So Glad to Meet You

by Lisa Super

The briefness of Oliver’s Cub Scout experience exposed its fatal flaw when they tried to make a fire. The newspaper burned as planned, the gray and white ravaged by orange and blackened into flakes, but the logs would not ignite, no matter how many squirts of lighter fluid Daphne and Oliver doused over them.

  “Maybe the wood is damp?” Daphne said.

  “We’re in the desert. There’s no such thing as damp.”

  “It might be damp from the lighter fluid. The good thing is I’m getting high off the fumes.”

  Oliver shifted on his haunches. “Okay, Plan B. Mooch off of someone else’s fire.”

  Daphne’s stomach went heavy and hollow at the same time. She’d imagined the whole night with Oliver all to herself and now the disappointment traveled through her at a nagging pace. She hit the reset button on her expectations for the evening, kicking herself for setting them above her grasp in the first place. Silly girl with an unrealistic crush. Joshua Tree had made her forget that. With all the death surrounding her, she had felt more alive than she actually was.

  “Sounds good.” She played along.

  One of the things Daphne admired most about Oliver was his social grace. She imagined him drifting from clique to clique in the Sacred Heart hallways the same way he wandered from fire to fire with complete ease, natural small talk, and effortless charisma. After they moved on from each fire in search of the liveliest evening, he never made any judgments. He appreciated everyone’s fire, even if it wasn’t for him. To Daphne, this was the equivalent of a superpower, Mr. Extrovert.

  Before they even said hello, Daphne spotted the fire they would be sitting around for the remainder of the evening. Twelve people their age, with a keg, already surrounded it, so the deal was as good as sealed. That seal was stapled when four people in the group turned out to be beautiful girls who hadn’t adequately dressed for the desert night. They shivered in their denim shorts, in desperate need of booze and a new friend to warm them. The sight of Oliver transformed them into Pavlov’s salivating dogs. Ding. Ding. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

  “Hey, how’s it going? Mind if we join your fire?” Oliver asked the three guys flanking the keg.

  As a response, they handed Oliver a cup of beer.

  “Thanks. I’m Oliver. This is Daphne.”

  Daphne gave a small wave. She stepped up to the fire and everyone made an introduction. The names floated through the space between Daphne’s eardrum and brain. She identified the people around the fire by their defining characteristics: Booming Laugh, Eyebrow Scar, Glasses, Dirty Flannel, Freckles, Cheekbones, Dreadlocks, Guitar Boy, and Skanksville One through Four.

  Oliver read her snap-judging face and smirked. “Are you drinking?”

  After enduring the length of the desert day, the near-death experience, and now being surrounded by unfamiliar faces, the last thing Daphne wanted was a drink. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  He set down his beer. “I’m good, too.”

  Before Daphne could enjoy the surprise moment of chivalry, Skanksville Two and Three closed in on Oliver and sat him down in a lawn chair. Scrutinizing the fire, Daphne could see the night playing out in the flames. Oliver would be preoccupied by whichever body he found the warmest. Daphne would be forced to make awkward conversation with inebriated strangers and pretend that she didn’t notice Oliver drift off into one of Skanksville’s tents. Judging by their lack of preparation in the clothing department, they probably didn’t even have a tent. He’d end up bringing the girl back to his tent. Daphne’s tent. Now she was internally stabbing herself for not bringing her own tent. She was more unprepared than Skanksville.

  Daphne took a seat next to the most innocuous member of the campfire, Guitar Boy. He strummed a vaguely recognizable tune, and she figured she could gush over his modest talent without having to engage in actual conversation. Besides feeling like a filthy groupie, it was a win-win.

  While she set a mental timer to measure how long she could sit without speaking, a body plunked into the seat on the other side of her.

  “The fire’s warmer over here.” The chair creaked when Oliver settled in.

  Daphne disguised her joy by digging in her bag and making an announcement to the campfire crew. “Oh, I forgot…” She pulled out five chocolate bars, a box of graham crackers, and a bag of marshmallows. “I brought s’mores.”

  A chorus of whooping cheers sang around the fire. Fist bumps ensued. Dreadlocks and Glasses snatched the ingredients from her.

