On the other side of the ridge was the trail to the peak, the one I’d told Archie about. I saw where it wound upward through the trees before vanishing in a mass of black clouds. To get there all I had to do was make the leap from where I stood to an equally precarious ledge on the opposite side of the waterfall. The gap was maybe two feet at most, but would have been terrifying even in good weather. One slip would send you tumbling into white water, down to the rocks below. And while I wanted—needed—the car keys, for all I knew, Archie already lay smashed at the bottom, his possessions—and mine—all lost for good.
I stood frozen in the gusting wind and driving rain and stared at where I needed to go. I couldn’t possibly do this and yet I had no choice.
I held my breath.
And leapt.
—
Landing on the other side, my feet skidded and slipped, throwing me forward onto my knees. I splayed my hands out with a yelp, managing to catch myself before spinning sideways off the rock face. I lay, trembling, before realizing that I’d made it. Alive. Pushing up with filthy, bleeding palms, I somehow got to my feet and started to run, slipping, limping steps that carried me up through the trees and toward the trail Rose had said to follow.
The rain came down harder the faster I tried to move, turning the earth to slurry beneath my feet. I flailed and slid. It was like running on ice, and I stumbled with each stride, falling over and over until I was covered with mud. It was in my nose, my ears, oozing from my shoes.
But I kept going, step by futile step, until the hairs rose on the back of my neck and the air crackled with ozone. My skin went taut, and the sky lit up with shattering brilliance while sending two simultaneous bolts of lightning to strike the ground right in front of me.
My shouting was drowned out by the earth-splitting crack of thunder that followed immediately after. I bolted straight into a forested thicket located just off the trail, diving beneath a canopy of dripping aspen trees and army-crawling through the mud, as low as I could, before wriggling on my belly into a makeshift shelter formed by a set of crisscrossing tree trunks that had collapsed against the hillside.
The pelting of rain echoed off the branches high above where I’d buried myself, but the dark spot I’d found was relatively dry, a decent waiting space. I wiped water from my eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. Only when I could see again, I found I wasn’t alone. Hunched mere inches from where I was, soaked and miserable—his eyes wide with fear, his back pressed into the soft dirt of the carved-out hollow—was Archie.
36.
“GIBBY,” HE SAID, and it was impossible for me to read his voice. Was he relieved to see me? Angry? Fearful? It didn’t matter. I hated him even as my teeth chattered and I trembled horribly with cold and wetness. My migraine, which had waned in the face of adrenaline and certain death, now swelled and pulsed its way toward a sickening crescendo unlike anything I had ever experienced.
More thunder crashed down on us. Shaking the ground and rattling the trees. It was as if hell itself had set up shop on that mountain, a deafening force capable of sparking images I never wanted to see again, shooting them straight into my field of vision—Marcus bellowing with his hands wrapped around my mother’s neck, his face bulging with fury; the righteous gleam in his eyes as he tore at her clothes, pinning her body with his, seeking to punish her with what was meant to be love; and me, cowering and helpless, forced to bear witness to it all.
Archie repeated my name and reached out to push my shoulder with his foot, pushing harder when I didn’t respond. I leaned forward with a groan to vomit between my legs. Then I did it again. And again after that. And then I couldn’t move. I just sat there, frozen, hands bleeding, knees bleeding, covered in mud and puke and drool and rage, and every nerve in my body was on fire.
“Shit,” breathed Archie. He didn’t touch me again. He just sat and watched me, something I begrudgingly appreciated since the worst thing people did when I fell ill was to try and shove food or water in my mouth or ask me a ton of questions about what they could do to help, when what I actually needed was absolute silence or, more precisely, the absence of all sensory input.
The migraine seemed to peak after I got sick, the way they often did, flaring then fading until I was able to collapse backward onto the ground and open my eyes without feeling like death.
“You okay?” Archie asked with a frown.
I didn’t answer. I had nothing to say to him.
“Those headaches of yours are pretty shitty.”
I still didn’t answer.
He lay back on his elbows. “So that’s how it’s going to be? Well, why the hell’d you come all the way up here if you weren’t gonna talk to me?”
I flipped him off.
Archie laughed. “You’re pissed, aren’t you? You’re pissed, but you’re not going to say it. That’s not how shit gets fixed, you know. That’s how you let life just keep pissing you off, day by goddamn day.”
“What do you know about fixing shit?” I snapped, turning to glare at him. “All you’ve done over the past few days is get people killed.”
“Maybe that’s all I need to know,” he said.
“You’re sick.”
“And you aren’t?”
“Rose is suffering because of you. She’s in pain.”
“Because of me?” Archie huffed. “You came up here on your own. You chose to climb that waterfall and dick around with me when you could have been saving that precious girl of yours.”
“Bullshit! You made me come up here! You stole the keys!”
“I didn’t make you do anything. You had the keys before we even started climbing. You could’ve left the campsite any time you wanted and been off this mountain by now.”
