The Girls of No Return (27 page)

“No more drama.”

 

We didn't talk about Gia on the way back down the mountain. We didn't talk much at all, actually, because we were too busy walking carefully, our feet cautious and slow. I wouldn't say that we were drunk, exactly, but the mountain seemed much larger and the trees less familiar. Boone had given Ben his copy of
The Dharma Bums
when we first arrived
,
and before we left, he handed it back to her with a wink. She kept checking to make sure it hadn't fallen out of the waistband of her pants as we walked. I could imagine the liquor inside of it sloshing around with each step, and it made me dizzy. I had the odd sensation that I was walking at an angle, and I kept straightening my back and rolling my shoulders to correct it.

At the bottom of the trail, Boone patted me on the back, and I raised my shoulders protectively. “Scared much?” she asked. “God, you always act like I'm going to hit you or something. Anyway,” she continued, “I was just going to say that today was kind of fun.” I turned around to catch her customary smirk, but it wasn't there. She was nodding at me. “Seriously.” She walked quickly toward the cabin.

I watched her leave. I thought back to the first time I met her, and how she had looked at me like she could have just wadded me up and thrown me away. I didn't know which side of her I could trust: tough and hard, or earnest, almost kind.

Everything around me was still a little fuzzy, like I was constantly squinting, so I decided to head down to the dock. There were still twenty minutes before dinner, and I wanted to give my head a chance to clear before making conversation with the other girls. I was pretty sure that Margaret would be able to tell exactly how many ounces of wine I had drunk just by glancing at me from across the Mess Hall. Plus, I wanted to be by the lake.

I stood on the beach and looked out across Bob to the mountains beyond. I let the breeze tousle my hair, and I planted my feet firmly on the sand. Raised my arms up over my head and swung them in lazy circles, copying some of Margaret's morning exercises. Brought my arms down before bending at the waist and rolling my torso from side to side. I felt like an acrobat, a yogi. I swung my head first in one direction, so that I could see the top of Buckhorn, and then I swung it the other way. My eyes locked on Gia's. She was standing just behind me and to the right. Knowing my luck, she'd been there the whole time.

“Shit,” I said, “you scared me.” I laughed. My laughter sounded too loud. “I was just . . . exercising.”

Gia stared at me for a moment. I knew how stupid I looked, how ridiculous I sounded. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had laughed at me and walked away. But she just kept her gaze on me until I blushed. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the ground.

“I looked everywhere for you,” she said. I glanced back up at Gia. She shook her head. “Where have you been?” Her eyes were lit embers. “What were you and Boone doing?” She pronounced Boone's name as though it was fake, with a little pause before the
B
that could just as well have been quotation marks:
If that's her REAL name
.

“We went on a hike,” I said. How did she know I'd been with Boone? How long had she been watching me?

“Where?”

“Up a mountain.”

“Which mountain?”

I shouldn't have paused then and shifted my weight from one foot to another. Nothing says Outright Lie like a pause before speaking. “Up Vespers Summit,” I said.

“For three hours? You took your time,” Gia said coolly.

I kicked myself mentally for not thinking of a different mountain. Vespers was an anthill compared to Buckhorn. I could have been up it and back in the time it took to have a morning shower.

“I had no idea you were friends with her,” Gia said. She waved her hand in the direction Boone had gone. “I mean, I didn't know you guys hung out. What else have you kept from me?” For a moment, her mouth trembled, then she pursed her lips together. Her voice was hard. “Lida, look: I'm not your babysitter. You can do anything you want with anyone you want.” She waited a beat and continued. “But you
know
how much she hates me.”

I nodded.

“So you can imagine how much this hurts my feelings.” She scuffed the toe of one shoe in the dirt. “I mean, can't you?”

I nodded.

“I don't think I've asked much from our friendship,” she went on, “but I never thought I'd have to ask for your loyalty. You know, just plain respect. Now I see that I should have. I guess you must think of me as kind of . . . I don't know, temporary.”

“No!” I said. “God. I mean, you could never be temporary. Boone just —”

Gia interrupted, speaking softly. “Sometimes,” she said, “it feels like you just don't have time for me.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. My face was burning. I felt about three years old.

“You always say that.” She shook her head and turned to walk away.

There was something about the finality of her back as it moved away from me. The words were out before I felt myself open my mouth. “Boone is friends with the guy in the fire lookout. We were up visiting him.”

Gia turned slowly back around. “Guy?” she asked.

“Just a ranger,” I added lamely. I was trying to backpedal but couldn't figure out how. “Just some guy.”

“And you two visit him often?” Gia straightened her shoulders and narrowed her eyes at me. “You weren't going to tell me about this.” A statement, not a question. “Your best friend.”

I felt a warm bubble pop somewhere down low in my chest. I tried to keep from smiling.

“You're a different person than I thought you were.” Gia wasn't smiling at all.

“No.” I couldn't think of anything else to say.
Best friend best friend best friend.

“I don't keep anything from you.”

“No.”
Best friend.

“I would never.”

“No.” I wanted so badly to reach out and grab her hand, touch her face, rest one palm on that cool cheek.

Gia sighed, long and low, like she was giving up on something. Finally and irrevocably. “Well. I guess I know where I stand.” She looked away.

“No!” It was a high-pitched shout. I'd never heard a sound like that come from my own throat. “It's not like that!” I was shaking. I knew she was going to leave me if I didn't come up with the right combination of words. I had to say the right thing, had to make her understand. “He's Boone's friend, not mine. I've only been there a couple of times with her. I think . . . I think she doesn't like to hike alone. And we only stay for a little while. I hardly know him at all.”

