The Night Will Find Us

by Matthew Lyons

  Parker looked away. “Fine, I guess. I don’t know. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “Josh said he missed seeing you in Algebra Two today,” Nate said, grinning.

  Josh reddened. “I … no, it wasn’t … I don’t know. I just noticed you weren’t there, is all. I wasn’t … like, making a judgment about it. Or anything.”

  “It’s fine. Got busy, is all,” said Parker, waving Josh off. He nodded toward Nicky and the cigarette in her lips. “Can I get one of those?”

  “They’re menthols.”

  “Menthols are fine.”

  “Sure then, knock yourself out,” said Nicky. She tossed him the crumpled white-and-wintergreen hard pack.

  Nate stitched his face up into a play-scowl. “Hey, seriously, what the hell?”

  Nicky waved him off, keeping her eyes on Parker. “Need a light?”

  “No, I got it.” Parker shook a smoke free and lobbed the box back to Nicky. He produced a battered silver Zippo from his jeans pocket and snapped it to life, touching the flame to the tip of the menthol. Beside him, Chloe could just make out the engraving on the side: DAC. David Allan Cunningham. Parker’s dad.

  “That’s one big-ass backpack, man,” Nate said.

  Parker nodded, but from where she stood, Chloe could see something in his eyes she didn’t like.

  “We’re going camping,” he said measuredly.

  “Yeah,” Nate said, “we’re going camping. It looks like you’re prepping for doomsday or something. That shit is oversized as fuck, dude.”

  Chloe shot Nate a hard look. “Why does it matter?”

  “Because the rest of us just have our bags and shit while Parker’s busy showing up like the Boy Scouts of America or something. ‘Be prepared,’ right?”

  “I never was one,” Parker muttered.

  Nate’s face twisted into a mean little smile. “Shocker.”

  “I was,” said Josh. Everyone looked at him, and his face flushed red. “For like three years,” he added sheepishly.

  “I rest my case,” Nate said with a sneer.

  Chloe watched Parker’s shoulders knot up as he turned to stand square with Nate, easily looming a foot over the fat kid. Parker rolled his head back and forth, eliciting a meaty crack-crack-crack from his neck.

  These two. They’d been at each other’s throats the whole year, needling and posturing, typical guy bullshit; it had only gotten worse since Parker’s dad—Chloe’s uncle Dave—went missing last fall. No one knew what had happened to him. One day he was there, the next, he was gone. It was as if he’d just … disappeared.

  For a moment, Chloe was sure Parker was actually going to smash Nate to pieces, like he did the Terletsky kid, but then Adam shoved his way in between them, meeting Parker’s gaze and holding it, keeping the big kid’s attention off Nate.

  “Hey, hey. Ignore him.” Adam kept his sky-blue eyes locked on Chloe’s cousin, leaning in and dropping his voice so only the three of them could hear.

  “Look, I get it, okay? I do. You’ve done this camping shit before, we haven’t. You know best here. No big deal. Nate’s just, y’know … being Nate. The more he sees he’s getting on your nerves, the more he’s going to do it. You know how this works.”

  He wasn’t wrong. They’d all seen the animosity growing between the two of them for the whole school year; barbed comments, mean jokes, and other microaggressions were the norm for Nate and Parker these days. When it was one or the other and everyone else, it was like nothing had really changed. They were still them. Nate was a wiseass, but he meant well; Parker was as intense as he’d ever been, though he never stopped being a sweetheart underneath. But when they were in the same room together, it felt like things were just waiting to boil over, and both guys kept turning up the burner.

  From where she stood, Chloe watched Parker’s eyes flare, then cool.

  “All right,” he said after a moment. “Fine.”

  “Okay, good,” said Adam, raising his voice to a normal volume. “So, what’d you get from the gas station?”

  Parker shrugged his churchdoor shoulders and looked down at the bags by his feet.

  “Candy bars, soda, beef jerky. Chex Mix. Stuff like that.”

  Adam’s face softened. “Sweet. Let’s get everything in the van and get out of here, okay? We’ve got a long drive ahead of us—probably a couple hours, right?”

