Chapter 9 #2
‘It’s a very important biological process!
’ Alice insisted, perching on the edge of her bed and refusing to relax.
Even though she was annoyed, she couldn’t stop herself from staring while she knew Briar couldn’t see her.
Her eyes traced up Briar’s calves, taking in the smooth tanned skin of her thighs.
Her shirt had ridden up, and Alice could see the soft plane of her stomach, the dip of her belly button, and just the barest strip of lace from Briar’s underwear.
She had the strangest urge to touch Briar and see if her skin was still as smooth as it had been the last time.
Maybe she had been fooling herself by thinking that her attraction to Briar had disappeared with time.
But attraction, she reasoned, was fine – she knew where she stood with Briar, and she would never allow herself to feel anything truly dangerous for the girl who was selling her favorite place in the world.
She’d become adept at avoiding developing feelings towards women she was attracted to; she could practically boast a DPhil in that subject too.
Briar had been the one person she’d ever allowed herself to have feelings for, and she remembered how that had ended.
‘You are the only person in the world who will go to bat for the worms.’ Briar sighed, putting her hands behind her head.
Alice could have been imagining it, but Briar almost sounded…
wistful? Maybe she’d been approaching this incorrectly.
Briar had never caved to a bully, but she did have a sentimental side Alice could exploit.
‘You’d help me, though,’ she tried, prodding Briar more than she had so far in this disaster of a week. ‘When I went out in the rain to move them off the trails so no one would step on them.’
Briar nodded, still looking at the ceiling. ‘Of course I’d help you. There was no saying no to you when you had an idea. You could’ve rallied anyone, with that glint in your eyes.’ She paused. ‘You were annoying as hell,’ she clarified, her voice soft.
‘Oh really?’ Alice asked, trying not to feel flattered when she knew Briar hadn’t meant it as a compliment. ‘Was I annoying when I won our team the 2012 Capture the Flag game by shooting an arrow with the flag attached over the boundary?’
‘No, that wasn’t annoying,’ Briar said, still not looking at her. ‘But it was reckless. You could’ve hurt someone.’
‘I have perfect aim,’ Alice reminded her.
‘There’s nothing scarier than a teenage girl with an encyclopedic knowledge of poisonous fungi and perfect aim.’
Now she knew she should definitely be offended. ‘I never wanted to hurt anyone.’
‘Could’ve fooled me,’ Briar said under her breath, and then continued, louder, ‘You were always so perfectly controlled at school that it was hard for most people, even Noah, to figure out what you really wanted. And then we would come to camp and everyone here would see the side of you that I saw all the time. The side that was a little bit dangerous. The side that was allowed to want.’
Alice clung to those words, the closest thing she had to an admission of nostalgia from Briar so far. She settled back into her pillows, getting comfortable.
‘It was easier to be myself here,’ she admitted.
‘If I messed up, I could bounce back from it. Susan never reacted the way my mom would’ve.
I liked the me I was here better than the me I was anywhere else.
’ She didn’t add that she liked who she had been around Briar all the time, because it was too painful to admit.
Even more painful was that Briar was the person who made her brave, by accepting her as the person she really was, not the one she tried to present herself as. ‘Didn’t you feel that way too?’
‘It wasn’t as simple for me as it was for you,’ Briar said. ‘Your parents were miles away, and my mom was right next door.’
‘Yeah, but Susan was never disappointed in you.’
Briar didn’t say anything for a long moment and Alice worried she’d messed up and they were no longer in the place of easy nostalgia that would remind Briar how important the camp was to both of them. She knew with certainty she had messed up when Briar spoke, her voice wavering.
‘She was a good mom.’ Briar’s voice cracked on the word. ‘But I wouldn’t say I never disappointed her.’
Alice thought about what Freddie had said, about Briar telling her mom she didn’t want to be a teacher anymore.
Telling Susan she had dropped out of college couldn’t have been easy for Briar.
Knowing that Briar had done it because she thought it was her responsibility made Alice’s chest ache, and she forgot her anger.
‘You’re making her proud with how well you’re doing this summer,’ Alice said.
She meant it. While Briar had been self-conscious about how she’d done in school, Susan had never batted an eye at her missing deadlines as long as she’d put in her best effort.
And now Briar wasn’t only putting in her best effort.
In Alice’s eyes, she was the person the campers trusted most with their problems, the person who problem-solved with the counselors when things went wrong.
It was a shame she couldn’t see that and only saw the ways in which she was letting Susan down.
