Watching Briar grow closer with Noah, then Harper, via sporadic social media updates had been torture for Alice. It had felt like life in the US had continued on without her, like she’d never been a necessary part of it, and she had no one but herself to blame. And of all their high school friends, of course Briar would become closest with Alice’s ex and the girl who had never had a nice word to say about her.
‘What’s this?’ Freddie’s voice rang out from behind her.
‘A mural,’ Alice said, not taking her eyes off the paint.
‘We’ve not had a mural before,’ he said, coming up beside her.
‘I was thinking the campers could paint between the lines throughout the summer and, by the end, it will be all filled in,’ Alice said, chancing a glance sideways at him, nervous to see if he liked the idea. Camp was so steeped in tradition that straying felt sacrilege. ‘What do you think?’
‘I like it.’ He shook his head, looking bemused. ‘I forgot you were such a great artist. What’s the inspiration, then? Is this in Susan’s honor?’
She blew a strand of hair out of her face. ‘It’s more of an apology to Briar, since she won’t listen to anything I say. She can ignore me, but she can’t ignore this.’
Freddie was silent for a moment and Alice’s face grew warm as she assumed he was putting the pieces together – the half-completed outline of a campsite under the stars, Briar’s story from the night before, and the fight between them he’d heard about. She wasn’t embarrassed that she had kissed Briar that night, but she also didn’t want to explain to someone who’d always looked up to her how badly she’d fucked things up by doing it.
But Freddie just said, ‘Briar can ignore a lot.’
‘Yeah?’ Alice asked, slowly adding a moon to the sky in front of her. ‘I didn’t realize how much the two of you had kept up over the years. I thoughtIwas your camp big sister.’
‘Well, you never asked. And I figured it was a sore subject for you, so I didn’t bring it up.’
Alice sighed. ‘It’s not a sore subject. I never meant to give you the idea that Briar had done wrong by me. She didn’t, and I’m not mad at her.’
‘But she’s mad at you?’ Freddie asked.
‘She says she’s not. She says the fight was so long ago she doesn’t even remember what it was about.’ She stopped herself from absent-mindedly filling in the moon. ‘She’s always been good at hiding her emotions, I guess. She just never hid them from me.’
‘Then you were lucky,’ Freddie said. ‘She never told me how she was, even when Susan got sick the first time. It was summer when she was diagnosed, so we were all around. Everyone was upset, but Briar wouldn’t talk about it. When she didn’t go back to college for her senior year, we knew things were bad.’
Alice looked at him sharply. ‘Susan said that Briar dropped out because she decided she didn’t want to be a teacher anymore.’
Freddie raised his eyebrows. ‘I think she might have even believed it. That’s how tough Briar is to crack. She convinced her own mother that she’d dropped out of school because she wanted to, coincidentally at the same time Susan needed a caregiver.’
‘Oh,’ Alice said, mulling over Freddie’s recollection of events. Of course she remembered the initial diagnosis six years ago, but Susan had written to her about it with her usual pragmatic attitude:
Dear, I’ve had some bad news from the doctors, but they’ve cleared me to finish out the end of camp before starting treatment. If all goes according to plan, I should be back on my feet by next May, which is the most important thing.
There had been no mention of Briar in the initial email, but when Alice had asked after her, Susan had written back:
She seems to be feeling directionless lately. She’s dissatisfied with her teaching program and doesn’t feel that the material matches up with her pedagogical approach. I understand her concerns, but have still encouraged her to finish out the program. She’s always wanted to be an English teacher, and I know she’ll be a brilliant one if she can just push through.
If it had seemed strange that Susan hadn’t mentioned Briar’s reaction to her diagnosis, Alice had written it off as something Susan considered too private to share. She wondered now whether the window she’d had into Briar’s life – the updates of her achievements and happiness that had led to Alice convincing herself that Briar was better off without her – was Susan’s way of protecting her from the truth.
She shook that thought off quickly. It was clear, even with everything Briar had been through, that she was resilient enough to weather any storm without Alice. She’d already bonded with the new cohort of counselors, earning their respect before Alice could say two words to anyone. If anything, Alice felt like her presence in Briar’s time of need was only making things worse.
‘I thought about reaching out to Briar when Susan was first diagnosed,’ she admitted to Freddie. ‘But I figured she had a good support system, since she was living with Noah and Harper.’
Alice had eventually dismissed the impulse as selfish, wanting to soothe her own anxieties over Susan’s condition rather than make things easier for the whole family. She had decided that Susan needed a peaceful environment to recover, and she didn’t want to disturb that.
Freddie didn’t bat an eye at Alice’s awkwardness when talking about Noah and Harper. ‘None of us realized how bad it was. Susan made it sound like she’d essentially come down with a bad flu. And there were no other updates, except that she was cleared to come back to camp, and, after a couple of years, that she was in remission.’ He looked over at her, a pained expression on his face. ‘I found out the cancer was back a week before she passed, and Briar had only known for a few days at that point. I’ll never understand why Susan didn’t tell us earlier.’
Alice was struck dumb by his words, by the realization that she had known Susan’s prognosis weeks before she’d told Briar. It didn’t seem possible.
‘I understand it,’ Alice said, trying to hide her surprise. ‘If there was nothing to be done by the time she found out, why prolong others’ suffering on her behalf? Susan would’ve found that unseemly. She would hate for us to cry over her.’
‘Fuck that.’
Alice snorted. ‘I still can’t believe she’s gone. I mean, Iactuallycan’t believe it. Does it feel real to you?’
