After a second of silence, we both burst into laughter. It’s the kind that knits your stomach muscles together but releases something deeper. I speak again, and it’s easier now. “When I made friends with Brad, I thought we were both…you know…He’s really short-sighted. He got contacts for football, but he used to wear these Coke-bottle glasses, and he had acne.” He still gets acne sometimes. He puts these star-shaped stickers on his face and everyone thinks it’s mind-blowingly cool, but if I get a single spot (which I do, twice a month, like clockwork), I get comments on TikTok telling me to wash my face. My theory is, there’s a special something that certain people just have, something that makes everyone around them breathless and witless with adoration. And he has it. He’s always had it.
But I’m distracting myself when I should just get this over with. “I assumed we’d be bullied together,” I admit, “and I thought we could handle that. We didn’t need to, though, because it turns out when Brad is on your side, that stuff just doesn’t happen.” So guess what happens when he’s not on your side?
Yeah.
Oh, well.
“Even back then, no one made fun of him because he was so beautiful—” Shit. I did not mean to say that. “—and charming,” I add quickly, smoothly (I hope). “You know how he is. You like him.”
She’s blushing, appropriately shamefaced. “Well, yeah. He’s…” She waves a hand. “You know.”
“Sure,” I say dryly. “I know.”
“Honest!” she laughs, blushing harder. “He’s so honest! You feel how much he means everything, like…like he cares about every single word he says to you.”
Yeah, I do feel that. It’s rocket fuel to the fire when he insults me. But four years ago, he squashed that quality, he squashed himself, to fit into a social box that wasn’t made for him. Brad is so much more than the popular crowd’s Nice Guy or the prettiest girl in school’s boyfriend. (Thank God that thing with Isabella Hollis didn’t last too long because watching him French-braid her hair in the cafeteria was honestly a gut-wrenching, nauseating travesty of hygiene and at one point I was on the verge of shaving her head for the good of the school biosystem and—)
Anyway. The point is: he was Bradley Fucking Graeme and he was too special to play a crudely drawn role in some tacky 2000s high school movie. But he didn’t even know it.
I tried to tell him. But he didn’t want to hear.
Silence rings in my ears and I realize I haven’t spoken for a while. Instead, I’ve been sitting here glaring daggers at thin air while Aurora watches me with patience and a hint of alarm. “Sorry,” I say, clearing my throat.
“It’s okay.” She shrugs. “If you went on much longer, I was just gonna push you until you laid down, then turn off the lights.”
I snort. “We can go to bed if you want. I know I’m rambling.”
“We’re in bed,” she says, stretching pointedly and punching her pillow. “Finish the story. I’ll tell you one tomorrow, but it probably won’t be half as interesting.”
I roll my eyes and lie down, but after a second, I keep talking. I’m not sure if I can stop. I feel like a waterfall. “There’s really not much more to say. He decided he wanted us to be normal more than he wanted me to be myself.”
I didn’t mean to phrase it like that. I always thought my…my disgust with Bradley was about his own choices, about principles, not about the fact that he’d wanted something better than me and left when I couldn’t be it.
I remember what he said today, though: My therapist said you were controlling. I might’ve been more offended if I didn’t think he was right. Sometimes—not so much now, but a lot when I was younger—I felt like one of those little kids who squeezes a doll so tight its head pops off. No one wants to be left, right? But I’ve always been OTT, so I don’t want to be left on pain of death. I’m better now. But I do remember how I used to be.
So maybe it’s a good thing Bradley ditched me before I could squeeze his head off. Maybe that’s why I agreed when he asked me today if we could be kind of, sort of, temporarily okay.
“When did all this happen?” Aurora asks quietly.
“When we were thirteen or fourteen. It was snowing, so…just after my birthday, I think.”
“Huh,” Aurora says, thoughtful. She glances in my direction, eyebrows raised, her eyes big and reflective in the lamplight. “Capricorn?”
“Obviously.” I squint at her. “Aquarius?”
“Scorpio,” she says calmly, as if that’s not the shock of the season. I’m so busy absorbing the implications that it takes me a second to ask, “Wait, when’s your birthday?”
“Friday,” she says. “You know, fourteen is such a—”
“Friday?! We’re going to be here on Friday!”