  “Probably,” said Chloe.

  “Well, let’s get going then. We want to be there and set up before it starts getting dark.” Adam nodded to the bulging plastic Thank You For Shopping With Us bags on the blacktop. “Help me get all this into the back with the rest of our shit.”

  They piled into the Astro and hit the road, everybody but Parker and Chloe leaning out their windows to give the scrolled city limit sign the finger as it whipped past and quickly disappeared into the distance.

  Randolph, New Jersey: Where Life Is Worth Living! Fuck you twice. Just another nothing bullshit suburb in New Jersey, the nothing bullshit capital of the world. Anytime they managed to get out of their hometown alive wasn’t just a mercy, it was a miracle.

  They’d been planning this trip for months, an end-of-the-school-year expedition down to the Pine Barrens to camp and drink and burn shit and kick summer break off right. Parker had picked the place, a campground he said he’d gone to a bunch when he was a kid—not too far out of the way, but remote enough that nobody would bother them. Nicky had spent months gradually swiping Bud Lights from her dad’s garage fridge, one at a time so he wouldn’t notice, stashing them in an old cooler in a far, spider-filled corner of the basement. Adam snaked an eighth of half-decent weed and a bottle of Everclear from his big brother’s room. Nate started stockpiling fireworks, and Parker spent a lot of time in his basement, getting together all the camp gear he thought they’d probably need. They each bought their own food to add to the pile: granola bars, cans of SPAM and sardines, precooked bacon, oatmeal, and Pop-Tarts. Add to that Parker’s two bags of gas station junk food, and they were stocked up for a midyear Thanksgiving Dinner if they wanted to have one.

  Chloe was the one who spun the lie they each fed to their parents. None of that I’m sleeping over at her house and she’s sleeping over at his house and blah-blah-blah crisscrossing bullshit; that was amateur hour and almost guaranteed to get you busted. No, this required a little actual creativity—a few well-aimed lies braided together with the truth, so if anybody slipped, it would get written off as forgetfulness or whatever instead of outright forgery. They were going camping, sure, but so were a lot of kids. Just an overnight, nothing serious. Yes, there were going to be adults there, a couple of the newer teachers were chaperoning, they’d said. No, it wasn’t an official thing, it was more casual than that. Just some kids from their class, the new seniors. No, they weren’t going to drink or do any drugs. Yes, they were going to be as safe as possible. Promise.

  Chloe angled the van down Route 10, then took a hard right onto 287 a few miles later, eventually heading south on the turnpike toward the Barrens. When they turned off the highway almost two hours later, the forest rose up from the horizon in a green-and-brown wave that crashed over them and dragged them under, leaving the sky and sunlight behind, obscured by densely packed trees. The Pine Barrens were massive, a sprawling wood that blanketed most of the lower half of the state, stretching out to cover something like a million acres of land, all told. It wasn’t just a forest; it was a green ocean that stretched on and on forever, punctuated by the occasional column of sunlight that managed to break through the treetops to spear into the earth below.

  Scanning the road ahead, Chloe reached over and turned the radio down, reducing the music to a soft background buzz as she followed the arrowed signs labeled CAMPGROUND.

  “Cell service just shit the bed,” Nate announced from the middle of the van, clicking his iPhone off and tossing it onto the seat cushion next to him.

  “You can get by without porn for seventeen hours,” said Nicky.
>
  “You can get by without porn. I’m a growing boy, and a growing boy needs tits.”

  “You’ve already got tits,” said Nicky, nodding at the moth-eaten T-shirt drawn tightly across his chest.

  Nate winked at her and made a show of looking her up and down.

  “You’re just jealous,” he said, licking his lips.

  In the rearview, Chloe saw Nicky blush and look down at her knees, self-conscious. “Fuck you, Nate.”

  “Only if Josh is cool with it.”

  “What? Ew. God.”

  Nicky made a grossed-out face and chuckled despite herself while Nate grinned. Beside Nicky, Josh’s face turned a bright, pinched red, and he turned to look out the window like he hadn’t heard anything at all.

