I could get up if I wanted to, but I don’t try. Sobs take me over, racking my ribs, and I cry so hard it hurts, right onto the rough ground, dirt sticking to my face. There’s nowhere to put this. Nowhere to go. I’m staring into a black hole of nothing but hurt, a chasm that can never close, this wrong against the whole of everything that can never be made right. This whole thing, this stupid camp I gave up my whole stupid life for, it’s all a fucking waste. It killed someone. It did the opposite of what it was supposed to. There was no together, no fixing anything, nobody looking out for anyone making sure that things were safe, just all of us, cut loose, with nothing to protect us, not protecting each other. I can’t believe this happened. My brain says no no no no even as I know that won’t do anything, can’t reverse this, there’s nothing I can do. And suddenly I’m fourteen, in my room, phone ringing upstairs past eleven at night, hearing my dad say, Who’s calling so late? and Hello? and then screaming NO! guttural, raw, the same sound as Sage at the tree. When I heard his voice, I knew. I knew and my throat went dry and my gut went sick and the room around me spun and I knew I had to lock the truth inside of me forever. I knew that I could never tell: that Andy was drunk, that I’d seen it, that I didn’t stop him. That I didn’t go along. If I’d gone with him, if I’d had the guts to get into that car, I could have at least made him pull over if he swerved. I could have watched his driving. I could have fixed it. But I didn’t, and now the world was backward, upside down, everything opposite and wrong, and he was gone, and it would never, ever be the same again. I sob and sob, trying to empty it out, that night and today and every time I was afraid and didn’t do a fucking thing, didn’t say anything, didn’t take a stand, but it just keeps coming and there’s always more inside, more guilt, more pain, more anger, and it doesn’t go away. I sob until my face hurts and my muscles are too limp to cry anymore and then I just lie there, the rawness turning to a hollow throb that I know will be inside of me forever.
* * *
• • •
At the fire that night, we’re all in shock. We just sit there, staring into the orange and blue, watching the wood burn. I don’t look at anyone. I watch the flame till I see spots. A spark hits my face and I don’t even brush it away; I just let it burn me. Sage is beside me. Sometimes she starts crying; then eventually it subsides and she’s quiet again. She doesn’t talk.
Finally Exile takes his cap off, runs his hand through his dark hair, and speaks up. “I’m sorry, everybody. I know nobody wants to think about this; I know none of us can hardly even think at all.” People pull their eyes off the fire and look at him. “But the reason they came to pull Aaron out today is that they’re gonna cut. And no matter how it happened”—he swallows a lump in his throat—“he’s out of the tree. That means Cascade can come in.”
Who even cares anymore, I want to say. The voice is angry in my head, like a stubborn, pissed-off kid. It doesn’t matter. We can’t stop them. The people in charge are trying to make money. That’s all they want to do. The cops are helping them. There’s no one to protect us; there’s no one to protect anything. And we’ve just proved we’re too small to protect it ourselves. We should just give up.
“And the thing is,” Exile goes on, “they have another reason to move fast now.”
“What do you mean?” Nutmeg asks.
“Well, the cops and rangers who’ve come up here are all working with Cascade; that alliance is pretty tight. But someone dies, sometimes the family hires a lawyer right away, or a good cop gets curious, starts sniffing around. Anyone who might want to try to make this a crime scene and look into what happened won’t be able to do that if everything gets logged. The company and the cops and rangers who are working with them are gonna want to clean this all out as fast as they can.”
Shit.
Exile looks at us. “We have to block off the road. Probably tonight.”
We all just look at each other. If it’s about Aaron, letting them erase him, letting them pretend what happened didn’t happen, it’s not so easy to give up.
But none of us can even bear to think about it. Planning, solving problems: it feels impossible. And nobody trusts anybody. There’s a long, long pause, where no one wants to talk.
Then, finally, Jeff looks at me, then everyone. “Okay,” he says simply. “I’ll head it up. Who’s coming with me? I need at least five.”
