The song wraps up.Sweat trickles down the back of my neck, and I force myself to clap along with everyone else in the room, even though I’m trying to keep my hands from shaking.Barry walks back to the microphone.
“Weren’t they wonderful, folks?”he says, grinning widely.“Let’s hear it again for the Twinkle Toes!”
We clap again.
Maybe he’ll misread the program, forget the plaque, and I won’t have to present it, I think.
Maybe the earth will open, swallow me whole, and I won’t have to do this.
“Next, I’d like to give the floor to the senior ranger from the Copper Creek Division, Jennifer Tetson.Jennifer?”
Oh God, he doesn’t even know that she’s not here.Now I have to say that, too, along with some variation on, “Here’s a plaque, thanks for keeping things from burning down.”
I’ve got the plaque in a death grip, but I stand.I swear I canfeela hundred and fifty or two hundred eyes on me, and I somehow navigate stepping away from the table and walking toward the microphone in my high heels.
You can do this, McKinnon, I think.The stakes are never gonna be lower.
My heels click across the tile floor.I hear the soft sounds of people whispering to each other, the scrape of plastic forks against paper plates, napkins rustling.Then I’m at the microphone, I’m clearing my throat, my hand is reaching out to adjust it in the stand.
“Thanks, Barry,” I hear myself saying.My voice is higher pitched than normal, but it’s not even shaking.
It’s a fucking miracle.
“Unfortunately, Jennifer was called away at the last minute,” I say, and pause.
Do I tell them another raccoon got into her house and she has to trap it?I think wildly.Do they need to know that?
I laugh nervously into the microphone and decide to cut it as short as possible.
“But, on her behalf, and on the behalf of everyone — of the whole Copper Creek Ranger Division, which I’m part of, actually, I’m also a forest ranger —”
This is going off the rails.Fuck.I take a deep breath.
Suddenly, a piece of public speaking advice comes back to me:Pick one person in the crowd and pretend that you’re talking just to them.I glance over the tables in front of me, but they’re all firefighters I don’t know, and their faces just make me more nervous.
“In thanks for your hard work fighting the Elkhorn fire, which I’m sure everyone here knows is one hundred percent contained and actually almost out since we’ve had those big rainstorms rolling through...”
I stop.
I’ve landed on a pair of deep blue eyes.They’re the color of a glacial melt lake in the spring.The color of a snowy hillside in deep shadow.
I didn’t make that up just now.I once waxed poetic for two whole pages in my diary about these eyes, and even though I don’t remember half the ridiculous things I wrote back then, I sure ashellrecognize them.
Hunter Casden is staring right back at me.
I didn’t even know he was here, in this church basement, letalonein the town of Lodgepole.
I wasn’t even sure he was in Montana, honestly.
“Uh,” I say.
My brain’s frozen.I think I’d be less surprised if JFK or Elvis were sitting there.At least, I’d be less gobsmacked.
I didn’t lose my virginity to Elvis.When I was eighteen, I wasn’tcompletely certainI was going to marry JFK.
I swallow and manage to close my mouth.My brain is going a million miles a second, thinking a stream of nonsense likeholy shit is that Hunter yes that’s him wait are you sure what if it’s just — no, I’m really really sure that is him sitting right there, yes, oh my god, how long has it even been does he recognize me?
Then, the worst thing happens.
