“Bug bites.”
“I got those, too. They’re everywhere.”
“They’re bedbugs.”
“Christ.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course they are.”
I asked him for another cigarette. Better to keep my hands busy than pick off scabs. After handing one over, Tomás ended up flopped beside me again in the camping chair. He threw his head back. And sighed.
I lit the cigarette and smoked silently. Part of me wondered if I should feel angry with Tomás—or even Rose—but I didn’t. Nicotine pooled through my veins, my heart, and yes, there were shadows in the trees and a cruel bite to the air, but from where I sat, there was also a view of the moon rising high in the sky, pleasing in its fullness and the way it lit our small clearing. There was the scent of pine and the crackling of a fire and the promise of things that were good even as we sat in the depths of our very own tragedy. I had no idea how any of that could be, and yet there I was.
I breathed it in. Deeply.
Tried to hold on tight.
43.
THE WORLD CONTINUED to freeze around us, and strange thoughts continued tumbling through my mind, ones about Archie and Rose and all the others. What was it the Preacher had said? We’re very private people. That had been the first lie he’d told us. After hearing that, I’d admired Avery for snapping a photo of him. The girl after the wolf. But then he’d invited her scrutiny. Her probing lens.
Everything afterward, it seemed, had also been lies—who he was and what he wanted. Although perhaps my imagination was limited by the things I believed in. Perhaps the man we’d met had genuinely been both a preacher and a drug smuggler. I had no proof to the contrary and I was most certainly biased by my past experiences with a man who’d claimed to speak on God’s authority. Even so, when I thought about it more, I decided that the Preacher’s first lie to us had actually been, We won’t bite.
The vodka caught up with me, and I soon struggled to keep my eyes open. The effort must’ve come through on my face, because eventually Tomás told me, “Go be with Rose.”
I rolled my head in his direction. “Huh?”
“She needs you.”
“But I thought—”
“Forget what you thought,” he said. “Go on. You don’t need to stay up. It’s too cold.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Me? I’m going to sleep, too. After this.” He pulled out a final cigarette and gave me a weak smile.
I smiled back as best I could. Then I left him there, smoking, by the fire.
—
Rose stirred as I lay beside her.
“Shhh,” I told her.
“Ben,” she said.
“Go to sleep,” I whispered. “That’s what I’m doing.”
Her nose wrinkled. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? And smoking.”
“How can you tell?”
“You reek.”
“Sorry. I was just having a drink with Tomás. We were trying to stay warm.”
Her eyes glittered in the darkness. “Tomás?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is he?”
“By the fire.”
“He’s okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“But you don’t like him.”
“I do like him. We had a good talk tonight.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
Rose smiled. “I’m glad.”
“How’s your pain?” I whispered. “Is it getting worse?”
“It’s not getting better.”
“Can I check the bandages?”
She yawned. “Not now. In the morning, okay?”
“Okay,” I said because I was tired, too, and as I settled beside her, the plaintive hoot of an owl floated down from the trees, breaking the night’s silence. A second owl hooted in response—a warbling duet—and I kissed Rose. Closed my eyes.
Dreamed.
DAY FIVE
44.
WE WOKE TO sun and warmth, which is to say hope, and it wasn’t just owls now, there were more birds singing, chirping, chattering, alive. That, combined with the drip-drip-drip of melting snow, was a stark reminder that what had fallen was never meant to stay.
I let Rose sleep but joined the others by the fire as we discussed our plans, what we needed to do. Shelby and Clay agreed to attempt the hike up and around the landslide that had washed out the access trail, in order to make their way down to the staging area, where the cars were parked. I handed the keys over to them, but it was a real possibility, we realized, that the cars would be buried under snow and ice or wedged in mud, and therefore impossible to move.
“Then try your phones,” Tomás told them. “There’s a charger in the Pathfinder.”
“If that still doesn’t work, keep walking to the main road and flag drivers down for help,” Avery added.
The rest of us planned to stay at the campsite and do what we could to make ourselves visible. Blue sky and bright sun and no wind infused us with energy. Our rescue was imminent. It had to be. There were no excuses for helicopters not to look for us, and even if they went to the top of the mountain first, surely they’d continue looking elsewhere. Surely they would make it to the other side of the mountain, to peer into this lonely gorge.
“We can try the bonfire again,” I suggested. It was an optimistic plan, given that I could barely move my left arm—it was swollen stiff; my damaged shoulder a rainbow of bruising—but in planning there was action. Avery smiled and said she’d help. I smiled back and let myself feel good that we could still be friends given all that had happened between us. But that was what death did. It put things in perspective. Reminded you what was important.
I also watched Tomás kiss Clay good-bye—first pulling him close, then nuzzling his neck before making his way up to his mouth. I looked away at that point, but it felt good to see that, too. And while I’m well aware I wasn’t meant to feel anything about what they were doing, what I mean is that it felt good to know that passion had endured in those woods. Respect and admiration, as well. And, I could only imagine, trust.
