Chapter 18
“You can’t be serious.” It’s impossible to keep my exasperation off my face.
“The passholders need to be present for me to release your guest bracelets.” The Sunflower Sound VIP concierge flattens her mouth in a practiced expression of sympathy.
I scrape back the strands of wet hair plastered to my forehead. “Their flight is delayed.”
Nate’s waterlogged sneaker squelches as he steps forward. “We can FaceTime them. They’ll show you their IDs.”
The concierge smooths her embroidered Western button-down, which is dry, and clasps her hands atop her wood-paneled desk, which is also dry, like everything else under this tidy white canopy other than us. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait for the passholders.”
“They won’t be here until tomorrow.” Desperation turns my voice ragged. “We walked forever to get here. Carried all our stuff. Where else can we go? We don’t have a tent.”
The flat line of her mouth tightens. I’m not getting anywhere, I know, but we’ve come so far.
Five hundred fifty miles on the road with the rain chasing us across half the state.
Then a mile-long trudge from the farthest parking lot, after an attendant told us we couldn’t park in VIP without Livvie and Kyla.
He didn’t mention that we wouldn’t be able to get in at all unless they were with us.
My legs are simultaneously stiff from the car ride and fatigued from wading a mile through soggy fields.
Our shoes are fucked. The soaked hem of my jeans clings to my ankles.
Right over the concierge’s shoulder sit orderly rows of luxury RVs and fancy tents. There’s a covered central area with wicker furniture and large potted plants on one side, giant Jenga sets and cornhole boards on the other. To the right, a row of golf carts waits to ferry people to the stages.
Nobody on the other side of this desk is getting trench foot.
“I can give you general admission tickets and a sticker for the car camping lot.” The concierge slides a white envelope toward me. “You won’t need a tent to sleep there. When your friends arrive tomorrow, meet them here and you’ll be able to enjoy the amenities.”
I concede with a weak smile. “Thanks.”
Nate is no longer standing at my side. He’s shuffled over to the left corner of the desk, where the view of the VIP campground is less obstructed.
Logan is here, we know that. One of his friends posted photos earlier: a group shot in front of one of the fancy tents, with Logan front and center, and one of him at the first show of the day, his face turned up and his arms spread wide, inviting the rain.
If a golf cart dropped him off right now, we’d see him. But that would require perfect timing, which we don’t have, so instead we trek back to the car.
“You go ahead,” I say a quarter mile in. “I’m going to lie down and let the mud take me. When future generations discover my body, I’ll be so well-preserved they’ll put me in a museum.”
Nate reaches out a hand. “Let me take your bag.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to. It would be a waste of the granola bars for you to keep it when you succumb to the elements.”
Around the halfway point, he makes a futile attempt to wring out his T-shirt. “I would agree to spend the afterlife at a Vegas pool party in exchange for the power to teleport away from here right now.”
“But would you swim at the pool party?”
“I’m already swimming,” he says. “Is this not swimming?”
By the time our car comes into view, we’ve deteriorated into foolishness, leaning into each other’s shoulders as we stagger forward.
“Remember when you thought the clown motel was the worst thing we were going to encounter?” I ask.
“Remember when you thought the trip had gone off the rails because you stepped on a Lego?” he replies.
“We handled The Floor Is Lava like professionals. Shouldn’t we be able to handle this?”
“I don’t know if I’d say we handled it like professionals. ” A pink tinge colors his cheeks, but his tone is playful.
I’m too delirious for that comment to fluster me.
We blast the heat and follow the concierge’s directions to the car camping lot, where it’s abundantly obvious that the masses came prepared.
Different versions of the same pop-up canopy shield the tailgates of every vehicle, many set with folding chairs and tarps for floors.
People have grills and coolers and lighting arrangements.
Most of them seem to be planning to sleep in tents.
The rest have air mattresses and piles of bedding in their trunks.
Shit, what are we going to do without blankets?
Nate’s eyes are wide and darting everywhere, which means he’s ten seconds away from hitting the gas and not letting up until we run into the closest Courtyard by Marriott. “All the hotels nearby are probably booked,” I say.
