“Setting aside that we don’t evenhavebirdseed—”
I crouch, grab a bag of trail mix off the ground, and hold it out. Gideon eyes it.
“Absolutely none of that is in their natural diet.”
“Then maybe it’s time they learned to party.”
“You’re welcome to wait back at the cabin, you know,” he says, and that edge to his voice is a little sharper and it sounds likeI don’t want you here.
“And dowhat,” I say, and I sound like a bratty teen and don’t care. “I already read everything I’m interested in and you’ll get annoyed if I try to stream anything on the iPad over the satellite.”
“Aren’t there puzzles?”
“Ugh.”
Gideon waits.
“I don’t like puzzles,” I say. “Why would you print a whole picture and then cut it up into tiny, weird pieces and mix them up only to put it back together? Nothing happens when you finish, you’re just back where you started only you’ve got about ten fewer hours of life left.”
“If you stay, you can’t keep talking about birdseed.”
“Do you want me to go back so you can be alone?” I ask, and it comes out have annoyed and half pathetic, and neither of those are my good half.
Gideon huffs, breath puffing into the air, and he walks closer to me and sits on the ground, leaning back against a rock.
“Not really,” he says, looking up at me, and it feels better than it should. I sit with a sigh, my shoulder brushing his, my head back against the big rock behind us.
“Sorry,” I say, and he nods, then pats my knee.Patsmyknee.
“It’s okay,” Gideon says, but we don’t talk much for the rest of the day, either.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
ANDI
Before we goto sleep that night—Gideon in the living room, on the couch that’s too short for him, and me in the bedroom—I ransack the place for more blankets, not that I think they’ll do much besides crush me under their weight.
It’s been a weird, awkward day that turns into a weird, awkward evening, and I try to tell myself that we’re both tired and exhausted and un-showered and trapped in a tiny cabin that doesn’t have electricity, and that’s all obviously true, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling like there’s something else. Like I came on too strong, maybe, or I’m a bad kisser, or talking to his brother reminded him that he’s not supposed to be kissing girls unchaperoned or something. Instead of asking I decide to go to bed and possibly deal with it in the morning.
Besides my sleeping bag, I’ve got a fleece blanket, a comforter circa 1965, a quilt that’s seen better days, a quilt that had seen better days twenty years ago, and a wool blanket that I’m pretty sure was meant for horses but that I’m not complaining about. It takes me forever to warm them all up barely enough to drift off, but eventually, I do.
I wake up shivering. It’s dark as the grave, something my grandmother used to say, back when we still saw each other. The wind is blowing something fierce, some part of the cabin whistling in it. After a few moments I realize the curtains are open and there’s just enough dim moonlight to see the outline of things. I curl up into myself, double-check that all my blankets and limbs are still there, but it doesn’t help. There’s a loudpopfrom the living room as the wood stove burns lower, and I exhale, chewing my lip.
A gust of wind rattles the window, and I decide: fuck it, and fuck Gideon and his puritanical ideas about rooms.
Outside the blankets is, obviously, even worse. In about thirty seconds I swear my hands are shaking and my teeth are chattering as I rummage through my frame pack as quietly as I can, trying to yank out my sleeping pad without waking Gideon.
I’ve barely dropped the pad and all my blankets on the floor in the living room—where it’s at least forty degrees warmer, thanks to the wood stove—when he stirs on the couch, then pops up suddenly on one elbow.
“Andi?” he says, voice scratchy.
“I’m Bigfoot. Go back to sleep,” I whisper, like it matters.
In the orange glow of the wood stove I can see him run a hand through his dark hair, as if it’ll get his brain online.
“You’re cold.”
“It’s, like, negative thirty in there,” I explain, and he sighs.
