Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
CLAY
W hen twenty students showed up in the early morning hours, dressed in sweatpants and a ragtag assortment of outdoor gear, I barely looked up from my extra-large coffee cup, which I would need to pull double duty today. Not only did I need to carry an outsized load for two miles uphill, I needed to rally enough energy to motivate the stragglers to do the same.
Yes, most of the students who signed up for the trip were gung ho about spending two nights in the mountains, but there were always two or three who’d thought it sounded like a good idea when they signed up and came to have second thoughts five minutes into the trip. They’d have to hike two miles uphill like everyone else, with me encouraging them all the way. And at their age, I doubted I could entice them with the offer of their favorite colored Skittles like I used to do when I was a camp counselor.
When the last students straggled in looking every bit worse for whatever partying they’d done the night before, I smiled my most encouraging smile, welcomed my intrepid students onto the bus, and shoved each kid’s backpack into the luggage area, which was a sea of gray, some dark blues and greens, and a lot of khaki and tan.
And then a flash of bright red. It caught my eye the same way a cardinal would entrance a bird-watcher, and my eye followed the color until I saw the rest of Ally’s puffer coat emerge after she closed the trunk of her car. I watched her heft a dark gray backpack onto one shoulder like she was slinging on a bookbag, even though its size made it—and her—list to the side. And I watched her walk toward me in a pair of black yoga pants tucked into the wooly beige socks she wore with her hiking boots.
It was hard to believe only a week had passed since she’d wandered hesitantly into my yard to practice camping. Now she looked every bit the wilderness pro, and I had no small amount of pride in having opened her eyes to the beauty of the outdoors.
Ally’s hair tumbled over her shoulders from under a navy-blue beanie which made her eyes look even brighter than eyes had any right to be. My heart began hammering in my chest in an alarming way at the sight of her.
Ever since I’d let the idea into my head that Ally might feel a fraction of the heat I felt humming in my veins, I’d been able to think of little else. Fortunately, after many years of camping, my packing list was rote and I’d written down all the instructions for the students, because I wasn’t having much luck staying focused on camping.
Hell, at this point, I needed to cop to being pretty much out of my mind with obsessive thoughts about Ally, and none related to her skills as a chaperone.
Which was why I grunted at her like a Neanderthal when she got on the bus and took the seat across from me. “Not late,” she said, pointing at herself with both thumbs. It was then that I noticed her pristine white mittens.
“Nice work. Keep those hands warm. Though they probably won’t stay white for long.”
She waved a hand. “They’ll be fine. I have a pair of work gloves for the grungy stuff. These are just to keep me warm when it’s chilly or whatever.”
Her smile disarmed me, along with the sparkle in her eyes. “I’m sorry, are you the same woman who professed to hate the outdoors? Why do you seem excited about this?”
She fixed her stare on me, and I felt a surge of heat crawl over the back of my neck. My throat went dry. I felt uneasy. Then she leaned in, bringing her face closer to mine, so close that I could smell the citrusy scent of her skin. I inhaled gratefully, wanting to capture the essence of it.
She whispered against my ear, “Because if it’s anything like the night in your yard, I’m going to have a great time.”
Pulling back, she settled in her seat, smiled once more, and turned to look out the window. I yanked my hoodie over my head and turned to do the same, willing my racing heart to calm down. And more importantly, worrying about how to get through a weekend around Ally without getting a hard-on in front of twenty teenagers.
Logic would have dictated having Ally hike behind me where I couldn’t fixate from fifty feet away on the globes of her ass beneath her heavy backpack. But no, I’d asked her to hike in front of the group, and now I could hear her laughter like wind through the trees and watch the pale strands of her hair catch the sun as she moved up a set of switchbacks just above where I hiked behind the stragglers of the bunch.
Back and forth, we’d been weaving up this long set of switchbacks since we left the bus behind in the parking lot. “How many more?” I heard one of the students ask Ally for the tenth time.
“Just a couple. Don’t worry,” she huffed, a Mary Poppins of the trails.
“You said that ten minutes ago and we’ve gone up three since then.” I couldn’t catch a glimpse of which student it was, but I had my suspicions. Cammie Longmeyer had been in my class last year and she always asked the same thing when I assigned a reading: “How many pages is that? How many chapters?” Some kids always needed numbers. Some adults too.
“Quit counting and you’ll feel a lot better,” Ally said, and I smiled to myself. She was great with these kids. No wonder they all clambered to be in her class.
I needed her to lead the group and set a reasonable pace. If it felt comfortable to her, it would be comfortable for the students. They wanted to go at a leisurely pace and talk while they hiked.
I had a tendency to tear up the trails without realizing it. I’d get into a thought cycle and not realize I was vaulting up a mountain until I turned to find no one behind me. Long ago, I learned I did better bringing up the rear of the group and letting someone else set the pace.