She blinks slowly. “Yes, I know.”
“You’re turning eighteen here!”
“Yep. But we were talking about—”
“Who cares what we were talking about?” I yelp. “What are we doing for your birthday?”
She blushes as red as Rudolph’s nose but stays firm. “You’re doing a very good job of avoiding the topic,” she says severely, “but not good enough.”
I open my mouth, then close it. Surprise. Birthday surprise for Aurora. That’s my plan, because no one should turn eighteen while stuck in the woods away from her friends and family, but especially not Aurora. She’s so sweet. She’s so lovely. She’s like everything I wanted to be as a child before I grew up and realized I was an incurable cow and it might be genetic. A birthday surprise is happening because she deserves it—
But I need to lull her into a false sense of security. “Right. Er. What were we saying?”
“You and Brad,” she reminds me, “being fourteen and stupid.”
I snort.
“I would’ve given a lot to be normal at that age,” she says pensively.
“You are normal.”
“Not really. Which is fine, I know that now. But when I was younger…” She glances at me. “I have celiac. Did I mention that? No gluten. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago. But before that, I was always sick and sore and stumbling all over the place, and everyone thought I was a complete freak, and I thought they were right. I just wanted people to like me. Everyone else had friends. What was wrong with me?” She shrugs while my heart calmly shatters.
I’ve never minded people saying I’m annoying or weird or a bitch because I don’t think those things about myself are bad. It never occurred to me that some people deal with the weight of everyone else’s judgment and their own. That never occurred to me at all.
“But I have friends now,” she continues. “And I know they’re worth more than all the people who were…who were casually cruel to me, because they’re deliberately kind, and that makes them better people. My kind of people. Except I had to learn that. Don’t we all have to learn that?”
I huff and turn my pillow over. “So what are you saying—Brad was unfortunately deprived of his learning years because he’s tragically gorgeous and charming?”
Aurora grins. “I didn’t say that. You said that.”
I throw my pillow at her. “Not buying it.”
Because that can’t be enough. Surely that can’t be enough for the way he made me feel.
And the way you made him feel…
Was justified. It was.
But only if he’s the enemy.
And apparently, out here at least, he’s not.
BRAD
Our second day of the BEP is spent being lectured on the contents of our little green books (the short version is: DO NOT EAT 99 PERCENT OF THE PLANT LIFE AND DO NOT PLAY WITH FOXES) and learning all kinds of safety survival stuff we’ll need to remember for our next expedition. I don’t insult Celine. She doesn’t insult me. In fact, we don’t talk at all, nor do we glare holes into each other’s skulls. It’s all completely normal and healthy and very boring.
Success, I suppose.
On the plus side, freeing up the brainpower I usually spend on pissing her off has helped me think about my novel a lot more. On the minus side, I’m mostly thinking about how bad it is and how I’m never going to finish it, rather than useful stuff like, you know, working on the plot.
On our third day, rain falls again to match my attitude, and Victor gleefully drags us outside to perform manual labor. (I’m no therapist but I’m pretty sure he has issues.)
“Can you hold on to this?” I ask Raj, trying to hammer our final tent peg into the soggy grass.
He crouches down at my side and grimaces, which is basically all he’s been doing since we were paired off and given our tent. “You’re not gonna bonk my fingers, are you?”
“I might.”
“I’m an artist, Brad. I need these fingers. Break them and I will sue.”
“It’s a soft mallet, Raj,” I tell him. “Get a grip.” Then I bonk his fingers on purpose.
He collapses into the mud (it’s fascinating, really; he doesn’t even seem to hesitate) and howls, “Betrayal!”
I bonk his head.
“Violence! Vicious, relentless—”
“Everything all right over here, boys?” Zion asks pointedly, looming over us like a tablet-wielding god when, in reality, he’s five years older than us, max.
Raj pops up like a daisy, brighter than today’s cloud-covered sun. “Yes, sir, Zion, sir. Tent’s almost up. Pegs behaving. Everything’s in order. If you ask me, I think we’re doing a cracking job.”
Zion rolls his eyes and taps at his tablet as he leaves. Shit. Did he at least notice what an effective leader I’m being today? Probably not, since I was leading via mallet attack.