Nineteen
On the third Saturday of November, I was slowly roused from sleep by a voice that seemed to be in the middle of an important professional conversation. Which was strange, because it was also the voice of a child. I blinked my eyes open and heard,
“Yes, I will wake him up right away. Oh, he is already waking up. Okay. I will pass the message. Thank you for calling. Bye-bye now.”
“Casper?” I said blearily. “Who was that?”
Standing beside the bed, Casper put down the phone, and I saw it was mine.
“I took a message for you,” he said proudly.
Anytime Casper borrowed someone’s phone to call his parents while they were at work, he called the dental practice’s number instead of their personal numbers.
I was positive he had a crush on the bubbly receptionist based on her voice alone.
His imitation of her was so sweet, I wasn’t even annoyed about being woken up at 5:33 a.m. on a weekend.
“You did a great job,” I said. Curtly. I was maybe a little annoyed. “Care to share this message, or can I go back to sleep?”
“A lady named . . . I don’t remember her name, but she said to tell you to get your lazy ‘aa—behind’ out of bed. I don’t know what an ahbehind is, but she also said you need to go to a field. I think there were, um, six buses.”
I rubbed the sleep-fog from my eyes like seeing better might make that make sense. Moments later, I shot upright.
“Shit,” I said, throwing myself out of the bed. Today was that camping field trip. I hadn’t thought about it since I’d handed in the permission slip back in September. “I forgot.”
“She said she knew you would.”
I weighed the pros and cons of just not going. Pros: Sleeping in, not spending my weekend in the forest with my classmates. Cons: Cella would kill me for ditching her. Dad would also kill me for wasting his money. I’d be the deadest vampire alive.
Sighing, I checked the clock again. From Casper’s retelling, I guessed that the buses would leave at six. I had maybe nine minutes to pack and get ready if Cella and I were going to get to school on time, assuming I drove like a maniac.
“Casper, I have a very important task for you.”
Casper nodded earnestly.
“Go out front and scare away any deer blocking the driveway. Do whatever it takes.”
Casper shot off like a bullet.
I was downstairs in six minutes, unstyled hair flopping into my face, black leather duffel bumping into walls as I rushed around corners.
I flew past the kitchen, then doubled back and tore open the fridge.
A repeat of Halloween, six hours from home, would be disastrous.
I was getting my tumbler from the cabinet when Cedric rounded the corner from the living room.
“Are you leaving for your field trip?” he asked.
I paused, the cabinet hanging open. “Did Dad tell you about it or something?”
“Is that boy going? From the pack.”
“How should I know? I’m not his keeper. Look, I really don’t have time.” I shut the cabinet and tried to leave, but Cedric was standing beneath the archway in my path, holding something out to me.
“I want you to take this.” It was a pocketknife.
“You want me to get suspended, you mean,” I drawled. “Pretty sure if the need arises, I can take a bear.”
“It’s not for a bear.” He flipped open the knife. The short blade glinted.
“Looks like every other—” It dawned on me, ice cold. “Cedric. Is that silver?”
He lifted a finger to his lips, nodding.
“I’m not bringing that! Are you insane?” I whispered. Loudly. “Why do you even have that? Where do you keep getting all of this—?”
He shushed me harder.
“Whatever. I don’t want it.”
“It’s just a precaution. Tomorrow night’s the full moon.”
I flinched. I hadn’t known that. But I didn’t take the knife.
Cedric’s eyes darkened. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft on him.”
“I’m not soft on anything. I’m also not a lunatic. He’s just a kid. Like me.”
“You’re not a kid,” snapped Cedric. “You were a kid when our mom was killed right in front of us. You can’t freeze up like you did then.
Listen, Kier, I can’t—” He shoved a hand into the front of his hair.
It was getting long, enough to tie back but not as long as when we were little.
“What am I going to do if something happens to you too?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Go on like you normally do? It’s not like you talk to me anyway, so quit pretending it makes any difference to you what happens to me. You just want to drag me into your fight.”