That meant that I’d been hiking up a mountain for the past half hour like a bunny chasing a carrot, always there in the distance but too far away for me to take a bite. Safer that way for both of us. Even if Ally had wanted me to kiss her in the tent in my backyard, I couldn’t exactly do anything to test my theory until we got the kids into their parents’ cars, safe and sound. Forty-eight hours from now.
Might as well have been a month.
“The doorway of your tent should face away from the lake,” Ally’s voice called out amid the sea of snapping tent poles and the ruffle of nylon. “You want to be facing downwind, otherwise an animal will follow its little curious nose right into your tent in the middle of the night.”
“Really?”
“What kind of animal?”
The chorus of voices were more curious than panicked, and it amused me that Ally was threatening them with the very thing that frightened her the most.
I looked over to see her standing amid three tents with her hands on her hips. Head tilted to the side, she seemed to be considering how big a lie to tell. When she caught me looking at her, she grinned, caught. “Bear, most likely.”
I shook my head at her as she bit her lip and turned back to the students. “Okay, probably not, but just face the right way anyhow. Because I said so.” I continued to watch her take command over two of the guys who’d decided that seniors no longer needed to turn in homework and were annoying half the faculty with their antics. They each towered over her by a foot and probably weighed double what she did. Cassius yanked the wool beanie off his dark blond hair and shook it like he’d just left the ocean. Picking up one of the tent poles, he bent it into a U shape and let it snap open in his hands, making a fwak sound that sounded like a loud fart.
It was off to the races from there. Nothing beat a giant fart in the woods for these guys.
His buddy Miles liked that trick, so he did the same with the second pole. I’d have been more annoyed by them except that they were doing the exact kind of dumb shit Shane and I used to do growing up.
I started to go over there, ready to put them in line, but I stopped myself. She hadn’t asked for my help, even if I wanted her to have it. So I waited. And watched.
Ally stood staring at them, expressionless, arms folded across her chest. They continued flapping their tent poles around and a couple kids next to them caught on and started doing it too. She pointed at those kids and shut them down in half a second. “You want to lose an eye with that thing?”
There was some mumbling and head hanging before those two got back to putting their tent up. As to Cassius and Miles, Ally continued staring at them, saying nothing, while they flexed their poles a few more times, each time looking up at her and expecting her to blow her top.
Then, they finally realized they weren’t going to get her goat, and they stopped. “You know what’s cooler than making fart sounds?”
Neither one answered, but both of them gave it a fair bit of thought.
“Carrying a few poles and some fabric on your back and turning it into a man cave in under five minutes. You want to give it a go? Were you listening when we explained it before?”
Some nodding and grunting followed. Ally pointed to the poles and the slots on the tent, and the guys coordinated their efforts, sliding the tent poles in and anchoring them, then using the full power of their gym-honed backs and shoulders to pound in the tent stays. Within minutes their tent was up and they swaggered away high-fiving each other.
Ally moved on to the next group of tent builders, and I found myself unable to move on at all. I was fully stuck on her.
“Who’s hungry?” I yelled, tapping a metal spoon on the side of a pot.
“Yes!”
“Me!”
“Yes, please!”
“Word.”
The chorus of responses came from down near the lake where half the group had decided to skip rocks before dinner. The rest of the kids were lazing in camp chairs around the firepit where we had a small fire burning. Ally and I had led the kids through the forest to select good-sized logs and kindling, which they’d stacked just off to the side.
A few yards away, twelve pitched tents sat in a clearing, some listing to the side if the kids had pulled too hard on the strings that held them to the ground with metal pegs. Others had their tent flies flapping with the breeze. And despite my very clear instructions, two of the tents faced Sky Lake instead of away from it.
Always one kid who didn’t get the memo. Or two.
I didn’t hear Ally come up behind me, but I felt her presence. It had been happening all day, this connection to her that came from sensing her presence, a general awareness of where she was at every moment. It was like my body had tuned in to her frequency and I was following it like a lost animal headed for home.
“Hey,” I said without turning around. I had to keep my attention focused on the flames roaring from the firepit. Another lie I told myself.
The truth was that it was getting harder and harder to look at her without allowing my eyes to devour her, and I could not do that in front of a group of students. I’d already given in and admitted to myself that I planned to do something about my consuming attraction just as soon as this trip was finished, but I needed to keep myself in check for the remainder of the weekend. I was a runner, for God’s sake—I had self-discipline, even if Ally was testing every last shred.
“Hey yourself.” Ally gave my back a poke with something sharp, forcing me to turn and identify it. A stick.
“Tents look pretty good,” I observed.
“They do. And you were right. I just directed traffic and the kids did all the work. They even pitched mine for me.” She pointed to a light green tent sitting on the outer edge of the others. About as far away as possible from the one I’d set up for myself. Good. The farther away she was when she slipped into her sleeping bag for the night, the less I’d think about her.