Chapter 2 #2
“Guys, it’s bad enough you’re not helping, but now you’re pawing through the snacks?” Asha was inching a pole through the gathered fabric loops of the tent. “It’s supposed to be salty and sweet together. Now it’ll just be salty.”
“You’re sweet enough to make it work.” Nolan blinked and smiled an innocent smile, revealing chocolatey front teeth. “Okay, now I’m thirsty. You think the campground vending machine has milk?” He stood up and jogged toward the entrance.
“Flattery is not going to get this tent built,” Asha called after him, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Hattie, pull on the other end. This fucking thing is stuck.”
Together, we managed to force the end of the pole into its little pocket. But the next pole was even harder. Asha and I were both sweating. Mason was laughing.
“Mason, stop scarfing sugar and get your butt over here.”
“Hey, hey. I am not scarfing. Nolan’s the scarfer. I am carefully selecting the green ones to build my manly stamina. Then I will come help you ladies with all of my testosterone.”
“Oh my God. Never mind,” I said.
“Gross,” said Asha.
Mason stood up and walked toward Asha. “All right, stop begging. The reinforcements have arrived.”
“Just like a boy to do the exact same thing the girl has already been doing but make it like he’s some knight in shining armor,” Asha said, smirking at Mason.
“You’re welcome,” Mason said, stepping into her spot.
He and I moved in sync then, wordlessly navigating around each other to apply pressure where it was needed, bending the arc of the tent until each piece settled into place.
Then he unzipped the front flap with a flourish and Asha unfurled the sleeping bags.
We collapsed on the soft fleece inside, congratulating each other.
“I’m actually pretty proud of us,” I said.
“We have a promising future of successfully assembling IKEA furniture,” Mason agreed.
Later, we forced Nolan to build the fire while we ate the trail mix nuts, leaving just the sad little raisins in the bag. This is it, I remember thinking. We’re independent. We’re practically adults.
The feeling carried me through the evening, the six of us sitting around the fire, each face lit by the warm glow of the flames, looking like a commercial for an expensive SUV that could take us on adventures just like this.
We stayed up late, talking about our favorite music and whether female vocalists could capture emotion that male singers couldn’t (Asha thought so).
Finally, we tumbled into the tent without brushing our teeth, crawling into our sleeping bags still dressed, succumbing to the deep untroubled sleep of summertime with no homework or obligations.
At some point in the night, I woke up needing to pee. I tried desperately to tell my bladder not now and go back to sleep. I tried lying on my side, my back, curled up in a ball. There was no avoiding it.
I crawled over the snoring lump next to me and felt for my flashlight in the mesh pocket that hung from the wall of the tent.
Clicking it on, I slipped my feet into flip-flops by the door, unzipped the flap, and stepped out into the night chill.
The dew was so heavy that it felt like it had been raining.
I shivered and hugged myself. I wanted to get this over with as fast as possible and get back to the cocooned coziness of my sleeping bag.
The bathroom looked like a lighthouse, bright fluorescents beckoning across the gravel loop of the campground.
Inside, it was the same dank mess I remembered from earlier in the day, trash on the floor and water from the showers creating suspicious puddles all over.
I wondered if it ever dried out in here.
In the humidity, I could hear mosquitoes buzzing, so I crouched over the toilet without touching the seat, peed, washed my hands, and hurried out of there.
I stepped from the thousand-watt bathroom into complete darkness.
Before I had gone into the light I had been able to see vague shapes around me, the dark mounds of tents up and down the loop, the outlines of shadowy trees against a clouded sky.
Now, after all that brightness in my eyes, I saw none of that.
It was flat black, like someone had thrown a hood over my head.
It made me nervous. I clicked on my flashlight.
A tiny circle of light appeared in front of me on the ground, revealing gravel pebbles and weeds.
I inched forward, the bobbing circle in front of me showing more of the same, gravel and weeds, gravel and weeds.
I lifted my head. Just black. Where was the tent? Shit.
After what seemed like an eternity, I looked behind me.
I was much farther away from the bathroom now, but was I going in the right direction?
