“My dad always says that the best way to train for hiking the Underground is to get two bowling balls and then bang them on either side of your ankles,” Caro says, laughing. “Because so much of the hike is in the river and the rocks and cobble are always clunking against your ankles. You both brought your hiking boots, right?”
They nod.
“Great,” Hope says. “Okay. We’ve taken care of the phones. Everyonehas their gear for the Underground. That brings us to the next item of business. Ash?”
“Right.” Ash reaches into the small crossbody bag slung over the back of her chair and pulls out three tiny notebooks and a package of pens. “We’re each going to write down what we’re disappearing from on a piece of paper. And then we’re going to burn them.”
Hope smiles to herself. This ceremony was Ash’s idea, and it feels very true to her nature. Ash is the one who remembers everyone’s birthdays, who made the group spreadsheet for the trip, whose floral arrangements are famous for being wild and singular but also have a well-considered, nearly invisible structure to them. Hope takes a paper and pen and looks down. Should she be honest? She should. She reminds herself,No one’s going to read this.
It’s still hard to write.
Hope scrawls a single word on the paper and folds it up. She catches Caro’s dark, pooled eyes across the fire. Hope smiles at Caro, and Caro smiles back. Here they are at last, no miles or screens or physical distance between them. Another shower of sparks rises upward, and Hope looks at Ash. Her brow is furrowed, as if she can’t think of a single thing she’d get rid of from her perfect, messy life.
But Hope knows better.
Everyone has something.
“I’ll go first.” Hope lowers her voice, and they both lean in to hear her. She holds her paper over the fire but doesn’t drop it. “So, there’s something I haven’t told you guys.”
“Uh-oh,” Caro says. “Spill.”
Ash looks uneasy. Hope understands. How welldothey know her, after all? And yet they were willing to hand over their phones to her. Their lives, to some extent, if she’s being dramatic.
“I told you all that my movie got canceled.” Hope hears a rare hesitant note in her own voice. Although in many ways she’s sort of the defaulthead of the group, she’s also the youngest. Right now, she feels it. “But that wasn’t actually the truth.”
A log on the fire cracks and settles. No one flinches. Ash and Caro are intent on Hope, on what she’s saying. Somewhere in the distance, an animal—a dog? a coyote?—howls.
“They actually fired me,” Hope says. “They decided to recast the role after the first day of filming.”
“Oh, Hope.” Ash reaches over and puts her hand on Hope’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I blame the World War I lighting.” Hope manages a laugh. “I think they got me into full makeup on the set and decided I looked haggard and terrifying and ancient instead of young and beautiful and sympathetic.”
“Youareyoung and beautiful,” Ash says fiercely.
“And sympathetic,” Caro adds.
“But not young and beautiful and sympatheticenough,” Hope says. “Anyway. I was feeling really shitty, and I figured that with all my newfound spare time I could make sure I read the book for book club this month, that at least I could managethatand not let you guys down—”
“You never let us down,” Ash interjects, and Caro nods.
“—and then I remembered how we all met at that Agatha Christie book club, and how Agatha was actuallyalivein World War I, and she was, like, this awesome volunteer during the war, and how before her husband became a piece of garbage he was a fancy military pilot and she was head over heels for him, and I felt forherall over again.”
Hope laughs, a ragged breath, holding her folded-up square of paper over the fire. “So. I’m leaving behind work. I know, I know. Not the most earth-shattering thing I could choose. But I really am. All the expectations. All the things I haven’t done. All the wanting to eat something at a party and not having a single bite because a potential director might be watching, and you don’t want them to think you might get too big. All the chemical peels and preventative Botox and hoping it’s enough and not toomuch. All the roles I didn’t get and the ones I still want. It’s all going up in flames.” She drops her paper into the fire, and it catches fast, the edges blackening to the middle, the whole thing turning into ash.
There is a brief, crackling silence.
“I’m burning work, too.” Caro tosses her paper into the fire. “I’m not copying you, Hope. I’d written that down before you said anything.”
“But your job actuallymatters.” Hope knows she can’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “You’re adoctor.” Caro doesn’t seem to know how to answer that, but thankfully Ash throws her paper into the fire as well.
“Let’s make it a hat trick,” Ash says. “Because I wrote down work, too.” She ducks her head. “And… I also wrote down my family. I know that sounds terrible. It’s only for the next few days.”
“It doesn’t sound terrible,” Hope says. Ash has been a mom for sixteen years, and she runs a small business that keeps taking off in unexpected ways. Of course she needs a break.
“Sorry,” Ash says. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“Cry all you want,” Hope says. “That’s what this trip is for.”
