“Ask any guy. Go ahead. Ask Hugo.”
I cringe. If Hugo is thinking about sex with me, I really would rather not know. “I’ll just take your word for it.”
We both turn toward the large picture window. I can make out the black water through the trees. It’s not far away. For a moment I’m in my old pink bedroom, watching the ripples dance on the walls. Then I think of that little girl, the one dressed in pink. She opens her mouth and the filth begins to ooze over her bottom lip just as I’m jolted back to reality.
“You okay?” Justin asks. When I look at him, confused, he says, “You’re shivering. Come on, Hugo’s not that bad.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What, then? Look, you don’t have to spend the night outside with me,” he says, stroking my cheek softly with the calloused pad of his thumb.
“No, I wasn’t—” I begin, but it’s better he doesn’t know what I was really thinking. About that life that he knows nothing about. It’s not worth explaining anyway. The past belongs in the past. This trip is all about moving on, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.
Chapter Three
My cell rings while I’m pulling on my long underwear. I check the display and see a familiar number. “Hey, Dad,” I say, watching Justin do a little jig by the window. He’s so excited by the river, he’s gotten dance fever.
“Hey,” my dad says. “Where are you?”
“Just got to Baxter,” I lie as Justin turns to watch me. I plant my butt on the edge of the bed. “We’re setting up our tents now.”
“Cool,” my dad says. “How’s the charge on your phone?”
“It’s fine,” I say as Justin twirls around the room like he’s Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Totally sexy.
“Mount Katahdin is breathtaking! The hills really are alive up here!” Justin shouts. Then he falls down on the ground. Then he pretends that something is attacking him. He gets up, runs, and falls, and by then I guess the imaginary thing is on top of him because he collapses onto his stomach and screams. “And they’re … going … to eat me!”
Shut up, I mouth, but my dad must have heard. “How is Justin?”
“Um, he’s …,” I begin, watching him miraculously revive.
Justin calls out, “Going to wait until after dinner to murder your daughter.”
I reach over and smack him. “… good.”
“Are you okay? Do you need anything? If you do, just call. Just call me anytime. Let your old man know how things are going.”
I sigh. That’s my dad. By now Justin is making funny faces at me, trying to get me to laugh. He almost succeeds when he rolls his eyes back in his head and pushes up his nose to look like a pig. “Everything’s fine. And I’ve got to go. We’re going to the store. We forgot …” I look around but can’t come up with anything. I’m terrible at thinking on my feet like this.
Justin offers, “Beef jerky?”
I’m about to say it, but I catch myself in time and smack him on the shoulder again. “I mean, we’re going on a hike. And we want to get up there before it gets dark.”
“You’re a beef jerky,” I whisper at Justin.
“Now?” my dad says. I can just picture him in the living room, looking at the kitchen clock through his bifocals and shaking his head. “It’s awful late for that. Bring flashlights in case you’re not back by nightfall.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Levesque. Everything’s fine,” Justin calls, starting to make faces again.
I smack him again as I disconnect from my father and sigh. “I hate having to lie to him.”
“He’s being irrational. People who don’t know the facts are quick to condemn it, but white-water rafting is completely safe,” Justin says, sounding like a public service announcement. Then he grins. “Now let’s go outside!”
We don’t get to ditch Hugo after all. While we’re gathering our bags and trying to sneak down the stairs, Angela comes out of her room, her eyes big and round. She has eyes that would make the most hardened criminal confess and beg for mercy. They should be surrounded by a nun’s wimple. “Where are you off to?”
“We were just, um …” Justin looks at me. He’s terrible at confrontations.
“We thought we would camp outside. Just for tonight,” I explain.
“You?” she says to me, incredulous. When I nod, her eyes get wider yet. “But you can’t leave me alone with Hugo!” she whispers. “That would be so … awkward.”
“You invited him,” I point out. “What happened to ‘He’s kind of cute’?”
“Yeah, well, he is, but …” Pleading, she looks at Justin. “I don’t even really know him that well. Being alone with him all night, would be totally awkward, with a capital A.”
“This is a little plusher than I thought, Angela,” Justin says. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice. I just thought that …”
She clamps her hand around mine. “We were going to make popcorn and s’mores and tell scary stories and stuff. Please.”
Right. Angela was a Girl Scout. She lives for s’mores and scary stories by firelight. I look back at Justin. He clears his throat. “Well, why don’t you guys come with us?” he asks.
“Really?” she asks. “Okay! That would be cool!”
She scampers off to gather her things as I glare at Justin. He has this way of caving under the slightest amount of pressure. He squeezes my hand. “It’ll be fun,” he whispers.
“But … Hugo,” I say, since that name alone is an explanation as to why it won’t be.
He doesn’t answer, just takes my sleeping bag from me, as if carrying it is his way of apologizing. Then he leads us out to the backyard. Angela points the way to an old campsite and we set up there. There’s a fire pit, and Justin, the master woodsman, finds a way to get a fire burning within a few minutes. When we lay out our sleeping bags, Angela begins to divvy up the marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars.
When I sit down on my bag, my butt thuds painfully against the hard ground and some insect skitters across my nose. Even with the fire burning and my hands in the pockets of my jacket, my fingertips feel numb. I immediately regret being so sweet to Justin. Not only that, but tomorrow we’ll be on the river, instead of getting ready for prom. I was already being nice to him by agreeing to come on this trip. What made me agree to sleep outdoors?
“Scary story time,” Angela says. “I am so going first. I’ve been practicing this one ever since we started planning the trip. It’ll totally freak you out, Ki.”
I stare at her. “Thanks?”
“No, you’ll appreciate this one.”
I think she’s saying this because I’m a horror movie junkie. But that’s indoors, in a well-lit room. Even with Justin to protect me, it’s spooky, and we’ll be sleeping here all night. Outside the circle, the forest is black. The rushing river sounds like eerie whispers. No, no. The river is fine. The sound is relaxing. The river has no hold over me.
“Once upon a time,” she begins as I nibble on a marshmallow. She leans forward so that the fire casts strange shadows on her face. “There was this boy.”
“Ooooh. Scary,” Hugo says.
Nobody bothers to laugh or even to look at him, not even Angela, who is too absorbed in her story to notice him. “His name was Jack McCabe. He grew up in a home with his father, who was a lumberjack. His father was also a very evil man who blamed Jack for the death of his wife in childbirth. So he would beat Jack every night if he didn’t do everything he was told. He made Jack clean the house, make him meals, tend to the animals, everything. The father would sit there at night, sharpening the blade of his ax on a stone, watching his son. That was all he ever did. Sleesh … sleesh … sleesh.”