10
Turns out that “quiet hours” really do mean quiet. Even though the tent cabins in Camp Owl are spread apart, when it’s pitch-black outside and the usual white noise of city life—traffic, air conditioners, TV—is replaced by crickets, you can hear everything.
And I do mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.
The flush of toilets. Distant laughter. The crunch of gravel as a stranger walks. Even the smallest noise is amplified. So when all six of us converge in the girls’ tent cabin to talk about how we are going to retrieve the hidden wine, it isn’t long before we decide that Brett and Lennon will get up early and cart the wine back in their packs. Actually, Brett volunteers Lennon, and Lennon just says drily, “I’ve always dreamed of being a rumrunner.”
The boys retreat to their tent, and we get ready for bed. It’s been a while since I’ve slept in a bunk bed—and never since I slept in a tent. But after logging the events of the day in my minijournal and a couple of hours spent lying wide-awake in bed, cataloging all the nocturnal noises in camp, I manage to fall into a restless and unsettled sleep, waking periodically.
When dawn pushes away the darkness, I give up on sleep and climb out of my bunk.
It feels strange to be up so early. But Reagan is a morning person, and when I shimmy to the floor, I find her facedown, sprawled on top of a still-made bed. She never got under the covers? It’s insanely chilly in here. I’m a little worried something is wrong, so I shake her shoulder.
“Go away,” she says in rough, muffled voice into her pillow. She sounds awful. And pissed off. So I leave her alone and gather my clothes as quietly as possible. Summer is still asleep, and I fear I’ll wake both of them up if I use the en suite bathroom, so I head out to the camp bathhouse.
It’s far brisker outside the tent than inside, but I see lights in some of the other tents and silhouettes moving around, so I’m not the only person up this early. But I’m able to snag a free shower stall in the bathhouse, and I don’t hurry shaving and washing my hair so that my phone has time to charge. When I’m finished drying my hair, I hike back through the camp, feeling a lot more civilized. The boys’ tent is dark and both of the girls in my tent are still asleep. Unless I want to sit here and listen to Reagan snoring, my best bet is to head up to the lodge for early breakfast.
Blue-gray light filters through pine trees as I hike up the main path. The compound looks different out here in this light, so I have trouble spotting the garbage bin where we left the wine. Maybe Brett and Lennon have already retrieved all the bottles. I mentally cross my fingers and continue along the path toward the lodge.
When I enter the pavilion where we ate dinner, I find an expansive breakfast bar set up on a couple of tables. Eggs, bacon, pastries. Also, an oatmeal station with a dozen topping choices, which one guest is browsing. Why anyone would want that over sausage is a mystery to me. Grabbing a plate, I lift up the lid of a silver chafing dish, and through the warm sausage steam, I get a hazy look at the person hovering over the oatmeal station. He’s tall, dark, and hot, and—
OH MY GOD, I’m ogling Lennon.
It’s like the telescope spying, only worse, because he’s three feet away from me, and I can’t duck to the floor and hide. At least he’s not half-naked.
“Must be the end-times if you’re up before dawn,” he says, lips curling at the corners.
“I couldn’t sleep. Roosters were crowing.”
He laughs. “You’re thinking of a farm.”
“Look, all I know is it sounded like a bird, and it was irritatingly loud.” I slide a quick smile in his direction. “So it was whatever you call mountain roosters.”
“I think they probably call them hawks,” he says, amused.
“Same difference.” I load up my plate with sausage and bacon. “So, oatmeal. Really? Can’t you eat that at home?”
“I love oatmeal. Oatmeal is life.” He sprinkles a spoonful of almonds on his oatmeal. “You know, I believe Samuel Johnson in his infamous eighteenth-century dictionary described oats as something that the English feed to horses but the Scots feed to people.”
I shake my head, smiling to myself. “You and the crazy factoids.”
“And you’re just desperate for meat because you live with Joy,” he says, gesturing toward my plate.
True. It’s not as if she cares that I’m a carnivore, but if she’s cooking, it’s a vegan freezer meal. “Last night was the first meat I’ve had this week,” I admit. “So I’m going full-on cavewoman here. Just meat and coffee. Maybe some sugar,” I say, adding a giant cinnamon roll to the top of my sausage stack. I spot some brown sugar among the oatmeal toppings and briefly consider sprinkling some on my bacon.
“Ah, the ol’ Paleo Diabetes diet.”
“I’m the picture of modern nutrition,” I say.
“It gives your cheeks a healthy glow.” Eyes merry, he looks me in the face for the first time this morning, really looks at me, and I feel my ears warming.