He blinks. “I didn’t say I wanted to go to a hotel.”
“You’re good here?”
“I’m great,” he says. “Looking forward to”—he surveys the scene in front of us—“giving that Slip ’N Slide a try.” I narrow my eyes at him, and he mirrors the expression. “Wait, do you want to leave?”
“Nope. This is going to be an adventure.”
Once we park, things start looking up. This shitty little corner of this giant swamp is an instant community. Just add water, and the misery and music does the rest, apparently. We wander the rows, feeling out who seems friendly and social, and the answer is almost everyone.
A group of KU students holds court in the three spots next to ours.
They readily share their sandwiches and beer, which we gulp down eagerly.
Natty Light has never tasted so good. An older couple takes one look at our sorry state and gives us a package of wet wipes and a couple clean, dry towels.
We Venmo a guy in an old Bronco twenty bucks in exchange for a sleeping bag, though we decline his offer of mushrooms.
The rain eases up around sundown, and the campsite glows an artificial yellow as the lights come on.
Nate and I take turns shimmying out of our clothes in the car, drying off and scrubbing away as much of the grime as possible.
I change into my denim shorts and new cowboy boots, admiring their metallic gleam while it lasts and throwing on a lightweight hooded jacket over my T-shirt to protect against the unrelenting wind.
When Nate ducks into the car, I head back toward our college student neighbors.
“Un-fucking-believable,” spits a guy wearing a blue baseball cap on top of the hood of his red plastic poncho, his jaw flexing as he glares at some of his friends, who are gathered around the passenger seat of a Jeep.
His anger is jarring, since the first conversation I had with him involved him cheerfully listing every food he believes to be improved by ranch dressing.
A curly-haired blond girl in cute yellow rain boots flashes me an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” she says. “We’re having a bit of a situation. Did you guys want more beer?”
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
The guy in the poncho is still muttering curses, so she angles herself away from him. “He’s pissed because someone just threw up in his car.”
“Oh, no.” One thing that would definitely make the car camping experience worse is unwanted bodily fluids in the vehicle.
She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. This guy none of us even know that well, who kind of invited himself. Between this and the weather, I don’t know if we’re going to make it until Sunday.”
“Are you going to any shows tonight?” I ask. “Maybe that will cheer everyone up.”
She nods. “Maggie Rogers, for sure, if I can rally the troops.”
“Sounds fun.” Then I remember why I came over here in the first place. “If you were a person who liked to be in the middle of the chaos, where would you be tonight? Nate and I are looking for a friend.”
She laughs. “Well, Fixxins is playing later.”
“Fixxins?” I repeat.
“His music is wild. It’s basically dubstep with a country twist.”
A bolt of dread strikes me in the heart, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I’m pretty sure my knees buckle. Not to be overdramatic or anything. It’s just the last fucking thing I need right now is EDM. Why can’t the headliner be one of my pop superheroes? I could rally for that.
Don’t be a baby. Suck it up.
When Nate emerges from the car, he’s wearing a dry version of the outfit he had on before, his usual beach bum special. T-shirt, open flannel, slate-gray pants instead of army green this time.
“Great news. I have a solid hunch where Logan’s going to be tonight.” I turn toward the blond girl. “Do you know what time Fixxins goes on?”
“Ten thirty, I think.”
“ Ten thirty. ” I choke out the words. “Awesome. Three more hours to kill.”
Nate assesses my hysterical, twitchy smile. “Let’s rest for a bit. Today was exhausting, and we need to conserve energy.”
Yes. Good. Things are better in the car, where we’re shielded from the wind and can barely hear our neighbors bickering about who’s going to clean up the vomit and how the sleeping arrangements are going to be reconfigured now that the Jeep is a biohazard zone.
I take the driver’s seat, reclining it as far as it’ll go, and Nate follows my lead on the passenger side.
“Madison is being too nice.” I shiver, still unable to shake the chill from today. “She dealt with the floor mat. Someone else should’ve helped Dave get rid of that nasty blanket.”
