Starry Eyes

by Jenn Bennett

  “You could have woken me! We could have hustled!”

  “I’ve only been awake for fifteen or twenty minutes. Don’t you get it? It was too late an hour ago. By the time we hike to the parking lot . . .”

  They’ll have driven away already.

  Okay. No need to panic. Just think. Make a new plan. What do we do now? It took us four hours to hike here from the parking lot. Another hour or so to drive back to the glamping compound, where we could catch a taxi or bus home. But we don’t have a car. “How long a hike on foot is it from the parking lot back to the glamping compound?”

  “There aren’t shoulders on some of those mountain roads we drove. They aren’t made for hiking. Christ, they’re barely made for vehicles. You remember the drive here on that twisty main road.”

  We nearly hit a couple of other vehicles coming in the opposite direction when rounding switchbacks. It was sort of scary, and I definitely wouldn’t want to be on that road in the rain or fog. Especially not on foot.

  He shakes his head. “We’d be better off taking an actual walking trail the other way around the mountains, but that could take . . . a lot longer.”

  “How much longer?”

  “A day.”

  “All day?”

  “And night. We’d have to camp along the way. There’s no straight shot back to the compound from the parking lot out here.”

  Holy crap. Is he serious?

  “This can’t be happening,” I tell him as I pace across the shelter, trying to figure out what to do next. I’m absolutely panicking now and not even bothering to hide it. “They abandoned us in the middle of nowhere? It was just an argument!”

  “Reagan was pretty upset.”

  “Reagan? I’m the one who was humiliated.”

  “There was a lot of humiliation handed out last night in all directions. Everyone was upset. After you left, Reagan cried . . . a lot. And yelled a lot. I think her Olympic failure is affecting her more than she lets on.”

  I stare at him. “You’re taking her side?”

  He holds up his hands. “Not taking her side. I don’t even like Reagan and, frankly, don’t understand why you and Avani were ever friends with her in the first place. You know how I’ve felt about her. That hasn’t improved over time, especially seeing how she’s given Avani the cold shoulder. I’m just saying that Reagan only pretends to be okay, but clearly she’s not. As stupid as Brett can be, even he knew it. Reagan’s been reaching out for anything to make her feel better, including him. After things calmed down last night, he told me that they’d been talking since spring break, while he was getting back together with his old girlfriend. But I guess they started officially hooking up after the Olympic trials fiasco.”

  Jesus. Wait. Since spring break . . . ? That party—where Brett and I kissed—was during spring break.

  “Did you know they were a couple before last night?” I ask. “Brett and Reagan?”

  He shakes his head. “They kept it from me, too. If you haven’t noticed, Reagan has control issues. I guess when you and Brett got together at that party—”

  OH, GOD. HE KNOWS.

  “We weren’t together,” I say. “Not like that.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  How does Lennon know about the kiss? Did Brett tell him? Of course he did. I don’t know why this upsets me so much, but I feel . . . exposed. “What exactly did Brett tell you?”

  He averts his eyes and doesn’t respond.

  “Oh, terrific,” I mutter. “Could this get any worse? It was just one kiss! And believe me when I say that I’m regretting it now.”

  “I didn’t put a lot of stock in most things he told me,” Lennon says. “I know his mouth is bigger than his brain. And it’s not as if I didn’t know you were dating people over the last year. Life goes on, right? I dated someone too.”

  He did? I had no idea. I want to ask who it was—when it was. Are they still dating? He said “dated,” right? Past tense?

  “Not that one thing has to do with the other,” he says quickly. “Apples and oranges.”

  “Right,” I say quietly. “Apples and oranges.”

  He shakes his head. “My point is, Reagan has issues. She’s wounded and embarrassed, and she’s not thinking straight. People do stupid things when they’re acting on emotions.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  One brow lifts.

  “Not wrong enough to get abandoned,” I amend.

  “Neither of us did. Well, I knew better than to agree to this trip, but I came anyway. So in a way, I was wrong. But, hey, all the agitators are gone, and I’m right where I want to be, so maybe it all worked out.”

