Chapter 25 Going Full Into the Wild
25
Going Full Into the Wild
“I probably need a tent, right? A waterproof one?” I muse aloud.
I stayed at Chelsea’s after the party. I couldn’t bear to go back to my apartment and see Adam everywhere. Then I spilled the tragic story of the Lewis Cookie Party and promptly fell asleep.
Now I’ve lured Chelsea to the Mall of America.
One part theme park, one part capitalist nightmare, the Mall of America may be the worst place to find yourself on a Sunday in the middle of December. My foot slides on a Yeti bumper sticker as I yank Chelsea by the arm past the picked-over cooler display at the entrance of L.L.Bean.
My eyes dart around the store until they find a pop-up tent display in the distance. I charge toward the orange vinyl, chewing my bottom lip while I compare features of the tents. I have no idea what I’m looking for, so I grab the one in the smallest box. Compact is best, right?
“Do you need to shop for camping supplies right now ?” Chelsea asks, worry laced in her voice. I barely register her concern.
I can’t be with you when you’re so determined to be someone else .
Adam’s words play on repeat when I give myself a moment to think. So I don’t let myself think. I just do. I woke up this morning with energy that needed to be expended and a bone-deep desperation to be the woman I’m supposed to be. Adam’s wrong. I’m not being someone else. That better, more worthy someone is me.
“I’ll need it for next weekend,” I explain, wrenching my cart with a herky-jerky 180-degree pivot. Chelsea trails behind me, her mouth agape.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“The Boundary Waters. Ely, maybe? I’m just gonna play it by ear.” I mention the wilderness within the Superior National Forest near the Canadian border casually, like it’s a bagel shop I want to stop at on the way home.
“It’s like five degrees there if it’s a warm day.” Chelsea follows me through the racks of clothes, removing a hammock from my cart and placing it back on a shelf. Before her hands have left the box, a man with an ash-blond bun snatches it for himself. Never underestimate the brutality of a Midwesterner near discounted outdoor equipment.
“If I don’t get some practice camping, I’ll never hack Patagonia in January.”
“Why do you need to go to Patagonia in January?” she asks in her best patient-teacher voice. When I disappear into the depths of the thermal underwear rack, she tries a different tactic. “Patagonia is in the Southern Hemisphere, right? Is it even that cold there in January? Northern-Minnesota-woods cold?”
“It’s in the mountains.” I haven’t looked into the weather conditions yet. “Should I dehydrate my own food, or can I buy the store-bought stuff?” I barrel away from her with three sets of wool long johns.
“I think there’s some unnecessary risk in dehydrating your own.” Chelsea’s mollifying words don’t match the distress in her voice. Her eyes flit toward the entrance repeatedly as I compare the temperature recommendations on windproof pants.
I see Chelsea’s shoulders slump in relief out of the corner of my eye. “Mara! Thank god you’re here. She’s gone full Into the Wild . Have you watched that one, Alison? I think it’s on Netflix.”
“With Reese Witherspoon? Of course.” My thoughts are miles away, contemplating whether I need new hiking boots or if I can double up on socks.
Mara wrenches the pants from my grasp. “Nope. Into the Wild with Emile Hirsch. It’s a true story in which someone traveling alone in the wilderness starves to death in a bus. A bus, Alison!”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to die in a bus. But if I did, at least I’d know I really lived.”
My mantra sounds dramatic and disturbed even to my own ears.
“You know how else you can live? By living. Come on, we’re going to eat waffles. You’re not maxing out your credit card on whatever’s happening right now. I can’t believe you dragged me to the Mall of America during Christmas shopping season. A hugely pregnant woman shoved me in front of a Pandora store, and this was after I’d already witnessed her other child vomiting on the log flume.” Mara grabs me firmly by the shoulder. “I love you, but there’s only so much trauma I can withstand before noon on a Sunday.”