Then Clay and Shelby took off. The melting snow sparkled jewel bright, and I walked with Avery to find more wood for the bonfire. We were going to spell out SOS if we could find enough branches to burn or just a single big X if we couldn’t. The first place we looked was in the gully where we’d dumped the Preacher and his girlfriend, although we skirted past the burial site and headed for higher ground, crawling up the back side of the mountain.
Walking side by side, we hoofed through virgin brush, where the untouched trees grew close and tight, creating thick cover for the lower branches, leaving them relatively dry. Avery, who’d brought her camera along, stopped to snap a few photographs of the trees. When she was done with that, she stood on her toes and broke off the branches within her reach—something I couldn’t do with my bad shoulder, so I stood beside her and cradled the wood in my good arm. A lot of it was too green to burn, but I didn’t say anything. A squirrel ran above, at one point tossing a pinecone at my head, which made me laugh.
Avery gave me an odd look. “You’re in a good mood.”
“Not good,” I said. “But better.”
“Sun does that.”
“Indeed.”
“Back home, they’re having classes right now. Can you imagine?”
I shook my head. If conceiving of anywhere overseas was the equivalent of visiting a modern-day dinosaur park, then envisioning myself dozing in second-period English while Ms. Johnson droned on about Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, a decent play made boring by her endless lecturing on the distinction between comedy and tragedy, felt about as surreal as discovering the fountain of youth or believing in my mother’s eternal happiness.
“Think things will be different when we get back?” Avery asked.
“How could they not?”
“I just mean, it’s unbelievable, everything that’s happened.”
“I know,” I said.
“I can’t believe they’re gone.”
“I can’t, either.”
She pulled at another branch. “I haven’t even cried over Archie yet, you know? It’s weird. I loved him, awful as he was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
I paused, unsure of how to ask Avery what it was I wanted to know. “Hey, what were you and Rose talking about yesterday?”
The branch she was tugging on snapped. She passed it to me then wiped her hands. “When?”
“In the tent. When it was raining. You were talking to her about Archie. You said you both thought this weekend would be different. And that Rose had given him a gift.”
“Oh,” she said. “That.”
“Yeah, that. What was the gift?”
“Reason.” Avery brushed her hair back, pushing it from her face. “And hope.”
“That’s it?”
“At the time, it was everything.”
“But I don’t understand. Why would she do that? Why would Rose want to give Archie anything?”
Avery took a step toward me, closing the distance between us, and when she took my hand this time, she held tight. She didn’t let me pull away. “Ben,” she said.
“What?”
“Haven’t you asked yourself the same thing about me?”
—
Avery and I walked from the gully to dump the wood on the wet shore of the China Spring. The snow had melted from most of the larger rocks and we sat together in the sunlight while dragonflies dipped and buzzed near the surface of the water. That was where she told me the things she wanted me to know and which she’d never meant to say.
With her legs crossed, her dark hair blowing in the breeze, she told me the story of two girls: one who wanted to save a boy but couldn’t, and one who wanted a boy to save himself but who wouldn’t. These girls, who met as lab partners in their senior-year science class, decided to help each other, in the way girls are wont to do. I pictured it happening like in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Only instead of murder, these girls charted their course to freedom through kindness. Reason, too. And so one was tasked with teaching the other’s boy how to hold on, while the second intended to help the first’s learn to let go.
“What did Archie need to hold on to?” I asked her.
“His life,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”
Of course, I didn’t. I knew nothing about Archie because I didn’t like him and I didn’t think he was funny or interesting or even very smart. But I guess Archie and I were of the same mind regarding the worth of his character, because according to Avery he’d been doing everything he could to destroy himself for the past two years. It was the reason he took so many risks. Why he stopped carrying his asthma medicine. And threw knives at his feet. He was waiting to succeed at failing.
Hoping, really.
“He was twelve the first time he was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning,” she told me. “I don’t know if he did that on purpose or not, but it doesn’t matter. He also overdosed on pills last fall—that was on purpose, although he’d never say so. And he stole shit. Drove when he was wasted. Got into fights. He tried to die or get himself killed in pretty much every way possible, which meant he hated himself the more he lived because being alive only proved he was a failure. But I loved him, and I worried about him because he wouldn’t talk to me or to anyone about any of that stuff. He knew I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he actually took his own life. But telling him that, all it did was make him feel worse. And I don’t know, it’s strange how loving someone can make them feel worthless, but that’s what sickness does. Abuse, too. But when Rose got a hold of him, it seemed like he was doing better. Because she’s not me. She didn’t waste her time telling him how great he was.”
I was baffled. “What did she do?”
“She made him want things.”
“What things? How?”
