He Started It(67)

The button is gone.

The old one with the tarnished gold color, it’s gone. At first, I think that I’m just missing it, that it must be here, but it isn’t. I realized this as we repacked our bags before heading out into the woods, to the campsite, and now it’s all I can think about. That damn button appeared and then disappeared without any explanation.

Felix doesn’t know anything about it, so if he did go through my bag, I doubt he’d take an old button. He’d take the cigarettes instead—or at least wonder why I have them.

It would be easy to blame Portia since we shared a room so many times, but Eddie had access as well. There were plenty of times I left my bag in the car to use the restroom or go into the store. Anyone could have taken it.

I think about this as we walk single file into the woods, even as I continue to argue with Felix. “You bought way too much stuff for one night.”

“You buy too much stuff all the time,” he says, half turning around to wink at me.

Now that we have our camping equipment, he’s back to the pretend fighting, and he’s really bad at it. I still wink back.

“Time out,” Portia yells from behind us. “Hold the bickering until we get there.”

I don’t say anything else. All I hear now is the clink of the bottles in Portia’s bag.

The walk isn’t a long one. One minute we’re in the middle of the woods, and the next we’re in a small clearing in front of the water. This isn’t one of the formal campgrounds, so there are no cabins, outhouses, or anything that looks like civilization.

The memories come back. I can see exactly how it looked then: where each of our sleeping bags were located, and off to the right, the woods where I last saw Nikki.

It makes me feel like crying all over again.



* * *



–––––

“Well, this is nice,” Felix says, walking around like he’s checking out another motel room. “I don’t see any bear droppings or anything.”

Lovely.

Portia looks at him like he’s crazy.

“You didn’t look for bear droppings last time?” Felix says.

“No,” Eddie says.

Felix whistles. He’s good at it. “You guys are so lucky to be alive.”

“All right,” Eddie says, cutting off anyone who thinks about continuing this conversation. “Here’s how we’re going to set this up.”

He barks out orders about where everything should go, then Felix contradicts him, and I feel like hitting both of them with my can of bug spray.

Portia motions for me to follow her into the woods. She grabs one of her orange juice bottles and brings it along. We go just far enough that we hear them talk but they can’t hear us whisper.

“Bears?” she says, unscrewing the top. She has premixed vodka with the orange juice. The smell hits me from a foot away.

“He’s just being . . . Felix. That’s how he is.”

“Huh.” She takes a swig of the drink and nods. “How long have you been with him?”

“So many years.”

“Huh.”

“You don’t like him?” I say.

“Oh, he’s fine, I guess. A little quirky, maybe.”

Quirky. Yes, I would say he’s quirky. And he can be uptight, finicky, and completely overorganized. And when you least expect it, he’ll slam his fist on the dashboard. Maybe into other things, too. Maybe I’ve just never seen it.

“It’s weird being back here,” I say, changing the subject. Everywhere I look, I imagine us here as kids.

“I guess,” Portia says.

“You don’t remember.”

She looks around, like she’s trying to conjure it up in her mind. “I remember Nikki being tied up. I remember the ghost stories and the marshmallows and the cocoa.” She stops and stares at the campsite in front of us. “That’s about it.”

“Yeah.”

She starts to say something. Stops. Starts again. “Sometimes I think I remember but I don’t know if it’s real or I’m just making it up.”

Felix looks at us through the trees and I wave him off, letting him know that we’re fine. He doesn’t have to come save us from any bears. “Like what?” I say, taking a gulp of the strongest drink I’ve had in a while. “What do you remember?”

“I think she said goodbye to me,” Portia says. “I swear I can hear her whisper it.”

I nod. “I bet she did. I bet she said goodbye to you.”

Portia tilts the bottle and downs a lot more than a sip. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and chuckles. “I was joking,” she says. “Nikki never said goodbye to me or anyone else. She was nothing but a selfish bitch.”

I feel like I’ve been slapped.

“But you loved her,” I say. “You worshipped her.”

“Beth, she tricked me into drugging everyone. Into drugging myself.” Portia scoffs and shakes her head. “Nikki was a horrible person.”

She walks away, leaving me in the woods by myself.



* * *



–––––

We don’t use sticks for the marshmallows. Not this time, not with Felix around. He bought a set of metal spears made just for roasting marshmallows, because “I’m not eating anything off a stick because a bear could’ve peed on it.”