The Girls of No Return (37 page)

The trail curved up for a while, and then we dropped down and followed the river. Excuse me: Did I say
river
? I meant creek. It was hardly worthy of the poorly drawn whitecaps that Margaret had allotted it: The creek pushed gently over rocks, waving moss visible in its shallows. We had to cross it a few times, and each “crossing” consisted of stepping onto whichever rock was prominently sticking out of the water and hopping lightly to the other side. Not quite the harrowing experience that I used to read about in my old Oregon Trail history books. Even so, there was a muffled ocean roar in the trees above us, and it was so cold that we breathed heavily through our mouths and only smelled the deliberate sharpness of the air when we stopped to drink water from our bottles. Our packs, which had felt heavy and encumbering when we first set out, started to feel like an extra layer of protection against the elements, and I welcomed the weight on my shoulders and back.

We'd probably been hiking for about forty minutes when Jules hung back to talk to me.

“Lida. Hey.” Jules fell into step beside me.

“Hey.”

We walked quietly for a minute or so. Watched as, up ahead, one girl hugged her friends dramatically and then turned off the trail toward her campsite. “Good luck!” one of her friends called. “You'll need it!”

“That was your Thing that Gia was talking about yesterday, wasn't it?” Jules spoke suddenly, her words coming out in a rush. “I mean, it had to be. She was looking right at you.”

“No she wasn't.”

“Yes, she was. At one point I saw her look straight at you. And that's when Boone started up. It had to be your Thing, or at least, something having to do with you.”

I didn't say anything, but sped up a little instead. I guess Jules took that as an affirmative. She sped up too.

“Look, I want you to know —” She sounded out of breath, and I slowed down just a bit. “You should know that I don't hate you for what you said to me in the cabin. I don't. I guess I didn't have any idea what was going on between you and Gia.” She stopped walking suddenly, grabbing my arm and forcing me to stand still too. “But what
is
going on? Why did she —”

“It's too complicated,” I said. I peered toward the group in front of us, trying to discern where Gia was. I didn't want her overhearing any of this.

“Try me,” she said.

I looked at Jules — really looked at her. She was willing to forget all of the hateful things I had said to her, all because she was worried about me. I could see it in the way her eyes widened, her eyebrows knitting together with concern.

“It was my Thing,” I said softly. I started walking again, though slowly.

Jules matched her pace to mine. “Yeah, I thought so,” she said.

I took a deep breath. “I used to hide in the bathroom at high school at the end of the day.” I looked at my feet as I talked. The tops of my boots were gray with dirt. “I know most people hide during lunch hour, when everyone is eating together and all that. I didn't. But after school, when everyone was at their lockers and talking about what they were doing that afternoon, making plans, exchanging numbers, just being normal, really — I couldn't stand it. So I would hide in the bathroom until most people had left. And then I would get my stuff and go.”

“That sounds horrible,” Jules said. “Didn't you have anyone?” I expected to hear pity in her voice, but I didn't. She sounded sad.

I kicked a pebble out of the path with the toe of my boot. “I didn't try.” And the funny thing was, I could still remember exactly how it had felt to not try anymore, as though I had decided to sell a broken-down car that had been rusting away. How useless it had all felt.

“And so you started to hurt yourself?”

“Yeah. I just needed to escape, you know? I had all these thoughts whirling around in my head all day, every day, questions with no answers, and it gave me a release. I mean, when I was . . . cutting, I wasn't thinking about school, or my mom, or anything, really.” I paused. “I didn't feel alone, because I didn't really
feel
.”

Jules shook her head. “That's shitty. That's really shitty.” She sounded almost indignant. “I mean, not what you did, but why you did it. Because, Lida, you can be . . . fun. I know that's a lame word,” she added quickly, “but it's true. Maybe not at first —” She threw me a sly smile. “But once you warmed up, you could be funny. Kind of caustic, but in a good way. And people should know that.” Her footfalls became heavier as she spoke, as though she was trying to stomp on the past, grind Bruno High and everyone in it into the dirt. “Damn it, your mom should know that.”

“Thanks,” I said. I meant it too.

There was a moment of silence before I felt Jules's hand on my arm.