  “Hey, Parker?” Chloe called back. “Can you come up here? I need to know where we’re going after this.”

  Surprisingly nimble for a kid his size, Parker moved up the length of the van with ease, kneeling down as best he could in the narrow space between Chloe and Adam to look out the windshield at the road ahead.

  “The turnoff should be right along here,” he said, squinting through the little light still squeezing through the trees. A moment later, he darted a hand out, pointing a finger at a rough dirt turnoff ahead.

  “There. That’s it. Turn there.”

  Chloe cocked her head to one side, not taking her eyes off the road.

  “Uh. Is it?”

  Beside them, Adam turned to regard Parker. “Are you sure? I mean, it doesn’t look like anything.”

  “I’m telling you, that’s the turnoff. What, you don’t believe me?”

  Adam’s hands went up in supplication. “Look, I’m not being an asshole here, I’m really not, it’s just … When was the last time you were up here, man?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “How many is a couple?”

  “I dunno, a couple is a couple. Why does it matter?”

  “I guess it doesn’t,” said Adam.

  Parker turned his head to look intently at Chloe, his big brown eyes full and pleading.

  “I remember, Chloe. Trust me. This is it.”

  Chloe hesitated for a moment, then swallowed her doubts and said, “As long as you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.” Her cousin’s voice was nearly a whisper, so soft and fragile, Chloe was sure she was the only one who heard him say it.

  She eased her foot off the gas and slid it over to the brake, spinning the wheel to turn off the two-lane blacktop. The second they hit the dirt road, the tires started to judder and rumble, sending loose rocks pinging off the underside of the van, but Chloe could already see that Parker was right on the money—the road wound back and forth through the thick trees in a relatively clear path that went on and on into the distance.

  “Just take this all the way to where it ends, okay? Another twenty minutes, maybe. We can park there, and then we’ll hike the rest of the way up,” said Parker.

  “Hike? Nobody said dick to me about having to go on a hike,” Nate called out. “I don’t want to go on some fucking death march, guys. I’m wearing flip-flops over here, not like boots or whatever.”

  “We did say,” said Adam. “Like a week ago, and then again yesterday. It’s not our fault you didn’t listen.”

  “It’s not far,” Parker said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Just a couple of miles, and then we’re there.” Chloe didn’t have to look over at him to know he was smiling a little bit.

  “A couple of miles? Are you kidding?”

  In the rearview mirror, Chloe saw outrage flicker across Nate’s face and then ease back into scowling, brooding silence. Fine by her. At this point, she was willing to settle for whatever kept the two of them from going shithouse on each other any more than they already had.

  She followed the dirt road carefully, keeping the speedometer pinned at a safe twenty miles an hour, navigating the twists and turns and switchbacks that led them deeper and deeper into the Pine Barrens. The trees were closer to the path than she was used to, keeping them in shadow, but every so often, she’d catch a glimpse of sunlight poking through the trees, a yellow blade jabbing into the ground.

  The parking area Parker had told them about was a little gravel cul-de-sac at the end of the dirt road, really only big enough to accommodate two or three cars—four if they really squeezed in—but luckily, there wasn’t anyone else around. Chloe nosed the van in along the far side and killed the engine, throwing on the e-brake before announcing, “Okay, we’re here. Everybody out.”

  They unloaded their packs together, splitting the supplies evenly so everyone carried their fair share. Nicky and Josh took most of the cookware and water while Adam and Parker carried the beer cooler, heavy with cans and gas station ice. Nate grabbed the tents, which left Chloe stuck with the extra bags of food Parker had gotten from the Shop-N-Go.

  Parker assured them again that the hike wasn’t going to be too bad—maybe a little hilly, but it wasn’t like they were traipsing up the side of a mountain or anything. Everybody seemed to be fine with it except for Nate, who grumbled under his breath and kept glancing furtively down at the sandals he’d strapped to his lumpy hobbit feet.

  Christ, but it was humid. Everybody had said that the coming summer was going to suck, boiling hot from June to late September, but May hadn’t exactly been comfortable, either. It was already pushing the high eighties a couple weeks ago, but out among the trees and the plants, the heat and humidity were almost unbearable. The air was thick with condensation that laid on them like a blanket, plastering their shirts to their skin, drawing beads of sweat down their spines to pool in their jeans.

