Chapter 8 Sadie
I’m so proud of myself I could cry.
Today was hard. Like really hard. There hasn’t been a moment all day without pain of some sort—my shoulders, my back, my hips, my feet. A headache that started blooming somewhere around mile four. Add in my treacherous experience back at the waterfall, crying would make sense.
The creek shouldn’t have scared me. It was, objectively, not scary—the water was so clear I could see fish swimming.
I’m proud of myself for not listening to the voice in my head that kept whispering rocks are slippery, rocks are deadly, maybe rocks and rivers are not your thing. I listened to Thorn instead—and Trey, and Parker—and their voices drowned out the anxiety.
I’ve survived another day.
I really want to upload some stuff to Instagram—but after finding out Thorn overheard me recording today’s vlog footage, I’m a little self-conscious.
“Need any help?” he asks, glancing over at my efforts to secure a tent peg in the ground.
“Not sure why you’d think that,” I reply. If I make a joke out of it, the truth will sting less: I, Sadie Whitlock—competent in many areas of my real life back home—have been an utter disaster out here. “Not like I’ve needed your help with anything else so far.”
He bites down on a laugh. “Right.”
I’m struggling with this particular peg, but too stubborn to admit it. He knows, too—about the struggle and the stubbornness, I can tell—but he gives me space, pretends he believes I’ve got it under control.
I do not have it under control.
It’s partly secure, but I must have hit a root or something because the peg won’t go in any farther.
Thorn hovers behind me, silent but there, making it even more difficult to concentrate.
I pull the peg out altogether, readjust the placement of the tent flap, and try again.
It’s better this time, but still gets stuck three-quarters of the way into the ground.
An abrupt and resonant clanging suddenly echoes through the clearing, startling me—I flinch so hard Thorn and I collide, the back of my shoulder making solid contact with his chest.
Matteo, apparently, has a cowbell. “Dinner in ten!” he calls out.
“So sorry,” I say, laughing. “YouTube did not say there would be cowbells.”
“Guess you must have watched the wrong videos. Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m good—but are you?” YouTube also did not advise on what to do when you accidentally bodycheck your wilderness guide.
“You pack the punch of a hummingbird,” he replies. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended,” I tell him, grinning. “So what’s for dinner? Sushi? Steak? Ice cream?”
He laughs, playing along. “There’s that research coming through for you again. If you’re lucky, there’ll also be chocolate lava cake fresh out of the oven.”
“Please tell the chef I’d like raspberry sauce on mine.” Ugh, I miss raspberries.
“Want to know a secret?” he says, leaning in conspiratorially. It’s a nice change: a rare glimpse of the Thorn I met when I first arrived, before he became Super Serious Hiking Guide Thorn. “I have a bar of dark chocolate with raspberries in my pack right now.”
I pull away and swat his arm. “Who’s the overpacker now?”
He laughs. “If you’re nice, I might share.”
“Noted,” I say, playing right back.
At dinner, we gather around the campfire, devouring grilled corn and a variety of prepackaged nuts and jerky and dried mango, all courtesy of Matteo.
This is the best corn I’ve ever had—and that’s coming from someone whose best friend is absolutely obsessed with corn. Abby has dragged me across the country to not one but three corn festivals throughout our friendship together.
I’ve had every kind of corn imaginable. I’ve even had this kind of corn—the kind that’s been grilled directly over the fire while the husks were still on—but maybe Matteo’s just perfected his technique somehow?
Suffice it to say, it’s pretty incredible.
“Don’t get used to it,” Matteo says as I reach for seconds. “There’s only enough for tonight.”
“Can we convince you to come be our chef up at the coffee shop?” Trey says, licking his fingers. “You’re super talented, bro.”
“Thanks, man. Reminds me of Peru—one of the guys I knew down there made it all the time.” He grabs a second helping for himself. “I’ve thought about going to culinary school, actually.”
Matteo’s more talkative than I expected, especially after seeing how silent he’s been with Thorn. While the rest of us are exhausted and ravenous after all the hours of hiking, Matteo has seemingly endless energy to burn. This is the fourth time he’s brought up Peru.
It’s also the fourth time Thorn has tensed up at the mere mention of Peru. He rips off his corn husk in rather violent fashion.
Whatever’s going on between them, it most definitely has to do with Peru.
Sparks and embers flicker from the campfire as a trail of smoke winds its way toward the starry night sky.