Gia watched me as I floundered through my excuses. “Right,” she said finally.

I pressed on. “I mean, he's not even that exciting. It's pretty up there, sure, but he's just kind of sitting around with his maps and his books. You'd probably think it's boring.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-five,” I said.

“And are he and Boone . . . ?”

“I don't think so.”

“Huh,” Gia said quietly, studying her hands. She picked casually at a fingernail. “Well, then, there's only one thing to do.”

I knew what she was about to say, and mentally willed her to say something else, something like,
We just have to pretend this conversation never happened
, or
You have to stop going up the mountain with Boone
. I would agree to any of it, if only she wouldn't say what I knew she was about to.

“You have to take me up there.”

There was no arguing, of course. Gia spoke as plainly as though she was telling me to screw the cap back on a tube of toothpaste.

 

 

IT WAS HARD TO FIND A TIME TO GO. I'VE LEARNED THAT YOU
can always find obstacles to keep you from doing the things you don't want to do, but that these things ultimately have a way of imposing themselves on you anyway, so you find yourself singing in church choir or babysitting the neighbors' kids or eating a slice of fruitcake at an old person's holiday party. Taking Gia up Buckhorn was like that, but worse. For a week or so, I managed to be busy. Too busy. We were reading
Tender Is the Night
in English class, and I spent a lot of time in the cabin, trying to finish it before the discussion. Miraculously, our science teacher finally gave us homework. That kept me occupied for an afternoon as well. Lots of things, really.

But could I tell you what
Tender Is the Night
is about? Nope. Do I even know what we were studying in science? Huh-uh. What I was really doing during all those boring hours was hiding. Hiding and thinking about Gia, and how she'd looked at me when I told her I'd been up Buckhorn with Boone. I could see how that might cut her, make her wonder what kind of friend I was, whether I might be some kind of double agent, a disloyal companion who goes around telling secrets and playing both sides. I had never talked to Boone about Gia, not in any real way. And I never would. But Gia couldn't know that, could she?

These things swirled around in my head as I listlessly turned the pages of my book or jotted down notes. And amid this maelstrom, one thought appeared again and again, elbowing its way to the front of the line and blocking out the others.
Best friend.

As though on cue, the weather started turning. Less than two weeks after Parents' Weekend, we woke to the sight of our own breath fogging up the cabin. The pine needles still crunched underneath our feet as we walked, but now the crunch was more brittle, as though the frost that would inevitably blanket the woods with infinitesimal icicles had already taken up residence. Boone started wearing a skullcap to bed at night. Gwen wrote to her mother and asked her to send a box of skiers' hand warmers. I spent more and more time in the Bathhouse shower when no one was there, just letting the hot water run over the top of my head.

One morning, I headed to the Bathhouse before the rest of the school awoke, crossing my arms over my chest and clutching my shoulders like a saint or a mummy. I had always liked showering at this time. The sun was just beginning to rise, and the air around me was soft and gray. In this light, even the trees looked indistinct. Though the landscape seemed completely still, a sepia-toned photograph, there was yet a low hum that resonated through the woods as the birds awoke and called out to one another: chickadee, flicker, tanager, warbler. We'd learned to identify birdsong in Margaret's class, and I'd realized quickly that I had an ear for the nuanced patterns of their calls. I felt comforted by the thought that the forest was like this every morning — impassive, beckoning, alive — whether I awoke to see it or not.

Showering alone was a gift I gave myself. I never showered in front of the other girls anyway, but those mornings when I was able to drag myself out of my sleeping bag and tiptoe across the cabin without waking anyone else, my feet whispering across the floorboards, were when I most appreciated the school. Walking alone to the Bathhouse, opening the door, stepping into its humid warmth — at those times, I could pretend that I had chosen all of it. That it had been my decision, like it had been Jules's. I allowed myself to love it. Now that it was so cold out, these mornings were even more precious to me.

I spent a little more time showering that morning, lost in the same thoughts that had plagued me all week. It was so warm in the Bathhouse that I felt comfortably drowsy, and I was in no hurry to leave. Finally, though, my fingers began to resemble dried cranberries. I stepped out of the shower, wrapping my towel around me.

Gia was standing across the room, watching me. Had she just gotten there? Had she followed me all the way from my cabin? No, that was crazy, I told myself. Her arms were crossed as she leaned against one of the sinks, studying me.

“You sure have a way of surprising a lady,” I said awkwardly, and then, when she didn't respond, I added, “I didn't know you were a morning person.” It was as good a greeting as I could manage.

She still didn't say anything. She came toward me softly, almost floating. There was a look on her face that was the strangest blend of curiosity and conviction. I remember thinking that if I moved one muscle, if I even shifted my weight, she could hear my bones knocking against one another.

Gia stopped with only about six inches between the two of us. She reached out and hooked a corner of the towel with her finger, pulling it so that my left side from my thigh to my ribs was exposed. My scars were red and puffy from the heat of the shower, cutting across the skin in a pattern decipherable only by me. I had sketched it myself during still, solitary afternoons, my school books outside the bathroom door where I dropped them, no sound but that of my labored breath.

Gia let the towel hang open and traced the crisscrossed lines on my hip with her finger as if she was reading a newspaper. “Oh, Lida,” she said sadly. Very slowly, she let the towel drop. We stood eye to eye, our inhalations and exhalations in harmony with one another. The only other sound in the room was the rhythmic
drip, drip
of a leaking showerhead. Then she leaned forward until her mouth was hot against my ear.