18
I freeze. “What are you talking about?”
“My father died.”
“When?”
“Last fall.”
How could this be? Last fall? “But . . .” I can’t even talk right. “What do you mean? How?”
“He killed himself.”
Without warning, tears flood my eyes. “No. That’s impossible.”
Lennon slips the cards into their cardboard sleeve. “He attempted once and failed. His girlfriend found him and got him to the hospital in time for doctors to pump his stomach. He said it was just an overdose of pain pills, and that he didn’t mean to, but his girlfriend didn’t believe him. And she was right. Because a few days later, he did it again. Successfully.”
I’m crying now, not making any noise, but stinging tears are tickling my cheeks, plopping onto the nylon floor of the tent. “I didn’t know.”
Lennon’s expression is somber. “I know you didn’t. Almost no one at school noticed. I mean, I thought you might hear. . . . It was in the paper. It trended online for a few hours.” He shakes his head softly.
“I didn’t hear,” I whisper, lifting my glasses to swipe away tears. “I’m so sorry. I just don’t understand why I didn’t hear. And I don’t understand. . . . Your dad was happy. He was so funny, always laughing. How . . . ?”
“He’d been on antidepressants for years and didn’t tell anyone he’d stopped taking them. He started obsessing about his music career being over. He was depressed that no one cared or remembered.”
“That’s not true! People still buy their records.”
“Barely. And he had a skewed idea of his success. I mean, how many people can say they had their songs played on the radio? But he didn’t see it that way. He wasn’t making much off royalties anymore, and the band was never huge—not like others. I don’t know. I guess being forced to work a nine-to-five job was failure to him. He couldn’t handle being normal.”
“Oh, Lennon.”
He nods, eyes downcast.
Did no one in our group know? The way Brett and Summer were talking about his dad when Reagan drove us to the glamping compound—and what was said about him during the big fight last night—I’m almost positive they didn’t realize.
I know Lennon didn’t see his father every day—or even every month—but Lennon was closer to Adam than I am to my dad. And now I’m thinking about Sunny and Mac, and how they must have been grieving too. And I never acknowledged it. What kind of monster do they think I am?
“When was the funeral?” I ask.
“Last October.”
When everything fell apart between us. The homecoming dance. The sex shop opening. My dad fighting with Sunny and Mac.
Is this the reason why?
It makes no sense. Why would he shut me out? “I should have been at the funeral.”
Pained eyes flick to mine. “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
His face turns rigid, and he grabs the bag of trail mix. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, I do! I should have been there. Didn’t you want me there?”
“Yes, I wanted you there!” he shouts, startling me. “My dad died. It was the worst time of my life. Of course I wanted you there, but . . .” He squeezes his eyes shut and lowers his voice. “Look, it’s getting late, and we’re both tired. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Lennon!”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it right now. Goddammit, Zorie. What don’t you understand about that?”
This smarts. I’m shaking now, still fighting tears. And I’m utterly confused. But Lennon is unzipping the mesh door, and he ducks out of my tent before I can think of the right words to stop him.
Dazed, I try to sort out the events that transpired last year. Try to make sense of them. To understand Lennon’s anger. On the final week of summer vacation, Lennon and I kissed. We conducted the Great Experiment in secret. We decided make our first public appearance as a couple at homecoming. Lennon stood me up and stopped talking to me. The Mackenzies’ sex shop opened. My dad started fighting with them.
New information: Lennon’s dad died. He didn’t tell anyone.
Where does this fit into our friends-to-enemies road map?
All this time, I thought he’d freaked before the homecoming dance and decided that he didn’t want to go public with our relationship. That our experiment had failed, and he was too much of a coward to tell me to my face.
And yet he just blew up at me about not being there at his dad’s funeral. Now I feel like he’s bitter about our breakup—that somehow this is my fault.
What am I missing?
I crawl outside my tent, but Lennon isn’t around. The light inside his tent shows the dark silhouette of his backpack. He’s dumped my pack in front of my tent, as if to signal that we’re done talking for the night.
Well, I have news for him. We’re not.
I’m too chicken to trample after him in the dark and definitely don’t want to catch him heeding the call of nature behind the bushes. So I wait by the fire’s glowing embers, hugging myself to keep the chill away. He was right. The stars are amazing out here. I find the constellation Cygnus, and then Lyra right next to it, but I’m too upset to appreciate what normally brings me joy.
Several minutes pass, and Lennon doesn’t come back. Now I’m worried, and a little angry. We need some kind of system. He should tell me where he’s going so I don’t sit around wondering if I should go look for him. What if he’s attacked by a bear or falls off the cliff?
Anxious and irritated, I retreat into my tent and roll out my sleeping bag. Take off my shoes. Put them back on. Take them off again, because my ankle feels better with them off, and then decide to change quickly into my loungewear for sleeping. Halfway through, I remember that the light in the tent shows everything, so I turn it off and dress in the dark.
Guess he’s getting the last word after all.