A bit of an overreaction, sure, but the mention of the full moon had left me unsteady. And, yeah, I was a little pissed my brother had tried to hand me a knife to use on my . . . whatever Mason was. It stunned Cedric enough to allow me to slip past him.
Seconds later he called behind me, loud enough to be heard throughout the house, “Remember: this is our fight.”
***
I did, in fact, drive like a maniac.
Cella was waiting on the curb when I pulled up to her house.
She spent most of the drive shrieking, first for me to go faster, then to slow down, then shrieking with laughter.
It was 6:02 when I parked, 6:04 when we made it to the bus loop—Cella wanted to run, but I had to draw the line somewhere—and another ten minutes before the buses left.
Because when had a field trip ever started on time? Drama queen.
I scanned the heads in the crowd, but I saw no sign of Mason before we were herded onto one of two buses by Miss Jenkins, of all people. She seemed thrilled to have a reason to project at six in the morning.
Cella fell asleep an hour into the six-hour journey south.
Message to
Can a 6 ft boy fit through a bus window?
7:24 a.m.
i’d love to see u try and find out
can u choose a window on the left side? i wanna get a vid
7:25 a.m.
So you’re on this fuckass trip, too?
7:25 a.m.
I dreaded it a little less knowing he’d be there.
ur radiant spirit and zest for life light up every room
also cells )
7:32 a.m.
I dreaded the trip a lot less.
***
The sky was heavy with unshed rain for the entire drive. The buses stopped just after noon at a campsite in northern California. I stepped out and immediately forgot to be grumpy about it; the redwoods were so tall they could crack the sky.
Cella craned her neck to look up in matching awe. “They probably know so many secrets,” she said. I nodded my agreement.
As the first order of business, boys and girls were separated and told to stand with their buddies.
While the pairs left for the lunch pavilion, those of us who hadn’t requested a partner were instructed to stand aside.
Carrington’s gym teacher had a megaphone and a whistle, and he greatly abused both.
Mason and I stood on opposite ends of a circle of eight boys.
I put my mean mug to work, so it wasn’t surprising when no one jumped to buddy with me, but I worried they would flock to Mason.
As it turned out, being popular didn’t make you any more approachable than being standoffish.
We were the final two without partners, forced to reluctantly pair up by default.
Cella had been partnered with a quiet girl who clearly had other friends she would rather hang with.
Cella and I walked together to lunch and were quickly spotted by Lara, who beckoned us over to where she sat with her cheer friends.
Cella shot me a look of pure panic, so I faked an Important Phone Call and pulled her into the crowd of teens milling about with compostable plates.
We slipped away in the bustle. Cella ate her chicken wrap and baby carrots sitting behind a tree wide enough to conceal the both of us, and then some.
We whispered throughout the after-lunch orientation but were soon separated to stand with our buddies.
Miss Jenkins announced—rejecting the gym teacher’s megaphone when he offered—that the first unofficial camp activity would be a series of competitions.
The cabins were divided into common areas surrounded by bedrooms, four to a room, and due to the number of students, one pair of each gender would get a room to themselves.
Any buddies interested could compete for that room.
“Or!” Miss Jenkins cried in falsetto, “Even if you’re not interested, you can stick around for the love of the game!”
Half of the students left for the cabins. Miss Jenkins was not deterred.
Mason and I locked eyes.
The first event was a rock-climbing race. I purposely let go of the belay rope while Mason climbed. There were gasps as he dropped several feet, and Miss Jenkins nearly swooned. He cursed me out the entire rest of the climb. We had appearances to keep up, after all.
And I knew he’d still win.
Mason tripped me during the three-legged race. His smirk was short-lived, since tripping me with our legs tied together meant tripping himself too.
We still won.
The third challenge, for the brainiacs, was naming California native wildlife.
A park guide flipped through the pages of a massive binder, and points went to the first pair to name the subject of each photo.
The hardest for everyone were the pictures of plants.
Unsurprisingly, there was plenty of overlap with Oregonian flora.
We won by a lot.
(Mason got one right, but we got a deduction for profanity: “Those are some motherfucking California poppies!”)
Miss Jenkins led the competition with the zeal of a WWE host.