“But that doesn't explain why, in Circle Share . . . why did Gia do that?” Jules's eyes searched mine. “What's going on, Lida?”

I knew that I could tell Jules. She wouldn't judge me; she never had. Maybe if I had recognized this earlier, and hadn't written her off as a flake, someone I didn't have to take seriously . . . maybe if I'd taken the friendship she'd offered on my first day at Alice Marshall, none of this would have happened. I could start now. I could tell her everything.

“You're a good friend,” I said instead. “Anyone is lucky to have you on their team. Anyone.” I meant this.

Jules blushed and smiled; she couldn't help it.

“But it's really, really too complicated,” I went on. “Even just talking about it now makes me tired.” I took a deep breath. “Can we talk about it later?”

“Sure,” Jules said slowly. “But I'm here, you know, if you need anything.” Suddenly, she turned toward me and enveloped me in a hug. Her arms reached around so that her hands landed on the sides of my backpack, and she spoke into my shoulder. “People like you, Lida. Maybe in Bruno it felt like you didn't have a choice about who you were, but you do now. You're Somebody here.” She squeezed me, hard, and then let go. We started walking again, our boots scuffing against the dirt.

I saw a Fifteen slow down up ahead, falling back so that she could walk with Jules. It was Lucy, the sullen girl who had been Jules's canoe partner when we paddled to the waterfall across Bob. She stopped and waved at us as we caught up. I could see for the first time that Lucy had an interesting face, with lively eyes that shimmered when she smiled, as she was doing now.

“Julie!” she said as we caught up. “You slowpoke.” She hit Jules playfully on the shoulder. It was clear that they were closer than I'd known, and I recalled that Lucy usually sat on the other side of Jules in Circle Share. “Hi, Lida,” she said carefully.

“Hi,” I said. I thought I would hang back a bit, and let them walk together. I stopped and knelt down under the pretense of tightening the laces of my boot. “You guys go ahead,” I said. “This might take a while.”

“You sure?” Jules looked down at me. “We can wait.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” I started to say, and stopped myself. I remembered what it had been like in the bathroom stall at Bruno High, waiting for everyone to go so I could gather my things. The way my shoes sounded as I walked down the empty hall alone. Jules was right: This wasn't Bruno High. I didn't have to hide. “I mean, yeah. I'll walk with you. If you just hold on a sec, I'll be ready to go.” I finished tying the laces quickly and stood back up again. “Ready.”

“Good.”

I walked down the trail with Jules and Lucy, listening to their comfortable patter, chiming in when I had a chance. I stood there as Jules hugged the younger girl good-bye, and waved as Lucy headed down her allotted spur. Our group was thinning. Gia had left the trail while I was talking to Jules, so I hadn't watched her disappear into the trees. Too soon, it was Jules's turn to depart, and she hugged me fiercely again before squaring her shoulders and trudging off to the left. The sun had settled itself behind a low, bleak cloud, and the trees appeared bleached and defeated. Even though I was wearing a jacket and sweating heavily underneath my pack, my wrists and hands were chapped with cold. I stuffed my fingers into the front pocket of my jeans, scraping knuckles against denim.

My campsite was last, and I hiked on alone, clutching the map in my hands and looking again at the X that designated my camping spot. I didn't want to think about Gia, about what her face looked like when she was telling everyone my Thing. If I hadn't known it was mine, I'd have never guessed that she was lying. What else had she lied about? I shivered in the cold air.

I tried to fill my mind with other things. Breathing, for instance. Taking one step, and then another.

Finally, after what felt like miles, I saw the spur that I was supposed to follow. It looked narrower than the trails the other girls had gone down, and it plunged steeply toward a cloak of heavy pines. I looked behind me once, and then left the main trail, stepping deliberately as I descended into the woods.

My site was located about a quarter mile in, and was crowded on three sides by trees. I put down my bag, stood in the center of the site near the campfire circle, and looked up. The trees leaned over me like inquisitive bears. I took that image as a sign of protection. I was intent on feeling optimistic.

The fourth side of the site opened onto a side path leading down to the stream, which was lined with rocks and coarse grasses. This, then, was the first order of business. I grabbed the collapsible water bucket from my pack and tromped down to the creek's edge to fill it.

