“We should get the rest of the stuff unloaded.” Benners had resumed his cloak of practicality. The calm older brother. The scout leader. Only he’d always been too cool for scouts. “We can leave food till later, as long as we have a tent up and all the cooking gear out.”
“All right. Better than fucking around in the dark trying to do it once we’re drunk,” Connor agreed.
Benners started toward the car. Connor nodded for Aurora to go ahead. He was still angry, but old-dog angry. And he wasn’t as intimidating as he liked to think.
“We should swim,” he called a few moments later. “Did you bring swimming stuff, Aurora?”
“No…but I have some things…I can sort something out.”
“You can’t not swim. It’s the best bit. Moonlight and cold water.” He looked up at her under his eyebrows when she turned. She smiled at the sudden poetry in his voice; at the way his accent stepped up into full-on West Coast of Ireland. Connor reacted with embarrassment. “Sure one of the other girls can lend you. Not Jojo. She doesn’t have any girls’ clothes.”
They emptied Brett’s car and the panniers of Benners’s bike in two loads. All together, there were three tents as shelter in case the weather changed. Seven sleeping bags and thick foam mats. Blankets. A battery-powered radio. Shopping bags of food and bottled water. Cases and cases of beer bottles and cans. Pillows, two camping stoves, and four torches, because Benners’s parents had outbuildings full of that kind of stuff.
They pitched a single tent as a quick retreat in case of rain, and it was already sauna-hot in there by the time Jojo and Brett returned from their wood-finding expedition. They’d tied the wood into bundles and were dragging it with ropes. Jojo’s idea, Aurora guessed. Jojo, who virtually lived outside and was browner in her vest top than any of the boys, despite her fair hair.
“Do not go left along the riverbank,” Brett announced. “There’s a dead animal over there and it fucking stinks. I mean, stinks like the smell you’d get if you opened up a grave.”
“Recently dead?” Aurora asked.
“Three or four days, I think,” Jojo answered, straightening up and rubbing her arm across her forehead. “Three or four really hot days. It’s kind of impressive how much it smells.” She gave a sudden grin. “Hey, maybe we should put it in Topaz’s sleeping bag.”
“Maybe not the right time,” Benners replied, then bent over to fiddle with a guy rope. “Did you find the other two?”
“No. Did they come our way?” Brett squinted back in the direction they’d come.
“Theoretically. Topaz isn’t exactly top at orienteering.”
“But they know the place, though, right?” Brett started tugging off his T-shirt, unembarrassed at having an audience. The top was drenched with sweat, and the well-honed body underneath was glistening with it. “They’ll be all right?”
“I’m sure they will,” Benners said.
Aurora felt suddenly flustered by Brett’s bare skin. She wanted to look, but was worried about being caught. She glanced away and saw Connor’s furious expression. She felt a moment of sympathy toward him.
“Ahh,” Jojo said as she straightened up from untying the firewood and saw Brett’s chest. “Doing that without asking is like visual assault.”
Connor gave a brief, snorting laugh, but Brett just grinned at Jojo.
“But the kind of assault where you actually aren’t saying no,” he said, balling up his T-shirt and chucking it toward one of the tents. “I need a drink. Where am I looking?”
“Here,” Aurora said, pushing one of the double-bagged six-packs of Kestrel toward him with her foot.
He crouched down over the bag. “Ah, not beer. Where’s the hard stuff?”
He hunted around in the other bags, and pulled out a liter bottle of vodka and a couple of plastic cups. Aurora watched him pour a measure into each and then top the cups up with orange juice.
“Are you fucking serious?” Connor asked, laughing unnecessarily loudly. “Vodka and orange?”
“I’m a bloody athlete,” Brett said. “I can’t have a beer gut.”
“So you’re watching your weight,” Connor said, still grinning.
Brett didn’t answer. He held one of the cups out to Aurora. She shook her head quickly.
“Oh. Sorry, I don’t…I don’t want any. Thank you.”
“Really?” His face showed momentary confusion. “Aren’t you thirsty?”
“Yeah, I am. I’ll just have some orange juice.”
She took the bag from him, found a clean cup, and held her hand out for the carton of juice.
“If you’re worried about the taste,” he said quietly, as he passed it, “it’s actually quite sweet. Kind of thing you can drink without having to like drinking. You know?”
“She’s fourteen,” she heard Connor say behind her. His voice was a lot angrier than it needed to be. “And she doesn’t drink.”
There was a brief silence, and then Brett said with that same half smile directed across her toward Connor, “I thought your family liked their drink. You, your dad…”
There was a hot, heavy silence, and then Connor moved quickly toward him. Benners was just as quick. He got in the way while Brett straightened up slowly, still smiling slightly.
“What did you fucking say?” Connor spat.
“Come on, come on,” Benners said loudly. “Don’t rise to it. Don’t rise to it.”
Benners had his arm across Connor’s chest, hand gripping his shoulder, and although he was taller he was losing ground to Connor rapidly, his feet sliding in the dry earth.
Brett was shaking his head. “You don’t want to fight me, dude.” It wasn’t even a threat, the way he said it. Just a statement of fact.
“Seriously,” Benners said, and then to Brett, “Just tone it down. We’re supposed to be hanging out with friends, not…”
It was Brett who took a step backward. “All right. All right, that was…OK. I’m sorry. Being a dick. Let’s have a drink, and feel better. Here.”
He pulled one of the cans of Kestrel out and held it out to Connor, who clearly had fight still pulsing through him.
“Come on, Connor,” Benners murmured. “Don’t bother.”
Aurora stepped over to Connor, her heart pounding. “That was my fault. I…I should have just drunk it. Sorry, Connor.”