I haven’t experienced darkness like this—aside from the warm glow of the fire—since I was a little kid out on my grandparents’ ranch, hunting for constellations from the comfort of their enormous backyard hammock.
“You don’t happen to have any s’mores stuff, do you?” Parker, the quiet tennis player with flawless brown skin and long black locs, sounds hopeful.
“Thought you’d never ask!” Matteo says with a wide smile, his teeth movie-star perfect even in near darkness. A few seconds later, he produces a bag of thick marshmallows from his pack.
Everyone springs into action, collecting twigs and loading them up with marshmallows.
Everyone, that is, but Thorn.
“You don’t like s’mores?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Just letting everyone else go first. What’s your excuse?”
“Oh, you know, just letting everyone else go first,” I reply, matching his inflection tone for tone, an experiment to see if I can make him laugh again.
He does, and the sound of it catches me off guard—there’s just something so attractive about the way he laughs, that deep voice and how surprised he always sounds to be laughing at all. It’s like he’s out of practice at it, like he’s coming up for air after being underwater just a little too long.
We scrounge around for a stick to use and find the perfect one right behind my tent: it forks at the end, a double prong that will allow us to roast two marshmallows at once.
Thorn follows me back over to the fire, where a lively debate is happening about proper marshmallow-roasting technique—the coffee bros are all in favor of letting them catch fire and char until the entire outside is crispy and molten black, while the tennis girls are Team Ooey-Gooey-But-Still-Recognizably-Marshmallow.
Joshua and Zoe are on opposite sides of the debate; the more I see how they interact with each other, bickering one minute then kissing the next, the more I wonder if their incessant PDA is the only interest they actually have in common.
Matteo, predictably, enjoys everything.
“How do you like yours?” Thorn asks me. He holds his hand out for my—our—stick. “May I?”
I snort. “Please, be my guest. And no strong opinions, really…I like them edible?”
I’m guessing Thorn has infinitely more practice at this than I do, as my experience with s’mores can best be summed up in precisely two categories: the kind I’ve made in the microwave at home, and the deconstructed s’mores-inspired desserts I’ve had at fancy restaurants.
Seeing as we’re lacking in both the microwave and five-star-chef departments, I’m happy to let him take this.
He roasts our marshmallows until they’re on the verge of catching fire, then pulls them out. I’m ready with a paper plate full of graham crackers and chocolate, and together, we assemble them.
Everyone settles into their own groups—tennis girls, coffee bros, Joshua and Zoe and their drama.
I catch Matteo glancing our way when Thorn isn’t looking, watch a decision play out on his face: there’s no way he’s coming over here.
Sure enough, he heads over to the tennis girls, and they make room for him to join them, laughing at something he’s said.
This, Thorn notices too.
I tilt my head toward Matteo. “So what’s up with you guys?”
He coughs, narrowly avoiding death by graham cracker. “What do you mean?”
I study him. “The fact that you’re supposed to be ‘coleaders’ ”—I add air quotes for emphasis—“but haven’t spoken a single word to each other since we’ve been out here?”
“That’s not technically true,” he says. “He’s been talking all night, and I was within listening distance the whole time.”
I smirk. “Okay, yes, that totally counts.”
Thorn lowers his eyes, focusing intently on not choking as he takes a long sip from his water bottle to clear out his problematic bite of s’more. The longer it takes for him to meet my eyes again, the more I feel like maybe I should have thought twice before bringing it up.
“You know what?” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked—”
“It’s fine.”
It’s not. The silence stretches between us as he takes another bite. A tiny bit of gooey marshmallow catches on his lower lip, and he licks it away with a flick of his tongue.
I take another bite of my own s’more, not sure what to say now that I’ve made things awkward.
“You’re pretty brave, coming out here all by yourself,” he says, an abrupt subject change, not at all what I was expecting.
“You think?” I ask after another bite, as if it hadn’t even occurred to me. In all honesty, I’ve been thinking it myself—but it’s validating to hear it from him.
He gives a deep nod. “I do.”
I take it in, waiting for another joke about Eat Pray Love or Wild—both of which are in my pack as we speak, by the way, but I will not be admitting that anytime soon.
The joke never comes. Instead, there’s a thoughtful look on his face as he studies me. Like he’s looking for the real answers to the question he asked earlier on the trail: What made me want to sign up for something like this?