Nate changes a setting on the climate controls, and warm air instantly hits me at a better angle. “She’s a peacemaker, and Jackson is an ass,” he says. “It sucks, but it happened, and now they need to deal with it. Him trying to assign blame is only making it worse.”
“Go ahead, tell him. Say, ‘Jackson, it’s time for you to turn that frown upside down.’?” I illustrate my suggestion with a big, cheesy smile and frame my face with my hands.
He rubs his eyes. “I hate you.”
I roll down his window and lean forward, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Hey!”
He jabs at the door, fumbling for the window switch. But my finger is still resting on the button on my side, and the pane only rises an inch before I press down. The window whines as we battle for control.
“Jackson,” I call out in a stage whisper. “Nate wants to talk to you about your attitude.”
“Quinn,” he groans, but I’m laughing too hard to let up on the button.
Objectively, this bit we’re doing is nothing special.
But everything is funnier because of our current circumstances.
We’re stuck in this shitty field full of misery and we can’t do anything about it, and somehow that turns up the contrast on every scrap of humor we find, making it better and brighter.
A slog interrupted by brief moments of joy.
This feeling is…familiar. Weirdly, it feels like college.
I usually think about college as a time when I simply chose happiness, rising effortlessly out of the smoking crater Jolee made of my family’s lives.
But really, there were plenty of times like this, when all I could do was find a way to laugh if I wanted to keep from crying.
Example: The day the Range Rover got repo’d, I was forced to quit the waitressing job I’d just started because I could no longer get to work.
So Bailey and I spent the evening wreaking havoc with a digital jukebox app one of the local bars used.
It was meant to allow patrons to select music—except you didn’t have to be in the bar to pick a song.
Which meant drinkers across town had to listen to “O Canada” and “The Wheels on the Bus” that night while we rolled around laughing on the floor of my dorm room.
That first year of college, I got stress stomachaches.
I sobbed over nothing every time I had more than four drinks.
I compulsively plucked the stubble from my kneecaps because it gave me fleeting sensations of calm and control.
Through it all, Bailey was there, turning on episodes of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team and dragging me out for frozen yogurt.
Those moments didn’t replace the bad stuff. But they made it survivable.
One thing I may not survive is what Nate does next, while I laugh and refuse to let up on the window: He pounces.
One second he’s flat on his back and the next he’s lying over me, prying my hand off the button.
And because I never learn my lesson, I feel shoulders and hands and warm breath and leap instinctively to the foolish conclusion that we’re about to kiss.
“You torture me,” he huffs, and my brain liquefies.
Of course he’s not trying to kiss me. All he does is swing his other arm around so he can roll up the window. When I realize it, I squirm in a hasty effort to throw him off. My back arches, my feet scrabble to grip the floor, and my hips collide with his.
He makes a noise, a little oof. The car goes silent as the window reaches the top, but he doesn’t move. My limbs feel viscous, so I don’t either. He is shadow and warmth above me, and I can just make out his teeth sinking into his bottom lip in the dim light.
Someone bangs on the roof of the car three times. “Use protection!”
Nate flies back into his seat. My head snaps to the right, past his shoulder. The KU crew is filing through in a line, off to the show, I guess.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be.” It comes out sharp. The last thing I want is for him to be sorry, unless the only thing he’s sorry about is that we got interrupted.
I wish Nate and I could seize this little window of time we have. I’ve already replayed our night in Denver together so many times it’s going to be on my Spotify Wrapped.
But Nate didn’t like the idea of being my rebound from Caleb, and he’s obviously not sold on the idea of a fling. He’s either being cautious with his heart, or he doesn’t want it as badly as I do. I said enough yesterday, and I’m not going to push it any further.
Rain peppers the sunroof like drops of liquid moonlight, falling more steadily than the sporadic drizzle we’ve gotten for the past couple hours.
“Should we go soon?” I ask. Dread kicks in my chest at the prospect of what lies ahead tonight.
Long bathroom lines and music without a hook and trying to work our way through big crowds of too many people rolling on various substances.
“Not yet,” he says. “Let’s wait until this lets up again.”
But it doesn’t let up at all.