Exile and Nutmeg look at Jeff. I do too. Every time he’s volunteered to do something here, it’s been for selfish reasons. To compete with Aaron or with me; to get in with Stone, show off, make me feel like I’m a coward. I don’t trust him. Not at all. Not anymore.
I stare straight at his face, right at his eyes, boring through to see what’s behind them. “I’m not going to do anything stupid,” Jeff says. “Or dangerous. Or anything that would piss off Cascade or the cops. Okay? I get it. It isn’t time for that. Not now.” He looks at Goat and Dirtrat. “Nothing dangerous, nothing risky,” he tells them, and it’s almost like he’s giving them an order, and they nod, listening. The rest of the bus kids do too. Stone tags it: Jeff’s the one they’re listening to now. He’s okay with it. Stone nods too.
Jeff turns back to Exile and Nutmeg. “I mean it. I’m volunteering to lock down and block the road. I get it. I know that’s what we need to do.”
Sage picks up her head to look Jeff in the eye. “Don’t fuck with us,” she says, her voice exhausted but firm, mustering the last bit of strength she can.
“You heard Exile. He’s right. We need to do this,” Jeff says, not backing down. “You want to stop me? I’ll listen to you. But you do that, it leaves us all exposed, and it lets them cover up whatever they want to. You want to let them do that, or you want to let me take care of it?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I’m trying to do something to help.”
I stare at him hard, assessing him. There’s nothing else behind his eyes. No bravado, no bullshit, no jealousy. His eyes are honest. Like when we used to be together in his basement, or in the tent those very first nights here, before all of this. When I still knew him. He looks like the person that I knew.
Sage looks at him a long moment, and then she finally nods.
Jeff gathers Bender and Stone, Goat and Dirtrat, Naya and Cyn; he grabs water and their gear, and waits for them to follow him. As they’re about to go, he stands and looks at me. I don’t know what it means. Something like, I know that I can’t fix the things that happened, but at least I can do this.
* * *
• • •
The rest of us stay by the fire; nobody wants to be alone. We’re gonna be awake all night, I can tell. Nutmeg gets Sage some food. She doesn’t want to eat, but he makes her. I can’t even imagine how she must feel right now. It seems like too much for one person to hold. But she is: she’s sitting up, and eating, taking one breath, then another.
After a minute, some life comes back into her eyes. “Thanks,” she says to Nutmeg, I guess for making her eat. “You guys mind if I go talk to Alison for a minute?” she asks the rest of the group, and they shake their heads: of course not. “C’mon,” she says to me, quiet, and I help her stand up, following her to I don’t know where.
She brings me to her tent and turns a lantern on. It’s a mess in here, her pack pulled apart, clothes strewn everywhere. From when I came to get the camera. I made this mess when he was still alive, and now here it is, reminding us.
“Sorry,” I say, and I start cleaning up her things.
“It’s okay,” she says. I don’t stop, though. I have to put it back like it was before.
“It’s okay, Alison,” she says again, but I can’t stop. I have to put it back.
She tugs at me. “Sit.” I’m still cleaning. “C’mon. Sit down.” Her voice is firm, and it snaps me out of what I’m doing. I finally stop folding.
“Listen,” she says, her eyes shot through with red. “I ne
ed something from you, Alison. I need your help.”
I look at her, no idea what I could possibly do that could help anything.
“I need you to help me get everyone out of here.”
At first I think I must have misheard her. I just stare.
“It’s pointless,” she says. “Without the sit, it’s just a matter of time.”
I was thinking those things, just an hour ago, at the fire. But it’s a whole other thing to hear her say them. It seems wrong.
“But we can stop them—we can lock down—that’s what the dragons are for—”
“They’ll get us out. Beat us up, pepper spray, whatever. If they want to get us out, they’ll get us out.” She says it matter-of-factly, like it’s obvious. “I’m just being realistic,” she says. “It’s done. They’re coming. Okay? It’s safer for everyone if we just admit it’s over.”