Briar didn’t respond, and Alice heard sheets rustling as she turned over. ‘Fuck, it’s hot in here,’ she said finally. Alice knew that it signaled the end of their conversation, and the beginning of the first sleepless night of many.
Alice stumbled out of bed the next morning, feeling like her eyes had barely closed through the whole sweaty night, only to find that she had slept through breakfast. Briar hadn’t woken her up, which seemed like a bad omen for the day.
Whatever goodwill she’d garnered must have dissipated overnight.
No matter how many steps forward she took in rebuilding their friendship, it seemed like Briar took three steps back.
When Alice walked out of the director’s cabin, Freddie was standing there with Robin, wearing a stern expression.
‘What’s wrong?’ Alice asked, hoping the words came out as though she wasn’t about to fall over from exhaustion.
‘Robin had an altercation,’ Freddie said. Alice admired his stoicism, a trait she’d once possessed, but these children and Briar had leached from her all within a week’s time. ‘I thought the two of you could have a chat.’
‘Let’s go talk in my office, shall we?’ she said to Robin, taking his arm and guiding him toward the director’s office.
Over her shoulder, she mouthed, Where’s Briar?
in Freddie’s direction and received only a helpless shrug in return.
Great. Briar had disappeared again, doubtless to meet the estate agent and finalize the details of selling the land.
Alice had failed to get through to her about how much the camp had meant to them.
And now Briar wasn’t here to help Robin, who Alice felt wildly out of her depth with.
‘Okay.’ Alice deposited Robin in a chair and settled behind the desk. He gazed up at her, pitiful as ever, not looking remotely capable of a fight. ‘What happened?’ she asked, as gently as she could.
‘One of the boys tried to take away my stuffy,’ Robin said, and tears started falling from his eyes immediately. ‘Am I in trouble, Violet?’
Alice kneaded her forehead. ‘What did you do to the boy who tried to take away your stuffy?’
‘I pushed him,’ Robin said. ‘I didn’t mean for him to fall over, I just wanted him to get away from me.’
Alice, in a not-strictly-professional capacity, was somewhat impressed by the child in front of her.
Robin had confronted a total stranger, had stood up for himself in a way Alice had never managed to.
Even with Briar, the person she knew best in the world – and even for a cause as noble as keeping Susan’s camp – the most Alice could land were a few passive aggressive comments.
‘I’m sorry that he made you feel unsafe. But you shouldn’t touch another camper even if you’re feeling big emotions. You’re still discovering how strong you are, and I know you don’t want to hurt anyone.’
Robin nodded. ‘Are you sending me home now?’
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘But can you promise to not do that again?’
She was surprised to see Robin’s eyes fill with tears again. ‘I just want to go home!’ he cried. ‘Nobody wants me to be here. I don’t want to be here.’
Alice’s throat tightened. She couldn’t say she didn’t know exactly how Robin felt.
It was clear the help she’d meant to give to Briar, the apology that she still owed her, was only making things worse.
She wasn’t a competent co-director, she wouldn’t be able to convince Briar to keep the camp, and she was beginning to think that she was the last person on earth who could help Briar through her grief.
Having been Briar’s best friend ten years ago didn’t mean she was anything to her now, that was clear.
‘Um,’ she said, trying to pull herself together. ‘I’m going to step out for a moment to talk to Freddie, okay? Can you stay here?’
Robin nodded, and Alice went into the hall with the full intent of finding Freddie and talking to him. Instead, her feet led her into the bedroom, where Briar was now infuriatingly not missing anymore.
‘What’s wrong?’ Briar asked immediately, and Alice knew she must have looked truly terrible based on her reaction.
‘It’s Robin again,’ she said, sighing. ‘Where did you go during breakfast?’
‘My mom’s,’ Briar said, and Alice was annoyed because she had no idea how to tell if Briar was lying anymore. ‘The cable company thinks me saying she’s died is some sort of ploy to get on a cheaper plan, so I had to make some calls and request another copy of her death certificate.’
‘You could’ve woken me up before you left,’ Alice said.
‘I thought you would’ve been happy to get the extra sleep.’
Alice huffed. ‘Yeah, it did me a lot of good when the first thing I encountered this morning was Freddie telling me that Robin had gotten into a fight at breakfast.’
‘A fight?’ Briar asked. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Alice squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look at Briar. ‘He says no one wants him here. And honestly? I understand the feeling.’
And then she whirled around and went to go find Freddie.