  “Are you insane? This is a complete disaster. What are we going to do? Maybe there’s another way to get back that doesn’t involve hiking all day. A bus that stops near the parking lot? The Sierras public transportation here has to connect to other nearby towns. Surely, there’s somewhere we can catch a Greyhound or something back to Melita Hills.”

  “Already thought of that. I have a map of the bus routes. The closest one is a grueling eight-hour hike back through the mountains. That’s without breaks. And for someone who’s not accustomed to hiking—”

  He means me.

  “—count on it taking ten, eleven hours. Up and down extraordinarily steep inclines. A hike for experienced hikers who want to challenge their bodies. It’s labeled on the map as ‘difficult.’ ”

  Are you kidding me?

  “I don’t think they realized what they were doing by leaving us here,” Lennon continues. “Reagan’s an asshole, but she’s not inhumane. Brett just operates on the belief that everything will turn out fine, and he probably convinced Kendrick and Summer of this. At least, that’s what I hope.”

  I hold Reagan’s note in my hands, staring at it blankly while Lennon gets the fire going, blowing the tinder and rearranging sticks. I think I’m in shock. Maybe I should put my head between my knees or blow into a paper bag.

  “I’m going to miss the star party,” I say, more to myself than to him. I know it’s the last thing I should be worried about, but I’m having trouble focusing. My brain is moving too quickly, flashing through minor details as it searches for a solution to our predicament.

  Lennon looks up from the fire. “Is that the meet-up Reagan mentioned last night?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I was supposed to catch a bus to Condor Peak in a couple of days. My astronomy club—Dr. Viramontes, you know?” Lennon’s moms occasionally used to drive me to the observatory for my meetings, so of course he knows. When he nods, I briefly explain the star party. “I was supposed to meet Avani there.”

  And now I know why Reagan was so eager for me to go. I would be out of her hair, and she could enjoy Brett’s company in the open. God, what an idiot I’ve been.

  “Suppose I can just text Avani when we get to a place where there’s service,” I say absently. There’s definitely no service out here. “Avani needs to know not to expect me.”

  “Or you could just go to the star party like you originally planned,” Lennon says, something devilish sparking behind his eyes.

  A bird trills loudly on a distant branch. “It’s too early to catch a bus,” I explain. “No one will be at Condor Peak yet. I can’t just sit around there twiddling my thumbs for a couple of days and wait for people to show up.”

  “I’m not talking about taking a bus. Condor Peak isn’t all that far from here.”

  “It’s not?”

  He reaches into his jacket vest and pulls out his notebook. After a few moments of shuffling things around, he finds a map and unfolds it. “See,” he says, laying the map down on a boulder and pointing. “This is where we are. And this is Condor Peak.” He measures something and does a quick calculation, mumbling numbers under his breath as he counts them out. “A couple of days’ hike through King’s Forest. Maybe three.”

  I snort. “Okay, that’s insanely far.”

  “Not reall
y. The trails would be a hell of a lot easier than the one leading to the nearest bus stop, and we wouldn’t hike the entire time, you know. We’d take breaks. Camp at night.”

  “We?”

  “You and me, yes,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’d take you there.”

  “The two of us hiking to Condor Peak? Alone?”

  “I wasn’t planning on inviting the bear along, but if you think we need a chaperone . . .”

  I chuckle nervously and look at the map. “Are you serious?”

  “Completely.”

  “Why would you do this?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t want to go back home yet. If you do, then I can walk you back to the bus stop. Maybe you’d be able to catch a bus tomorrow. Maybe there would be service and you could call your mom to come get you. Maybe you can hitchhike.”

  That’s a whole lot of maybes. Definitely do not like.

  “On the other hand,” he says, “if you want to go to Condor Peak, I can plan a less dangerous and much easier hiking route into the national park.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, trying to think of a way to turn him down without sounding like a jerk. I mean, I can’t do this. It’s Lennon. My enemy. My former enemy. And also my former best friend. I have no idea what we are to each other now. We just started talking again, and my body is so stupid that it’s already having erotic dreams about him, which is what got me into trouble with him in the first place. I don’t want to get my hopes up. I don’t even want to have hopes!