  “Look at you, camping pro.” Oliver nudged her with his elbow.

  The warmth of the fire helped redden out her flush. “I do what I can.”

  The rest of the night, Oliver stayed at her side. Yes, Skanksville was there, too, but Oliver always turned to Daphne when he spoke, made sure she was part of the conversation to the point that Skanksville started to hurl sour looks in her direction. It was magnificent.

  The overambitious fire blazed on. One by one, the group retired to the tents, and the Skanksville clan joined whoever would take them in for the night, leaving only Oliver, Daphne, and Guitar Boy, still strumming away beneath the stars. Oliver pierced a marshmallow with his stick and cast it over the fire, where the flames licked its surface.

  “You’re doing it wrong.” Daphne impaled her marshmallow with her stick, held it down near the glowing red-orange coals of the fire, and slowly rotated it. “You have to cook it at the base where the fire is the hottest and keep turning it. That way the marshmallow cooks evenly all the way through and you have a gooey center.”

  “That looks way too complicated for marshmallow cooking.” Oliver promptly stuck his stick into the flames, alighting his marshmallow into a purple blaze of white bubbling to black, a chemical reaction gone wrong. He blew out the fire, plucked the marshmallow from the stick, and popped it into his mouth.

  “That was a raw marshmallow with a bunch of carcinogens.”

  “What if I don’t like a gooey center?” His mouth was still full.

  “Who doesn’t like a gooey center?”

  “No one,” he admitted.

  “My dad taught me how to roast marshmallows. I wanted to stick them into the fire like you.” She lifted her stick from the coals and used two graham crackers to slide the fragile, melted blob off the tip. “But he was patient. It was an art form. He really was a good dad, once upon a time.” She added two pieces of chocolate and pressed the graham crackers together again. White and brown oozed out. “Plus, it needs to be hot all the way through to melt the chocolate. The most important part.” She handed the s’more to Oliver.

  “I don’t know. You’ve built up my expectations.” Oliver took a bite.

  While he chewed, Daphne put another marshmallow on her stick and returned it to the fire.

  “Daphne Bowman, you make a damn fine s’more. I think it’s your superpower. Especially since you inherited it.”

  “Ooh, goody. So alcoholism can be my superpower, too.”

  “Nope. Superpowers have to be advantageous, as well as a curse.” He considered this for a moment. “Is that why you aren’t drinking?”

  “No. Maybe,” she mumbled. “I didn’t feel like it.”

  “You’re not going to get it. The alcoholism.”

  “Easy for you to say. Your genetics have less booby traps than mine.”

  “Well, you’re nimble. You’ll make it around all of them.”

  “Nimble? You saw me on that boulder today. I would trip on a booby trap trying to step around it. I’d probably fall into it.”

  “Okay, but you’re smart. And you know yourself. You’ll build some contraption to fly over everything so you’ll never have to step foot on the ground.”

  She sighed, lacking both the strength to argue and the confidence to agree. “Do you ever think that we live too much of our lives around Jason and Emily?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Sometimes I feel like my whole day revolves around making Emily happy or pissing her off. Like today, when I picked out this shirt, I
thought, Emily would hate this shirt. She hated florals. One time my mom made Emily take me to the mall with her and Jason. Emily tore through the racks and critiqued each shirt. She couldn’t stand anything with flowers because the best thing about flowers is how they smell, and you can’t get that from a shirt, so why wear it? But then I put on these boots and I thought, Emily would like these. And it made me happy. Stupid.”

  “I try to be as little like Jason as possible.” Uncertainty tainted his voice, the effect of opening a door in his mind after years of keeping it shut.

  “You like the same music.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?” Her tone was earnest, unchallenging.

  Still, her question hit Oliver in a sensitive spot and he flinched. “Liking a few of the same artists and bands isn’t being like him. Serial killers probably like Elliott Smith, too. Am I like them?”

  He wanted her to retract her line of questioning, to go on eating marshmallows like their siblings hadn’t died together in her garage seven years ago. But after those seven long years, Daphne was finally getting answers. She couldn’t stop now. “I’m not saying you’re like him, I’m asking how you think you’re different.”

