I snort. “Okay, that’s insanely far.”
“Not really. The trails would be a hell of a lot easier than the one leading to the nearest bus stop, and we wouldn’t hike the entire time, you know. We’d take breaks. Camp at night.”
“We?”
“You and me, yes,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’d take you there.”
“The two of us hiking to Condor Peak? Alone?”
“I wasn’t planning on inviting the bear along, but if you think we need a chaperone . . .”
I chuckle nervously and look at the map. “Are you serious?”
“Completely.”
“Why would you do this?”
He shrugs. “I don’t want to go back home yet. If you do, then I can walk you back to the bus stop. Maybe you’d be able to catch a bus tomorrow. Maybe there would be service and you could call your mom to come get you. Maybe you can hitchhike.”
That’s a whole lot of maybes. Definitely do not like.
“On the other hand,” he says, “if you want to go to Condor Peak, I can plan a less dangerous and much easier hiking route into the national park.”
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to think of a way to turn him down without sounding like a jerk. I mean, I can’t do this. It’s Lennon. My enemy. My former enemy. And also my former best friend. I have no idea what we are to each other now. We just started talking again, and my body is so stupid that it’s already having erotic dreams about him, which is what got me into trouble with him in the first place. I don’t want to get my hopes up. I don’t even want to have hopes!
“How were you planning on getting home once you got to Condor Peak?” he asks.
“Avani,” I say. “She’s driving—following Dr. Viramontes and a few other people up there. The star party is for three nights, I think? So she’s heading back when it’s over. We were supposed to leave Friday morning to be back home by noon.”
“Then I can catch a ride back to Melita Hills with you guys,” he says, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world. “Avani’s cool. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
No, she wouldn’t. She likes Lennon. My brain flips back to the stuff she said about Brett not being in Lennon’s league. God, she’d love to know what a total screwup Brett was during this trip. She’d probably gloat and say she told me so.
Or she wouldn’t, because she’s too nice.
This is not what I planned. Then again, none of it is. Nothing has gone the way it was supposed to go. At all.
How did it all go so wrong?
“Look,” he says. “The way I see it, if you go back home, Reagan wins. Because now that she’s humiliated herself and lost control of her perfect vacation, she wants everyone to be miserable along with her. When school starts, she’ll tell her tribe in the courtyard a version of the story that makes her look the best. Like it or not, you will be the antagonist of that story. Don’t you think she’d just love it if she could tell everyone that you had to take a bunch of connecting rural buses to get back home? Or pay a gazillion dollars to hire a car—or worse, call your mom to come get you?”
“Your knack for making me feel like a failure is extraordinary.”
“Or,” he says, holding up a finger, “you could tell everyone that she ran home like a spoiled brat who didn’t get her way while you had a great time hiking with the coolest guy in school.”
I push my glasses up.
“And you can tell them that you went to a star party,” he continues. “People will say, Ooh, what’s that? And you’ll be able to say, No big deal, I just hiked across a national park and met up with some of my fellow astronomers to view— Wait, what is it again?”
“The Perseid meteor shower.”
“The Perseid meteor shower, which probably doesn’t happen that often.”
“Every year.”
“Once every three hundred sixty-five days,” Lennon says in a mystical voice, wiping his hand through the air dramatically.
“Shut up,” I say, smiling a little, despite the dire situation.
“Hey, I know you didn’t lug that telescope up here for your health.”
I glance in the direction of my tent. I haven’t even had a chance to use it.
“Do what you love. Don’t let Reagan stop you. Screw her. Screw Brett, too, and his pretentious Kerouac worship. Kerouac drank himself to death. Neal Cassady screwed anything that moved and was a total misogynist—like most of the Beats, who were a bunch of immature dicks. Then he died of barbiturate abuse. So yeah, neither one of them lived past their forties. National treasures, my ass.”
Yikes. Someone has strong feelings. “Didn’t know you were so knowledgeable about literature,” I say.
“I might surprise you yet, Zora May Everhart.”
He already has.
“I’m sorry about Brett,” he says in a gentler tone. “I really am. Especially if you liked him.”
