Nineteen #2
We lost at knot-tying, because what the hell, but we made up for it in the final event, two-man tug of war.
It was hardly a fair fight. Blake and the sandy-haired boy from the football team put out a good effort, but by the end, our backs were covered in dirt, and all of our opponents were brown from chest to knee.
We got the spare room. Mason started to go for a high-five, then remembered himself and smoothly turned it into a middle finger. We grudgingly walked to our cabin, arguing the entire way.
The room was a closet, two sets of bunk beds with hardly enough floor space between them for our bags. I returned from the showers to find Mason had beat me back. I took one look at him and doubled over laughing.
“What?” he said with an exaggerated frown. His shining eyes gave him away. “Sharing clothes is romantic.”
Mason stood at the window wearing a blue fleece pullover and the sweatpants I had lent him after finding him buck naked in my woods. I had forgotten he still had them. They were somehow an even worse fit than before. Had Mason’s thighs gotten bigger since joining the football team?
I would need to investigate this thoroughly.
“Take those off,” I said. “Mason. They’re so bad.”
“But we’re having such a sweet moment together.”
“No, seriously, take your clothes off right now.”
“Yup, yes, doing that.” Mason kicked out of my sweats and tackled me onto a bottom bunk.
“Hold on, before we—”
Mason did not hold on. I tried to roll on top, but the bed was so small, all I did was shove him into the wall. He popped off my mouth with a grunt.
“Slow down, Tiger,” I said. Mason made the face he made every time I called him that—his I hate cats face. “What time do we have to be back out there?”
“Dinner’s at seven,” he said, already leaning forward again. I let his mouth skim mine, parting my lips, before pulling back. “You’re a fucking tease, you know that?”
His hair left my fingers wet. I slid my hand down to run my thumb across his lips and tried not to fold when he pursed them in a gentle kiss. “I need you to answer some questions for me first.”
“Another young wanderer seeking my wis—”
I pushed my thumb into his lips to silence him.
“What’s the point of this trip?” I asked.
“Shit, you’re hopeless. Did you even read the permission slip?”
“Why would I do that?”
“My fault. It’s a college apps relief trip. You know, put down the personal essays and connect with nature.”
“That’s it?”
“Not bad, huh?”
“Could be worse,” I conceded. “As long as we’re not getting graded on the ‘connecting with nature’ part. I’m not an outdoorsy person.”
“You?” Mason raised his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”
The reaction surprised me and made me vaguely uncomfortable. “What time is it now?” I deflected.
Mason checked his step-tracking watch like a dork. “Six forty-three.”
“We should skip dinner. Connect with nature in here.”
He scoffed. “Speak for yourself. Some of us actually have to eat. But hey.” He rolled back on top of me. “We have seventeen minutes.”
Maybe it was the time limit, or the new environment, or the thrill of having to keep quiet with our classmates one wall away, but we connected with time to spare. Afterward, Mason trailed thin bites down my chest, in no hurry to fix himself before dinner.
“Feels weird,” I thought aloud. “This is the first time we’ve done anything outside of the shed and school.”
“I can remember a few other places.”
“Since we’ve been together, I mean.”
“Oh, so we’re together now?”
I pushed him off of me. He hugged my waist to stop himself rolling off the bed.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said with a placating kiss to the hollow of my throat. “But since we’re talking about it . . .”
“Are we?”
“We could be.”
“Is this really how you want to do this?” I asked. We were both disgusting.
Mason scooted up to kiss me briefly. “Say no more.” He stood and quickly redressed, holding up a finger to tell me to stay put. The bruises I’d left on his thighs were already fading. “Prepare to be wooed, Callisto,” he said on his way out of the room to fetch paper towels.
***
At dinner, Lara came to us, dropping into the seat beside Cella and firing away like they’d already been mid-conversation.
She cuddled close, lamenting the cold. Looking around, she waved over the closest boy she knew and shouted for his jacket.
The boy, Blake from the football team, actually took it off and jogged over. I couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Who even books a camping trip at the end of November?” Lara complained, teeth chattering.