She’s supposed to be the one who believes. She’s the one I’m supposed to look to when I don’t, when I want to give up. She’s not supposed to be saying this. And when she does, I really see it being over. Nobody believes. There’s no hope to hold on to. I think about those clear-cuts on the highways, naked and barren; I imagine this forest turning into that, another death. Like Aaron, again, except worse, because it makes his death a waste. I feel myself getting sucked into the black hole that’s inside me. It’s hopeless, I hear myself think. It’s over. It’s all bullshit. The words in my head are the same as at the fire, but the feeling is different. It’s not a temper tantrum, not stubborn frustration; it’s deeper, and bigger, and bottomless. It’s familiar, this place: it’s all I thought there was, for years. After Andy died, till I came here, it was my life. Maybe that’s how it is. That black hole is what’s real. Nothing else.
And then suddenly I start crying. Like really crying, the kind you can’t control. My chest heaves; there’s snot and everything. Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like it’s selfish. It’s not fair of me when Sage is here; I need to be the strong one. But I can’t help it. The force of it scares me: from a place deeper and bigger than anything I recognize, anything with words, anything I’ve felt in years. I feel like a little kid.
I cry and cry till it feels like there’s no water left in my body, till my head throbs and my eyes are sore.
Sage watches me a long time before she speaks. Finally she just asks: “Is it Aaron?”
I shake my head through the tears. That’s part of it, but not all of it.
“Is it what I just said?”
It is, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s everything.
I finally say, “I had a brother.”
And then I catch myself: She just lost her boyfriend. Like just now. She doesn’t need to hear about my bullshit problems. “Sorry,” I say. “Forget it.”
“No,” she says slowly. “It’s okay.”
“He died,” I start, and I’m crying again before it’s even all the way out of my mouth. “This is stupid.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “You can tell me.” And I can’t help it. I’m too exhausted to do anything but tell the truth. All the secrets press past my skin, and I just let them. “He was in an accident,” I say. “I was fourteen. He was driving. I knew he was drunk when he was leaving, I knew it wasn’t safe. I should’ve said something, but I didn’t. I thought his friends would laugh at me. I didn’t want to be embarrassed—so fucking selfish. If I’d been in the car, I could’ve stopped it, I could’ve taken the wheel or made him pull over or something. But I just let him go. Like a fucking idiot. I never told anybody. I could’ve stopped him.” I start crying again. “I could’ve stopped him.” I sob. “It’s my fault.” And then the crying takes over, and all I can say, over and over, is It’s my fault.
“I know how you feel,” she says.
And we just look at each other, together in this black hole of guilt that’s bigger than us both, and for what?
“That’s why I want to cut our losses,” she says. “It’s enough people getting hurt. You know? If you’d stopped your brother that night, if I’d stopped Aaron . . .” She trails off. “People would still be here.”
But her eyes are far away; there’s something distant in them. I don’t think she believes what she’s saying. She doesn’t look like the Sage who strode up to me the first day here, who taught me how to haul water and split wood. Right now, she looks broken. I know what that looks like.
“It sucks,” she says. “But it’s the best that we can do.”
And then I realize. The clarity cuts like a knife through the muck and sludge.
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
She looks up at me. “What, you have a better idea?”
I can’t believe I’m going to say it.
But I do.
“I’ll go up.”
She looks at me, shocked. “Alison. You can’t.”
“Why not?” What do I have to lose? I dropped out of school. My mom will never talk to me again. Jeff’s done. All I have is right here, in front of me. It might not do anything. They might be stronger than us. But I can try.
“You don’t know how to climb.”
“Nobody here knows how to climb.”
“You’re not even eighteen—I can’t let you—”
“You said it yourself. If we give up on the sit, they’ll just come in and cut. Then all of this is wasted.”
