Chapter Twenty-Four Mary
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mary
Four and a half years ago
It took the both of us to help a writhing Leo to his feet and guide him, stumbling, to my campsite and the river.
After using some dish soap to mix up a pot full of cold, sudsy water, we rinsed and dabbed at his angry skin in an attempt to break down the oils causing him so much agony.
Finally we led him to the bank and helped flush his face with the icy river water until our hands went numb from the cold.
For over an hour, the only words spoken were our soft reassurances, periodically punctuated by his profanity.
When, at last, he felt a slight improvement, we sat him down by the fire, and I wrapped gauze around his swollen eyes.
My sister was the first one to broach the subject—loudly enough that I’m sure her voice carried for a good mile in the still night.
“What the actual fuck, Mary?!”
It wasn’t a question so much as a demand for an explanation—and that really pissed me off.
“No! No, no, no!” I shook my head violently. “You do not get to do that. You do not get to go screwing around in the woods five minutes from my campsite—with our guide, no less!—and then ask me what the actual fuck!”
“Wow, look at you throwing around the big nasty f-bomb! What would Mommy and Daddy say if they heard that word come out of the mouth of their precious little ‘Marebear’?” she taunted. “Oh, no! They might cut off your trust!”
I’ve never been so angry as I was at that moment. So angry that I went completely still with a rage powerful enough to render me unblinking, unbreathing, and unseeing for several heartbeats.
She must have sensed it because she immediately shifted from the offensive to the defensive. “I’m sorry, Mary,” she said in a much softer, much more contrite tone. “I was just . . . I’ve been really lonely, and Leo and I hit it off—”
He scoffed from next to us.
I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“What? Have you got something to add? ’Cause, last time I checked, relationships between team members are ‘frowned upon,’ but relationships between team members and guides are explicitly forbidden.”
Leo, who, with his gauze-wrapped head looked more like a World War II hospital patient than an outdoor adventurer, swung his blind gaze in my direction.
“Yeah, your sister over there already lobbed that little Molotov cocktail my way when she threatened to report me if I had you two kicked from the course after that shit show on the river.”
My turn to demand. “Wait, what? What is he talking about, Sam?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head as if she couldn’t believe we were having such a ridiculous conversation.
“I just . . . I mean, we’d already, you know, hooked up.
Just because we wanted to . . . And maybe after the thing with the raft, I might have mentioned that it wouldn’t be great for him if anyone happened to find out . . .”
“You blackmailed him?” I yelped, my voice pitching higher on the offending word.
“Yes!” Leo agreed, nodding. “Yes, that’s exactly what she did! She blackmailed me!”
“Don’t you even try to pretend you’re a victim here,” I spat at him.
“It was against the rules in the first place, and for good reason! You have a position of power over her, and her credentials are in your hands. Besides, clearly a little blackmail wasn’t much of a deterrent, because here we are!
” Our guide dropped his head in defeat. He knew I was right.
But I wasn’t quite done yet. “And why on earth would the two of you decide to do it out in the woods? And so close to my campsite? Couldn’t you have done your shagging in one of your tents instead of out in the middle of the forest? And in winter, no less!”
Sam looked guiltily at Leo, who I could tell was turning red under the bandages.
“I was doing my check on your campsites,” he explained miserably. “When I came across Sam out in the woods.”
“I’d caught sight of your campfire,” she jumped in, “and I was planning to sneak over here and scare you—you know, scratch on your tent like a bear? But I ran into Leo and . . . well . . . you know . . .”
I didn’t know. And I don’t mean because I was a virgin, but because it seemed so incredibly stupid that I couldn’t fathom it.
“Look,” Leo said, “there’s no reason this has to go any further, okay? We’ll just all meet up tomorrow, as planned, and pretend none of this ever happened.”
I snorted. “Really? And how do you plan to explain the fact that your eyes are swollen shut?”
“The swelling will wear off by then, and I’ll put on sunglasses to hide the redness.”
I threw up my hands and paced in front of the fire for several more seconds before stopping and pivoting to face him. As if sensing my gaze, he tilted his head in my direction.
“You’re a damn good guide,” I told him sincerely.
“And I can’t believe I’m here lecturing you.
I’m eighteen. You’re thirty! But, my God, this was a bad decision.
You’re lucky all you got was a little bear spray in the face.
Next time it might be someone mistaking you for the bear.
Or, God forbid, it might be the bear himself! ”
“I know,” he muttered. “I know that, Mary. And I’m sorry. Everything you’ve said is spot on. I’ll do whatever you guys want. I can turn myself in right now if you want . . .”
