Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Camellia
Camellia took the lead, and she knew her pace was too fast to sustain, but she was walking off some frustration. A couple of times lately, she’d felt something, seen something in Wolf’s eyes when they met hers, and then that kiss…
And yet last night, he’d acted like a fourth-grader who thought girls had cooties. He’d been stiff and guarded. Even when she’d snuggled up to let him know it was okay.
Jerk.
Fine. She didn’t need his validation.
She hadn’t needed his rejection either, though.
Whatever.
“’We were walking right into the sun, we left so early,’” Wolf said, reading from the journal they’d brought along.
“’We headed way up into the highest, rockiest places we could see.
We went that way often, but this time we went farther from the river, deeper into the wilds.
I don’t know if we were within the park’s boundaries or not. ’”
He looked out into the distance ahead of them.
It infuriated Camellia that he was pretending not to know anything was wrong. On the other hand, the only thing wrong was that he hadn’t responded to her signals last night.
She was being ridiculous. He couldn’t help it if he didn’t want to… That kiss in the river had been pure emotion, what with the doll in the water and his history and all. It might not have meant anything.
Although he’d sure seemed attracted to her when they’d been all wrapped in each other’s arms, surrounded by the cold rushing river, their only warmth the places where they were pressed together.
She heaved a big, deep sigh and told herself to let it go. Wanting someone who didn’t want you back was how you wound up like Earl, obsessed and out of control. Besides, she had told him she intended to die single.
They hiked away from their campsite, heading whatever direction went uphill, until they had a beautiful view.
Rock formations and scrub brush spread out around them over brown, stony ground with stunted trees clinging in unlikely places.
The sky was blue without a cloud in sight, and she was glad of her hat and sunglasses, which darkened, as advertised, in the bright light.
“There,” Wolf said, pointing. “Those are the highest rocks I can see.”
“I agree. Let’s head that way.” She took off her backpack, though, and then shucked her hoodie, rolled it up, and tucked it inside where there were several water bottles to refill the canteens they each carried, a paper map, her phone, and her lunch. “It’s already warm.”
He looked at her curiously, noticing her friendly tone, no doubt. He should. She was trying to take his rejection with grace.
“Didn’t take long, did it?” He took off his jacket as well. And she noticed how his T-shirt clung to his chest and remembered how hard it had felt under her hands when they’d kissed. He had some muscles going on under there all right.
She shook her head, disgusted with herself, then stopped all at once, grabbed Wolf’s arm, and put a finger to her lips. He went still, too, frowning at her. There were two more sounds, footsteps she thought, somewhere behind them.
He heard them, too. She saw him react. And then the sounds stopped, and it was quiet again. There was no one in sight behind them. She took a deep breath.
“Probably an animal,” Wolf said. “Coyote, maybe, or a deer.”
She nodded and told her heart to slow down. “Probably,” she said.
But she listened, and she watched their backs as they hiked on. She never saw anyone or heard any footsteps again. So why was there a chill dancing up and down her nape every little while?
She’d deliberately lowered her bristles and tried to recapture the easy energy that had existed between her and Wolf up until now. It had been good, maybe the beginning of a solid friendship even, and she didn’t want to ruin it.
Soon they were hiking through the high, rocky places. They picked a flat-topped boulder with a view for miles and sat down to take a rest and get their bearings. Wolf dropped everything he was carrying, took out the map, and spread it open atop the boulder.
Camellia picked up his canteen, nudged his arm with it till he took it and drank.
Then he pointed to the spot that matched their location.
“I think we’re about here.” She was chugging from her own canteen but nodded as Wolf went on.
“Ma wrote that they could see the river, so far away it was no wider than her forefinger.”
She finished her drink, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and screwed its lid back on. Then she got out a package of trail mix, ate a handful, and offered the bag to Wolf.
He took some, too, looking at the horizon and then at the map as he ate. Then he said, “The river’s that way from here,” and pointed directly toward a row of towering formations.
She said, “Those rocks might be the only thing blocking our view of it. Let’s hike out past them next.” She drank some more water, ate some more trail mix. He did the same, and then they sealed everything up and returned it to the backpack. “You all rested up?”
