She’s staring at me, the leafless twig still between her fingers, and I have to look away. Thinking about what I did and didn’t do as a teenager can feel like strangulation, long, shadowy fingers of my old self wrapping around my neck. Turns out no matter what, we can never leave ourselves behind.
“I,” I start, and I don’t want to tell her this. She knows everything I did to her and her parents back then and she can still smile when she looks at me, sometimes; why confess more? “At first, I was glad,” I say. “I wanted him to stop being gay so he wouldn’t have to go to hell. But he didn’t get changed, he only got hurt. Obviously. And I didn’t know what to do, so I joined the Army and left the minute I could. He lives in Boston now and doesn’t talk to our parents. I don’t blame him.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
We sit in silence for a while, and for the first time all day, it’s comfortable, like the quiet is a blanket we’re both wrapped under, minds whirring.
“I thought if I told my parents about your dad and Rick, they’d help them… not like men,” I admit. “I thought, I don’t know, that your dad would start dating a woman instead and he and Rick would be regular friends, and you could have a normal family and none of you would go to hell anymore.”
I exhale hard enough that the flame on the lighter goes out.
“God, that sounds so stupid,” I mutter.
“You were a kid.”
“I was twelve. It’s not that young.”
“You were pretty sheltered,” she says, and now she’s watching me flick the lighter on and off, too. “It’s a miracle they let you hang out with me.”
“They thought your dad was a sweet, Godly widower who was doing his best to raise a daughter alone and that I could be a strong moral influence in your life,” I tell her.
Andi bursts out laughing and it’s so, so loud in the snow-soaked night that something startles in a nearby tree, but it’s good, like a burst of music. I can’t help but smile at her.
“Wow, they got that wrong,” she says.
“I was a great influence.”
“You taught me how to climb barbed-wire fences and carve sticks into spears with a pocketknife.”
“You could’ve learned that anywhere.”
“But I didn’t. I learned from you.”
I put the lighter back in my pocket because my hand is freezing, and I stretch my legs out again. My ankle protests, and I force myself not to make a face.
“I thought you’d be angry,” I tell her.
Andi blows out a breath, the twig in her hand bobbing up and down.
“I used to be,” she says. “I was for years.”
I wait, silent. Something I’m good at, for once.
“I couldn’t stay angry,” she says. “You were kind of a dick about it, don’t get me wrong—”
I snort, closing my eyes. She’s right.
“—But it’s hard to be a grownup and stay mad at a kid for making exactly the judgement call he was raised to make,” Andi says. “Dad and Rick put me in a lot of therapy. I’m still angry with your parents, and with my dead grandmother, and I’m pissed at the Burnley County school board, but not with you. Not anymore.”
I have no idea what to say to that, so I say, “Thank you.”
“Unless you still think I’m going to hell,” she amends.
“I’m not sure I think there’s a hell.” I’m not sure about much, these days.
She turns her head again, elbows resting on her knees, braid dangling over her shoulder, and looks at me.
And for the first time since I found her chained to a tree, I let myself really remember how we were before: two kids exploring way deeper into the forest than they should have, crawling across logs and splashing through creeks and climbing trees. Andi taught me to be curious. To be brave. To believe in unicorns and buried treasure. The memories are gold-tinted, always the perfect summer afternoon, and the sudden yearning hits me like a rubber band snapping against my skin.
“I missed you,” I say, and everything I’ve told her tonight is true, but this is the truest of all.
“I missed you too,” she says, and smiles, and the warmth of it flickers through my bones.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANDI
“This is stupid,” Gideon grumbles, sorting through fifty-dollar bills. “They’re national parks, the whole point is that you can’t own them and rent them out to people.”
“What do you think campgrounds are?” I ask, still holding my hand out.
“That money goes to the upkeep and maintenance of the campground itself,” he says, frowning some more and reaching for the twenties. “National parks don’t turn a profit off of those. The popular ones are more expensive because more people means more personnel and more maintenance. No one is enriching themselves off of national park campgrounds.”
“Sounds like you should write a strongly worded letter to whoever made this game,” I say, and wiggle my fingers because he’s sure taking his time over there. “Pay up.”
Gideon looks at the money in his hand, looks at the money left on his side of the board, and looks at me, eyes narrowed.
“You can’t argue your way out of this,” I tell him. “You landed on the Grand Canyon, I saw it, you saw it, everyone here can count to seven perfectly well—”
“I’m not trying to find a loophole in the rules, that’s your thing,” he says, all grumpy and offended. “When you’re not stealing from the bank.”
“We agreed on house rules!” I say. My hand is still out and still bereft of the Monopoly money I’m owed. “Not my fault if you don’t remember your own rules.”
“We never had that rule,” he says. “You made it up for this game and now you’re trying to trick me into thinking we had it all along.”
“Gideon,” I say, patiently. “Would I do that?”
“Absolutely.”
For a minute, I consider telling him he’s right. He’s not, of course—you can steal from the bank as long as no one catches you is a time-honored Monopoly house rule, one we played with almost from the first time we played Monopoly together.
But saying don’t you remember feels delicate and tentative, like crossing a canyon on a bridge made of toothpicks. Just because we finally talked last night doesn’t mean he wants to be reminded. It’s one thing to apologize in the cold, silent dark of night and another to run wildly down memory lane.
I’ve always had a bad habit of running without looking, though.
“We always played with the heist rule,” I remind Gideon. “You don’t remember the time you got two hotels on Boardwalk and you thought you were about to win for once, but then it turned out that Zach had stolen like five grand because no one was watching him, since we thought he couldn’t be that sneaky?”
Gideon blinks at me for a moment, and I’m not at all sure this bridge is holding. I hold my breath.
“Shit,” he finally grumbles. “Yeah. Was that the time Matt kicked all the pieces off the board?”