Right away she relaxes, getting her balance back.In two steps she’s on dry land and I step out of the creek, her hand still on mine.
“Thanks,” she says.“That didn’t feel unstable when I first stepped on it.”
She hasn’t let my hand go.
“That’s what hiking buddies are for,” I say.
“You got your feet wet.”
“It’s hot out, they’ll dry,” I say, shrugging.“It’s kind of nice, actually.”
“I probably should have just walked through the water,” she says.
We look at each other for a moment.Then she lets my hand go, drops her eyes, and looks at the trail ahead.Her throat moves as she swallows.
“We’re halfway there,” she says, and starts hiking.“We should make it before sundown.”
“Lead the way,” I say, and we set off down the trail together.
ChapterThirteen
Clementine
It’sanother four hours to the lookout tower, nine miles in total, but it feels faster than that.Earlier today, I camethisclose to going with one of the other firefighters, because after our fight yesterday, I wasn’t sure I could deal with talking to Hunter again.
And, honestly, it would be a hundred times easier to ignore him for another day or two until his crew is out of Lodgepole, and then pretend that nothing ever happened.It’s not that I can’t face my problems.Generally, in life, I face my problems just fine.
Just notthisproblem, because this one feels like a giant spider web that’s also been doused in honey and then also in superglue, and then there’sanotherspider web behind it waiting to catch me if I somehow get through the first one.It’s sticky and tangled, is what I’m saying, and it’s worse because everything hinges on old, half-buried, faded and questionable emotions that I can barely identify, let alone understand.
But here we are.Talking, like friends, like people who can work through problems.I know we’re probably going to have it out again before this little adventure is over.I’m dreading it.I feel like an adult, though, like maybe I’ve finally made a mature decision about Hunter.
That’s not happening yet, though.Now we’re hiking through the sun-dappled woods.We gossip about people from high school.He tells me about being in the Marines, about living with constant dust and roadside bombs.
About how he slowly realized that it wasn’t for him, even as he watched his comrades rise in the ranks, leaving him behind.He tells me about his first Fourth of July back in the United States, when he had to hide in his parents’ basement from the sound of fireworks.
I walk next to him and think,this is someone I don’t know.It feels strange, but good.
I tell him about being in college, about how unsettling it can be to go from a town of five thousand people to a dorm with almost that many.I tell him that when I first got there I felt like a back country hick in the big city for the first time, that I once got drunk and threw up on an ornamental statue, and that I finally figured the whole thing out and graduated magna cum laude in biology.
Before I know it, we’re at a fork in the trail.I point left, and half a mile later, I can see the Spruce Mountain Fire Lookout poking above the trees.
“You know, I’ve never been to one of these,” Hunter says, trudging up the trail next to me.
“That’s because you don’t get involved until the fire’s already found,” I say.“I’ve only been to this one once, when I was the lucky lady who got chosen to give it its annual cleaning.”
Hunter laughs.
“That often?”
“On the good years,” I say.“Though I only went because someone found out a family of squirrels had burrowed into one of the bunk bed mattresses.”
“Maybe I’ll sleep outside,” Hunter says.
I look at the tower as I walk up to it.It’s not big, maybe twelve feet square, but it’s got broad windows on every side, and the whole thing is on twenty-foot stilts.If there was a way to it besides hiking nine miles, it’d be a great vacation spot.
“It’s not so bad,” I say, neck craned up.“Kinda?—”
Suddenly my ankle buckles under me and I fly sideways, slamming into the ground.It happens so fast I don’t even make a noise, just anoofwhen I land.