  Oliver focused on the fire, took a breath and heeded the sky. He swallowed. Daphne had only intended to get a simple response and now she braced for some great truth he appeared about to reveal.

  “I won’t have a girlfriend. Because of Jason.”

  Her question had been innocent, and so had his response, but Daphne heard blame. Defense crept into her voice. “You think Jason died because of Emily?”

  “They were enablers of each other.”

  “You don’t think they were in love?” Her eyes widened at the implausibility.

  He stuffed his useless hands under his hamstrings. “I think they couldn’t see past the darkness in each other. They felt alone and the other filled the void. It was obsession more than love.”

  “That’s so depressing.”

  “Well, they were depressed.” He wiggled a hand out from under his leg and scratched his jaw, keeping his eyes down.

  “Isn’t that what love is, though? Except it’s the opposite. Instead of the darkness, you don’t look past the light in the other person. You don’t focus on the bad, the weaknesses, the imperfections. You see what you want to see.”

  “I want to see everything.” His head snapped to her like he’d tossed out an accusation instead of a broad statement. Shadows from the fire cut his face into alternating expressions of anger and hope.

  The same shadows danced across her own face. “And that’s how you’re different from him.”

  Relief lifted the corners of his mouth.

  She knew she’d hit a nerve that sent shockwaves down his backbone, so she struck again. “That’s something you’ll never get from someone you can’t even call your girlfriend.”

  A sheepish smile flashed across his face as he jabbed his marshmallow straight into the flames.

  An hour later, Daphne washed her face in the campground bathroom, scrubbing away the day, inhaling the campfire scent lingering in her hair. She folded her clothes into her bookbag and changed into her pajamas.

  As she traipsed around the dark campground to the tent, she cast a glance up at the stars. They weren’t as bright or plentiful as she’d imagined. No matter how far into the desert she ventured, she couldn’t escape L.A., couldn’t escape the past, couldn’t escape the present. But tonight, she didn’t want to; tonight, she was satisfied with the ground beneath her feet.

  Oliver was already tucked in his sleeping bag when she climbed into the tent. He’d laid out her sleeping bag a couple feet away from his.

  “Hey, you look…”

  He was seeing her barefaced for the first time. She didn’t think anything of it. She saw her bare face in the mirror as often as her made-up one. “Pick an adjective, any adjective,” she said.

  “Good.”

  She could tell by his awkward swallow that he regretted picking the most generic adjective of all, but she derided him anyway. “Thanks. Next, you’re going to tell me how nice my disposition is.”

  “You look different, that’s all. Good different.”

  “There are a lot of girls who write songs about how wonderful and awesome and life-affirming it is when guys tell them they look better without any makeup on.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not one of those girls.” She smiled at him.

  “I didn’t think you were.” He smiled back.

  “Goodnight, Oliver.”

  “Goodnight, Daphne.”

  She turned away with a giddiness swelling through her, thrilled to be sleeping next to him. Tomorrow they would wake up and spend the whole drive back to L.A. together. Life was everything it should be.

  • • •

  As the new dawn broke, the dreams of yesterday vanished along with the stars in the early morning sky, and the day rose into reality. Daphne woke in a cocoon of pain, the consequence of being spared her life on yesterday’s boulder. She awaited teasing for sneaking off to the bathroom and returning with smudgy eyeliner and red lips, but Oliver had no commentary on her morning priorities.

  They packed up the camp without saying much. Daphne basked in the comfortable lull while they loaded the truck. It reminded her of how she and Janine could sit in the same room for hours without needing to speak to warm the air between them. Silence had heat of its own. Now a warm breeze blew from Oliver and his able hands as they rolled up the tent.

  After the car was loaded, they drove out of the park and into Twenty-nine Palms. Daphne was sure there was a story to the town’s name, but she liked not knowing it. Oliver pumped gas and they stocked up on convenience store cappuccinos and junk food for the ride home. The sun shone brightly on their tired faces.