“That’s just good old-fashioned fear,” I tell him as I focus on the breakfast table, reopening a chafing dish I’ve already inspected once. “I had trouble sleeping last night. Too many things going bump in the night.”
“It’s different, isn’t it? Even sleeping inside tent cabins. It’s still . . . wild.”
Indeed, it is.
Lennon hands me some silverware wrapped in a cloth napkin. “Want to eat on the deck and watch the sunrise? They’ve got patio heaters set up, and it looks like they’re bringing around coffee.”
“Say no more,” I answer, hoping I sound casual and not as though I’m inexplicably happy to be eating breakfast with him.
We carry our plates outside and find a place away from the other early risers, near a patio heater. The juxtaposition of gently billowing heat and nippy morning breeze mirrors my feelings about being alone with him. He’s both familiar and foreign, and I’m in a constant state of being on edge when we’re together.
“Your plaid game is strong today,” he comments, sliding a fleeting glance in my direction.
I smooth a hand over red-and-black plaid pants. They’re tight, and a little punk rock—pretty daring, at least for me. I don’t think he’s teasing. It’s hard to tell sometimes. “Thanks?”
He nods, and I relax.
“So,” I say, digging into my mountain of food. “Did you and Brett retrieve the wine?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “He wanted Kendrick and me to go with him last night after we got back to our tent cabin. We both refused. Brett said he’d go himself, but I’m not sure how he planned to carry a dozen bottles, because he left without his pack. But he reeked like a French restaurant when I got up this morning—which is, frankly, better than that disgusting ax-murderer body spray he’s been wearing.”
“He got drunk by himself?”
“Or maybe he pulled a Summer and dropped another bottle,” Lennon says, shrugging lightly. “But when I came up here this morning, I checked the garbage bin and the bottles were gone, so I assume he managed to rescue them.”
We eat in silence for a while. I’m not sure I want to discuss Brett any further with him, and he doesn’t offer any other information. He finally pats his pocket and says, “I picked up the backcountry permit at the front desk from Candy’s husband, so we’re good to go with that. I also checked out the store in the lodge. They’ve got bear canisters for rent. If you’re caught with food and you don’t have one, you get fined. It’s on the King’s Forest information sheet that comes with the permit, if you want to see it.”
He starts to dig it out from his pocket, but I wave it away. “I believe you.”
“But . . . ?”
“It’s just . . . I don’t know,” I say, snapping off a piece of crisp bacon. “I joked with my mom about seeing wild animals on hikes, but it never truly struck me that they’d pose that much of a threat.”
Lennon chuckles. “There’s danger lurking everywhere. I’m talking deadly.”
“Terrific,” I mumble.
“Not just wild animals, either. Out in the Sierras, people have been killed by rock slides, drowning, falling off cliffs, heart attacks from hiking tough trails, being crushed by falling trees—”
“Jesus.”
“—heat stroke, hypothermia, boiled to death in hot springs, killed by crazy serial killers, poisoned by plants, contracting hantavirus.”
“Hanta what?”
“Transmitted through deer mouse droppings.”
“Um, hello. Trying to eat, here,” I complain.
“I’m just saying, there’s a lot of lethal stuff out there. But that’s half the fun.”
“Not surprised you’d think that.”
“I don’t mean in a thrill-seeking way. I mean learning how to spot danger and avoid it in a responsible, careful way. You have to understand your environment. Respect it. Do you think my parents would let me go backpacking if they didn’t believe I knew how to handle myself out there? They trust me because I treat it seriously. And that’s why they wanted me to come. I mean, you know they wouldn’t just agree to take care of my reptiles for a week unless it was important.”
True.
“Wait,” I say. “Your moms wanted you to come?”
One shoulder lifts briefly and falls. “I was worried Brett would go derping off to look for the hidden waterfall himself if I didn’t help. And we both know what a moron he is. No offense. I know you used to be into him. Or maybe you still are. . . .” Eyes down, his gaze briefly flicks to mine.
I don’t know what to say. I’m not even sure how I feel. The last twenty-four hours have been strange. I guess I thought it would be more thrilling to be around Brett outside of school, but we’re barely ever alone together. Maybe if we spent any time away from the group, he’d let the whole super-bro personality drop. I know he does it for attention and that there’s a different side to him. But then, we just got here.
There’s also been Lennon. I hadn’t planned on him. And when I wasn’t getting spooked about animal noises in the woods last night, I spent my tossing-and-turning moments replaying all of our conversations in my head, trying to figure out if we’re friends again, or if he wants to be—if I want to be. I haven’t come to any conclusion.
