Chapter 8 #2
Eventually, Ben returns and points to a steep, muddy hill in the distance. “I need a better angle. You up for a hike?”
“Well”—my eyes track up the dirt-covered incline—“I suppose that’s what these hiking boots are for.”
Halfway up the hill (if I’m being extremely generous) I’m convinced I’m dying.
My calves have never burned like this in my entire life and my lungs are in danger of rupturing inside my chest. My brand-new, not-broken-in hiking boots are squeezing the life out of my swollen feet, and a trickle of sweat rolls down my lower back (in Iceland!).
“Ben,” I gasp, coming to a stop. “This is literally the end of my life.”
Not out of breath in the slightest, Ben has the audacity—and oxygenation—to chuckle at my declaration of doom. “Not much of a hiker, huh?”
“I think…” Leaning forward, I rest my hands on my knees for support. “…that’s glaringly apparent right now.”
Hands on his hips, Ben glances back up the hill (mountain), then back at me. “We’re not even halfway there yet.”
“Yeah, I’m aware, Ben. Thanks.”
Taking hold of my elbow, he guides me to the side of the muddy trail, out of the way of the other hikers. “Why don’t you wait for me here?”
“No, I don’t want to wait here,” I protest. “I have to write a detailed article on this trip. How am I supposed to do that if I can’t complete the first slightly difficult hike?”
My gaze shifts over Ben’s shoulder to a group of teenage youths laughing and roughhousing on their way up the incline from hell.
Not a single one looks slightly bothered.
One especially smug kid even walks backward so he can face the group while he tells a story I’m certain must be downright riveting.
Fucking youths. Is it awful of me to hope he trips on a rock?
Ben follows my line of sight, then steps in front of me to block my view.
I know what he’s doing, and it makes me feel even more pathetic.
“Listen, this hike wasn’t on the itinerary.
This is just me wanting to get a better view of the fields for my photos.
You shouldn’t feel like you have to do this. ”
“My dad and brothers would be oh so proud,” I sarcastically mutter under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“We still have a lot on today’s agenda. We can’t have you dying already.” Ben says it with humor, an attempt to lighten the mood while letting me off the hook.
I’d keep arguing with him if I had the breath.
But he’s right about one thing, we do have a lot left to see today, and though he’s too polite to say it, we don’t have time for me to slow us down.
I sink to the muddy earth in a heap, not caring that I’m dirtying my new hiking pants. “Yeah. I’ll just wait here then.”
Ben nods and continues on his way.
I sit at the side of the trail, crisscross style, watching countless others pass me by, knowing full well they look at me with pity and probably whisper to their companions about the poor girl who couldn’t make it up the hill.
My first full day of excursions in Iceland and I’m failing miserably.
* * *
Continuing our tour around the Golden Circle, we make the drive to Kerie Crater, which is exactly what it sounds like, only much, much larger and deeper than I could have fathomed.
Ben and I tread over ground-up rock as we walk the rim first, my fear of heights and shoddy depth perception keeping me an overly safe distance from the edge.
Then we trek down a ridiculously long set of wooden steps to the floor of the massive crater, where a stunning aquamarine lake is encircled by the rusty red canyon.
There’s a bench at the edge of the still water, and we sit for a while, somehow managing to be the only two people on earth at this particular spot at this precise moment in time.
Neither of us speaks, and it’s the most therapeutic silence I’ve experienced in years.
But the problem with silence is that it allows the mind to wander, and I find myself again ruminating on the vivid memory of my mother that I recalled at Hallgrímskirkja.
I have no explanation for why this specific memory is suddenly invading my psyche and leaving me unsettled after all these years.
Maybe it’s this trip. The culmination of childhood dreams and years of hard work causing me to reexamine everything that got me to this point.
Maybe it’s the man beside me. The one person I can’t look at without thinking of the past.
I turn in his direction now. Ben stares out over the lake, eyes clouded over as if he’s as lost in thought as I am. Perhaps it’s the rippling blue water reminding him of a different lake, a different continent, a different point in time. Same two people.
“Hey, Ben.” I speak softly, hesitant to disturb nature. “Do you remember when we started kindergarten?”
“That came out of nowhere,” he replies in the same quiet, respectful cadence.
“I know. I was just thinking about my mom yesterday, and I had the strongest memory of the night she told me I’d be starting kindergarten with Marcus and Mason.
