The Girls of No Return (28 page)

“I'm sorry about the other day,” she said, her voice a throaty whisper. “I should never have doubted your loyalty.” She took one step backward, turned, and walked out of the Bathhouse.

 

“What's wrong with you?” Boone leaned over and hit my plate with the side of her fork. “Still having nightmares about Parents' Weekend?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. Lost in thought, I guess.”

Breakfast was almost over, and I couldn't stop looking aimlessly around the room. It must have seemed aimless, I mean. I would look over toward the door first. Then my gaze shifted slightly to the other table of Sixteens. Then over to Margaret, where she was eating oatmeal with a gusto traditionally reserved for refugees or starving orphans. Then, ever so slowly, I would glance toward Gia's table. And just as slowly, I would look away. My eyes had been making these rounds ever since we sat down.

“My ass.”

“What?”

Boone stared me down. “Lost in thought, my ass.”

“Don't worry,” Jules chimed in. “It's early. You're allowed to be disoriented.”

Everyone else resumed digging into their bowls of oatmeal and orange slices. I resumed my careful study.

She hadn't said anything to me when we saw each other in the Mess Hall, only one hour after she had whispered in my ear. I hadn't known how to act. Cool and aloof, like her? Should I have winked or nodded my head, acknowledging whatever moment had passed between us?
Had
something passed between us, or had I imagined it?

I looked down at my fingers, which were pale and dry from the steam of the shower. Remembered the way her finger had felt on my skin. I hadn't imagined it.

After breakfast, I stood up to join my cabinmates in our chore for the day, cleaning up the Waterfront. It was really too cold to swim, so there wasn't much to do: pick up driftwood that had floated onto the beach and throw it behind us into the trees, scour the thin strip of sand for whatever scraps of paper were hidden there. I was walking toward the door when I saw Gia standing next to the industrial-sized coffeemaker, gesturing at me with one hand — an almost-wave.

“I'll catch up to you guys,” I said.

Boone looked in the direction I was headed. She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said.

I made it over to Gia just as she was stirring cream into her coffee. She spoke before I had the chance to blunder through some greeting.

“My math class is canceled today,” she said, her voice low. “Miss Flynn is sick. What class do you have at one?”

It took me a full minute to remember what my schedule was for the day. Finally, I said, “English.”

“Can you get out of it?”

I had no more excuses. “Yes. I can meet you.” At that point, I would have agreed to anything to be alone with her again.

“The trailhead at one o'clock. Just the two of us.” Gia gave me the slightest smile — a thin, brightly colored ribbon. “We'll have lots of time to talk, then, and . . . you know . . . Continue the conversation we started this morning.” She laid her hand on my arm. Her cheeks glowed a dusty pink. Then she picked up her coffee cup and headed toward the door.

One o'clock couldn't come fast enough.

 

When I met her at the trailhead, Gia had changed her clothes and was wearing an outfit I had never seen before: a tight plaid shirt, equally fitted jeans. She'd pulled her hair up into a messy twist, and was wearing heavy mascara and perfectly smudged eyeliner that made her look unkempt and tousled, like a French actress. She looked, I thought, ten years older.

“Wow,” I said as she walked up, pulling on some fingerless gloves. “You look . . . great.” I'd gotten there early, my stomach fluttering wildly.

“Thanks,” she said. “You do too.”

I looked down at my outfit: same old jeans, same gray hoodie. I was wearing her T-shirt again, nestled underneath the sweatshirt, but she couldn't have known that. I smiled uncertainly.

“Shall we?” She nodded toward the trail.

I led the way, but I felt as though I was following clumsily behind. I was breathless with anticipation and anxiety, those friendly cousins. We hiked steadily upward, neither of us speaking. I could hear Gia's breath at my back as we wound our way along the switchbacks. I was waiting for her to say something first, to start a conversation I'd been hoping to have with her, I realized, since the day she arrived. But she didn't say anything. We reached the spot where we could see the school quite clearly, like a miniature town, and I paused, hoping she'd understand that I was ready to listen. To do anything. But she just smiled at me, raised her eyebrows, and lifted her chin in the direction of the trail, urging me to keep moving.

