“Yeah.” I refocused on my chicken.
Having finished our meal, Jude and I made our way to the gear tent. “Did Dr. Antos ask you about me?” he asked as we approached the table with the rappelling equipment.
“Yeah. He said he’d heard we were friends.”
“That’s what he said to me too. He say anything else about me?”
“Just that you were perceptive.”
“I’m still trying to figure out that dude.” Jude stuffed a rope in his pack. “Do you trust him?”
“He has me rehashing my hallucinations like they’re supposed to unravel why I have them. I don’t really care what they were. I’m just glad they stopped so I can get on with my life.”
“Yeah, me too. You ever think about lying?”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I recorded all of them in this document, and I gave it to him.”
“Well, that’s not anal at all.” He rolled his eyes.
“It’s complicated.” Remembering how I’d almost believed in the visions, thought Alena and Hunter needed me to complete some prophetic awakening of a magical sword, I shuddered.
“So, you up for this gig tomorrow?” He held up the ropes in front of us.
“I was so humiliated today. Thanks for helping me.”
“Hey, were you even paying attention? Half the kids were just as freaked out as you.”
“I couldn’t look down the cliff.”
“We should go first again so you won’t have to think about it for long.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“This sucks.” Frida’s face appeared between us. “There’s nobody cool in my group.”
“Maybe next week we’ll be together again,” I suggested.
“Word on the street is you froze on the wall.” Frida hooked her arm around me. “What’s up with that? We got to keep our reputation up. You got to be strong.”
“She’s good. She’s got it,” Jude told her.
“Well, I want to see your pics from today.” She hopped up on the table beside me.
We finished prepping the equipment for the next day and helped Frida with her chores. She and I tramped to the bathing station together and readied for sleep. Once we were in our packs for the night, she bonked me on the head.
“Photos. Now.”
Reaching under my bed, I pulled the camera out and handed it to her.
“It’s sort of like a documentary. I always watch television at night. This reminds me of being home.”
I spun to face her. “Do you miss home?”
“Sort of. Not my asshole dad, but I miss my mom. What about you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought of it. I’m kind of a loner, so...”
“You think?” She held the camera out to me. “Sort of figured that one out. How about friends?”
“I have one good friend, Eva. You’d like her. She’s sort of like you, outgoing, pretty, active.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Of course.” I snapped a picture of her.
“Whoa!” She shielded her eyes from the flash. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“How about a love interest? Anyone special?”
“No, I kind of have the reputation of being a little different, so guys avoid me like the plague. The boys that are interested are really crazy.”
She laughed. “So, how’d you become friends with Eva?”
“She was really depressed over some guy who dumped her when I first moved to Reykjavik.” I shrugged my shoulders. “And I was depressed about moving.”
“You had friends before?”
“Not really. But I liked being closer to my grandparents. How about you?”
“I got friends, but they’re all party people. Hard to tell if they’re real friends. Half of them ditched me just because I was coming here.”
“That stinks.”
“Hey, you’re from Reykjavik, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe we can hang out after, you know. Where are you?”
We talked a little about what it might look like for us to get together after the camp. She lived on the north side of the city, but the bus system could suffice for transportation.
The next morning, I’d wished Frida and I hadn’t stayed up so late chatting. It felt good to bond with someone, but I reminded myself who I was getting close to. Did I really want to get involved with a friend with so many issues? Man, you’re a hypocrite, I told myself as I hiked to the mess tent.
“You’re late.” Beth Ann stood with her hand to her hip.
“Sorry, I overslept.”
“Yeah, Inga told me you were up late talking to Frida. I don’t get what you see in that drug addict.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Really? And you’re here for…?” I put my hand to my hip.
“My step-dad abused me.”
Her admission stole some of my thunder, but I wouldn’t be deterred. “Don’t judge.”
“Got my eggs?” Jude approached from behind me.
“Yes.” I placed three in his hand.
“I tell ya, I’m missing my sushi about now.”
“You Americans and your sushi. You eat it for breakfast?” Beth Ann asked.
“Well, not usually, but I’m not sure my body thinks it’s breakfast time even after a week and a half. It’s dark, and we’re eight hours off, so yeah, that’d be a late-night snack for me.” He lifted a cooler to the tabletop. Opening it, he held up a piece of pink meat. “Salmon, sweet. Hey, any bagels come in today? Maybe some cream cheese?”
“Your wish is their demand, I guess.” John opened the breadbox.
“And here’s your cream cheese.” Ruth opened the other cooler.
“I’m thinking we don’t need the eggs today, then.” I closed the container we’d been counting the eggs from.
In my eyes, we’d won the food prep lottery. All we had to do was cut the bagels and fruit and set out the rest. Beth Anne and I set to work on the pineapples, Ruth and Jude cut the bagels, and Jude sliced the lox. I was paying more attention to the conversation than the blade, and the knife came down on my finger as I sliced through a pineapple spear.
“Oh man.” I dropped the knife and grabbed a towel, the cut searing. My heart began to throb in my ears.