“Right. You get fired. Sam and I get booted with no certification! Months of time and thousands of dollars down the drain.”
“Okay,” my sister began, taking a rare turn at being the peacemaker.
“Let’s all just go back to what we’re supposed to be doing.
I’ll walk back to my own camp, you try to get back to sleep, and Leo can .
. . Ah, hell . . . I don’t even know what to do with you, dude.
You couldn’t make your way to your own camp, let alone check in on anyone else’s. ”
“No, I was done. You were the last because . . .”
“Because you figured you’d finish your rounds and spend the rest of the night in her tent?” When he didn’t respond to my accusation, I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose between my index finger and thumb. “Okay, look—Sam and I will walk you back to your camp.”
“No,” he protested. “I don’t want you two wandering around out here by yourselves.”
“Seriously? You’re worried about that now?
” I asked, not waiting for an answer. “Okay, then she’ll just come back here with me so we’re together.
And tomorrow morning, when the sun’s up, she can go back to her own camp and pack everything.
We all make our own way back to the rendezvous site—alone.
No one speaks of this again. Like ever. Deal? ”
“Absolutely,” Sam agreed with a nod.
“Yes.” Leo joined her, then added, “Thank you, Mary.”
“Don’t thank me,” I grumbled. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The next morning, as I started out on the five-mile hike to the team rendezvous point, the damp, moist air transitioned into something heavier and darker.
The sun disappeared behind thick cloud cover, and I was surprised at how quickly a chill set in once it was gone.
At around mile three the sky turned an angry shade of grayish green and began to spit out tiny pellets.
Sized somewhere between rain and hail, they peppered my face.
Ping, ping, ping, ping. The incessant pelting went from mild annoyance, to discomfort, and, finally, to a relentless stinging that was infuriating and maddening by turns.
It was like something that you see on television when the bad guys, and sometimes the good guys, are trying to “break” an enemy—a twisted mashup of water torture and death by a thousand cuts.
By the time the camp revealed itself with a smudge of smoke on the horizon, I already had a fire burning in my gut—a simmering ball of rage stoked with the recollection of the night before.
And while I did have to swallow it, I didn’t have to be happy about it.
Sam and Leo were both already there when I arrived, as were the rest of the team, save for Nan, who came hiking in a half hour behind me, not having been mauled by a bear or molested by a psychopath.
If only my night had been so uneventful!
I tried to enjoy our last evening together as a group, but it was hard.
I couldn’t look at Leo the same way ever again, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to look at Sam again.
Certainly not in those final hours. So I made a point of discreetly avoiding her as I spent a little time with each member of our team, reminiscing about how much we’d changed during our time together and already making plans to come back for the “veterans’” trip offered to NAWA grads in the fall.
When the van picked us up the next morning, Sam managed to grab the seat next to mine, despite my best efforts to thwart her.
I angled my body away from her, staring out my window, neither of us uttering a word during the ninety-minute ride back to headquarters.
By the time we were a mile out, I’d already plotted my escape from the van.
The plan was to dart into the building before either my sister or Leo had the chance to corner me.
We were just through the gates when the van came to an abrupt stop, the driver cursing under his breath.
“What the . . . Who the hell are all these people?” he asked no one in particular as he started forward again, slowly navigating around a crowd of what must have been two hundred people—all cheering and clapping as we drove by.
“Oh my God!” Naomi exclaimed from her spot in the third row of the van. “They’re here! They actually came out to meet us!”
Leo, still wearing his sunglasses, twisted around in the passenger seat to look back at her. “Wait a minute—are you saying these people are here because of you? These are your followers or whatever? The ones you’ve been posting for all these weeks?” he asked, incredulous.
She had a huge smile as she nodded, brows raised in confirmation. “Yes! I told them when we’d be back and where so they could come out and meet us if they wanted to. But”—she paused, peering out the window a little closer—“I don’t think they’re here just for me . . .”
I followed the direction she was pointing. A group of at least a dozen people were standing together holding signs that read things like:
Reunited at last!
Double the adventure, double the love!
Sisters by fate, adventurers by choice!
“Wait . . . what?” I murmured, gaping at the crowd moving toward the building and our parking spot.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Naomi squealed, looking down at her phone. “TwinPower is trending number one!”
“What the fuck does that even mean?” Sam demanded, ducking her head to get a better look past me and out the window.
“It means the two of you have gone viral!”
For the first time in nearly a day, my eyes met Sam’s.
I knew right then and there that I didn’t have the luxury of staying mad at her because it was going to take both of us to face this. Whatever “this” was.