So I said, “This way,” and started around the back, moving toward the boulders. Once we reached the final ascent, I could hear Gia's footsteps quicken behind me, imploring me to move faster. There was an urgency in each footfall that I couldn't place or name. Was I imagining it? Was she just as eager as I was to get up there, see what I'd been doing with Boone all this time, and then head back down the trail, where we could be alone together again? So I sped up too. The fact is, I couldn't have stopped if I tried, and as long as Gia was with me, I didn't want to.

When we rounded the final corner and the lookout appeared before us, Gia touched my back so that I stopped and turned around to face her.

Now
, I thought.

“Lida,” she said.

Now
.

“Why don't you let me handle this one.”

I looked at her.

“Follow my lead, you know? I'd just feel better if I introduce myself.” She waved one hand dismissively. “I mean, what with Boone and all . . .”

I was about to ask her what she meant by this, but Ben's voice floated down from the lookout.

“Lida!”

We glanced up in time to see him waving from the narrow deck. He was pulling on a long-sleeved shirt over his T-shirt. I heard Gia's sharp intake of breath. I tried to shake it off, but my skin grew clammy underneath my hoodie.

We trudged up the last few yards to where Ben was standing with a pair of binoculars in his left hand.

“Hey,” he was saying to me when we reached him, but his voice trailed off when he saw Gia. He cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Someone new. My place is becoming the locals' hangout, I guess. I'm Ben,” he said.

“Georgina.”

Ben smiled at Gia and turned to me. “Where's Elsa?”

“Boone had a class,” said Gia, surprising me. I didn't know she knew Boone's first name. “I pulled Lida here out of English so that she could bring me up to meet you.” She took her time with each word. “I thought it was time that one of us met the man on the mountain.” She laughed lightly, never taking her eyes off him.

One of us?
I thought.
Who is she talking about?

“Ah,” said Ben. “So you're checking up on me.”

“Exactly. We have to make sure they're not up here getting into trouble. We wouldn't want anything
untoward
to be happening.” Gia's smile was a wink.

Ben laughed. “Of course,” he said. “Frankly, though, I'm surprised that Elsa would have said anything to you or anyone about her visits. I always gathered that they were rather illicit.”

The way that Ben said “illicit,” almost as though he thought it was funny, made me feel suddenly infantile.

“Oh yes,” said Gia, “very illicit. But these girls can't keep much from me.” She smiled at me in the way that a mother smiles at an adorable, drooling baby. “I'm something of their confidante, I suppose.”

“Sure,” said Ben. “I can see that.”

Gia started to ask Ben about himself, standing close to him on the deck as though she was having a hard time hearing, and I stood mutely by, staring at the side of her face, willing her to look at me and explain herself.

But I knew exactly what she was doing. I should have known since the minute she asked me to bring her up to the lookout. Ben was a smart guy, way too smart to get involved with a teenage inmate at a wilderness school. If he happened to meet one of the instructors, on the other hand . . . Gia looked like she was twenty-five, she acted like she was twenty-five, and most important, judging by the way that Ben was gazing at her, I knew that he wanted to believe that she was twenty-five. The whole thing had been settled before they even introduced themselves to each other.

Gia leaned back, her hands behind her on the deck's railing. “That's interesting,” she was saying. Ben's eyes were soft and yielding, and I knew exactly how it would be, how the lies would accumulate, wrap around one another in a great, tangled mass with me in the middle.

And yet, strangely, I wasn't mad. Not at that moment, at least. I felt frozen, unable to feel anything other than pure, stunned amazement. How did she do it? How did she know when to smile and tilt her head in just that way so that Ben would step closer, as he was doing, and touch her once, just above her elbow? How did she know when to talk and when to say nothing, communicating only with her eyes? How did she know how to
be
? If I learned how to be, would she look at me like Ben was looking at her?

“Lida, why so quiet?” Ben was looking at me strangely, a faint smile on his lips. “I don't think you've even said hi to me.”