“Blood.” Beth Ann jumped away. “You don’t have anything contagious, do you?”
Her hazy form swayed in front of me. “No.” Hating that I got light headed, I scanned the tent, trying to figure out the direction of the sink.
“Hey.” Jude’s arm wrapped around me. “This way.” He directed me to the wash station.
I held it under the water and then up to my eyes. “This isn’t good.” My knees buckled under me.
Jude caught me. “Here, give it to me.” With one hand, he grabbed a paper towel from the roll and wrapped it around my finger. “It’ll stop soon.”
“What an idiot. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It was an accident,” Jude said, his fingers holding my cut digit.
“I’m okay.” I squirmed out of his embrace.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m just not good with blood.”
“Should I get the nurse?” Beth Anne approached.
“She’ll be okay, give it thirty seconds.” Jude pressed the towel to my finger and flashed me a smile.
I looked at the ceiling and trained my eyes across the room, to focus on anything but his handsome face and warm hand holding mine.
“Okay.” He removed the bandage. “See, it’s not that bad.”
“Whoa.” I held my finger up. “It’s just a tiny cut. It looked so much worse.”
“They usually do when they’re bleeding. Here.” He held a bandage out to me.
Fitting the bandage on my finger, I made my way back to the fruit.
“Well, Mr. Jude to the rescue again,” Beth Anne whispered.
> I ignored her and finished chopping the pineapple.
“Hey, you dropped your bracelets.” John bent to the ground and held them out to Jude.
“Oh, wow, guess I did.” Jude placed them back on his wrists. “My arms must have gotten slippery when I washed up.”
Studying him, I tried to decipher whether he’d had any side effects from the bracelets being off. He hadn’t seemed different when he’d helped with my cut. Perhaps his symptoms were different from mine or intermittent. I wondered if mine might come and go. It didn’t matter though. It wasn’t something I would risk. I didn’t want to be flat on my back with a migraine again.
Telling myself it wasn’t any of my business, I fought asking him whether he was okay without the bracelets. But, the question preoccupied me through study time.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as we packed our gear for the hike and rappelling outing.
My face warmed, and I hoped it hadn’t turned red. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re biting your lip.”
“Later,” I whispered, cutting my eyes to John beside us.
He nodded, and we finished our work.
On the trail, we took lead behind the guide, hoping to be the first ones up and down the rock. “So, do I get to know now?” His hot breath warmed my ear.
Seeing the others at least five feet behind, I whispered, “I was worried when your bracelets fell off. Were you okay?”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t even notice. Your cut’s okay, right?”
“It was way smaller than I thought at first.”
“Guess you got a bleeder.”
The sky lightened as we walked, and the group grew more talkative. By the time we got to the climbing spot, there’d been several tunes sung in rounds. It came to a screeching halt with John starting the hundred-pints-of-beer-on-the-wall song.
“You ready?” Allen asked as he hooked me in.
“Ready to get this over with,” I told him, hoisting myself up to the first hold. Having watched Jude scale the face like a monkey, I memorized his path. I hated being forty feet off the ground with nothing but ropes and my muscles holding me up, but I didn’t freeze up as I had the day before.
“Look at you, rock star.” Jude extended his hand to me as I made it to the top.
“I’m not doing that again. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
“Noted.” He smiled and handed me a granola bar.
We explored the plateau as the others scaled the ascent. Then the group hiked a half hour to a small lake where we stopped for lunch.
“So, what were you and Frida talking about last night?” Jude asked as we ate.
“Just stuff. She seems lonely at home. We realized we could meet up once the camp is done.”
“That’s going to be weird. I’m not sure I can go back to regular school. I’m considering online school or something.”
“My mom thinks I’d never talk to anyone if I did that.”
“My dad wants me to be all normal. He thinks if I skip ahead I’ll never fit in socially.”
“So, do you?”
“I’m hurt.” He laid his hand over his heart. “Yeah, I mean, none of my friends know I have a photographic memory. I hide my geekiness behind muscle.”
“It’s sad that you feel like you need to do that.”
“That’s high school.”
“So, college?” I asked.
“I’m going to Stanford.”
“Sweet. I’m thinking Colorado State. I want to be a vet like my mom.”
“Oh, yeah, the whole no-meat thing.”
“Not no meat, just no blood.”
“Well, that fits with you turning white as a ghost this morning. And you want to be a veterinarian who potentially performs surgery on animals?”
Feeling my cheeks burning, I turned my face into the wind. “To help them, not to eat them.”
“Aww, I see the difference. So, no hunting for you?”
“No, I won’t be wielding a weapon any time soon.”
Allen called the group to order, and we had a group therapy session, with each of us checking in as to how we were feeling. I almost hated those meetings more than scaling the wall. But then I thought about having to rappel down, and my stomach turned. The views across the lake were enough to distract me as we made our way back to the cliff.
“We’re first, right?” Jude set his pack in front of Allen.
“As long as no one else complains.”
