddy, too.
But my giddiness was short-lived. Before I knew it, I regretted my actions. I more than regretted them. I hated myself. How stupid could I be? I had no reason to be disloyal to Rose. None. And yet . . .
And yet.
My gut churned with guilt. I didn’t understand myself or my choices—how I could be the person who’d done what I just did. How I could want something that made me miserable the instant I got it, when all I’d meant to do in the first place was walk around in the woods and kill time.
But lust is a curious thing, I guess.
It’s there,
until it’s
not.
—
My mood grew darker the farther we went. Avery wisely chose to ignore me, continuing to hum and bounce and snap photographs as we walked, both intent on capturing beauty and creating it, as if what we’d done didn’t have dire, life-curdling implications. As if it really didn’t matter that much to her in the first place.
I sulked more, a brittle sort of pity. However, all my oh-Lord-what-have-I-done sense of self-loathing managed to slip a few rungs down the priority ladder when we reached the clearing where we’d left Dunc and Archie and discovered they weren’t there. They weren’t anywhere.
So much for staying put.
“Well, shit.” I folded my arms and gazed through the trees. We were definitely in the right spot because Archie’s protein bar wrapper lay crumpled on the ground by my feet. I couldn’t resist pointing this out. “He’s such an asshole.”
Avery sighed. “They must’ve gone on ahead. Let’s keep going.”
We turned up the hillside and resumed our walking. A faint whistle of panic blew through me, a stubborn insistence that something’s not right, Ben, it’s just not, you screwed up and this is what you get, this is all your fault. But I tried not to get ahead of myself. We were only a half mile or so from the junction to Hunters Camp. It would’ve been hard to get lost. Although this was Dunc and Archie we were talking about. When it came to fucking up, no doubt they were capable of anything.
We left the canopied shade of the forest, stepping once again into the blinding sun. I pulled my weird sunglasses from my pocket and slid them on. The trail grew steep, taking us above the trees, and it wasn’t long before we’d reached a wide plateau with views of the valley we’d climbed out of. According to what I knew, there should’ve been a stream—Hunters Creek—running parallel to the path we were on. But a four-year drought meant no water, and the stream had dwindled to nothing but a boggy seeping, punctuated by a few puddles of mud and brown muck covered with algae and buzzing flies.
“This isn’t what the lake’s going to look like, is it?” Avery asked.
I shook my head. “Grizzly Lake is spring fed. Plus, there’s always, you know, the glacier.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think I’m not catching the sarcasm in your voice, Gibson.”
I laughed out loud in spite of myself. The look she gave me in return was pure mirth.
Avery pinched her nose while we walked. “Well, I’m glad this isn’t what we have to look forward to. Everything smells like farts.”
“Oh, wow,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re the on
ly girl I know besides Rose who talks about farts.”
Avery rolled her eyes. “Maybe you don’t know girls very well.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
“About Rose . . . ,” she began.
“No,” I said quickly. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not something that needs to be talked about.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged and nodded, turning to face forward again and walking faster, leaving me to watch her ass sway with each step. That was an activity far preferable to talking about Rose, although pretty soon it got me turned on again. Not in any dramatic, this-is-my-destiny way, like earlier; this was a normal, oversexed, depraved state of horniness. And you might think that would get me to forget my guilt—that lust and disgrace aren’t meant to coexist. But for me, in that moment, they did more than exist: They flourished and grew, fusing together into some sickening mass until everything inside of me was mixed up. Until I could no longer tell up from down, good from bad, or my chickens from their eggs.
Ahead of me, Avery stopped walking. Just out of the blue. In my addled state, I slammed into the back of her and tried mumbling a flustered apology—I sure as hell wasn’t going to explain why I hadn’t been paying attention. But she grabbed my arm and dropped to the ground, yanking me down beside her.
The weight of my bag made me tip forward onto my knees, scraping both and leaving me irritable. “What the hell?”
“Shhh!” she said. “I see them.”
I righted myself and crouched beside her. “See who?”
“Right there.” I followed Avery’s gaze. We’d reached the trail junction, which meant the steepest part of the climb was over. A marker clearly indicated that the trail to the left would lead to Hunters Camp and, in another four miles, Grizzly Falls—our final destination. The trail to the right, on the other hand, was lined with sheer granite and led to someplace called Papoose Lake.
There was no way anyone in our group could believe that Papoose Lake was where we were headed, and yet, when I lifted my glasses and squinted, sure enough, about a hundred yards down the granite trail were Archie and Dunc. Their backpacks were off, both propped up against a treacherous-looking rock wall, and the two of them lay flat on their stomachs, peering over the edge of the trail at something I couldn’t see.
When I Am Through with You Page 7