But I didn’t want to deflect anymore. My girlfriends would have been shocked. I know I was. I’d changed boys as frequently as some girls change nail polish, finding one excuse after another to erase any boy who might make the slightest inroad into my heart. But I wanted Quattro to see me. To like the real me. Me, the girl who worried about her parents. Me, the girl who planned to be a photographer. Me, the girl who found Zen in her lens. Me, the girl who wanted to be loved for herself.
Instead, in a classic deflecting move I had perfected myself—see, we’re just friends—Quattro stuck out his hand and said, “So? Deal?”
“Deal,” I answered, shaking his hand.
Electric shock. I knew he felt it, too. I could almost feel his breath. I definitely heard my own gasp, a sharp intake, as I wished we were running straight to the Sun Gate this very day.
“We should go,” he said abruptly, as if he’d heard my thoughts and didn’t like them. Not at all. He charged around me, fleeing like this was the scene of a crime.
Chapter Eleven
Maybe it was because I was shivering—feeling imminent hypothermia or heartache, it was hard to tell the difference—but I couldn’t have been happier at the sight of the flickering campfire at the end of the day’s trek. The awkwardness of wordlessly following Quattro was over at last. That is, I was relieved until I noticed Dad sitting sullenly by himself on one side of the fire, opposite the Gamers and Mom. It would have been hard to miss him, considering the scalding blast of his scowl at Grace. These days, the slightest comment could change the weather pattern of his moods.
Preempting Grace’s apology, I announced loudly so everyone could hear, “Sorry we took so long. It was my fault.”
“No, it was mine. Shana kept having to help me balance all of this,” Quattro said as he placed Grace’s backpack carefully on the ground.
Once again, Quattro’s bigheartedness blindsided me. But if he had stayed with me—and with Grace, once we caught up with her—out of some weird misplaced sense of obligation, he could have just left us now. He was taking the bullet of blame for us. Now, as I started to shuck my backpack, he actually slid it off my arms. Layers of water-repellent polyester and microfiber may have separated us, but I still shivered at his touch. What was his deal?
Dude, you don’t know how to break up with a girl.
Dad stalked off to our tent like a sulky toddler. Since I was such a bundle of irritation, too, I staked out an outcropping away from everyone else so I wouldn’t have to make small talk or worse, do a Dad and lash out at an innocent bystander. But who came toward me, bearing a steaming cup of quinoa?
Without a word—big surprise there—Quattro handed my dinner to me.
So grateful for the food, I wove my hands tight around the hot metal cup as if it held all my scattershot thoughts from the day: the cataclysmic insights from Grace about true love and Quattro about his mom, to be precise. Softening, I held the cup out to him. “Want some?”
“You first.” Sitting down, Quattro waited for me to take the first bite. Why was he hanging out now?
Confused, I lifted the spoon to taste the familiar nutty grain that I knew I’d forever identify with this trail. But I wasn’t hungry after all, at least not for food.
“You didn’t take a single picture today,” Quattro said, turning his full attention on me.
Trust him to notice. I cleared my throat, trying to think of an excuse. Over our silence, I heard Dad snap at Mom, “Fine, you go live your big life.” He didn’t need to go blind: He had already stopped seeing anything good around him. I shifted just in time to watch Mom reach out a conciliatory hand, but Dad jerked away from her.
I could only hope that Quattro hadn’t overheard them. But of course, he had. Everybody had. And now everybody was resolutely admiring the sunset and focusing on the meal. Even the porters, who didn’t speak a word of English, had fallen silent. Quattro was looking at me with pity. I had to do something, anything, to stop him from staring at me like that.
“Don’t you need to go?” I asked him. We had passed the Andean Trekkers campsite a good quad-burning ten minutes earlier. He had done his duty, carried Grace’s backpack, and deposited us safely with our group. So bluntly that I verged on rude, I demanded, “Why are you here?” It was hard to be vulnerable, but I added, “With me? When you clearly didn’t want to talk to me?”
He scratched the side of his nose and dropped his head, his shoulders hunched. Then he angled his head to look me straight in the eye. “Sorry about that. It’s just that I never talk about my mom.”
Yet he talked about her with me. Interesting.
I couldn’t follow that intriguing line of thought because Quattro switched the topic: “All parents bicker.”