Something clicks inside my head now, though.
“Your parents encouraged you to come on this trip,” I say, “because of Brett? They know he’s here?”
Lennon shrugs. “Yeah.”
“Do Sunny and Mac know that I’m here?”
A brisk wind blows as he scrapes his spoon on the inside of his bowl, gathering a last bite of oatmeal. “That’s why they wanted me to come. To . . . make sure you’re safe.”
A hundred emotions pummel me at once. I can’t even begin to sort through them, so I lash out with the first thing I can wrap my mind around. “I’m not an idiot, you know. I can take care of myself. I may not be in Olympic shape like Reagan, but I can handle a stupid hike.”
“Of course you can.”
“I can identify thousands of stars, so I’m pretty sure I can read a map.”
“Never said you couldn’t. You’re the smartest person here by a long shot.”
“Then why are you making it sound like I’m incompetent?”
He groans. “You’re competent. More than competent. I trust you a million times more than anyone else in this compound.”
He does? After months of not talking? This does something funny to my heart.
“Think of it this way,” he says. “If I needed to know whether Pluto was a real planet—”
“It’s not.”
“—then I would ask you. But if I needed to know how to build a bong, I would ask Brett. We all have our areas of expertise. Mine is wilderness backpacking.”
“But I never knew that!” I say, exasperated. “Your expertise is supposed to be how to survive a night in a haunted house.”
“In a way, they aren’t that different.”
I’m frustrated, and he’s cracking jokes. I can’t figure him out. “Is this about that photo book?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“What?”
“Is that why you came? Why your parents forced you to come? If you and your moms are just feeling sorry for me about my dad cheating, you can keep your sympathy. I don’t need it. I’m fine.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you. I’m angry for you. I want to cut off your dad’s arms with rusty hedge clippers. I want to chainsaw his feet off. I want to—”
“Okay! I get it, I get it.” Jeez. It’s my dad, after all. Though, admittedly, I’m secretly pleased he’s indignant. “If anyone’s going to Texas Chainsaw Massacre him, it will be Joy.” And I think she’d be going for something other than his feet.
He’s quiet for a moment. “No one forced me to come on this trip. I wanted to. I was hoping . . .” He stops suddenly, groans, and shakes his head.
“What?” I say. “You were hoping what?”
He hesitates. “Don’t you ever miss us?”
His words are a jab to my ribs. I’m surprised I don’t fall out of my chair.
I want to scream, YES. I also just want to scream. How many nights did I lie awake in tears over Lennon? I wasn’t the one who caused our downfall. The Zorie and Lennon show was going strong until the stupid homecoming dance, and its ending can be easily outlined in four steps. Trust me. I’ve literally outlined it hundreds of times in my planner.
(1) On the final week of summer vacation, Lennon and I accidentally kissed on one of our late-night walks. And before you ask how a kiss can be accidental, let me just confirm that it can. Laughter plus wrestling over a book can lead to unexpected results. (2) We decide to conduct the Great Experiment, in which we tried to incorporate intense make-out sessions into our normal relationship without telling anyone, in case it didn’t work out, so that we could still salvage our friendship and save ourselves from gossip and meddling parents. Mainly one parent: my dad, who has always hated the Mackenzies. (3) A few weeks later, the experiment seemingly going great, we agreed to come out of the nonplatonic friendship closet and make our first public appearance as an actual boyfriend-girlfriend couple at homecoming. (4) He never showed. Never gave a reason. Didn’t answer my texts. Didn’t show up at school for several days. And that’s where we ended. Years of friendship. Weeks of more than friendship. Gone.
He ended us.
And next to my birth mother’s death, losing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure. Now he wants . . . what? What exactly does he want from me?
I stumble over my answer several times, starting and stopping, unsure of what to say, and end up sounding like a fool. “I—”
A cheerful server walks up to us holding a tray filled with coffee in insulated cups. Lennon and I each accept one while the server makes small talk. I’m grateful for the intrusion, but it doesn’t allow me enough time to formulate a response to Lennon’s question.
Of course I miss us. You don’t care about someone for years and then just decide to quit. Those feelings don’t disappear on command. Believe me, I’ve tried. But other intense emotions are tangled up with our old friendship. At least, on my end. And that makes it complicated and confusing.
I like things that make sense. Things that follow identifiable patterns. Problems with solutions. Nothing I feel about Lennon fits any of that. But how do I tell him this without a repeat of the homecoming dance happening? I don’t. That’s how. I already had my heart broken once. Never again.
And yet . . .
Hope is a terrible thing.
