Chapter 24
Alice
The summer was ending.
It had always been like this. There would come a time when Alice would realize fall was impending, and her brain would flip to prematurely mourn the end of camp and the return to real life, counting the days as though she was facing the worst kind of sentence upon returning home.
But somehow, this time, she hadn’t been expecting it, and as she sat with the campers around the bonfire, her limbs grew heavy with bittersweet emotion.
Robin and his friends giggled as they stuck marshmallows on sticks to roast. Seeing them together, Alice was hit by a wave of nostalgia for the bonfires of her own youth, for the feeling that there were so many opportunities ahead of her.
At the time, high school had felt like just another place where Alice had to be perfect.
Now, she wondered if it was the freest she would ever feel.
She’d come so far – left home, come out, pursued her dream career – and somehow felt just as trapped as she had at eighteen, but with no real means of remaking her life again.
She’d taken too many steps down one path before realizing that there were no diverging trails ahead.
The bonfire marked the start of the last week of camp. After that, they would spend a week packing up. And then she would go back to London, interview for a job, and start the next stage of her life. A stage 4,000 miles away from these woods, from this summer.
She looked at Briar, sitting with a group of campers, and was overwhelmed by the wrongness of leaving her all over again.
The first time, it had been an impulse, a reflex to prevent her heart from breaking any further.
That heartbreak had blindsided her, upending the life that she’d known.
This time she was willingly walking into the heartbreak, eyes wide open.
Freddie cleared his throat meaningfully from beside her.
‘Look, I don’t want to put something else on Briar’s plate,’ he said, looking down. ‘But I was wondering if you know whether she can hire me in the fall.’
Alice studied him, confused. ‘I thought you had a job.’
‘They can’t sponsor my visa anymore. So I asked Briar if she’d be willing to take me on, just for the year.’ His expression was unusually grave.
‘Oh,’ Alice said. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure what she’s thinking when it comes to the fall…’ She trailed off, unsure if it was her place to tell Freddie that Briar was almost certainly selling the camp. It felt like Briar’s news to share.
Freddie nodded. ‘That’s fine, I’ll give her more time. I know it’s a big ask.’
Alice grabbed his hand, squeezing it. ‘Hey, we’ll figure it out.’
‘Bri-ar, Bri-ar, Bri-ar,’ the kids who Briar was holding court with started chanting, and Briar stood. Everyone fell silent.
‘Okay, okay,’ Briar said, holding her hands up in defeat, ‘I’ll sing something, but only if you promise to be on your best behavior for the rest of the night.
’ Her gaze swept across the group, landing on Alice for a moment.
Alice wanted to bottle the feeling of Briar looking at her like that, like the two of them were sharing a secret, forever.
Noah handed Briar his guitar and she played a few chords, testing them out.
Alice watched her, trying unsuccessfully to clear her mind of all of the unproductive thoughts that surfaced at the sight of Briar in the firelight, at the knowledge that she was going to hear her sing one last time.
Something had changed between the two of them in the last week, and it felt like they couldn’t go back to how they had been at the beginning of the summer. It should have been a good thing, but instead it just made Alice sad.
She wanted so badly to go back to when Briar had given her the friendship bracelet that very first summer, to savor every moment. When it had seemed like anything was possible, with Briar at her side. When she couldn’t fathom there would ever be an ending.
‘This is one of my favorites,’ Briar said, looking at Alice again. ‘Apparently Paul McCartney wrote it when he was fourteen, so all you fourteen-year-olds out there, take notes. You could be world-famous musicians one day.’
She played the first notes of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, and Alice felt a tightening in her chest that could only mean she was about to cry.
She was grateful to camp, in a way, for making her act so irrational.
She never would have kissed Briar all those years ago if it wasn’t for camp, a place where she had always been reckless.
And she never normally would have quit her real life to spend a summer trying to apologize to a friend, but love seemed to evoke strange responses from her.
Briar had learned how to play this song when they were twelve. It was the summer Alice had skipped her art classes to take extra music ones alongside Briar. Alice had discovered that summer that she was completely tone deaf, and that Briar had the voice of an angel.
As Briar sang the song’s final stanza, Alice allowed some tears to escape. By letting a few out, she hoped that she could act like an actual functioning human for the rest of the campfire, and not a mess. Everything in moderation.
Once she was back in London, these feelings would stop, she was sure of it. She’d managed to move on once before.
