Starry Eyes(51)

I had no idea about a lot of things.

“I dare you,” he murmurs.

I stop rubbing the cold out of my thighs and glance up at him. “You what?”

“I dare you to go to Condor Peak. Let me take you there. I can do it. I know I can. You used to trust me.”

“You used to give me reasons to.”

“I never stopped. You just quit paying attention.”

Are we fighting? I don’t think so, but the energy between us feels fierce. As flammable as his artful pile of sticks.

What do I want to do? Maybe he’s right, and returning home would be a quiet sort of surrender. And really, didn’t I come out here to get away from my family problems? Do I want to walk straight back into them, sitting behind the clinic’s front desk, pretending to be okay while my father walks around in a cloud of lies?

But what’s the alternative? Hiking in the boonies with my greatest enemy?

Former enemy?

God, I’m so confused.

Lennon squats by the fire and assembles a portable grill. Like everything else we’re carrying, it’s lightweight and compact, all the pieces fitting inside a single metal tube. When he’s finished clicking all the pieces together, it stands on four legs. He gingerly settles it over the campfire, and then sets a pan of filtered stream water atop it. Flames lick the sides of the pan.

We both watch the water heating as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

“Let’s think this through logically, okay?” he says.

“Yes, please.” Logical is good. Logical is safe. And I can tell by the look on his face that he’s about to use logic against me, because he knows me oh-too-well. But I’m so stressed right now, I don’t even care. I just need for things to line up in my brain.

He pushes dark hair out of his eyes and counts off a list of things on his fingers. “One, the group left us. Whether they thought through that clearly and realized what they were doing is inconsequential now. We’re stranded. Two, we can hike all day on brutal trails and hope either a bus or a nonmurderous Good Samaritan willing to pick up two hitchhiking teens can take us out of the Sierras—”

“Oh, God.”

“—or we can hike all day on easy trails and be halfway toward Condor Peak tomorrow. Three, you shouldn’t cancel your plans with Avani, because she’s a way better friend than Reagan ever was. Four, you have a perfectly capable guide who can take you where you want to go, and enough time to get there. Five, what do you have to lose?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what? You afraid Joy will forget to feed Andromeda?”

Smart-ass.

“No,” I say.

“Need to get back and press all your plaid skirts before school starts? Or maybe you’re expecting a big order of imported washi tape to be delivered and need to spend all day organizing it by color and pattern?”

“Oh, ha-ha. You’re a regular Bill Murray.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know, that my dad would kill us both if he knew you were part of Reagan’s group. I can’t imagine what he’d do if he knew I was contemplating spending several days alone with you.”

“Good point. Alone.” He whistles softly and opens a bear canister. “We’ll have trouble keeping our hands to ourselves.”

“I didn’t mean that.” I sound like a Victorian schoolteacher, shocked by the very idea of impropriety—all Heavens to Betsy! and How dare you, sir!

“No?” he says, feigning disappointment.

Is he flirting with me? That can’t be right. I think I’m losing my mind. “N-no,” I stutter, and then say more firmly, “No.”

“Let me take you to Condor Peak. Give your dad a big middle finger. Zorie and Lennon exploring the world. Like old times.”

“Like old times,” I mumble. “Hey, Lennon?”

“Yeah?”

“We don’t really have a choice, do we? I mean, hiking to the bus stop . . . it was never an option.”

He gives me a tight smile, and then shakes his head. “It will be okay. I promise. I’ll get you to Avani in one piece. And if you change your mind, at the very least I can get you to a ranger station inside the park by tomorrow.”

The water is boiling. He carefully tilts the pan’s contents into his steel carafe before settling a mesh plunger on top. Then he sets a timer on his phone.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“French press.”

“For coffee?”

“Yep.”

“Real coffee? Not instant?”

“We’re camping, Zorie, not living in a dystopian nightmare.”

“I’ll try to remember that when I’m digging cat holes.”

He holds up two blue enamel coffee cups. “It could be worse. It could be winter.”

Or I could be stuck in the wilderness, miles away from civilization, with the boy who crushed my heart in the palm of his hand.

Oh, wait.

I am.





Part III





15




* * *



Over coffee and a couple of rehydrated gourmet breakfast pouches that Reagan left behind, Lennon breaks out his big topographic map of the area and a black metal compass that unfolds to reveal several dials, a clock, and a ruler. He makes several measurements and jots down numbers with a mechanical pencil, and it all looks complicated.