“Funny thing is, I’m not sure that I did. I mean, I thought I did, until . . .”
“You actually got to spend time with him?”
“Maybe.”
“Me too. When he first started wanting to hang with me, I was like—I don’t know. He’s Brett Seager. Everyone loves him. But, Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I couldn’t spend an hour alone with him without praying for a nuclear bomb to hit, because at least I wouldn’t have to endure another second of him quoting lines from ‘Howl’ or On the Road.”
I think about Brett telling me he’d like to learn how to take photos of stars, and now I wonder if he really meant it, or if he was just preemptively placating my feelings.
“But,” he says, “despite everything that’s happened between us, believe it or not, I just . . . really want you to be happy. And if Brett is the guy to do that for you—”
“He’s not,” I say quickly.
“I’m glad,” he says in a quiet voice. “I’m so, so glad to hear that.”
I meet Lennon’s eyes with my own. His gaze is unwavering. Too serious. I’m having trouble holding it, so I look at the fire instead.
A long silence stretches between us. Lennon uses a stick to poke the new flames, adjusting his kindling. Last night, I watched him construct this same pyramid-shaped campfire, and eventually the surrounding sticks burn and collapse into the middle. It’s amazing, actually. I had no idea there was an art to building a fire.
I had no idea about a lot of things.
“I dare you,” he murmurs.
I stop rubbing the cold out of my thighs and glance up at him. “You what?”
“I dare you to go to Condor Peak. Let me take you there. I can do it. I know I can. You used to trust me.”
“You used to give me reasons to.”
“I never stopped. You just quit paying attention.”
Are we fighting? I don’t think so, but the energy between us feels fierce. As flammable as his artful pile of sticks.
What do I want to do? Maybe he’s right, and returning home would be a quiet sort of surrender. And really, didn’t I come out here to get away from my family problems? Do I want to walk straight back into them, sitting behind the clinic’s front desk, pretending to be okay while my father walks around in a cloud of lies?
But what’s the alternative? Hiking in the boonies with my greatest enemy?
“Not really. The trails would be a hell of a lot easier than the one leading to the nearest bus stop, and we wouldn’t hike the entire time, you know. We’d take breaks. Camp at night.”
“We?”
“You and me, yes,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’d take you there.”
“The two of us hiking to Condor Peak? Alone?”
“I wasn’t planning on inviting the bear along, but if you think we need a chaperone . . .”
I chuckle nervously and look at the map. “Are you serious?”
“Completely.”
“Why would you do this?”
He shrugs. “I don’t want to go back home yet. If you do, then I can walk you back to the bus stop. Maybe you’d be able to catch a bus tomorrow. Maybe there would be service and you could call your mom to come get you. Maybe you can hitchhike.”
That’s a whole lot of maybes. Definitely do not like.
“On the other hand,” he says, “if you want to go to Condor Peak, I can plan a less dangerous and much easier hiking route into the national park.”
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to think of a way to turn him down without sounding like a jerk. I mean, I can’t do this. It’s Lennon. My enemy. My former enemy. And also my former best friend. I have no idea what we are to each other now. We just started talking again, and my body is so stupid that it’s already having erotic dreams about him, which is what got me into trouble with him in the first place. I don’t want to get my hopes up. I don’t even want to have hopes!
“How were you planning on getting home once you got to Condor Peak?” he asks.
“Avani,” I say. “She’s driving—following Dr. Viramontes and a few other people up there. The star party is for three nights, I think? So she’s heading back when it’s over. We were supposed to leave Friday morning to be back home by noon.”
“Then I can catch a ride back to Melita Hills with you guys,” he says, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world. “Avani’s cool. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
No, she wouldn’t. She likes Lennon. My brain flips back to the stuff she said about Brett not being in Lennon’s league. God, she’d love to know what a total screwup Brett was during this trip. She’d probably gloat and say she told me so.
Or she wouldn’t, because she’s too nice.
This is not what I planned. Then again, none of it is. Nothing has gone the way it was supposed to go. At all.
How did it all go so wrong?
