I went alone. Down at the water’s edge, a perfect reversal of the mountains was reflected in the calm surface. I found a big rock to sit onand watched the glassy surface. Geese flew over in formation, a few on the left end out of line and fraying the V. A bald eagle sat up high in a pine tree surveying the lake, his bleached head winking in the sunlight. I tucked myself down behind a rock and tried to read a paperback novel in the dwindling light. But the loud music was too much.
I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but a huge part of me willed—ached for—someone, Sophie especially, but any of them really, to come fetch me, to encourage me to join in. And the sense that I wanted that so badly made me feel weak, like a deep dig that hit something already bruised inside me. I stubbornly looked out over the lake, disturbed only by rings from fish rising to the evening mayfly hatch. I didn’t want to feel this way, like I needed others. Like I wasn’t just fine on my own.
When I returned to camp, the empties were strewn about and the guys started to crash. I told Sophie we should hit the sack.
“You go ahead.” She slurred her words. “I’m awake.”
Josh had his arm around her. She leaned into him, eyes at half-mast. She kicked a stray coal into the campfire. Smoke billowed.
“I might sleep outside,” she said. “Under all this.”
Above, the night sky was an inky bowl splattered with stars, the Milky Way running like a burst vein through the center.
Sophie looked ethereal in that moment, either strong like a fire goddess or fragile like she might dissolve into the smoke. I sensed a touch of dread, but I couldn’t separate it from my jealousy. And why? Did I want a drunk roll in the hay? Try to steer Josh my way? If the tables were turned, would I have let Sophie sleep alone in the tent?
I went into the woods and peed, got in the tent, zipped the fly, and crawled into my sleeping bag. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the blasting music.
Later, the night was still and quiet when I woke to Sophie frantically prodding me. She was gasping for breath. She grabbed me through the bag and shook me awake.
“We have to go.” If terror had a smell, it rode on her breath—something acrid and urgent. “Now, Crosbie. Please, please. Get your boots on.Now.”
I found my flashlight. Her eyes were wide, tinged with fear.
“I’ll explain later,” she said.
“A bear? Did you hear something?”
“It’s Josh.”
The urgent tremor was like a jolt of electricity to my sleepy head. I slipped on one of my boots.
“He’s at the lake, but he’s coming back.”
I tugged on my other boot as fast as I could, leaving them unlaced. I grabbed my jacket, snatched the flashlight, crawled out of the tent after her, and followed her into the dark.
I tell Greene and Alderson how we fled and spent the rest of the night in the woods. How we stumbled over logs and roots after we turned my flashlight off because we heard some of the boys talking and realized they were looking for us. How we kept on, away from their voices, away from the lake and down slopes and ridges, hopefully toward the highway, but we ended up going too far down into a drainage basin. We curled up together to stay warm.
The next morning, I remembered something my dad told me years before when hiking in the North Fork of the Flathead. He said that people make a common mistake when lost in the mountains: They keep going down, thinking that’s correct, but they end up too low, in basins far away from the trails and roads. Often, if you go back up, you can find the path. So we picked our way upward, and eventually we hit a path traversing a ridge. We followed it and made it to a dirt road that led us to the Swan Highway, where we got a ride into the closest town and called a friend, one of our dormmates. Back safe in Missoula, we went to First Step, a resource center at one of the hospitals for victims of sexual assault, to have Sophie examined.
I tell them how, after a few days, Sophie finally decided to go to the police. They informed her, before they’d even spoken to Josh, that it would be tough to prosecute because there was a lot of alcohol involved and things got blurred. He said, she said. Et cetera. They brought him in when he returned with the others, but nothing came of it. Sophie told me she wanted to return to college life and pretend it didn’t happen.
She wanted to act like everything was carefree and fun, like our first few weeks in the dorm. But it had become anything but.
One month after that night in the mountains, after my philosophy class, I returned to our dorm room. Sophie sat cross-legged on her bed staring out the window. She wore an old green, baggy sweater that hung loosely on her bony shoulders. Her hair fell around her shoulders, greasy and lank, and the autumn light falling across her face exposed some creases in her forehead that I’d never noticed before, as if she were no longer a college student but a much older woman.
I wanted to cry. What was happening to my roommate? I should have prevented this. I should have never talked her into going camping, should never have encouraged her to be more open and, with that, implied willingness. If I could only press rewind, I’d do it all differently.
I set my books down and sat on my bed, facing her. “Aren’t you going to go to your math class?”
She shook her head. “Not today.”
“Sophie.” It came out as a sigh. “You need to go to your classes. If you don’t, you’re going to flunk out.”
“I’m not sure I care.”
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.”
