The Truth About Fragile Things (23 page)

“I did it!” she shouted. One foot poked up in front of her as she contorted in the water to put her underwear back on. “I did it. This is so scary.”

As soon as she had managed to ‘dress’ she disappeared under the water, shooting back toward us and emerging where the pool grew shallow.

“Don’t get out yet.” I motioned toward her. “Just meet us back at the top. Stay close to the rocks for cover.” I could see hikers standing on the trail, watching now. I grabbed Phillip’s arm, prayed her underwear passed as a swimsuit from a distance, and tugged him back to our packs and dry clothes.

“That was awesome,” he said as we climbed over the wet rocks. “You should have done it, Megan.”

“I’m good, thanks.” We made it to our clothes, my jeans almost as soaked as Phillip’s. “I hate wet jeans more than anything in the world,” I complained.

“You can take them off,” he teased.

“I think you’ve seen plenty enough.”

“Calm down. I didn’t see one tiny thing. At least not with my eyes. Pretty good image in my brain.”

“I hate you.”

I pulled out my dry sweatshirt and waited for Charlotte to reappear. When she did, I turned Phillip away and offered it to her for a towel. She dried off with the outside, her hands shaking so hard she could barely hold onto it. I listened to her teeth chatter as the autumn breeze passed over her bare skin. When she finished she pulled my sweatshirt on, stretching it over the top of her bent knees that she pressed against her chest.

Phillip pulled out his fleece zip-up he’d worn that morning and offered it to her. She sat down on it, pulling the sleeves over her feet. Her lips trembled with cold as I squeezed out her hair, tilting her head back so the dripping water wouldn’t hit her shoulders. When it was as dry as I could manage I started combing it with my fingers, running through the snarls until it was smooth enough to braid. It was a good thing the sun was hot and persistent that day. It only took fifteen minutes for her skin to dry.

“That water is cold,” she spat out when she could get her mouth to form words. “Did you see what I did? I went skinny dipping! Those fish will be talking for years. Wait, do fish live for years?”

“Even if you get all dry you’ll have wet underwear for hours. Serves you right,” I pulled too hard on her hair, making her yelp. “If a park ranger comes right now I’ll have to explain why you are sitting here without pants on. What exactly do you want me to say?” I should have known better to give her an opening.

“Tell her my dead dad must have had a thing for fish,” she mumbled. Then she made an odd sound, a snicker. A laugh tumbled from her lips, caught the stirring wind and scattered around us. Inside of us. Phillip joined her first. I tried to resist. I bit my lips together, locked them under my stern teeth, but in the end it ran up and down my throat until I had to let it slide out. And I will never know why as I sat laughing beside the rolling river I had to hide my face in my hand and wipe warm tears from my eyes. It was a wonderful ache.

“You may be my kind of girl,” Phillip announced, his eyes locked on Charlotte’s wet face, splotched red with cold and sleeplessness.

“What? One with a pulse?” she snapped.

“Yes,” he agreed, ignoring her narrow eyes. “You’re completely
alive
.”

I flinched, lowered my hand from my eyes. I cannot say why his compliment to her felt more like an insult to me. What I heard, what snuck into my ears under his bright syllables was,
“Megan is half dead. Always has been, always will be.”

Charlotte didn’t reply, just shimmied into her pants and picked up her backpack. “After we sleep in our hammocks tonight that will be four down.”

“That only leaves whitewater rafting and walking you down the aisle,” Phillip said as she tugged on her shoes. “We are kicking this list’s butt.”

Charlotte looked up from tying her laces, her face cold and unreadable. “We only have the start of the list,” she reminded us, “He never finished it. He never finished anything.” She jerked to her feet without warning and walked away while we pulled on our shoes and called for her to stop. We didn’t find her until we got to the parking lot, seated on a fallen tree, peeling the leaves from a slim weed.

She didn’t give us any explanation and only five words. “Let’s get out of here.”

Phillip found a diner where we could stop for dinner, a dimly lit place, crowded with burgundy vinyl booths and cluttered with dusty artifacts from farms. I tore into my fried chicken, letting Phillip take over the conversation since Charlotte had barely spoken since we’d found her.

“It’s six thirty. It will be dark before we get back to our camp. That’s why I bought that bundle of wood at the gas station.”

“Your car smells weird,” Charlotte finally contributed as she flattened her mashed potatoes with her fork.

“It’s from all the dead bodies,” Phillip quipped back. “I’ll get the fire started, we can roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories. That’s what girls do, right? Or should we braid our hair some more?”