” I fidget with the zipper on my jacket.
High above us, a gull soars through the overcast sky.
“I don’t know why I’m thinking about it now.
Or why I remember it at all. Is it normal to have memories from four years old? ”
“Probably if they’re significant enough. I have a few memories from back then, most of them I’d rather forget though.” I look his way again, but Ben keeps his gaze over the water. “Why are you bringing this up, Ems? I thought you didn’t want to talk to me about anything related to the past.”
I have made that perfectly clear, haven’t I?
“This isn’t really about our past, per se,” I justify.
“It’s just that, you know, it wasn’t really fair to me, having to start school that young so she could get all three of us out of the house at once.
I was four. Four!” The words pour out of me now as if this bench in Iceland is a couch in my therapist’s office.
I don’t have a therapist, clearly a huge oversight on my part.
“But it was always, ‘Mona, you’re so smart!’ and ‘Mona, you’ll do great!
’, but really it was an excuse to not have to take care of me for another year.
Even if that meant I spent the rest of my years in school trying to keep up with my peers.
Sure, I may have been smart enough academically, but socially, I was so far behind.
I spent elementary school terrified to raise my hand or get called on in class, even when I knew the answers.
Middle school feeling like nothing more than someone’s baby sister who snuck into the school dances.
I was the very last person I knew to learn how to drive or to wear makeup or to kiss a boy—”
Ben’s head whips around as I realize what I’ve said.
Flutters rip through my belly as those green eyes do that thing where they bore into my soul.
Neither of us says a word. I know we’re both thinking about it, though; Fourth of July at the lake.
But I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to go there, so I swallow hard and drop my head to stare down at my hands.
“It’s just,” I continue on, glazing over my unfortunate mishap, “I don’t think I ever realized how much that one little decision upset me, or how it changed the course of my life fairly drastically.
Now that I really consider it, it was the first time I remember just going along with what someone else wanted and never voicing what I wanted.
And I think it set the course for the rest of my childhood. Perhaps even my adulthood.”
Again, it occurs to me that this is probably a rant best suited for literally anyone other than the man sitting on this bench with me. Internally, I cringe at everything that just poured out of me. “God, I probably sound so whiny and overdramatic.”
“No, you don’t.” Ben’s hand covers mine, just the briefest touch to still my own hand, furiously working the zipper of my jacket.
Then he turns his full body toward me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and lowering his head to catch my downcast gaze.
“You want to know what I remember about kindergarten?”
I nod.
“I remember walking into Ms. Gomez’s classroom that very first day in my brand-new Batman T-shirt your mom bought for me so I could match the twins.” He smiles, adding shyly, “For bravery, of course.”
I smile back at him. “Right. Of course.”
“I remember the group of rowdy kids already gathered at the Play-Doh station. Your brothers the loudest of them all.” He huffs a short laugh. “In fact, I think they’d already established teams for freeze tag at recess.”
“Sounds right.”
“And then I remember you.” All traces of humor fade from his expression. “I remember the girl from down the street. Standing all alone near the bookshelves with tears in her eyes, looking overwhelmed but brave all the same.”
My vision goes wavy as my eyes burn, a thick lump forming in my throat.
Because now I remember, too. I remember standing in the corner alone, unsure what to do while the teacher greeted more kids filing in.
I remember some tearful parents hanging around the perimeter of the classroom, not quite ready to leave their precious little ones behind yet.
My mother wasn’t one of them. And I remember Ben.
He came over to me in his Batman T-shirt and worn-out Nikes, hair sticking up in every direction.
Don’t be scared, Mona, he’d said to me then. I’ll stay here with you if you want.
And now it hurts to breathe. Each inhale a sharp, slicing pain through the center of my chest.
“We, uh, we shouldn’t talk about us back then,” I say, although I know it’s unfair because I’m the one who brought this topic up, but I’m a coward and it’s the only way I know how to stop this hurt.
Ben shrugs a shoulder and sighs, leaning away again. “I’m not sure I know how to talk about the past without talking about us, Ems. Our pasts are tied together.” He stands from the bench and walks off toward the water’s edge.
And that’s the thing about trying not to care about Ben Carter. I’ll never actually be capable of it. Because despite the one really bad thing he did to me, there was so, so much good that came before it.