That was basically how the first night went. See a need: Fill it. It was the kind of hard work that was easy to do, and it kept my mind occupied with its rote demands. I took it in steps. First the water, then the firewood. I gathered kindling, looking for bigger logs along the way to bolster the large half-burnt log that the previous girl had thoughtfully left in the campfire circle. I found enough heavy logs for a massive bonfire, and I stashed some next to a tree, away from the fire circle.
Who knows?
I thought.
I might be too busy tomorrow to get more wood.
Yes, busy indeed. I tried not to think about the next day — all those hours to fill. I thought it might be as excruciating as filling a bucket with sand, using only an eyedropper.

Back to the tasks at hand. The tent was easy enough; for someone who had always thought of herself as a fairly useless student, I had sure picked up the apparently elusive skill of fitting two poles together. (On the van ride in, I'd heard a number of girls quizzing one another on how, exactly, to set up a tent, like it was a chemical compound whose elements they could never remember.) I thought about that first overnight with Boone, and was careful to look for tiny rocks that I knew would feel more like nails when they were pressing against my back or shoulders during the night. Then I put the tent together over what appeared to be the flattest stretch of flat ground.

Next, I walked into the woods around the campsite until I found a high branch where I could hang my bag of food overnight. I tied a rope around a rock and tossed it easily over the branch, letting the rock pull the rope toward the ground. That would make it easier to attach the bag in the dark and shimmy it up toward the branch, hoisting it with the other end of the rope before tying it around a tree. “Don't even think about it,” I said to the bears in my best Dad voice.

When all of that was done, I looked at the sky, which was the color of a dirty shell. That was when I realized that I'd forgotten to pack a watch. I was hungry, sure, but that didn't mean it was dinnertime. What time was it?

Panic knocked on the door; I opened it an inch. Without a watch, how was I going to know when to go to sleep, when to get up? What if I ate my lunch too early the next day and then had to wait eight hours for dinner? Would I sleep all day and wake up at night, restless and jittery? How would I know when to leave in two days so that I met up with the other girls along the main trail and made it to the van by eleven, like Margaret had said? What if —

I took a deep breath and looked at the sky again. Thought about the sky over Bob, the way it changed the lake's colors and patterns as the day wore on. If I could read the sun over Alice Marshall, I could figure out what time it was here, at least roughly. Boone, I reminded myself, never wore a watch, not even when we hiked to the fire lookout. I could do this.

And I knew something else too — very clearly. It was definitely time for dinner.

My hunger, which had politely waited in the wings while I set up camp, had emerged like a maniacal tap dancer, buffalo-stepping all over my stomach. Waiting for the water to boil was torture. I struggled to keep myself from cooking both nights' dinners at once. Starving, I devoured my pasta. Approximately two minutes later, when I was done, I washed my pot and congratulated myself on my various successes of the afternoon. I chalked my initial discomfort up to stress. Now I smiled, comfortable with the silence.

At first. But the evening, as all evenings will, eventually turned into night. I started the campfire. I put on another sweatshirt, and zipped my whistle into the front pocket of my backpack so I wouldn't lose it. I listened to the nighttime sounds, which were at once similar to and utterly different from the sounds at Alice Marshall. I snapped on my headlamp, picked up the water bucket, and headed down to the creek to fill it again. I wanted to be ready when it was time to put out the fire and go to bed. Sitting by the creek, holding the bucket at an angle in the water as it filled, I
felt
how alone I was. My aloneness had contours. I felt strange, disembodied. I carried the bucket back to the campsite, wondering at this.

And this feeling didn't go away. I wasn't scared; it wasn't that. I was just watching myself. I watched my Self sit by the campfire, warming her hands. I watched her stand and walk into the woods to hang the bag of food. I watched her squint up at the carousel of stars and then poke at the fire with a stick, separating the logs so that they lost some of their flame. I watched her pour the water slowly over the fire, listening to the hiss of the coals, stepping away from the smoke. And I watched her unroll her sleeping bag and curl into the tent, zipping it shut behind her. My Self was good at these things; she was capable and smart. But I didn't want to
watch
her; I wanted to
be
her. What was it Margaret had said during one orienteering class?
You're no more you than when you're alone.
If that was true, then I was long overdue for an introduction.