“But I promised Rose. I promised her I’d go with you.”
Archie wiped dirt from his hands. “You can’t seriously be that stupid. What’d you think would happen if you didn’t?”
“I’m not stupid,” I told him.
“Oh, yeah? What do you call it when you’re so desperate to make someone happy you end up becoming the thing that hurts them the most?”
“I’m not stupid,” I repeated.
“No,” he agreed. “You’re something worse.”
“What’s that?”
“Pathetic.”
—
I wish I could say Archie’s baiting and name-calling didn’t get to me. That I was able to be the bigger person and set my mind to doing what it was I needed to do so that we could both get back down the waterfall and the mountain safely and with the keys needed to lead us to help.
But his words stung and the storm raged and I stewed soppy in guilt. Hurting Rose was my deepest fear and hadn’t I already done that? Maybe she didn’t need to know of my infidelity in order for it to matter. Maybe betrayal bore its consequences with or without confession. After all, if Rose was right and math was the only thing in this world that could be counted on to be honest, then trust was an illusion. And without trust there could be no love. And without love, her love, I was nothing.
Nothing at all.
“You know,” Archie said after a moment, his voice lower, more solemn. “Maybe I’m being too hard on you. Taking the keys was a dick move. I admit that.”
I glanced over at him. “Yeah, it was.”
“But that girl, Rose, she’s not making any of this easy on you. You know that, right?”
“Not making what easy?”
Archie’s eyes widened. “Oh, come on.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You really don’t?”
“No.”
“Shit.” He dipped his head. Looked away from me before looking back. “Okay. I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to tell you about Rose. You remember that party we were at last year? It was in the spring. Out at that baby horse f
arm?”
“Miniature horses,” I corrected.
“Whatever. I was really fucked up that night. Just in a bad fucking place.”
“I know. I saw you.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, before you got there, I was drinking with some of the guys inside the house. Manny fucking Grossman broke into the Richards’ liquor cabinet, so we were drinking all the clear stuff, replacing it with water.”
“Classy.”
“At some point your girl waltzes in, all by herself, just out of nowhere. But she’s smiling and giggling and the whole thing, wanting to sit with us. I’d never seen her like that, but I say, sure, you’re cute, come have a drink. Next thing I know she’s on my lap, touching my face, my hair—”
“I don’t want hear this,” I said.
“You should.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. But first of all, I didn’t fuck your girl, so you can get over that, all right? That’s not what this is about.”
I didn’t answer.
“Look, she kept touching me, had her hands everywhere and at some point I asked her what she was doing. She missed you, she said, she needed you, and I told her she had a funny way of showing it. Then she whispered in my ear that she was rolling, which made sense because the bitch was high as fuck.”
“What?” I was confused. That didn’t sound like Rose. She didn’t do drugs. Not that kind, at least. Or so I thought. Then again, she hadn’t known I was coming and I recalled her energy from that night, electric and charged, so different from how she usually was. The way she’d laughed and lit the air as she bounced against and away from me, a glittering ball of mirth and movement.
Archie shrugged. “I told her to give me some, but she just sat and drank with us. Then someone said they’d seen you drive up. Girl was out of my lap in an instant and dancing away. ‘That’s it?’ I asked her, and she nodded and said something like, ‘I have to find him now.’ I told her, ‘You seem perfectly happy right here.’ Well, she gave me this dopey smile and that’s when she said it.”
“Said what?”
“She goes, ‘I am happy, Archie. That’s why I have to find him. I can’t hurt him when I’m feeling this good.’”
“Hurt me how?”
“You tell me.”
“I have no idea.”
Archie scratched his chin. “Rose told me you’d say that. She says you insist on pretending everything’s fine, even when you’re miserable. That you’ve trained yourself not to see the hammer hitting you in the head, and that you’d rather just complain all the time about having a headache.”
I went cold. “She did not say that.”
“Not that night,” he admitted. “But she did say it.”
“When?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Then I don’t believe you.”
He laughed. “Believe whatever the hell you want. You think I care?”
“Why’d you call her a bitch that night, then?” I demanded. “If you two are so fucking close?”
“I called her a bitch because she treated me like trash. She left me to be with you, some useless white boy, which made me feel worse than trash, actually. More like a pile of shit.”
I was aghast. “You hate me, don’t you? That’s what this is about. You’ve always hated me. The only time you even acknowledge my existence is when you’re drunk. Or stoned. Or you want something.”
Archie pulled his flask out as if on cue and took a swig.
“Nice,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
He swallowed whatever was in there with a smack. “I don’t hate you, Ben. If I did, you’d know. Trust me.”
That was all I could take. I hunched forward and twisted my head to look the other way, out into the dark woods, where the sound of rain echoed off the sheltering trees and mist pooled on the ground as if the earth was struggling to stay warm the same way we were. Whatever thoughts were in my head at that moment were not ones I wanted to be having. At all.
“Hey,” Archie said after a minute.