“In that forty-five second break we just took, you mean?” He said it with a teasing tone.
That was better. Maybe their friendship was still okay. “It was at least three minutes. Why? Can’t you keep up with me?” She sprang to her feet, heading in the direction of the rock formations at a clip that challenged him to catch her.
He did, and they picked their way around the boulders.
There was no trail, and they were up high, but as soon as they cleared the formations, the river glinted silver-blue in the distance.
Camellia ran up onto a stony rise and held up her forefinger to measure.
Then she turned and said, “A little further, I think.” And then the ground fell from under her feet and she dropped.
Wolf
“Camellia!”
Wolf watched her vanish and scrambled up onto the small rise as Camellia’s body pounded down a steep, rocky slope.
He slipped and slid down after her, losing his footing a couple of times along the way before he finally came to rest beside her.
She’d landed on her back, but her hair had come loose and covered her face.
He put his hands on her shoulders, leaning over her, pushing the hair away, and thinking again how soft it was against his fingers. “Be okay,” he said, and it came out all choked and hoarse.
He got past the tangle of honey-gold to see a pair of dark blue eyes blinking at him.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m…checking,” she said, moving very slowly.
He closed his arms around her, hugging her upper body against his chest. He did it without thinking, and just held her there against him, feeling her heart beat on the side of his chest where his didn’t, and a yin-yang symbol flashed white-hot in his brain.
When he released her, her face was near his, and he looked at her mouth and almost kissed her.
She looked right back at him, and he was pretty sure she’d have let him.
Then he looked away and broke the spell, releasing her, as she was sitting upright on her own.
She looked at her arms, moved her legs, and nodded. “I don’t think anything’s broken. And I don’t see any blood. But yeah. It hurts.”
He got to his feet and reached a hand down for her.
She clasped it and let him pull her upright.
As she stood there looking up at him, the wind came and lifted her hair like a golden cloud around her.
He got lost in it for a second, and she leaned a little closer.
Then the wind died and her hair settled around her shoulders, revealing the shape of a broken-down structure in the distance behind her.
Camellia
His hands were still on her shoulders and his eyes shifted to hers.
“What?” she asked. Is he going to kiss me or not?
He shifted his gaze to what stood in the distance behind her, then turned her around until she saw the shack, or what was left of it.
“Holy— Do you think that’s it?” she whispered.
“Has to be,” he whispered back.
It felt to Camellia like if they spoke too loud, the illusion might shatter.
They made their way to the shack, which was farther than it looked, but eventually, they stood outside the broken-down remnants of the small building.
It’d once had four walls and a roof. It currently had two walls leaning inward against each other, and the roof appeared to have melted into the ground where the other two walls had collapsed.
An entire eco-system of vegetation covered most of the exposed wood, and some kind of moss or algae clung to the black roof.
Wolf stood there staring at it, and his eyes were filled with shadows of the past.
“Do you remember anything, Wolf?”
“I played here,” he said. “There was a shed there and shaded gardens out beyond those rocks.”
He nodded, spread his fingers near the side of his head. “Memories fade in and out like ghosts. Like they’ve been in there all along.”
“Tell me,” she said. “It might help you to not forget them again.”
He nodded, looking around. “There was a small shed—we called it a barn—over there.” He walked to the spot and knelt, brushed dirt away with his hands.
“We should’ve brought shovels,” Camellia said. “I didn’t know we’d be doing archeology.”
“I was going to become an archaeologist from third to seventh grade,” he told her.
“Yeah?” She was smiling up at him. His shock seemed to be wearing off. He was getting excited now. “And what happened?”
“I discovered girls.”
She laughed, then clasped his shoulder once, before kneeling beside him to begin brushing dirt away. Eventually, they uncovered a few rotted boards, enough to confirm his memory.
He got up slowly, turned, and said, “There was a spring in those rocks.” Then he jogged toward the cluster of boulders anchored deep in the earth, and the spring was there, bubbling up into a tiny stone basin within.
“We kept food cold in here. There was a deeper well with a hand pump closer to the house for drinking water.”