It took a second before I realized he hadn’t turned on the road that would lead us home, but instead was heading straight into town. “Thiago, where are we going?” I asked, but either he didn’t hear me or else he just didn’t want to answer.
When he parked in front of the police station, I said, “Why are we here?” I would have preferred to be anywhere else. I didn’t want to talk about Julian. Especially not there. I didn’t want to relive that awkward, shameful moment when my mother and I had to explain to the cops how Julian had taken a nude video of me and uploaded it to the internet.
“You don’t have to go in with me,” Thiago said. “You can wait out here; it’s your call.”
“There’s no way I’m going in there,” I told him as he got off the motorcycle, hanging the helmet from his left arm.
“No problem. Wait for me here, then.”
He hurried inside before I could argue.
I looked around at the town I’d grown up in, asking myself when I had become the girl who gets harassed and stalked, who gets sneered at. The girl who gets dumped by her boyfriend because she hooked up with his brother.
I took out my phone and called Taylor. Don’t ask me why. I just needed to hear his voice. I needed to say I was sorry; I needed to feel his arms around me.
Memories flooded my mind: our smiles and laughter as we goofed off in his room, his visits during my shifts at the café, cuddling on the couch watching movies. That was Taylor: the guy who could make you laugh, no matter what.
He didn’t answer, so I hung up and looked at the photo of him on my home screen, blinking a tear from my eye. It rolled down my cheek, leaving a trail. I wiped it away with my forearm,trying to pretend I wasn’t crying even though it was exactly what I deserved. I deserved to cry, to be alone, and as I told myself this, I kept staring at that photo from when I’d gone to decorate his house for Halloween. He had been coming up behind me in a Frankenstein mask, and I’d spotted him in the living room mirror, but decided to pretend I didn’t know he was coming so I could scare him in turn.
I’d spun around and shouted “Boo!” He’d been so shocked, he’d fallen on the floor.
I couldn’t stop laughing, and the look on his face had been so ridiculous, I just had to immortalize it with a photo. I’d pulled off his mask and given him a kiss on the cheek, and at the same time, taken a selfie of the two of us.
Even now, as stressed as I was, that photo still managed to make me smile.
“You can talk to him if you want, Kam,” a voice behind me said.
I slipped my phone into my back pocket. I didn’t respond, putting on my helmet, and asked Thiago, “Will you take me home now?”
It looked like he had something else to say, but he just said, “Hop on.”
Again, he didn’t take the road home, and I was surprised when I found us on a highway leading out of town. “Where are we going, Thiago?” I shouted over the rumbling of the bike. He said nothing, so I got more and more nervous, and soon we were in an empty field, all shadows except for his headlights. I saw trees left and right, and when Thiago stopped the bike and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a boxy caravan parked there, and for a moment, my curiosity took over.
“What’s that?” I asked as he killed the engine and the silence of the forest seemed to engulf us.
“Take off your helmet,” Thiago said as he dismounted. I looked around. There was still a heavy layer of snow on the ground, and the trees were capped with white, their branches hanging low. In front of the camper was a circle of stones with ashes and burned logs in the middle. There must have been a fire there not long before.
“This is my new home,” Thiago said.
“What?” I asked, shocked, stepping forward and walking around the caravan.
“I bought it a week ago,” he said, stuffing his hands into his jacket. It certainly wasn’t new, or even in decent condition, but I could imagine stepping out of it, looking up and gazing at the stars, or building a fire and sitting down to talk for hours.
I’d always fantasized about road-tripping cross-country in a camper like this. I’d asked my parents a million times if we could drive Route 66, but they’d never seemed interested. They were more the five-star-hotel types, even if every day was always the same at places like that. Luxury suites and fancy views got boring. The camper in front of me didn’t look mobile, at least not in its current state, but I was curious to take a look inside.
“Why’d you bring me out here?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “We need to talk, right? And I figured this was a good place to do it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, sitting on one of the stones around the fire pit.
“Kam, my brother knows we have feelings for each other. Don’t pretend like we can just ignore that.”
I looked at a patch of trees as I buttoned my coat up and stuck my hands back in my pockets. It was freezing, but it felt good being out in the middle of nowhere. It was as if I was in another world, another time—somewhere I could think and reflect.
“What did they tell you at the police station?” I asked, tryingto change the subject or at least buy a little time. I wasn’t ready to face my feelings yet. And I sure wasn’t ready to face Thiago’s.
“They’re a bunch of morons,” he said as he walked around the side of the camper and came back with a few logs of firewood. “They said they’ll let his parents know, but that’s all they can do for now. For them, it’s just a case of bullying, and they want the school to take care of it.”
