The Truth About Fragile Things (21 page)

His smile was as faint as the foggy light behind the clouds. “Why doesn’t she look awful?” He gestured to Charlotte, her face flushed and her lips parted like she was just about to say something clever.

I told him I didn’t know and fumbled to understand his strange words. “Phillip, did anything happen while I was sleeping?”

“No! Of course not. We didn’t even talk to each other,” he said angrily and grabbed his backpack.

“Talking isn’t what I was worried about,” I muttered. Charlotte stirred, her head moving up toward the sky where she’d last been looking when sleep overcame her. Her hand reached out for him before she opened her eyes and it took her a few seconds to realize he wasn’t there. She found me next and I told her he went to start a fire before she could ask.

“I can’t believe we slept here all night,” she said. Our words were stiff like the frosted blades of grass, aching and awkward after being so effortless and sinuous a few hours ago. I didn’t know if I longed for the darkness or was glad to be free of its spell and back to reasonable day. What I did know was I had to go to the bathroom and I needed to clean up. I wanted mouthwash and a brush and lots of soap. I reluctantly left my sleeping bag so I could roll it up and carry it back to our campsite. It was with the utmost horror that I slipped into the woods to pee. Without walls and a lock I felt freakishly exposed despite the lack of people. Charlotte gave me a few tips, but still it was by far the biggest downside of camping. By the time we got back to our campsite Phillip had changed clothes and a fire crackled. I hovered over it as close as I dared; the air cold on my back while my arms and chest burned.

“Where do we wash up?” I could feel the wetness in my underwear from not having toilet paper and every step was torture.

“You could walk down to the restroom and use the sinks if you want. Or just brush your teeth at the spigot.” As Charlotte and I walked away with our clean clothes and backpacks we saw Phillip rummage through our cooler and balance a pan on some large rocks of the fire ring.

The restroom with its wooden walls, and collection of dead bugs in the corners of the cement floor, was empty. I cursed myself for not remembering a towel and decided to use my dirty shirt instead. I managed to wash my hair in the sink, moaning to keep myself from screaming as the icy water hit my scalp. Charlotte decided to skip and I didn’t blame her. Her hair wouldn’t even fit in the sink. After brushing through my tangles and applying a thick layer of deodorant I felt relatively sanitary.

My teeth were chattering so hard from the cold morning and my wet hair that Charlotte insisted we run all the way back to camp. It didn’t help. I arrived at my hammock freezing and coughing in the thin, cold air.

“Here.” Phillip pushed a cup of cocoa into my hand and I almost wept a grateful tear into it.

“Thank you. Where did you get this?” I asked it like he’d found a gourmet meal underneath a rock.

“You heat up water and drop in the chocolate.” He gave one to Charlotte, smiling at my expression as I pulled the chunks of cocoa floating at the top through my teeth in sips small enough not to burn my tongue. After cocoa came granola bars and packets of instant oatmeal. I didn’t even care it was apple cinnamon and I only like maple and brown sugar. I ate two and Charlotte and Phillip ate three. Phillip slipped back to his hammock and nodded off while Charlotte and I finished breakfast. I didn’t have the heart to wake him so I took our pot and dishes to the spigot and rinsed them out. Funny how cold water seemed sufficient in the woods when at home I’d insist on soap and clean rags and a steam cycle in the dishwasher. Charlotte fed the fire when I got back and held her hands close over the flames. I sat next to her, drying my hair, knowing the smoke would make my clean hair and clothes smell anyway. Camping seemed to be a series of uncomfortable concessions.

When I finished with my own hair I noticed Charlotte’s. It was kinked where she’d slept on it and snarled at the ends. With a slow hand I reached out with my brush and ran it gingerly through a few strands, watching her reaction. She continued to turn her hands in placid circles, rolling the heat through her fingers. So I did what I’d wanted to do since she first showed up on my doorstep. I took a handful of her hair and slid my brush through it. It had always appeared so dense and heavy that I was surprised by the lightness and softness of it. I grew braver, collecting all of it in my fingers and brushing until my strokes met no resistance or tangles. She sat as docile as Lauren and I untied the bandana that she used for a headband and tried to make her bangs lay straight. When they wouldn’t cooperate I opened my backpack and pulled out rubber bands and bobby pins. Starting at one temple I did a small French braid and then copied it on the other side. I  sat in front of her to check if my work was even. We were almost nose to nose. My gaze left her hair and locked on her eyes, golden brown, vulnerable, and piercing. I had the feeling it was the first time we’d ever seen each other.

I lowered my hand where it had been touching a braid, but didn’t break the stare. “It looks pretty.”

“Thank you.” Those words seemed hard for her and fell unnaturally out of her mouth.

I pulled back, let my eyes wander. “You are very welcome.”

She glanced backward at Phillip in his hammock and I followed her eyes to his peaceful face, smooth and untroubled. When she turned back she looked at the fire, not me. “Have you ever been in love?”

A pop of air jumped from my mouth. “No. Not at all.”

Now she searched me, checking for holes in my answer. “Last night Phillip got so mad when you said my dad shouldn’t have saved you. It was like he couldn’t live without you.”

I tried not to look as confused as I felt. “Yeah, that was weird,” I admitted. “But he’s not good at death, in general. It scares him. He would have sounded like that if a stranger said it.”

“I think he loves you and you don’t love him back.” Her eyes hardened, daring me to deny it. I sighed.

