I head back across the field to find Gabe, but Patrick’s the first Donnelly I come upon, sitting by the low-burning embers of the campfire and staring into the flames like he’s trying to solve a mystery, the light flickering over his serious face. His dad used to build us fires just like this one in the backyard of the farmhouse, tell us long, involved stories before we fell asleep. We’d pass out side by side in our sleeping bags. We sat side by side at Chuck’s wake.
I don’t know if he sees me or just senses me lurking, but after a moment Patrick turns and raises his hand to wave. I stand there for a minute, looking at him and remembering, wondering what would happen if I walked over and sat down beside him.
Wondering what would happen if I leaned in and kissed him good night.
God. What is mymalfunction? I just held his girlfriend’s hair back while she puked, for Pete’s sake. I shake my head once to clear it, embarrassed. I raise one cautious hand and wave back.
Day 35
Tess takes it easy the next day, predictably, mostly prone in a nest of sleeping bags with a Stephen King book and a bag of pretzels, which is the closest thing to saltines that anybody brought. The rest of us hike until our blisters are bleeding, till it feels like the mountains are having their way with all of us: Patrick has a run-in with some poison sumac. Imogen gets stung by a wasp. My sunburn chafes against my clothes until I’m swearing to anyone who’ll listen that I’m done with outdoor activities forever. “I mean it,” I tell Imogen, hobbling along back down the mountain, hair falling out of its messy bun. “As soon as we get home I’m going to set up shop in a hermetically sealed bubble and never come out again.”
“Sounds like a great plan!” Julia calls brightly, coming up behind us. Imogen and I look at each other wide-eyed for a moment before bursting into wild, slaphappy giggles.
“That Julia,” I gasp, practically doubled over with laughter. It’s been a long time since Imogen and I cracked up like this, since before I left, definitely. I don’t know if the two of us are just exhausted or what, but it almost makes the burn worth it. “You can always count on her.”
Tess has perked up enough by the time we get back that she helps Patrick grill burgers and hot dogs over the campfire, lining the buns up along the table in neat, symmetrical rows. “Feel better?” I ask when I come over to grab a pair for me and Gabe, along with one of the knock-you-naked brownies Imogen made. Tess nods quickly, tilting her head to accept a kiss on the cheek from Patrick that might or might not be for my benefit, it’s impossible to tell.
“Good,” I say brightly, paper plate in each hand, feeling my face do a weird thing and willing it not to.You’re welcome, I think nastily. “I’m glad.”
I tell myself there’s nothing to feel strange about all of a sudden, that I’m cranky and uncomfortable because of my sunburn and sleeping on the ground for a third night in a row. But later on I’m coming back from the campground bathroom holding my toothbrush in one hand and rubbing my opposite arm with the other—it’s chilly this high in the mountains, goose bumps blooming up and down my limbs—when I spy Patrick holding the flap of the tent open for Tess so she can climb on in ahead of him. I can’t hear what he says to her, but I hear her full-bodied laugh in response, muffled as Patrick zips the door shut. It’s the same tent Chuck set up for us behind the farmhouse summer after summer when we were kids. Inside, I know it smells like mothballs and dirt.
I breathe in sharply, hit all at once with this weird, strong instinct to scream outStop, like seeing someone about to step in front of an oncoming car or put their hand down on a hot burner. Like I’m trying to stave off something awful and disastrous—only I’m the one about to get hurt.
God. I actually shake my head as I turn purposefully back toward the tent I’m sharing with Gabe. I don’t know how to make myself quit feeling like this. OfcourseI knew the two of them were sharing a tent, ofcoursethe various implications of that fact had occurred to me—and, I guess, so had the fact that those various implications were irrelevant as long as Tess was puking her guts out.
Gabe reaches for me almost as soon as I’m inside, one hand in mine and tugging me down onto the soft pile of our sleeping bags, rucking my practical tank top up over my head. “This is some sunburn, Molly Barlow,” he murmurs, looking at me in the dim moonlight shining in through the vent in the ceiling. He presses his mouth against a red place on my shoulder, another one near my hip where yesterday’s shirt rode up as I slept. “That hurt?”
Tess is thinner than me, I think meanly.She’s probably better-looking with her clothes off than I am, she’s probably—
Stop it.
“Doesn’t hurt,” I promise, closing my eyes and sinking into it a little, Gabe’s hands and his mouth and the now-familiar hum he cranks up in my body. Patrick and I were babies when we started dating, young enough that it didn’t feel like we were in a hurry to do anything, both of us probably shyer than we’d admit even to each other. But we’re older now, we’re at the point where it’s definitely not inconceivable for him and Tess to have moved way faster, for him to be pulling off her T-shirt right now, tugging at the elastic on her underwear and—
“I can’t,” I blurt suddenly, sitting up with such force I pretty much shove Gabe right off me, bolt upright in my half-unzipped sleeping bag with my face flushed sweaty and red. I completely don’t know how to follow it up, how to explain to him that it’s Patrick and Tess one tent over and the two of us in here, and that everything feels connected, too close, terrible, and right this second all I want is for no one to ever touch me again. We’ve done it already, haven’t we? Maybe it shouldn’t be so big of a deal, but it just, itis, I don’t—“I’m sorry,” I try, “I just—”
“Hey, easy,” Gabe says, sitting up and scrubbing his hair out of his face. “You’re okay; we don’t have to do anything. Easy, hey.” He reaches out and laces his fingers through mine, squeezing. “You wanna go for a walk?”
I smile at that, embarrassed and grateful, reaching for my shirt and fussing with the hem for a moment. “Are you, like, perfect or something?” I ask him, shaking my head before pulling the shirt over it. “Is that your superpower?”
“Nah,” Gabe says seriously. “My superpower is X-ray vision.”
I snort. “Oh my God, I take it back.”
Gabe grins. “Come on,” he says, standing up and pulling me to my feet along with him. “Let’s go see some fucking stars.”
I grab some snacks and supplies, and we pick our way across the campground, past parties still going strong and intense late-night conversations happening around dying fires. I shiver as the night air hits my sunburned skin. Gabe’s hand is warm around mine, though, and by the time we reach the clearing where the concert was last night I’ve pushed Patrick and Tess and whatever they might or might not be doing resolutely out of my mind. This is what’s happening, me and Gabe and these fucking stars above us. This is right where I’m supposed to be.
We find a patch of grass mostly clear of garbage and spread the blanket on the damp ground, leaning back to look up at the sky. We’re far enough from any real civilization that the moon looks like a spotlight—there’s Orion, one of the Dippers, Cassiopeia in her upside-down chair. “This is the part where we talk about what specks we are compared to the universe,” I inform Gabe wryly, but the truth is I’m really, really glad we came out here to look. “Here,” I say, pulling a couple of beers out of my backpack. “To being specks.”
Gabe grins at that, surprised. “Look at you, Girl Scout,” he says, twisting the caps off both of them and handing one back to me. “I love you, you know that? You’re something else.”
I blink at him for a moment, Gabe blinking back at me. Then both of us start to laugh. “You know what I mean,” he says, and Ido, I think, sitting out here with the bowl-shaped sky above us. I kiss him hard to show I understand.
Day 36
Back at home there’s another email from the dean in my inbox:Dear Incoming Student, please, for the love of all things holy, hurry up and figure out your life.
Or something like that, at least.