I don’t hear Lennon until I’m zipped up inside my sleeping bag, wishing that we were sleeping on softer ground instead of the unforgiving rock of the cave floor. I listen to his movements, and hear him doing something to the campfire’s embers—putting them out, I suppose—before he enters his tent.
The cave amplifies every sound. Zippers zipping. Plastic crinkling. Rummaging. He clears his throat, and it makes me jump. Then his light goes out, and after some rustling, all the noise stops.
And the silence is oppressive.
This is crazy. I can’t sleep while I’m upset. And what’s worse, my mind begins pulling up other anxieties. My swollen ankle. Snakes. Shadows moving inside the caves. Lennon’s stupid manga story about people-shaped holes in the side of the mountain. And then I can’t take it anymore.
“Lennon?” I say quietly.
No answer.
I try again, this time louder. “Lennon?”
“I heard you the first time.” His voice is muffled yet close. I imagine where he is in relation to me and wonder if I could stretch my arm out and touch him if the tents weren’t there.
“Remember when you thought you saw a shadow move in the caves? What if there really was someone creeping around and that someone comes out here?”
“They probably already would have if they were going to.”
“Or they could be waiting to murder us in our sleep.”
“Or that.”
“I’m serious,” I tell him.
“What do you want me to do about it, Zorie?”
He doesn’t have to be so grumpy. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, when you think of something, let me know.”
I blow out a long breath.
“Hey, Lennon?”
“Still hearing you,” he says.
“Are you sure there aren’t any tiny holes in this cave?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Holes snakes can slither through.”
I hear him cursing under his breath. “I’m sure. No holes. Go to sleep, Zorie.”
Yeah, that’s not happening.
“Hey, Lennon?” I whisper.
“Oh my God!”
I wince and grit my teeth in the dark. “So, I was just thinking. Since there’s a possibility that shadowy cave trolls may sneak out here to murder us, you should probably keep your hatchet handy. Just in case.”
“I sleep with it next to me.”
“You do?”
“Just in case.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I argue. “That makes me feel like there really are threats out here at night.”
“Of course there are. Do you see any door you can lock? We’re completely unprotected out here. Anything could happen.”
I sit up in my sleeping bag. “Hey, listen.”
“I didn’t know I had a choice,” he mumbles.
I ignore that. “I think you should sleep in here.”
Silence. For several seconds. Then he says, “Um, what?”
“This tent is for two people,” I tell him. “I’m not trying to exchange body heat, as you so eloquently put it earlier. It’s just that I would feel better if you were in here when I get murdered by the cave troll.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Lennon?”
“I heard you.”
“Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
I wait, heart hammering. After some rustling, I hear a zipper, and then a silhouette appears outside my tent door. It zips open, and Lennon’s dark head pops inside. “Give me your pack.”
I pull it across the tent floor and shove it toward the door. It disappears and thuds nearby. I think he stashed it in his tent. Another zipping sound. Then my mesh door parts and something unrolls next to me. Some sort of foam sleeping pad. The one that stays rolled up, strapped to the bottom of his pack. It’s followed by a sleeping bag, which he throws on top.
Lennon crawls into the tent and zips the door to close it. And before I know it, he’s slipping into his bag, a flash of black boxer shorts below his T-shirt, muscular legs . . .
Then he’s lying next to me. The tent is suddenly so much smaller.
“Happy?” he says, sounding vaguely sullen.
I smile to myself. Yes. “That depends. Did you bring your hatchet?”
His sigh is epic. “I’ll just have to choke the life out of the cave troll. Good enough?”
“Yes, that’ll do, pig,” I say in my best James Cromwell. “That’ll do.”
The hood of his sleeping bag looks fluffier than mine is, and he punches it around until it makes a pillow. Then he lies on his back, one arm over his head. Facing him, I curl on my side and stare in the murky light until my eyes adjust to him, my own gaze tracing over the sharp, straight line of his nose and the spiky fringe of hair over his brow.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I whisper in the dark.
“I needed you,” he whispers back. “It was so terrible, and I needed you.”
An image of his father fills my head, and then unexpectedly, I think of my birth mother. Her face. Her laugh. How empty I felt when she died. I know exactly how Lennon feels, and that makes it all so much worse. Because I’d never in a million years want him to hurt that badly.
A strange, stifled noise fills up the space in the tent, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s crying. Lennon never cries. Never. Not as a kid, and not when we got older. The sound rips my heart to shreds.
On instinct, I reach out for him. When I lay my hand on his quaking chest, he seizes it with steely fingers. I can’t tell if he’s about to push me away, and for a brief moment, we’re frozen midway between something.
A tense sort of twilight.
He turns toward me, and I’m pulling him closer, and he buries his head against my neck, sobbing quietly. I feel hot tears on my skin, and my arms are circling him. The scent of him fills my nostrils, shampoo and sunniness and wood smoke, the tang of sweat and fragrant pine needles. He’s harder, stronger, and far more masculine than he was the last time I hugged him. It’s like holding a brick wall.
Gradually, the quiet crying stops, and he goes completely limp in my arms.
We’re in a strange cave, slightly lost. Off plan and definitely off trail.
But for the first time since we left home, I am not anxious.