Briar handed off the guitar to Noah, who performed a spirited rendition of ‘Yellow Submarine’. Alice expected Briar to return to the campers she’d been with before, but instead she sat next to her.
‘Hey,’ she said, resting a hand on Alice’s knee. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Alice said. ‘I forgot how good you are.’
‘Remember when you tried to learn it too?’ Briar asked, grinning.
Alice swatted at her arm. ‘No need to lord it over me.’
Briar put a hand on her chest in mock affront. ‘I would never.’ Alice narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh, well, if you insist…’ She broke into a quiet rendition of Alice’s nasally singing voice.
‘Fuck off,’ Alice said, smiling.
Briar brought her face even closer to Alice’s. ‘I just wanted to see if I could make you say fuck.’
Alice laughed. ‘You’re such a child.’
The campers around them erupted into applause and they turned back to Noah, who was giving a theatrical series of bows to his fans. Freddie stood next, gesturing for quiet.
‘Back by popular demand,’ he announced, ‘it’s your favorite duo! What do you think’ – he turned to Sierra – ‘can they handle it?’
Sierra nodded. ‘I don’t see any fainters.’
Freddie broke into song.
‘He has such a beautiful soprano,’ Alice muttered to Briar, and she was rewarded with Briar’s laughter, which had once been, and had again become, Alice’s favorite sound in the world.
Freddie and Sierra continued, the performance somehow morphing into Sierra giving an educational lecture on indigenous history as Freddie did an interpretive dance in the background.
‘Andddd remember, kids, imperialism is not giving. Or whatever it is you all say nowadays,’ Sierra said, as they reached what Alice supposed was the end.
‘Should we have let them do that?’ Alice asked out of the side of her mouth.
The final piece of self-control that was keeping Alice composed broke at the sight of Briar hunched over, red-faced and giggling. She laughed at the sound of Briar’s laughter.
‘Definitely—’ Another peal of laughter overtook Briar. ‘Definitely not.’
‘We’re terrible camp directors, aren’t we?’ Alice asked, wiping a tear from Briar’s cheek with her thumb. ‘Are we scarring these children permanently?’
‘They’ll bounce back.’
‘What about us?’ Alice asked. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of Freddie doing the splits while Sierra sings “This Land Is Your Land” un-ingrained from my hippocampus.’
‘We’re long past any chance at normalcy for you, I’m afraid,’ Briar said.
‘Are you okay? I’ve never known you to giggle.’ Freddie plopped himself down next to Alice. ‘Actually, you two have been laughing an awful lot recently.’ He looked between them for a drawn-out moment. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’
‘No,’ Briar said.
‘Are you getting high on Cook’s supply?’ he accused.
‘No!’ Alice said, still laughing, catching Briar’s eye and reveling in the feeling of having a shared language with her again.
She felt a pang of recognition, as if this scene had happened before.
That was what it meant to have a best friend like Briar – someone who had shaped the way Alice’s brain worked in ways she would never be able to understand the extent of.
She knew now that her heartbreak at eighteen hadn’t been teenage angst. She’d loved Briar then, and loved her now. Maybe she’d never stopped.
Alice was propelled to her feet. ‘I need to talk to Noah and Harper.’
She wanted to give Briar one last magical moment of the summer, something she could look back on positively despite what came next. And she would need help to pull it off.
Alice made her way around the fire pit to where Noah and Harper were talking in hushed tones. There was a hint of tension that reminded Alice of the poker night.
‘Hi,’ she said awkwardly, wishing she’d timed her bright idea to not interrupt what was clearly an important conversation.
‘Hi,’ Noah said, easily turning his furrowed brow into a clear expression. Harper’s frown didn’t fade as quickly.
‘Briar’s birthday is in ten days—’ Alice started.
‘We know,’ Harper interrupted.
‘Right, of course you do. I was just thinking it would be nice if we could surprise her with a party.’
‘I think that’s a great idea,’ Noah said.
‘We should get the old crew down here, anyone who’s able to come on short notice: Rafa, Zach, Sonya. And you guys can get in touch with her college friends, maybe? Her roommates?’
Harper nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Should we have it here?’ Noah asked. ‘Or back in DC?’
‘My idea was to do it at Susan’s house. I have a list of projects that need to get done. I don’t want Briar to have to do all of them in the fall, when she’ll have so many other things to catch up on. So we could fix it up as a surprise.’
‘I am pretty handy,’ Noah said.