“No worries,” he says and stands. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Wait!” I tell him, jumping up to stop him as he’s walking away.
He swings around, and suddenly we’re closer than I intended.
I blow out a hard breath and stare between us. “Do you . . . um, maybe want to walk with me to the lodge store so I can get a bear-proof food storage thingy?”
A long moment stretches, and my pulse is going crazy. I scratch my arm through the sleeve of my jacket.
“All right,” he finally says, and I let out a sigh of relief.
All right, I repeat inside my head.
If I can’t have what I want, then maybe we can find a way back to when things were simpler. When we were just friends.
* * *
I end up getting a few things from the store: a bear canister, a pocket water filter, and a multitool gadget that has a tiny shovel. Lennon says I’ll need it for digging fire pits and cat holes. I’m not exactly sure what a cat hole is, though I have a bad feeling about it.
The walk back to the camp is mostly quiet but not entirely awkward. It’s still nippy, but the sun is burning away the fog, and according to Lennon, it should be a nice a day. I was too fixated on our breakfast conversation to utilize the Wi-Fi.
When we round a curve and enter our camp, Lennon says, “Hold up.”
My eyes follow his and spot the problem. Candy and the ranger we ran into last night are heading down the steps that lead into the girls’ tent. They turn and walk north, headed in the opposite direction. We wait for them to disappear into the trees before continuing.
“What do you think that’s about?” I ask.
“Don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. Listen.”
That’s when I hear Reagan. Her raspy voice carries, and she’s angry. We jog toward the tent cabin and rush into the middle of an argument.
“No, I won’t calm down,” Reagan’s telling Summer. “Do you understand how much trouble I’m going to be in when my mom finds out?”
Kendrick and Brett aren’t doing anything, so Lennon gets between the two girls. “What the hell is going on?”
“Everything’s ruined,” Reagan says, backing away from Summer to drop onto the sofa, head in her hands. “That’s what’s going on.”
“They found the wine,” Kendrick elaborates while Brett paces behind the sofa. “We’re being kicked out.”
“I thought you were going to go back for the wine last night,” I tell Brett.
A look of distress passes over Brett’s face. Instead of answering me, he groans and pounds a fist on the console table. “This is so ridiculous. They have their wine back. No harm, no foul. I don’t understand why they’re being such hard-asses.”
“Because you pissed on a yurt,” Reagan yells at him.
Umm . . . what?
“For the love of Christ,” Lennon mumbles, shaking his head slowly.
“I was drunk, okay?” Brett says before pleading to Reagan, “We both were.”
“You were out together last night?” I say, alarmed.
Reagan rubs her head roughly. “We drank the bottle Brett smuggled back.”
The one he stuck in his pants, I suppose.
“And we were going to go back together and get the other bottles, but . . .”
“But we were buzzed,” Brett says defensively to the group. “We forgot to take an empty backpack with us to carry the bottles. So we just took two and—”
“We planned to come back for the rest,” Reagan says. “We just . . . got distracted.”
This is not like Reagan. She’s not a big drinker. I’ve been to parties with her, including the party—when Brett kissed me—and she never drank. It affected her cross-country running times, and she was always training for the Olympics.
Guess things are different now.
“Were all of you out drinking?” I ask, wondering now if this could explain some of the noises last night that kept me up. I’m also irritated and hurt that I was left out. But I guess Lennon was, too.
“Don’t look at me,” Summer says. “Kendrick and I went to the sauna, and then I came back here and fell asleep.”
“Same,” Kendrick says.
“Does it matter?” Brett gripes, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re on vacation, and Reagan and I were just unwinding. It’s not like we’re criminals.”
“Technically, since you’re both underage . . . ,” Lennon says.
“And the destruction of property,” Kendrick adds, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You know, with the pissing on the tent.”
Brett sighs heavily. “Not my proudest moment, for sure. But what’s done is done.” He plops next to Reagan on the sofa and rubs his head. “This is all so stupid.”
“Oh, I’ll agree with that,” Lennon says, voice dripping with contempt. He turns to Kendrick. “What exactly did Candy say?”
“That the compound could lose its license to serve alcohol if they knowingly let this kind of thing happen and didn’t take action. She said if it had just been the janitorial crew who found the bottles stashed in the garbage, they might have let it slide. But another camper reported it—I suppose it was the family inside the yurt.”
Oh. My. God. There was a family inside the yurt when Brett . . . ?
“It could have been the other campers that complained about noise in the woods at two in the morning,” Summer adds.
Reagan groans and rubs her temples.
“So, yeah. It looks bad for the compound,” Kendrick finishes. “And we have until noon to vacate the tents, or they’re calling the police.”