“It’s probably wasted anyway.”
“But you don’t know that,” I say. Out on a limb, not sure if I believe myself. But there’s nobody else to believe. I can feel it, the space inside me: there’s nobody above me telling me what to think or how the world works, nobody making the rules. Right now, right here, what I believe is up to me. I can believe it’s wasted, over, meaningless, or I can believe there’s something I can do that still has a chance at changing things.
She looks at me, grave. “You’re a kid. I can’t have it on my shoulders. Not two of you.”
“It’s not on your shoulders,” I say. “I’m choosing it.”
She shakes her head.
I don’t know for sure that it will change a thing. But I know not doing it means giving up; it means letting them win, it means the people on top who aren’t protecting anything get to come in and burn it all down and for sure, definitely, there will be no one there to stop them. I know, now, that letting that happen would be a choice. That I make.
“Look,” I say, a clarity coming through me that’s unfamiliar, that seems to come from somewhere else, like I’m not quite planning what I’m saying, I’m just saying it. “I haven’t known what I actually wanted since my brother died. I never even knew what it felt like to know what I wanted. I want to do this.” I wipe my eyes and push through. “If we give up, Aaron died for nothing. I can’t let it be for nothing. Not again.”
She looks at me.
“Please,” I say. It’s dangerous, but if I don’t do it, it means doing nothing, and that means I’ll be dead inside anyway. “I have to.”
I let it hang there, waiting. She stares at the tent floor, her clothes and Aaron’s; she buries her face in her dirty hands.
And after a long, long time, she looks up, eyes clear, something sparking through, and she says, “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 21
I stay in Sage and Aaron’s tent all night. It’s weird, being there with his stuff: sometimes Sage will look at a sweatshirt of his, or a hat, and start crying. But she doesn’t want to be alone. She goes back and forth between sobbing and seeming fine. I remember that feeling from when Andy died; I feel it now, too. Like you’re staring down a long dark tunnel of something that’s too big to understand, and sometimes it’s just normal, and other times it knocks you on your ass and you can’t do anything but cry. I can’t believe Aaron is gone. Just like that. I was listening to his voice, trying to find a way to help him, and then he fell, and he was gone.
>
The night goes on longer than most nights do, until finally the sky turns indigo, and then the sunrise starts. Watching the light turn yellow out the tent flap, I get that adrenaline feeling of up all night: wrung out, dried up, exhausted and awake at the same time. And I realize: now I’m not going up in Legacy “tomorrow” anymore; I’m going up “today.”
I need to stretch out the next couple of hours as long as I can. I lie there beside Sage, listening to her breathe; she finally fell asleep. Aaron probably lay here like this sometimes, staring at this ceiling, inhaling this air, waiting for her to wake up. Now that she’s sleeping, I can finally feel the quiet parts of what I feel: his absence carving a hole in me, leaving me unprotected from the outside, too, both sides of my skin surrounded by empty. There’s no one to take care of me. Not Aaron, not Andy, not my mom or my dad. Not Jeff, not Sage. It’s just me. That’s all I’ve got. I feel naked, like a baby, like I need to be taken care of, and at the same time I feel more grown-up than I ever have. Like I have to take care of myself. I’m going to have to. There’s no one here but me.
When Sage wakes up, we walk to the kitchen. Nutmeg and Exile are there, making oatmeal for everyone. As soon as they see Sage, they all stop what they’re doing.
There’s this strange power in being the closest person to someone who just died. Everyone defers to you, looks after you, like a queen or a baby; you’re the most powerful person in the room, because you’re the most broken. It happened with my mom: at Andy’s funeral everyone surrounded her, tending to her, bringing her things, asking what she needed. My dad, my grandparents, all their friends. It made me mad. Andy was my family, too; I lost him too, and nobody was gathering around me. It wasn’t fair. I hated everyone for it, and I hated my mom most of all.
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