“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

Ben laughed. “ ‘Oh, hi,' ” he said. “That's it?” He paused. “Okay, okay, I see how it's going to be here. You want to play the ingenue. Quiet Lida. I get it.”

Gia smiled at me. She might as well have reached over and tousled my hair.

“No I'm not,” I said. “I'm not that quiet.” I looked out over the railing, scanning the distant peaks for some sign of assistance. Obviously, there was none. “Boone knows that.” I looked over at Gia in time to see her eyes sharpen suddenly, as though frozen in ice, and then she blinked and laughed.

“Oh, that's probably true,” she said to Ben. “You can feel as though you know these girls so well, and then they end up surprising you.”

“I'd guess you've got quite a few stories,” Ben said, smiling. “I'd like to hear them sometime.”

She's got stories, all right
, I wanted to say.
You're starring in one of them right now.
But I couldn't.

Gia touched Ben's elbow and steered him away toward a corner of the deck. I knew what she was doing: They were making plans to meet again. A time when they could talk away from the kids. What was it my dad used to say? Little kernels have big ears? They walked back to me, both of them smiling, though each smile held a different quality of happiness.

“Well, Lida, shall we head back down the mountain? We don't want Bev to send the cavalry after us, do we?”

Ben reached out and rather formally shook my hand. “Pleasure doing business with you, Lida. Perhaps at our next meeting you'll say more than ten words.” He laughed, sticking his hand out for Gia's. “And very nice meeting you, as well.” Ben held her hand just a second longer than necessary. “I'm sure I'll see you around.”

“I'm sure.” Gia's voice was almost a whisper, close to a purr.

There was a heaviness like sand in my gut.

We walked silently away from the lookout, Gia leading the way. The sun was just starting to move toward the tops of the peaks. We hadn't been visiting with Ben that long, but it had felt like hours. Once we rounded the bend in the trail and could see Bob again, Gia spoke.

“That was nice.”

I said nothing.

“I don't know how a person can stand to be alone up there.”

Nothing.

“He must get cabin fever.”

Nothing.

“I'm sure he's just desperate for company, don't you think? I mean, his only visitor is some half-wild cowgirl.” Her laugh was light.

I spoke quietly to Gia's back, because if I raised my voice I thought it would come out in a scream. “He and Boone are friends because he
likes
her, not because he's desperate.” I stepped heavily, hoping that she would speed up. She kept on walking unhurriedly, though.

“I didn't say that, Lida. I'm sure he finds Boone quite . . .” She paused, looking for the right word. “Amusing.”

“No,” I pressed, “you don't get it. They're friends.”

She stopped so suddenly that I almost knocked into her. She turned and smiled at me sadly, as though she was sorry for something I had done. “Sure. Maybe they are.” Gia reached up and touched her hair. “But I doubt that Ben talks to her about
everything
.” She continued descending toward the lake.

“You mean you,” I said loudly, hurrying behind her. “You don't think he'll talk to Boone about you.”

“I don't know what you mean, Lida,” said Gia. She sounded farther away than she was. “I just think that Ben probably doesn't talk to Boone about his very personal business. Only that.”

“And you're going to be his personal business, right, counselor?” I don't know where it came from, but it hit me like a Mack truck: a rage so hot I thought I might be glowing. “Or should I call you camp director?”

Gia turned to face me. “Lida, calm down. It's not like I'm going to kidnap Ben or anything. I just want to get to know him better, and I can't do that if he doesn't think we're on a level playing field.” She sighed. “You're making a big deal out of nothing.”

“No!” I almost shouted. “This
is
a big deal! You can't do this! You can't just go around collecting people like — like — they don't matter! They have to mean something to you! They have to!” I grabbed her arm.

Gia recoiled, trying to shake me off. “Let go of me!” Her voice was high and thin, like a young girl's.

“Why did you lie? Why can't you just let it go?” I shook my head, ashamed at the tears that had sprung to my eyes. “Why do you have to have everything?” I released her arm.