Avery sighed. “Ask her. I don’t know, really, other than getting him to join the orienteering club. But they share a certain kind of pessimism, those two. It’s like they’re both determined to see the world for what it is, not what they’ve been promised—even if it hurts. Or because it hurts. I don’t know that Rose even liked Archie. I’m pretty sure she didn’t, but she helped him anyway because they connected over the ways they’d failed the people who tried to love them. Every time I thought he was going to end it all—he started carrying that dumb gun around once he found out he wasn’t going to graduate—Rose gave him a reason to live. Even if it was just for one day, or one hour, it was something. Although, you know”—Avery blushed—“the ironic thing is that it was Archie who got Rose and me talking in the first place. I’d told him about you coming to see me at my dad’s shop this summer, and he could tell I liked you, I always have, I guess. But when Arch saw that Rose and I were partners, he told her how I felt. He was just being a dick, but the thing was . . .”
“. . . it’s what made you and Rose friends,” I said, without finishing the last of my thought: Because Rose wanted you to have me.
Avery nodded.
“So I was the boy meant to let go?”
“Yes.”
“Of Rose.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“That’s between you and Rose. But I think . . . but I think she doesn’t want to hurt you. And more than that, she wants you to know how to walk away from pain. How to choose what you need, not what you think you have to give.”
My head was spinning. “And us? What about us?”
Avery shrugged, at the same time reaching to slide off her camera’s lens cap. “There is no us, Ben. That’s just it. Don’t you see? There’s you and there’s me. But those”—she added with that easy smile of hers—“are both very good things.”
She lifted her camera then and snapped the picture you’ve all seen by now on the news, the one that’s come to define me and my motives. I don’t know how she did it, but Avery managed to capture everything about that moment: me, hunched on a rock in a small patch of sunlight, knees pulled tight to my chest, and there’s the most love-lost look on my face—an expression of heartbreak, bewilderment, and utter, utter despair.
45.
WE GOT TO work on the bonfire after that, because there wasn’t much left to say. Avery and I arranged the wood we’d gathered, first clearing the ground of snow, as much as we could, sweeping it off with our feet and with branches too wet to burn. When the pebbly shore below was visible, we positioned the dry wood we’d found into a shape that was ultimately my suggestion—and a petty one, at that: a pair of twin Xs.
The double cross.
It’s hard to remember what I was feeling in those moments. A lot of things, I’m sure. But as crushed as I was, what I kept coming back to, over and over, wasn’t Rose or Avery. Or even myself.
It was Dunc’s goofy smile and all the lonely suffering it hid.
It was Archie’s final march into the snow, which had seemed like suicide, but had also been an act that saved me.
It was, above all else, Mr. Howe’s undying determination, in the face of a future marred by disappointment and dreams unfulfilled, to stay at peace with nature, never at war. It was his boundless joy and unfailing wonder at every mountain climbed, every vista reached, every turn in every goddamn trail.
In truth, I’d envied so much of what he’d chased and found, but when I thought about it more, I realized Avery might’ve gotten the whole desire and want thing mixed up. Maybe desire wasn’t just about going after what made you feel good; maybe it was also about finding a way to feel good about yourself in the first place.
My skin tingled at the thought, the possibility. Could
life really be that simple? It was a novel idea, to consider I might make my own joy, rather than waiting for the things I loved to be taken from me. To believe contentment wasn’t something to pursue, but something I could be.
A state of mind.
Yes, I told myself. But of course.
“Hey,” Avery said sharply.
I glanced up, a faint smile on my lips, but she was looking somewhere behind me. I turned to see Tomás running toward us, waving his arms frantically. He was calling for help, and I knew exactly what he’d say before he even said it. How could it have been anything else?
“It’s Rose,” he gasped as he reached us. “Something’s wrong!”
—
We raced back to the campsite. Wrong was an understatement. I fell to my knees next to Rose, where she lay on the tent floor in a puddle of sweat. Everything around her looked strange. Eerie. It was the sunlight, I realized. It filtered through the worn beige nylon to cast Rose’s skin with a golden glow. But where she’d always been bright, vibrant, lit from within, she was now pale and panting and shivering all at once. I put my hand to her forehead. Felt the fever roaring inside of her.
Tomás bumped up beside me. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Rose,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”
Her teeth chattered and she wheezed with each breath, but nodded. I wrapped her shoulders in as many blankets as I could find. Avery crouched on the other side of her and held her close, whispered in her ear, while I switched on the lantern and ducked down low to inspect her injuries.
Pushing her shirt up, I winced at the sight of her skin. Not only were the bug bites everywhere, but they’d grown bloodied from her scratching and it seemed hives had risen up in solidarity; she was covered in blotchy wheals. I let my fingers stroke her skin before pulling back the tape and gauze to inspect the entry wound. My throat felt thick, but the wound looked fine. Clean, at least, and my mind rattled with thoughts of hantavirus or Zika or plague or even some horrific unknown disease that was transmitted primarily through bedbugs.
When I Am Through with You Page 23