I didn’t respond. He reached out and pushed me with his shoe again, like he had when I’d gotten sick. He did it lightly at first but then he kicked me, sending fresh waves of pain sloshing through my head.
“What?” I snapped.
“Look.” He pointed. I turned and looked, facing away from the woods and out onto the mountain and the lake and the distant valley below.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
It was snowing.
37.
“WHAT THE HELL is happening?” Archie hissed. I didn’t answer, just stared in disbelief as the cacophony of hail-thunder-rain gave way to the peaceful silence of white puffs tumbling down from the sky. Gathering on the ground in swirling drifts.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”
He pushed his wet hair back. Gave a barking laugh. “Christ almighty. Which one of us do you think pissed God off? It’s October.”
“We need to get back down,” I said. “This is bad. We’re going to get stuck up here if the storm gets any worse.”
Archie grabbed his backpack and crawled forward in the mud, carefully skirting around my puke as he prepared to leave the shelter of the thicket. “Yeah, about that. I’m not going back down.”
“Wait, what? What does that mean?”
“It means I’m doing what I came up here to do. I’m not quitting now. I’m going to get that money. No one else is going to get it. That’s for damn sure.”
“You’re serious?” I asked.
“Very.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He squeezed his way into the storm, leaving me behind. “It probably is.”
I crawled after him. I had no fight left. “Okay, you win, Arch. Let’s just go. Let’s get this over with so we can get off this fucking mountain.”
He turned to gawk at me, still on his hands and knees. “You’re staying?”
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Archie gave me the strangest look. “You tell me.”
“Let’s just go,” I said again. I felt itchy. Anxious. I wanted to get moving.
“Hell, all right, then,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
—
It was easier to hike in the snow than the rain. The trail smoothed out and we trudged side by side. Archie kept drinking from that flask of his, until his words were slurring and his gait was wobbly, and finally I drank some, too, against my better judgment. I needed the warmth, I guess. Or the courage. I also made him give me back the map and the compass. He didn’t know the first thing about using them.
Another quarter mile on, with the icy summit looming above, we rounded a steep bend in the trail only to have a second alpine lake come into view, a smaller one, with snow dusting its shore, its water black and deep.
“Hey, what’s this one called?” Archie asked.
I pulled the map out, clutched it in my freezing hands. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. “Granite Lake.”
He shuffled right to the lake’s edge. Stared down its depths. “Looks like a good place to drown.”
“You think?”
“It’s like a quarry,” he explained. “You jump in, there’s no way out. Rocks are too high from the waterline.”
He was right. Unlike Grizzly Lake, Granite Lake was snow fed, which meant the low water was due to the drought. A paradox of sorts: What little water there was meant it was more likely to kill you.
We stood there, unmoving. The snow kept falling, the clumps growing heavier, thicker. It melted on the lake. It gathered on our skin.
“My aunt drowned,” Archie said softly.
I looked at him. “Avery’s mom?”
“Nah, I’m not talking about her.” He took
another swig from his flask. “That was shitty, though. How that happened.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s still shitty. My uncle, he’s never gotten over that. Probably never will. Same with Avery. She’s always been the Girl Whose Mom Died. She fucking hates it, you know. It’s like people always put their own sadness on her because they figure she’ll know how to deal with it.”
Well, that was a more astute observation than I would’ve expected from Archie DuPraw. And, much to my chagrin, I realized it was also a pretty apt description of the way I’d always seen Avery. Maybe the way I still saw her.
“You’re close with her, huh?” I asked. “Avery.”
He wiped his red nose, then wiped it again. “You’d better not fuck her over, Gibby. She’s a nice girl. Smart, too. She’s been through a lot.”
“I don’t plan on doing anything to Avery.”
“No . . . don’t say it like that.” He shook a wet, boozy finger at me. “That girl’s too good for you. I’ve told her. I don’t know what the hell she sees in you.”
I rubbed my hands together. “Maybe you should tell her I’m with Rose.”
He snorted. “Maybe you shouldn’t have screwed her yesterday.”
“Tell me about your aunt,” I said quickly. “The one who drowned.”
Archie’s head bobbed. “Yeah, that was my dad’s little sister. Laney. She was eight when it happened. Long fucking time ago.”
“It happened in a lake?”
“Nope. Ocean. The Pacific. Down near Bonny Doon, north of Santa Cruz. You been there?”
“I’ve never been anywhere.”
He stared at me. “You serious?”
“Absolutely. This trip is my first time out of Humboldt.”
“No way,” he said. “That’s kind of crazy, you know. It’s sad.”
I folded my arms. “It’s true. And I don’t need you telling me how sad you think my life is.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, I got it. Don’t shit yourself. Anyway, they were on the beach, playing by the water, building goddamn sandcastles or something, when my aunt and my dad got caught by a sneaker wave. He was twelve. Pulled them almost a mile offshore. She couldn’t swim. He kept trying to hold on to her.”
When I Am Through with You Page 19