Tomás gave an exasperated sigh. “We’re talking about fugitives who broke out of a state mental hospital. That means they were waiting to be assessed to see if they’re criminally insane.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need to wait for someone else’s assessment. This is Archie DuPraw we’re talking about. I know insanity when I see it. Hell, Gibby, you ought to know better than the rest of us. Takes one to know one.”
“I guess.” I didn’t have the energy to get sucked into the taunting nature of his words. No one had ever said I was criminally insane; I just had to see a court-ordered therapist for a year or so after what happened with my stepfather. I was also assigned a social worker, who made sure my mother got on disability on account of her back injury and did his best to keep her sober. Trust me, even though I’d killed someone, to everyone outside of our house, I was seen as a victim. I was treated like one, too.
This time, though, I doubt I’ll be so lucky.
21.
AVERY FOUND ME after dinner when I went to get water from the river so that Clay and I could wash the dishes. The sun was setting and the sky was bursting with color—bright pops of it, here and there and there—and even though I didn’t plan it like that, my whole body kind of felt the same way when I saw her walking toward me.
That long black hair.
Those soft, soft thighs.
She sat on a rock by the water’s edge, at a spot where the river ran wide, taking pictures of the sky and the dragonflies and maybe of me. For my part, I pretended not to see her while I crouched to fill the dromedary sack, which was just a fancy name for a nylon bag that held water. We were hidden from the others by a thicket of weeping spruce and feather grass, and I don’t know how it happened, but pretty soon we were sitting together and letting our knees touch and talking about things that felt urgent and deep, like how much we liked each other but didn’t want to hurt Rose. Pretty shitty stuff, I realize now, looking back on it, because if I were getting played, the last thing I’d want my significant other talking about was how bad she felt for cheating on me. But in that moment I was stupid and eager and maybe there was a certain chaos I craved.
The sky dimmed and after the talking, Avery and I fooled around for a bit. I want to say I couldn’t help it, but I could and I did it anyway. The colors popping in the sky and popping inside of me grew brighter, more brilliant, the more I ran my hands along her skin; soon I was panting again, all heat and original sin.
Avery, for her part, was earnest in her lust—eager, too, which I liked, and submissive, which I didn’t. But she touched me back and things were good for a while until it ended up kind of fizzling out. Embarrassing, but I was honest and told her how that happened to me sometimes, that my head and my body didn’t always work well together and that it was probably due to brain damage, although that was impossible to prove because it wasn’t like I had a sex life before I’d been hurt. I also told her that some people with traumatic brain injuries wanted to do it all the time and could also be really emotional, but that I was the opposite and that it was frustrating and irrational, because how could I want something but not really have the desire to do it?
Avery looked confused with my explanation. But then she shrugged and patted my shoulder, like I was a good little donkey who’d just carried her up a steep hill. “Makes sense to me,” she said. “Want and desire aren’t the same thing, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, want is for when there’s something missing. Desire is for going after what makes you feel good.”
I’d never heard that before but thought she might be right, so then I told Avery that maybe the reason desire was hard for me was because going after what made me feel good was a choice and that I didn’t like making choices. She sort of frowned when I said this, her eyes filling with more compassion than I could bear, and she told me she hoped that someday I might see things differently. Then she said she had to go.
By that point the sun was almost gone from the sky and it was true, we both needed to get back to the campsite. We couldn’t go together, so Avery left first. She didn’t really say good-bye or act like she’d miss me as she slipped back through the grass, and I felt sick with abandonment. Guilt, too, for failing Rose again for no other reason than lust. Also shame, for being so damn bad at it.
Kicking off my shoes, I went and sat on the boulder Avery had been perched on and dropped my feet into the black pool beneath. Then gasped. The cold nearly stopped my heart, pure polar melt, but I didn’t pull back. I let the depths of the water chew at my bones with its unrelenting force.
I thrust my legs in deeper still, to my knees, watching as bubbles frothed at the surface. Eager to indulge the greedy pull of the current, I was of half a mind to let it take me. To let it pull me under. Just to be wanted, if only in death.
I closed my eyes.
I let my hips slide forward, to the boulder’s very edge.
“Hey!” a voice said.
My eyes flew open, and I whipped around to see Clay Bernard holding a flashlight, which he was shining right in my face.
“What is it?” I yanked my feet from the current.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Clay gave me a pointed you’re-full-of-shit look. “Well, you got that water or what? I’ve been waiting for you for, like, forever.”
“Yeah, I got it.” I scrambled off the rock before gathering up the dromedary sack along with my shoes and socks. “Let’s go.”
—
When the dishes were done, Mr. Howe announced that he would be leading a stargazing hike to a spot about a mile away up on the western ridge, where the entire sky would be visible. He’d brought a portable telescope and the view would be stunning, he said. No light pollution to dim the stars or crush our dreams. Plus, a meteor shower was happening. Long-lost pieces of ice and comet dust bursting and shimmering in their final fall to our ground.
I didn’t end up going on the hike. Someone had to stay back and keep an eye on the campsite. Not to mention I hadn’t been doing very well at the whole resting thing.
Archie, Rose, and Shelby also ended up staying behind, which worked for me. I planned on staying close to Rose and far from Avery, since I clearly couldn’t be trusted around her. I was starting to feel pretty lousy about that, especially given the fact that Avery wouldn’t look at me, not even out of the corner of her eye.
So I focused my attention on Rose. On all that I loved about her and all I could do to show her that. She’d cut her hand on a serrated knife while drying dishes and although she tried gamely to be brave, I could tell it hurt—Rose hated nothing more than physical pain. So when I got her alone, I sat her down outside our tent in the grass and insisted on tending to the wound with a first aid kit.
Her eyes brimmed with tears while I poured antiseptic on it.
“It stings, doesn’t it?” I asked.