“But my cart,” I whine in despair. It’s then my eyes catch on the thing that rips me in half. Collapsing onto the floor next to a circular sale rack of performance vests, I clutch the source of my devastation on my way down: a fucking denim-khaki reversible jacket.
“Come on, sweetie. We can come back later after we do some googling.” Chelsea pats my head cajolingly.
“Yes, I’m sure Wirecutter has an article on the beginner’s guide to frostbite,” Mara says.
I’m crying on the floor of an outdoor retailer over a men’s jacket. I’m a manipulative teaser on the five o’clock news: Holiday inflation devastates shoppers (more at eleven!) . And my friends are hardly fazed. I’m utterly pathetic.
I drop the jacket, and Mara and Chelsea lead me by the arm past the canoe display and out of the store.
···
I’ve eaten four bites of waffle when it begins.
“First…” Chelsea folds her hands sweetly on the lacquered-penny tabletop of our booth in the assertively trendy restaurant. “We want you to know we love you. It’s just—”
“This is an intervention,” Mara erupts.
“Subtle,” Chelsea murmurs, letting her head fall back on the black vinyl. “What’s going on, Al? Is this really only about Adam?”
“No.” My voice cracks. “Yes. Probably not.”
“Does it have to do with the mastectomy?” Chelsea asks gently.
I consider her question, brushing my hair out of my tear-stained eyes, the wet pieces sticking to my face. The fresh wound to my heart smarts, but something older and thornier twists at my sternum just above it. “I was supposed to get cancer,” I say in a stuttering breath.
“It wasn’t like one hundred percent happening,” Chelsea says softly.
She hands me her napkin as tears stream down my face. I blow my nose into it pitifully. “My mom did, and I was supposed to probably, someday get cancer. And now I probably won’t. I can’t shake this feeling that I cheated.”
Chelsea shakes her head, her eyes filling with water. “You didn’t cheat, Al.”
“Maybe. But my mom beat cancer, and she’s still consumed by it because of me. It’s all we talk about. How much she doesn’t want to see me go through chemo. How I can mitigate my risk until I never have to worry about it. But I want to be someone who deserves it, like Sam. Sam deserved his life.”
Mara reaches across the table to take my hand firmly in hers. “What happened to Sam was a horrible accident—and it has nothing to do with you—but, I’m sorry, ‘mitigating your risk’? Is that what we’re calling having a fucking mastectomy, Al? You had a scary diagnosis and made the decision to take control of your life at a pretty big cost. You want to talk about earning things? You did something hard and brave, and you have more than earned the life you have.”
I’ve never liked when people call me brave for making a cautious medical decision. But from my forthright friend, it doesn’t sound like a sympathy card from the hereditary-cancer section of Hallmark—it sounds like a badge of honor.
“You have to call your therapist. Today. We’re not taking no for an answer,” Chelsea says.
I lean my head on Chelsea’s shoulder. Mara leaves her side of the booth and scooches in next to me. I close my eyes, feeling safe and still for the first time today.
“Do you ever feel like you’re doing life completely wrong?” I ask shakily.
Chelsea’s shoulders jostle my head when she lets out a puff of air that’s equal parts laughter and tears. “Yes. Constantly.”
“I have a lot of opinions on how other people are living their lives, but my own?” Mara shakes her head with a smile. “I’m sorry if I made it worse by trying to control everything. I know how I can be—it’s very helpful in most areas of my life, but I didn’t see that I was doing that to you. I’m sorry for that, but you need to tell me when I’m going too far. You have to stop doing things because you think it’s what you should do and silently keeping a scorecard.”
I lob my head from Chelsea’s shoulder to Mara’s. “I think I can handle that.”
We eat too many waffles, and I’m consumed by that fizzy, silly feeling I only have around my best friends—that intoxicating invincibility of being known, understood, and loved as the most beautiful, brilliant idiot the world has ever seen. No one else, not even Adam, could make me feel so lovably ridiculous as these two weirdos.