“I can see how you’d think that, because he’s so free with…everything, but we don’t feel that way. He certainly doesn’t feel that way. I’ve seen him lose his head over lots of girls, but never love one.”

She started to peel the loose bark from a stick in our burn pile to avoid looking at me. “You never feel attracted to him?”

“Never.” I paused, sensing a lie and knowing she would detect it. “When he sings or acts or thinks,which isn’t as often as you’d suppose, I think he is beautiful in some way. The same way I think Henry is adorable, or I like to watch my dad talk about the Constitution…” I broke off my sentence, embarrassed I’d mentioned my father. It felt like bragging. “Like just last night—I saw how someone
could
be attracted to him. Just not this someone.”

She slid her thumb over the smooth, naked wood of the stick and squinted in doubt. I gently probed the place in my mind that had been troubled since last night. Making sure I smiled and twisted my voice into a tease I said, “He held your hand last night. And that didn’t mean anything to you, right? It’s just friendly. It’s the same thing.” The wind moved and blew hot smoke in our faces. we both coughed and shifted our backs to the fire.

Some movement caught my eye and when I looked at Phillip his eyes were open and watching us. I coughed twice more just to stall and then said, “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”

Charlotte jerked, surprised to see him awake. Phillip yawned. “I like the part where I’m beautiful. Do you two always talk about me when I’m not around?”

“Every waking minute,” I fired back, biting down on the embarrassment of getting caught. “Charlotte detected your undying love for me and I was trying to throw her off our tracks.”

That made him give one of his best smiles. “Don’t believe her, Charlotte. I’m her slave for life.” The words were so canned and dry that I laughed. Charlotte didn’t even grin. She scowled at the ground.

Phillip extricated himself from his sleeping bag and hammock, tripping as it tilted toward to the ground, and loped to us. He threw his arms around Charlotte’s turned back and said, “How could I ever love Megan when you’re sitting right here?”

I knew he would have said that to an eighty-year-old woman in a dentist’s office, but Charlotte stiffened, a board between his hands. Phillip, sensing he had gone too far, pulled away and cleared his throat, all business. “It’s after nine. I guess we can get going.”

“L
ayer up,”
he ordered us. “It’s chilly in the morning but it will get hot this afternoon, especially after hiking all day.” As Charlotte and I gathered our things Phillip packed our lunch. Our ice had melted, but we were down to peanut butter and jelly and fruit snacks anyway. Phillip threw extra bags of chips and cookies into his pack. “I never thought salad-nibbling Megan would turn into such a pig in the woods,” he announced.

When I said “thank you” Charlotte broke into laughter. “You honestly do say it just like someone saying—”

“Point taken,” I said in exasperation. “Have either of you ever eaten a sardine?”

Their faces twisted. “That’s a weird rebuttal,” Phillip said.

“No. I was just thinking of the sardines in the play and wondering if you have to cook them or if they come cooked. Or is that anchovies?”

We were still deep in a fish discussion when we piled into the car and Phillip checked his GPS for our next destination. As soon as we arrived I realized why they called it Elephant Rocks. At the top of the hillside where we parked the tree line gave way to stone and I could see a smooth, round boulder the size of an elephant balanced treacherously on the ground.

“That is so cool,” Charlotte exclaimed as she jumped out of the car. She took off running while Phillip laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, speeding up so we didn’t lose her in the middle of the Missouri wilderness.

“That rock is a pebble.” He took long, swift strides and overtook her where she was waiting impatiently for us on the path. “You have no idea what you’re in for.”

“Are there really bears?” I asked. The forest floor was more rock than shrub here and the small cliffs and hillsides rose and dipped, making it difficult to see where the path took you or what waited for you there.

“Only scary thing you’ll see is Charlotte,” he reassured me as we reached her again. She shot us an angry glare.

“Could we possibly hurry?” she growled.

“Yes, let’s,” Phillip drawled. “Those rocks have been there for six million years but they might implode and disappear before Charlotte gets to see them.”

When we emerged above the tree line I gasped, wishing we had walked faster. We could not be in Missouri anymore. Frankly, it didn’t look like anywhere on earth. Stretching almost as far as I could see was a bare landscape of rock, as smooth and slick as beached whales. And like smooth pebbles dropped from giant hands in the sky, round boulders as big as buildings leaned and tipped against each other, discarded and strangely balanced. My open mouth didn’t make words. Charlotte shrieked with delight, bounding forward, racing to the rocks.

She stopped a few feet away from a towering rock, paced in a circle as she studied the way it loomed over her, threw its shadow for a hundred feet. She touched it gingerly, a cautious stroke, looking up as if to see if it would wobble and finally crash to the ground. When the ancient rock kept its place she grew bolder, slapped it, circled it, and emerged from the other side with a look of triumph and a scream of delight.

“She’s crazy.” Phillip’s voice was bright with admiration. As we walked farther into the stone jungle, even I forgot myself. There was a certain power in the rocks, like a magnetic field that attracted hands. I needed to touch them. Needed to lean my back into them, scramble to the top of the heaps, leap from one to the next, run my fingers over their smooth backs. We found crevices where we managed to wiggle between two walls of rock, navigating shadowy passages untouched by the sun that wavered behind cracks twenty feet above our heads. My hands trailed along the walls, unable to accept that I was touching stone. It trembled without moving, pulsed with a secret. I could hear a voice they didn’t have.
I am ancient and alive.