I tried to remember the angle by which I had approached the building just a minute or two before, but I had been concentrating on not wetting my pants so I hadn’t really clocked what I was doing.
I should have counted my damn footsteps or something. Too late for that now.
I considered the possibility that I would just have to sit down and wait until dawn, but I wasn’t sure what time it was.
That could be hours. Maybe I should give it another try.
I headed back to the bathroom and started again, a little more to the right this time, pushing down the panic that was rising in my throat.
You’re just cold, Hattie. You’re not going to die.
Finally, something appeared in my little circle other than ground.
It was the corner of a tent, but there was a pickup truck next to it.
It was not our tent. Still, it was a glimmer of hope.
I had not been magically transported to the surface of the moon.
Maybe I could follow the line of tents to our tent.
I moved down the row, past three more unfamiliar tents, then five.
Now I once again felt too far away from the bathroom. Shit shit.
I kept shaking my head and blinking my eyes, trying to force more of the world to come into focus. The tree shapes were visible above me again, but now they seemed menacing, like Wizard of Oz trees. Even more menacing was the awareness that this was not normal. Something was very wrong with me.
I felt like I couldn’t get a good breath in all of a sudden.
I was nowhere, and the distance between me and my parents seemed vast. I was not an adult at all.
I was an immature child. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to feel my body at home in my own comfy bed, tried to will myself there. I opened my eyes. I was still cold.
It was completely silent, that hushed time when even the night birds have dozed off, like the world had powered down. Breaking that silence felt like breaking glass, but my fear was calling the shots now. “Asha!” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Asha! I need you!”
I waited and listened. Nothing. I whispered again. Then a zipper ran along its teeth close by. Please God let that be her. Biting my lip, I clicked my flashlight off. Now I heard gravel footsteps.
“Just when I think you can’t be any weirder.” An amused voice came from right behind me. Mason. “What the hell are you doing?”
I shrugged and tried not to look terrified. “My flashlight died when I went to the bathroom,” I lied, holding the dark flashlight up. “I was having trouble finding you guys.” I never knew exactly why I lied about not being able to see. Somehow the truth seemed more unbelievable than the lie.
I felt him take the flashlight from my hand. He clicked it on. I winced.
“Um, you know how flashlights work, right, Murph?” he said. Everyone else called me Hattie or Hatts, but Mason always called me Murph. And even though last names are supposedly more formal, the way Mason said it felt like the opposite. I could hear that signature smirk.
“Uh, yeah, Mason. It must have just been loose or something.”
“All right, little girl, let’s go tuck you in.” I grabbed his elbow and he put his hand over my hand. “And if you wake up Daddy again you’re going to get a time-out.” He was still teasing me, but his hand was warm and his voice soft around the edges.
“I wasn’t trying to wake you up,” I said, mock offended. “I was calling for Asha. It’s not my fault you came when I called like a puppy.”
“Asha is snoring like a lumberjack,” he said. He stopped for a minute, and we listened. He was right: I could definitely hear some heavy-duty snoring.
When we were at our tent, I hung back.
“I’m never going to get back to sleep now,” I said.
I felt like I had just had a big cup of caffeine—probably from the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, but maybe also a little bit from feeling suddenly like Mason and I were the only two people in the world right now.
“I don’t want to go lie in there, wide awake, and have to be quiet. Let’s just stay out here.”
“Seriously? It’s freezing.” He was still for a second. Then he said, “Hold on a sec.”
He detached himself from my hand and went into the tent, which I could just see the outline of.
He came back with both our sleeping bags seconds later.
I followed him a few feet to a picnic table and he unzipped them, laying his on the bench and pulling mine over us against the chill as we scooted together.
“Check it out,” he said. “Goodbye, stars; hello, huge ball of flame.”
The sunrise had been sneaking up on us. Half the sky faded from black to a soft gray. Just moments later, it was all of the sky. The clouds were visible again, wispy and white. Already the gray was taking on more blue.
“Sweet,” Mason said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sun rise before. Looks like not all of your ideas are bad, Murph.” He slung his arm around me and held my shoulder.