  “Ready to hit the road?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned the key and nothing happened. He turned it again. A buzzing spun from the base of the steering wheel. Oliver peered at the ignition with a mixture of curiosity, agitation, and foreboding. The simple motion he’d acted out hundreds of times before wasn’t having the same result. He pounded the steering wheel. Daphne jumped at the sudden motion and sound.

  “I’m sorry.” Apology was his only available action.

  “It’s okay. We’re not stranded in the desert with buzzards circling. Yet.” She tried to remain upbeat. The day was new, and there was still time to reclaim it.

  “My parents don’t know I’m here.” He sounded worried.

  “Neither do mine.” She shared his concern.

  He arrived at a grim conclusion. “I have to call them.”

  Oliver’s car door creaked as it opened and closed. Had it always protested against its purpose, its hinges begging for oil? The minutiae became painfully apparent in the face of impending doom. Daphne stayed in the car while Oliver paced outside of it, his phone to his ear. He was mostly quiet, hanging his head at the ridicule being carried from cell tower to cell tower across the state.

  As a distraction, Daphne checked her own phone and saw that she had six voicemails. Dread pressed her legs down into the car seat. Good news never left six messages. She scrolled through her texts: only one message, from Janine: “YOUR MOM RAN INTO MY MOM AND ME AT TARGET. SHE KNOWS. JUST WARNING YOU. P.S. I’M GROUNDED BY ASSOCIATION. THANKS. PHONE BEING TAKEN AWAY IN 3-2-1”

  Despite the horror in her belly, Daphne delighted in Janine’s warning, raging against parental strife until all technology was gone.

  The six messages were from her mother, each with its own theme for Daphne to identify. The Six Stages of My Child is Semi-Missing and Lied to Me.

  Mild Worry. “I love you. Please let me know you’re safe.” Aw, she knew Daphne existed and missed her. Sentimentality passed over Daphne, the shadow of a hawk in the desert sky.

  Agitation. “If you don’t call me back, I’m going to start worrying.” Again, the attention was endearing.

&
nbsp; Legitimate Worry. “I’m officially worrying. Call me before I do something drastic like call the police.” Uh-oh. Now things were getting serious.

  Unbridled Anger. “How dare you lie to me? Who do you think you are?” Um, she was a normal teenager. Plus, if her mom hadn’t run into Janine, she never would have known. It was a revelation of pure coincidence. Daphne’s actions harmed no one.

  Threats. “You are going to be grounded until you go to college. Say goodbye to your summer.” Her mother actually meant, Say goodbye to Oliver.

  Resignation. “Just call. Please.” By this point, Daphne was exhausted, too tired to be amused by her mom’s evolution. With a heavy forefinger, Daphne hit “Call Back.” The phone rang, and Daphne saw the momentary goodwill between mother and daughter blow by like the tumbleweeds at the edges of the gas station.

  “Hi, Mom. I’m sorry, I didn’t have any reception…”

  Daphne became the mirror of Oliver, still circling outside the car. They shared an empathetic glance and hung their heads at matching angles, absorbing the fierce, tinny voices scolding them.

  Sitting in the car, listening to her mother reminded Daphne of the balmy evening in March seven years ago. There had been a good part of the night, before her family discovered the decision Emily and Jason had made.

  On the drive home from Taco Tuesday at Pepe’s Cantina, her dad gorged within centimeters of his stomach bursting on all-you-can-eat-tacos-for-eight-dollars, he asks from the rearview mirror, “How was school?”

  Daphne reports that karma visited the class bully during dodgeball in gym.

  To this day, the scene made her cheeks burn with both giddiness and guilt.

  The perfect throw by Andrew Taylor, the runt of the classroom litter: the bully’s bloody nose, the keeling over, the nervous laughter and unspoken bonding with her classmates.

  Her mom twists around in the front car seat to study Daphne, her face a mix of worry and amusement.

  Daphne wished she hadn’t avoided her mother’s scrutiny. It was the last time her mom would look at her without seeing Emily. Maybe now, Daphne’s mom was finally seeing her again while screaming at her from one hundred fifty miles away. Daphne hung up, both defeated and refreshed, as Oliver slouched into the driver’s seat.