I glared. “I will happily cut your hair. Are you trying to go European or something? You’ll look like a girl in two more inches.” I fingered one of his dark curls that was growing brassy at the ends where it had been left in the sun all summer. “And I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“I do,” Charlotte said. “Once there was a dead guy who left a list and his daughter jumped into a river naked and it still didn’t fix anything. So ghosts suck.” Charlotte met our eyes, a steel challenge flexing in her irises like a bridge before collapse.

My chicken felt too heavy in my stomach. I stopped chewing.

“What did you expect to happen?” Phillip asked, still tugging on his hair to judge how long it really was. When he pulled it tight he could stretch it down to his nose. “Did you think there would be some grand moment? Choirs would sing over your bare behind?” His cheek lifted impishly.

“What?” she asked, catching his expression.

“I’ll sing about your behind if it’d make you feel better.”

“You’d have to imagine it because you didn’t see it.”

“Done.” He shoveled a spoonful of baked beans into his mouth and grinned up at the filthy ceiling fan.

“Stop imagining my butt,” Charlotte demanded and hit him squarely in the forehead with one of my French fries. “And Megan’s right. Cut your hair.”

“I told you you’d regret it,” I reminded her.

“Okay, I’m done,” Phillip said, his face almost completely serious. “Let’s order our dessert to go so we have something to eat at camp.” We got a Styrofoam container filled with slices of cake and pie and Phillip laid some cash in the middle of the table. “And despite your shocking rudeness, this one is on me, ladies,” he announced.

“That’s okay, my dad will pay for it,” I said, reaching for my credit card.

“No. This is a special occasion. I want to celebrate both of you.” He tipped his head so properly, I could almost see the top hat and ascot.

“What are you celebrating?” Charlotte asked.

“The uncomfortable,” Phillip announced. “Charlotte wore her birthday suit for some catfish and Megan…” He paused to let me see the amusement in his eyes. “Megan didn’t take a shower today and her legs are all hairy. I’m so proud of both of you.”

I debated for a moment whether I wanted to save my pie to eat at camp or make Phillip wear it in front of the other diners. Trail tongue won out. Barely.

P
hillip was right
about how dim the sky was by the time we got back to camp. We hadn’t brought our flashlights so we stumbled down the path from the parking lot to the campsite in a dark that was punctured only occasionally by the fires of other campers. We found our supplies piled in our hammocks, waiting for us. I used a flashlight to locate clean clothes while Phillip started our fire.

“It’s weird you can just leave all this stuff out and no one takes it,” Charlotte said, rummaging through her things.

“You are a cynical little thing, aren’t you?” Phillip asked as the fire silhouetted his body.

“I thought I was
alive
,” Charlotte shot back.

I laughed at the way she filled the word with admiration and longing. She sounded almost as ludicrous as Phil.

He couldn’t think of anything to say back so he just started walking into the black trees. “I need to empty my tank. No peeking.”

“No problem,” she grumbled.

I sat by the fire, watching the wood glow as the flames grabbed ahold and held it in a consuming embrace. I couldn’t sympathize with the burning logs, had never felt that sort of heat in the middle of my bones. There was something about the vast woods, the flashes of water, and color from the long day that made me feel empty. I pressed my fingers against my stomach and wished for the whitewash of day, when feelings that made no sense got scrubbed away in the rinse of morning.

“You are the quietest person I know,” Charlotte said sitting beside me.

“I don’t mean to be.”

“Yes you do,” she replied before I finished speaking. “You love that no one knows what you’re thinking. I’ve tried to do it. I’ve tried to act like you, but I can’t. The words just build up and when you’re fighting against saying something, there’s no power in it. Everyone knows what you want to say so you might as well just say it.” She poked one of the logs and some ashes fell in a spray of sparks. “But you aren’t fighting it. You just sit around, always calm, never speaking. No one knows what you want to say.”

“That’s her trick,” Phillip said joining us again. “She lets us imagine what she is thinking is brilliant and fascinating and then, by not doing anything, everyone thinks she’s amazing.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” I tried to defend myself, thinking through my answer, feeling it race around my head. “I just think first.”

“You think more than anyone I’ve ever known,” Charlotte said, and it wasn’t a compliment.

“I don’t mean to. It just happens. I just think and sometimes I think myself out of what I wanted to say. I say anything worth saying.”

“You must not think you have much worth saying,” Charlotte pointed out.

My hand thrust harder against my stomach, trying to hold some part of me that was falling, not wanting to stumble in front of them.