“They just wanted the cheap prices,” said Cella.
Blake draped his jacket over one of Lara’s shoulders, then stretched the fabric to cover Cella as well, holding the sleeve for her to slide her arm through. They both fit easily. Cella started butterfly clapping.
“I like your buttons,” she said, tucking her chin to examine the pins on the chest of the jacket. They were souvenirs from what seemed like every national park in the country.
“That’s funny,” said Blake. “I said the same thing to you sophomore year. You had all those buttons on your backpack.”
“Sophomore year?” Cella’s eyes brightened. “Oh yeah! You were in my . . .”
“It’s okay,” said Blake. Cella’s smile had grown a little baffled. “I sat in the back and my attendance was shit for the first half of the year. It was English.”
Cella’s eyes snapped up from the pins. “Oh . . . you, uh . . . remember me from that class?”
“You weren’t . . . quiet.”
“I know,” she groaned, dropping her head into her hands. “I was such a nerd. That’s so embarrassing.”
“Nothing wrong with a girl who’s passionate about her Arthur Miller.”
He sat down across from us with his arms crossed over the table to lean forward conspiratorially.
“I’m going to climb one,” he said, jerking his head toward a redwood. He didn’t seem bothered by the cold despite his thin sleeves.
“Don’t you dare,” said Cella, cut and dry like she was talking to me. Her eyes rounded anxiously, and she started to backtrack, but Blake barked a laugh.
“If the lady forbids it,” he said, holding his hands up placatingly. He shouted, “Kane! Change of plans!”
Mason appeared moments later, biting into two kabobs at once.
Blake told him to sit so they could come up with a new grand finale for the field trip.
Mason hesitated, glancing at Cella. They’d been fine around each other in class, but it had been weeks since they’d intentionally spent time together otherwise.
He’d told me more than once he missed their friendship.
I didn’t have any right to ask Cella where she stood, but I got the feeling, watching her watch him, that she missed being friends too.
I just hoped she didn’t miss the other stuff.
Cella said, “Are you going to stand there all night?”
Mason sat down on Blake’s other side, beaming. It was hard not to stare at him and his perfect angles when he was right across from me, but I didn’t suffer long. He soon excused himself from the table, and I didn’t see him again for the rest of dinner or during the group campfire.
The fire made everyone forget about the cold.
While Miss Jenkins led campfire songs, adding unnecessary vibrato at the end of every line, I sat away from the heat and the sparks.
As a child, I had always been taught to avoid large flames since our skin burned like paper.
As with sunlight, I wasn’t so susceptible to fire since my Trade, but it was a harder fear to overcome.
It didn’t help that the roaring campfire looked, to me, like a set of sharp teeth.
Altogether, the group performance of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” sounded bad and looked even worse, everyone singing with mouths full of s’mores. Cella had a nice singing voice, though, and she huddled under my arm, so close I could hear her crisply over everyone else.
Lara bounced around like she was at a pep rally, getting people waving their arms and clapping along. When she circled back to us, she took my free hand, trying to coax me to sway. I leaned down toward her ear and said: “My cousin, Lara? Really?”
Lara gave a wicked little laugh. “Not my fault you guys have good genes.” Her dancing slowed. “Seriously, though, you’re cool with it, right?”
I felt myself grin. “As long as you’re good to her.”
“I’m obsessed with her,” she said frankly. “She’s so weird.”
She said it with starry eyes, the way you might call someone brilliant or beautiful.
“Don’t tell her I said that,” said Lara. “The first part, I mean. The second’s fair game.”
I zipped my lips. Lara kissed each of my cheeks and Cella’s, then pranced off.
I ducked out early, getting to the room with a couple of hours to spare before lights out. It seemed like a dream, the chance to curl up against Mason and melt away the day’s wear, even in a bed we didn’t remotely fit in together. But Mason wasn’t there.
There was a note on the bed, written in shaky cursive on what was definitely my paper since Mason had forgotten a notebook.
Follow the trail, asshole
XOXO, Mason