I got my harness on and had Allen check it. Clipped in and with ropes in hand, I stood beside Jude. As with yesterday, the first jump would be the hardest as I couldn’t see over the side. I kept my eyes glued on Jude as he counted down.
On three, I bent my legs and pushed off, my stomach lurching as I careened over the side.
“Wow!” Jude yelled as our feet planted on the rock slab. “That was awesome.”
In a sickening sort of way, I thought, but held my tongue. I just wanted the next five minutes over with. “Let’s do this.”
“Your wish is my command.” He pushed off the wall and rappelled down a good body’s length. I copied him, and jump by jump we scaled down the mountain.
“You didn’t even look scared.” He accused me as we unhooked from the ropes.
“My dentist is going to complain about me grinding my teeth.”
“I can’t imagine how anyone could slight this face.” He ran his finger down my jawline. I froze at his touch, and our eyes met. “And, I can’t believe they let us come down here alone.” He looked to the top as two more campers descended the cliff.
I cleared my throat and stepped back, pulling my camera from my pack.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I just made things way awkward. You’re really pretty. I don’t know what happened. I just forgot where I was, went on auto-pilot there for a minute.”
“It was a good pick-up line.” I kept snapping pictures as the two kids neared us.
“Are you going to look at me?”
“Not for a while.” I didn’t want to look into his piercing blue eyes and see the emotion his words seemed to hold. Whether it was his standard line or not, I guessed that his go-to dreamy eyes would be just as bewitching.
“We’re friends. I don’t want to mess that up,” Jude continued.
“Good, I don’t either.” I backed away as the next two campers reached the ground.
Focusing on helping the others with their ropes and snapping candid shots, I kept my distance from him until we resumed the hike back to camp.
“You’re not going to be able to avoid me for two and a half more weeks.” I felt his warm breath on my neck.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Since when are you yearbook staff? You said you wanted to be friends.”
“I do.” I nodded, trying to convince myself that I didn’t feel drawn to him the way he seemed to admit being attracted to me. “I need to ask Beth Anne something.” I increased my pace, catching up to Beth Anne and Ruth. Knowing avoiding him was juvenile didn’t help fight my anxiety about being near him. I focused on interacting with anyone but him the whole hour’s trek to the tents.
We were late getting back, and I left my pack on my cot and headed straight to Dr. Antos’s tent.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“No worries, I heard the hike took longer than expected. How did the rappelling go?”
“I’m not a big fan of heights. I don’t think I’ll be joining a climbing club anytime soon.”
“Yet you were willing to go to great lengths to be in this program.”
“I don’t want to be on medicine the rest of my life.”
“I heard you cut your finger.”
“It was a minor cut, although there was tons of blood.” I took my bandage off, and I couldn’t even see the slice. “Wow, you guys must have some good ointment.” Bending it, I found no trace of the cut.
“All the antioxidants in the food speeds healing. Plus, you were active a good
part of the day.”
He had me pick up where we’d left off the previous day, reviewing the hallucinations. I almost made it to the point I’d started hearing their voices.
“And can you describe the characters? Any notable facial features or characteristics?”
I told him about Alena’s milk-white skin, auburn-brown hair, and blue eyes. Then I described Hunter’s light skin, dark hair, and blue eyes. Finally, I pointed out Theron’s and Thanatos’s olive skin, hair, and eyes. I thought about the physical similarities between Dr. Antos and Thanatos, and how Jude had similar coloring.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that the bad guys have dark coloring?” Dr. Antos brought me out of my assessment.
“Like some kind of childhood fairy tale?”
“Most villains have dark features,” he pointed out.
“I guess.”
“And Ivy had green eyes like yours. Do you know her other features?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything about how she looked other than her eyes.”
“Do you see your eye color as a striking feature?”
I shrugged. “I like the color of my eyes. They stand out with my light skin and hair.”
“Well”—he stood—“think about that tonight, and we’ll discuss it more tomorrow.”
Could it be I was just trying to make sense of good and evil? It wasn’t like I’d seen a lot of bad in my life. Aside from my problems with the buzzing sounds and the hallucinations, my experiences growing up had been good. Was it so boring I had to create something more exciting?
Reminding myself that schizophrenia was a diagnosed psychological condition with measurable and reversible symptoms, I made my way to my tent and then back to the supply station. I couldn’t control the visions any more than I could control the sunrise and sunset, could I? The causes of schizophrenia were thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors. As far as I knew, neither of my parents suffered from the disease. Obsessed with his work, Dad marched to his own drum. Maybe he had an undiagnosed psychological disorder.
My family ate healthy and lived in good areas. What stresses had I experienced when I was little and recently? Did Mom and Dad’s relationship problems cause me stress as a young child? Did the ringing sensation cause the episodes of hallucinations?
Thinking it was too hard to track the cause, I focused on my gear. I didn’t like wondering if something Mom or Dad did caused my problems. Maybe I was too sensitive. Being distracted, it took me twice as long to clean and put away the ropes, harness, and clips. When I finished, I realized it was dinnertime.
The Kingdom Journals Complete Series Box Set Page 33