“My mom is going to murder me,” Reagan says.
“Maybe Candy won’t tell her,” Summer says, putting on an encouraging face.
“Don’t you get it?” Reagan says. “My parents don’t leave for Switzerland until tomorrow. That means if I come home tonight with my tail between my legs, I’m going to have to tell them why I’m back so early.”
No one says anything. A sense of doom falls over the tent. At least I wasn’t involved, so my mom won’t be mad. But I’m honestly devastated that all of this is suddenly over. I revised my summer blueprint to accommodate this trip. I don’t want to go home and face my dad and his cheating. And what about the star party? It’s not for four more days, so I can’t just take a bus to Condor Peak this afternoon. No one will be there.
If that weren’t enough, I’m also freaking that Reagan was out with Brett last night. Isn’t it kind of weird? They aren’t saying that anything happened between them, and maybe it didn’t. I try to remind myself that they’ve always been friends—just friends. And Reagan knows how I feel about him.
So why I am filled with unease?
Maybe it’s because Lennon and I were “just friends” once too, until we started sneaking out at night together.
“So it’s over?” Summer says. “We have to leave? No horseback riding or hiking?”
“You and I could pick up my car and drive out to my family’s cabin in Napa Valley,” Kendrick tells Summer quietly. “No one’s using it right now. At least we can salvage some of this vacation.” When he sees Reagan’s head turn, he says to her in apology, “I’d invite everyone, but it’s just a one-room cabin. It’s my parents’ getaway house. There’s not even room for people to sleep on the floor, sorry.”
“You guys! We’re being stupid,” Brett says, suddenly reinvigorated. “Why should we go home? Our plan was to hike to that hidden waterfall in King’s Forest, so let’s just do that. We’ll spend the rest of the week there.”
“Our plan was to spend a couple of nights at the waterfall,” Lennon points out. “That’s a lot different from six nights. We’d need more supplies if we were staying that long. Triple the food. And there aren’t showers and flush toilets out there. Do any of you even have the most basic of things, like toilet paper? I gave you a list of stuff we’d need, and you ignored it.”
“I didn’t!” Brett insists. “I passed it along to Reagan.”
“Then why don’t any of you have bear canisters or water filters? You think there’s a sink out there? You have to filter water from the river to drink.”
“I have a water filter,” Reagan says. “I didn’t think we’d need a million of them. And I bought those campers’ freeze-dried meal packets.” She looks at me for confirmation. I have four of them in my pack. “And Brett said we could just hang our food in the trees.”
“That’s ineffective,” Lennon says.
“Dude, it’s worked for centuries,” Brett argues. “You’re being paranoid.”
“Park rules clearly say no bear canister, no backcountry camping.”
“Whatever,” Brett says. “Stop sweating the details. It will be stupid fun!”
“You’re half right about that,” Lennon says.
Brett’s forehead wrinkles. “Huh?”
“There are canisters for rent in the lodge store,” I say quickly, before Brett and Lennon get in a fight. “And more freeze-dried food.”
“Are we even allowed up there now?” Summer asks. “Are we banned from the lodge?”
Reagan pushes up from the sofa. “Screw it. They gave us until noon. Let’s load up on supplies. Brett’s right. So our plans changed. Big deal. We’ll adapt. It will be way cooler out on our own anyway.”
“So we’re doing this?” Lennon says. “You want to spend a week in the backcountry?”
“Why not?” she says. “Better than going home. If Candy tells my parents, I’m grounded anyway. Might as well have fun while I can. I say let’s go for it. Who’s with me?”
One by one, everyone agrees. Even Lennon, though I don’t think he’s happy about it.
New plan: Don’t panic. Everything will be fine. It’s the same as it was, just a few extra days at the waterfall. I can just hike back here and catch my bus to Condor Peak when it’s time to leave. Right?
Reagan looks at me. “Zorie? You’re in, right? Because I don’t need you going home early to tattle, and for all of this to get back to my mom.”
I sort of want to punch her in the boobs.
Anxious thoughts bloom. Of camping in the woods. Of Reagan and Brett spending last night drinking together. Of my conversation with Lennon this morning. All of these things are giant question marks bouncing around in my head.
But when it comes down to it, I’m still left with one indisputable factor.
Luckily for Reagan, I don’t want to my face my parents right now either.
“I’m in,” I confirm.
Reagan smiles for the first time since we walked in here. “All right. We’re going camping in the backcountry. But first I’m going to take a shower and get breakfast. I need grease and yeast. I’ve got a wicked hangover.”