  “How were you planning on getting home once you got to Condor Peak?” he asks.

  “Avani,” I say. “She’s driving—following Dr. Viramontes and a few other people up there. The star party is for three nights, I think? So she’s heading back when it’s over. We were supposed to leave Friday morning to be back home by noon.”

  “Then I can catch a ride back to Melita Hills with you guys,” he says, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world. “Avani’s cool. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  No, she wouldn’t. She likes Lennon. My brain flips back to the stuff she said about Brett not being in Lennon’s league. God, she’d love to know what a total screwup Brett was during this trip. She’d probably gloat and say she told me so.

  Or she wouldn’t, because she’s too nice.

  This is not what I planned. Then again, none of it is. Nothing has gone the way it was supposed to go. At all.

  How did it all go so wrong?

  “Look,” he says. “The way I see it, if you go back home, Reagan wins. Because now that she’s humiliated herself and lost control of her perfect vacation, she wants everyone to be miserable along with her. When school starts, she’ll tell her tribe in the courtyard a version of the story that makes her look the best. Like it or not, you will be the antagonist of that story. Don’t you think she’d just love it if she could tell everyone that you had to take a bunch of connecting rural buses to get back home? Or pay a gazillion dollars to hire a car—or worse, call your mom to come get you?”

  “Your knack for making me feel like a failure is extraordinary.”

  “Or,” he says, holding up a finger, “you could tell everyone that she ran home like a spoiled brat who didn’t get her way while you had a great time hiking with the coolest guy in school.”

  I push my glasses up.

  “And you can tell them that you went to a star party,” he continues. “People will say, Ooh, what’s that? And you’ll be able to say, No big deal, I just hiked across a national park and met up with some of my fellow astronomers to view— Wait, what is it again?”

  “The Perseid meteor shower.”

  “The Perseid meteor shower, which probably doesn’t happen that often.”

  “Every year.”

  “Once every three hundred sixty-five days,” Lennon says in a mystical voice, wiping his hand through the air dramatically.

  “Shut up,” I say, smiling a little, despite the dire situation.

  “Hey, I know you didn’t lug that telescope up here for your health.”

  I glance in the direction of my tent. I haven’t even had a chance to use it.

  “Do what you love. Don’t let Reagan stop you. Screw her. Screw Brett, too, and his pretentious Kerouac worship. Kerouac drank himself to death. Neal Cassady screwed anything that moved and was a total misogynist—like most of the Beats, who were a bunch of immature dicks. Then he died of barbiturate abuse. So yeah, neither one of them lived past their forties. National treasures, my ass.”

  Yikes. Someone has strong feelings. “Didn’t know you were so knowledgeable about literature,” I say.

  “I might surprise you yet, Zora May Everhart.”

  He already has.

  “I’m sorry about Brett,” he says in a gentler tone. “I really am. Especially if you liked him.”

  “Funny thing is, I’m not sure that I did. I mean, I thought I did, until . . .”

  “You actually got to spend time with him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Me too. When he first started wanting to hang with me, I was like—I don’t know. He’s Brett Seager. Everyone loves him. But, Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I couldn’t spend an hour alone with him without praying for a nuclear bomb to hit, because at least I wouldn’t have to endure another second of him quoting lines from ‘Howl’ or On the Road.”

  I think about Brett telling me he’d like to learn how to take photos of stars, and now I wonder if he really meant it, or if he was just preemptively placating my feelings.

  “But,” he says, “despite everything that’s happened between us, believe it or not, I just . . . really want you to be happy. And if Brett is the guy to do that for you—”

  “He’s not,” I say quickly.

  “I’m glad,” he says in a quiet voice. “I’m so, so glad to hear that.”

  I meet Lennon’s eyes with my own. His gaze is unwavering. Too serious. I’m having trouble holding it, so I look at the fire instead.

  A long silence stretches between us. Lennon uses a stick to poke the new flames, adjusting his kindling. Last night, I watched him construct this same pyramid-shaped campfire, and eventually the surrounding sticks burn and collapse into the middle. It’s amazing, actually. I had no idea there was an art to building a fire.

  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.”