Anyway, after spending the night thinking about a thousand and one ways I could have better handled the situation with Camden I’m in no mood to deal with Dirtbag’s antics.
Taking note that my mother’s back is still turned, I jump to my feet and before Dirtbag can so much as flinch I seize a fistful of his stringy hair and slam his ugly face into the hardwood kitchen table. He howls and there’s blood and my mother screams but I didn’t use nearly as much force as I could have. Dirtbag might have a broken nose and he’ll need some tissues to mop up the blood but he’ll be fine. Or at least he’ll be no more hideous than he usually is. I’m not worried he’ll call the cops because he’s already got a long history of being on their bad side.
“BENNET!” my mother shouts. It’s not often that she slips and uses my real name. I ignore her, grab the car keys from where they hang on a nail next to the door and make an exit before things can get worse.
I’m driving down the street when I realize that while I had the presence of mind to grab my jacket, this time I’ve left my phone behind. Being without a phone sucks but I’m not returning to that scene of fresh hell in order to get it.
I don’t have a destination in mind. Somewhere outside of Devil Valley but not Black Mountain. My mind has lost track of the time and I don’t even realize that the bus is due to show up any minute.
Then I turn the corner and I see Camden.
She’s standing in exactly the spot where she was standing the day she caught me looking at her the instant a cold gust of wind blew her skirt up. She’s not writing in her notebook now. She’s not looking at her phone or chatting with Mrs. Copella. She just stands still and stares straight ahead as if she’s thinking. Or waiting.
She’s facing in this direction, the direction where she expects to see me appear and I’d give a lot to know if she’s hoping for or dreading my arrival. She doesn’t notice the beat up red car that pulls up to the curb along Cardinal Street and she doesn’t notice that she’s being watched by the driver.
We were so fucking awful to each other yesterday.
I wish I knew how to not be awful. I wish I had all the right words on the tip of my tongue and that I could give them to her. I wish she was sitting in the seat beside me right now. I would tell her that I’m sorry. I would tell her about this morning’s debacle with Dirtbag and how there’s an unseen war raging inside me and that sometimes I just want to stand in the wilderness where no one can hear me and scream. I would tell her that I miss my father. And I would tell her that whoever I am and whatever name I’m attached to wants to be with her. Because she’s beautiful. Because she drives me nuts in the best way. And because there’s not another girl anywhere who can compare to her.
The bus appears and the moment of opportunity passes. Camden glances down the street one last time and her shoulders sag with disappointment before she trudges up the steps of the bus.
I stay put until the bus is gone and then I yank the car out of park. Halfway between Devil Valley and Black Mountain there’s a turnoff that leads to Angel Peak State Park. I don’t expect there will be many people hiking around in the woods on a weekday with snow on the ground and sure enough, aside from a guy who’s got an expensive camera setup pointed at the designated lookout point, there’s no one around.
My fingers become stiff after five minutes on the trail but I’m wearing my boots so at least I don’t slip and slide all over the ground. There’s nothing special enough about this area to be a huge tourist spot, not like the more well known landmarks looming over the town of Black Mountain. There’s a picnic gazebo a few hundred yards up ahead and it’s deserted, the canopy covered with snow, cobwebs in the charcoal grill. But beneath the canopy is a long table, the kind that my Devil Valley neighbors keep in their backyard for summer cookouts where seventeen extended family members show up and everyone eats hot dogs and laughs about someone accidentally setting fire to the living room couch twenty years ago.
The Drexlers were never that kind of family. My grandparents were dead by the time I was three and my mother had already lost her family when she married, so my memories only include the families of Uncle Gannon and Uncle Layton. The adults would drink from expensive bottles and the men would bicker in low voices while my mother and aunts had passive aggressive conversations about handbags and marble floors. My oldest cousins were rarely around and I wished they’d take the twins from hell with them but Angus and Grey were present a lot more than I cared to see them. During a pool game Angus once held my head underwater until I started to black out. Another time he and Grey asked me if I wanted to see something cool and ushered me over to a backyard corner where they unearthed a mass grave of decaying seagulls they’d killed with pellet guns.
And then there was the time my mother’s cat – a soft, trusting calico named Betsy – disappeared. The following Christmas, while the adults were preoccupied with their liquor, Angus cornered me and bragged that he’d smothered the cat and dismembered her body.
Deep in my left pocket my fingers connect with a wrapper and I pull out a Milky Way bar that I’d stowed in there last week and forgotten about. It’s a nice surprise because I’m hungry and as I tear the wrapper off I can’t help but think of my dad. This was his favorite candy and he kept a glass jar filled with the miniature versions on the cherry wood desk in his office. He let me know I could sneak in there and take some anytime I wanted even if my mother was shouting that dinner would be served in five minutes. He always wanted to see what new tricks I’d learned in karate or hear about my baseball games and he paid attention to my report cards.
He was a good father.
He worked a lot and often missed little league games and school concerts but he loved me and he loved my mom. Professionally he was known for ruthlessness and I’ll probably never know if he was involved in that terrible situation with the activists. But I like to think that the guy who idolized my mother and slipped me candy bars and tucked the blankets around my shoulders long after I should have been asleep was a decent man at heart.
After washing the candy bar down with a mouthful of snow I decide to take a hike up the peak. It’s not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, considering the ground is slippery, I have no phone and no one except for the camera man at the lookout has any idea that I’m out here. But the peak is small and I scale it without a problem. From the top I can see Black Mountain in the distance. The valley in between looks like a Christmas postcard. The sun has broken through the haze of grey winter clouds and for now the temperature is less hostile even all the way up here.
My gaze is still pointed in the direction of Black Mountain. All I see of the town is the distant spire of the tallest church but I know that church is located within a mile of Black Mountain Academy.
Where I should be right now.
Where Camden is.
Every time I think of the betrayal in her voice and the way her pretty eyes were bright with tears yesterday I feel a little worse and I already felt pretty bad in that moment. She doesn’t know whether or not to believe anything I say and why should she? So far I haven’t given her much to work with. The truth is, Camden is the first girl I’ve really wanted to know in every way.
No, it’s more than that. I want her to know me too. When I ask her to trust me I want her to feel no hesitation in believing that she can.