“Look,” he says. “The way I see it, if you go back home, Reagan wins. Because now that she’s humiliated herself and lost control of her perfect vacation, she wants everyone to be miserable along with her. When school starts, she’ll tell her tribe in the courtyard a version of the story that makes her look the best. Like it or not, you will be the antagonist of that story. Don’t you think she’d just love it if she could tell everyone that you had to take a bunch of connecting rural buses to get back home? Or pay a gazillion dollars to hire a car—or worse, call your mom to come get you?”
“Your knack for making me feel like a failure is extraordinary.”
“Or,” he says, holding up a finger, “you could tell everyone that she ran home like a spoiled brat who didn’t get her way while you had a great time hiking with the coolest guy in school.”
I push my glasses up.
“And you can tell them that you went to a star party,” he continues. “People will say, Ooh, what’s that? And you’ll be able to say, No big deal, I just hiked across a national park and met up with some of my fellow astronomers to view— Wait, what is it again?”
“The Perseid meteor shower.”
“The Perseid meteor shower, which probably doesn’t happen that often.”
“Every year.”
“Once every three hundred sixty-five days,” Lennon says in a mystical voice, wiping his hand through the air dramatically.
“Shut up,” I say, smiling a little, despite the dire situation.
“Hey, I know you didn’t lug that telescope up here for your health.”
I glance in the direction of my tent. I haven’t even had a chance to use it.
“Do what you love. Don’t let Reagan stop you. Screw her. Screw Brett, too, and his pretentious Kerouac worship. Kerouac drank himself to death. Neal Cassady screwed anything that moved and was a total misogynist—like most of the Beats, who were a bunch of immature dicks. Then he died of barbiturate abuse. So yeah, neither one of them lived past their forties. National treasures, my ass.”
Yikes. Someone has strong feelings. “Didn’t know you were so knowledgeable about literature,” I say.
“I might surprise you yet, Zora May Everhart.”
He already has.
“I’m sorry about Brett,” he says in a gentler tone. “I really am. Especially if you liked him.”
“Funny thing is, I’m not sure that I did. I mean, I thought I did, until . . .”
“You actually got to spend time with him?”
“Maybe.”
“Me too. When he first started wanting to hang with me, I was like—I don’t know. He’s Brett Seager. Everyone loves him. But, Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I couldn’t spend an hour alone with him without praying for a nuclear bomb to hit, because at least I wouldn’t have to endure another second of him quoting lines from ‘Howl’ or On the Road.”
I think about Brett telling me he’d like to learn how to take photos of stars, and now I wonder if he really meant it, or if he was just preemptively placating my feelings.
“But,” he says, “despite everything that’s happened between us, believe it or not, I just . . . really want you to be happy. And if Brett is the guy to do that for you—”
“He’s not,” I say quickly.
“I’m glad,” he says in a quiet voice. “I’m so, so glad to hear that.”
I meet Lennon’s eyes with my own. His gaze is unwavering. Too serious. I’m having trouble holding it, so I look at the fire instead.
A long silence stretches between us. Lennon uses a stick to poke the new flames, adjusting his kindling. Last night, I watched him construct this same pyramid-shaped campfire, and eventually the surrounding sticks burn and collapse into the middle. It’s amazing, actually. I had no idea there was an art to building a fire.
I had no idea about a lot of things.
“I dare you,” he murmurs.
I stop rubbing the cold out of my thighs and glance up at him. “You what?”
“I dare you to go to Condor Peak. Let me take you there. I can do it. I know I can. You used to trust me.”
“You used to give me reasons to.”
“I never stopped. You just quit paying attention.”
Are we fighting? I don’t think so, but the energy between us feels fierce. As flammable as his artful pile of sticks.
What do I want to do? Maybe he’s right, and returning home would be a quiet sort of surrender. And really, didn’t I come out here to get away from my family problems? Do I want to walk straight back into them, sitting behind the clinic’s front desk, pretending to be okay while my father walks around in a cloud of lies?
But what’s the alternative? Hiking in the boonies with my greatest enemy?