  Hiking her pack higher on her shoulders, Chloe fixed the nylon chest strap in place and clicked the remote at the Astro. The van honked its horn in response, just once, a sound that echoed through the trees and vanished just as quickly.

  “Here,” said Adam, making a grabby-hand in her direction. “Let me hang on to those. I’ve got more pockets than you.”

  Chloe shrugged and tossed him the keys. Beside her, Parker lifted the beat-up old Coleman on his own and nodded toward one of the rough trails branching off and away from the gravel.

  “Okay, this way,” he said. “Not far now.”

  Everybody followed him into the woods.

  2

  From out on the highway, the Pine Barrens was enormous; from inside, it was never-ending. Branches hung low in heavy canopies, and dead old leaves from seasons long past covered the forest floor in a carpet of soft rot. On their uphill path, the fronds and leaves obscured the distance in a lattice so dense and complete that Chloe could see only about fifteen feet to either side. She could almost feel the woods closing around their little bubble with every step they took—as if the forest was slowly eating them alive.

  The sound was another matter altogether; it was so weirdly loud out here, teeming with life. Insects buzzed against the wind as it whistled through the trees, and the caws of birds bounced brightly overhead, paired against the rustling of nearby hooves and paws. It spoke to her, it whispered to her, as if the voice of this place were a radio signal she was gradually tuning into. The sounds of the forest all swirled together inside her head, a natural symphony without beginning or end. This was the voice of the earth that she was hearing, what it was like without human beings around to screw it all up, as they so often did.

  The forest was ancient and absolute, humbling in its vastness and startlingly beautiful both from afar and up close.

  It didn’t take Nate long to start complaining about it.

  “I hate you all for making me do this. Especially you, Parker—this was your idea,” he called from the back of the group. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this lame camping shit.”

  Parker didn’t say anything.

  “Did you hear me, Parker? I’m serious. You’re gonna pay for this. You owe me big time now.”

  Parker still didn’t say anything.

  “Nobody’s making you
do this,” Nicky snapped back at Nate. “You can walk back to the highway and hitchhike home or whatever. We don’t need you here if you don’t want to be here. Especially if you’re going to keep bitching like this.”

  “Sure, I could do that. Or Chloe could just give me the keys so I can go sleep in the van tonight.” Nate slapped at his neck. “There’s air-conditioning, and not as many fucking bugs, probably.”

  “Chloe isn’t going to do that,” Chloe said, deadpan.

  “Because Chloe can’t, or because Chloe won’t?” The feigned sweetness in Nate’s voice was like burned aspartame.

  Chloe looked back at Nate and allowed him a patient smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Pick one.”

  Nate threw his hands up in the air.

  “Jesus. Is nobody on my side about this? Josh?”

  Beside Nicky, Josh spiked his eyebrows and looked back over his shoulder at Nate.

  “We’re all out here to have fun, Nathan,” he said mildly. “We all agreed on the trip. You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to, but the rest of us are staying the night when we get to the campsite.”

  “If I die of exposure out here, it’s all your faults, understand? I’ll haunt each and every one of you,” Nate grumbled.

  “You’re not going to die out here,” said Adam, sounding impatient. “You’re going to get drunk and stoned and throw shit into a campfire and eat hot dogs until you puke, same as all of us. Then tomorrow morning we’ll drive back home and it’ll be summer break and you won’t have shit to do for the next three months.”

  “When you put it that way, I guess it kind of sounds like fun,” Nate said. “But officially, this is still all bullshit.”

  “Duly noted,” said Adam.

  Eventually, they came to a natural clearing with a blackened, circular stone firepit in the middle. The whole area wasn’t much bigger than the living room at Nicky’s parents’ house. Overhead, the trees seemed to bow in over them, forming a natural baldachin between the clearing and the sky. Orange afternoon light danced through the wind-rustled leaves, casting a warm glimmer across the ground that seemed to make the soil glow.