The gesture made me feel cozier than the sleeping bags did. But then that warmth gave me a pang, made me think of something. “Remember when we first met? In fourth grade?”
“We knew each other before that,” he objected.
“No, we didn’t. I was at St. Brigit’s before that. I moved to Fillmore in fourth grade. That’s when we met. In Miss Davis’s class.”
“Oh. I thought you were there from the beginning.” He shrugged.
“Nope. Started with Miss Davis. Remember how she let us have free reading time after lunch and you could sit anywhere? How we used to climb on top of the cupboards and sit near the ceiling to read?”
“Ha, yeah. We were so psyched for reading time, just ’cause we got to climb.”
“I never understood you then. Not that I understand you now. But you were a real mystery.” I hadn’t planned to rehash elementary school with him, but out it came. It was clear I thought about it more than he did. Even now, I was looking for clues to how Mason ticked.
“A mystery? Like a ‘how could a boy be so handsome and so smart at the same time’ kind of mystery?”
I pinched his leg. “No, you dope. Seriously, you were kind of … a flip-flopper. Half friend and half enemy.”
I felt the energy change in his limbs. There was a tension, like he was struggling between the urge to make a snappy comeback and genuine curiosity. He landed somewhere in the middle.
“Murphy, I barely even remember fourth grade. And I definitely don’t remember being enemies. Not with anyone. So what are you talking about?”
“Do you remember how we were always next to each other in line, ’cause of our last names? We would talk in the hall on the way to math class.”
“Sort of. I remember math class. I hated Mr. Harding. Yep, you got me. I take back what I said about no enemies. I was enemies with Mr. Harding.”
“Yeah, me too.” I pushed on. “So, we’d usually joke around, but a few times, when I was walking in front of you, you did that thing where you reach out your foot and hook the ankle of the person in front of you.
One time I fell pretty hard. My books went all over the hall.
The whole class laughed. You don’t remember? ”
“Well, you’ve always been klutzy, Murphy—”
I sighed. I felt the snark wall going up. “Whatever. Never mind.” I waved my hand a little bit, erasing the attempt to cut through to something real. My body involuntarily inched away a little, but Mason grabbed me and pulled.
“Hey now. Hey. Don’t be like that.” I could hear the half-joking pout of his lip. “I mean, I don’t remember that, but it sounds like me, as in, a dick.”
I shrugged.
“I’m sorry, okay?” he said. He turned toward me. “I really am. I’m sorry to fourth-grade you.”
I laughed then. It was silly, after all. I’d been holding this against him all this time, a mental photograph of me splayed across the elementary school hallway rising in my mind like a barrier between us. “It was a long time ago.”
He turned back toward the brightening sky, satisfied. The sun’s rays hadn’t broken the horizon yet, but you could tell the sun was sitting just beyond the curvature of the earth because it was already turning the fluffy clouds a Hello Kitty pink.
“Whoa. Look at that,” Mason said. We huddled together, watching. I was not used to him being so serious, so quiet. “Well, we’re not half enemies now, right?”
“No.”
“Okay, good.”
“We’re one hundred percent friends now.” It felt corny as soon as it came out of my mouth.
“Let’s not get carried away,” he said, predictably. I knew he wouldn’t let me get away with that much earnestness. I smiled and shook my head. He had apologized to me, pretty sincerely, so that was something. I would hold on to that.
That trip was only a month before Mason died, but it feels so long ago now that it might as well have been someone else’s life altogether.
I have to stand up and shake out my limbs to stop feeling like I’m caving in.
At the time I had thought, Wow, maybe this is the beginning of something different, but now I know that it was really the end.
And it was such a missed opportunity. I could have told him my secrets then.
What was so hard about that? I could have told him that I couldn’t see in the dark, that I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me but I had some ideas, that I was afraid of ending up like my dad, defective and trapped, utterly dependent on other people, ultimately alone.
Then it wouldn’t be a secret. Someone else would know.
Maybe it would have changed everything. Changed things enough so that maybe I would have been with him that night on the dock. And he would be alive now.
I’m used to feeling regret about stupid things I say, impulsive things. But this regret for all I didn’t say is new, and it stings.