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“See? You’re not as perfect as you think. You even curse.”
“Who said I was perfect?”
“No one needs to.”
“You don’t really know me.”
“I know enough.”
“Humph,” I said, slightly taken aback. “Well, since you’ve got me all figured out, tell me something about you.” I paused, just as lightning filled the sky again, turning everything all silvery-gray. Like a camera flash. “Tell me something no one else knows.”
“No,” Sam said quickly.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“What’s it matter? We’re not going anywhere for a while. You said so yourself. And besides that crazy elk, we’re the only ones out here.” Rain splattered above us, droplets bouncing from one branch to another, one pine needle to another. It was as if we sat below a giant fountain, each raindrop trying desperately to reach our hiding spot. “I’ll give you the rest of the granola bar if you do.” My eyebrows wiggled.
“Forget it.”
“You’re no fun.”
“Wait. I thought I was complicated?”
“Touché.” I sighed and looked away.
I counted raindrops when the storm quieted for a few seconds. During one stretch, I almost reached one hundred. But the rain always returned to pound around us like an encore. The sky soon became so dark that we didn’t even get a sunset.
Sam’s shoulders began to shiver. I hadn’t thought he ever got cold, but he was wearing only a T-shirt. At least I had a sweatshirt.
This wasn’t good.
“Okay,” I said, mostly to keep our minds off the growing cold and our grumbling stomachs. “If you won’t go first. I will.” I bit the inside of my lip to keep my teeth from chattering, because if they started again I wasn’t certain they’d stop.
“What are you talking about now?”
“I’m going to tell you something personal,” I said. “And you have to promise never to tell a soul. Can I trust you?” I looked up at him, just as the sky flashed another bolt of lightning, squiggly white lines stretching in every direction. “Promise?”
Sam surprised me by nodding. Or maybe he was shivering again. Whatever it was, I decided to tell him. What if we never made it off this mountain? What if we froze together tonight in each other’s arms? What did I have to lose?
I took a deep breath to steady myself and said, “I let my best friend use BOTOX on my forehead on Friday night. That’s why I’m wearing this stupid baseball cap.”
Dead silence.
Sam’s chest began to shake—but not from shivering. From laughter. It was the dry-heave, raspy kind, like he was having difficulty catching his breath. It started slowly and then built to a splitting crescendo.
“Thanks,” I said, between his chest heaves. “Thanks a lot. Glad you find it hilarious.”
His laughter turned into a coughing fit when he tried to speak. He raised his hand, begging me to wait. Sam’s laughter finally subsided until all we could hear were raindrops again.
“Why would you do that, Riley?” He reached for the brim of my baseball cap but I slapped his hand, which only got him chuckling again.
“I’m gullible. I was bored. I don’t know. My best friend, Drew, talked me into it. I blame her.”
“Does your forehead hurt?”
“I don’t know. I can’t feel it.”
Sam started another laughing fit and I just shook my head at him, biting back my own smile.
When he finally quieted, I challenged him. “Okay, now it’s your turn to play. You’ve got to tell me something juicy, something really personal. And I swear to god I’ll keep bugging you till you do. I could bug you all night. I swear, I will.” I looked out beneath the branches into nothing but infinite blackness. “We’re not going anywhere, so make it a good one.”
14
Sam
“I’m not playing.”
I was defiant. I even forgot how chilled I’d become for a few seconds. There was no way I was playing Riley’s stupid game.
It was such a girl thing. Why did girls always feel compelled to share personal embarrassing stuff? And BOTOX? Are you kidding me? Why would a pretty girl do something like that? Girls confused me.
“Please?” she begged.
“No.”
“Chicken!”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe you’ll play?” She tugged on the collar of my T-shirt, hard.
“Never.”
“Then I’ll have to guess.”
In the growing darkness, I heard her lips smack. It was obvious that she was giving this way too much thought. I could practically hear the wheels spinning in her head. Or maybe that was just her teeth chattering.
“Still cold?” I said to change the subject.
“I’m freezing,” she said, just as a gust of wind blew through the tree, knocking icy raindrops off the branches. “This is miserable.” We shivered in each other’s arms.
“Your sweatshirt is wet.”
“So’s your T-shirt.”
We hugged tighter. We breathed heavily for warmth. We rubbed skin where we could reach. We didn’t have a choice. And while it didn’t seem so bad in the dark, now that we couldn’t see each other’s eyes, the situation was clearly going from bad to really, really freaking bad. Ugly words raced through my head—hypothermia and pneumonia, for starters.
“Riley.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way—” I paused for courage “—but there’s something we need to do. Now.”
“You’ve changed your mind about playing?” Her voice turned giddy, even as her teeth resumed chattering. I hoped she wasn’t starting to crack. I’d read about such things in life-or-death situations. Some people turned crazy as a survival mechanism.
My eyes rolled. “No. I’m not talking about playing your game. Be serious.”
“What, then?”
“We have to take our clothes off.”
Her body stiffened against mine.
“We’re soaking wet,” I added by way of explanation. “We could freeze to death if we don’t take them off.”
“We could freeze to death with them on.”
“True.” I nodded, trying to play to her reasonable side. “But we should at least...consider it. For body heat.”
“Get naked?” she whispered.
“Get naked.”
But then her shoulders softened beneath my hands. “Yeah, I was thinking about how to handle the wet clothes, too.”
“This is survival,” I stammered a little. “Nothing else.”
“Agreed,” she said. “Survival.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than me. “What about underwear?”
“I guess...I guess we can leave those on.”
“Okay,” she said. It sounded like she was trying to work up her nerve.
At least it’s dark, I wanted to assure her, but that sounded like something a creepy guy would say. “I’ll go first—”
Riley caught my arm in the dark, interrupting me. “Let’s do it together.”
“Okay. On the count of three.” I counted slowly. “One...”
“Two,” Riley said with me.
“Three.”
With only a couple of inches between us, we stripped out of our wet shirts. Blindly, we fumbled and felt for a branch beside us to hang them in the hopes that they might dry, knocking arms at the same time.
“Sorry,” we said at the same time when our elbows crashed against each other. I winced when hers caught my funny bone.
I doubted that our shirts would dry even a little in the damp night air. Removing our pants was harder. I had to help Riley pull off hers, one slightly soggy leg at a time. When her jeans pulled over her injured leg, she moaned.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
She garbled something back that sounded like “sleigh” but it was probably “it’s okay.”
After helping her, I unzipped my jeans and then shimmied them down and stripped them off my bent legs without kicking her in the face.
Beside me, Riley shivered even more and I wondered if stripping was the right idea, especially as rain continued to fall. If there had been a more awful night, weather-wise, I hadn’t experienced it. This was like a bad horror movie.
As we sat across from each other in our underwear, shivering in the dark, lightning lit up our hiding space. In the flash, I looked at Riley, and she looked back at me. In that instant I saw everything. She was so white she glowed. Her arms crossed to hide her chest. Most of all, I saw that she was as terrified as I was, and for that reason alone I could not look away.
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed, Riley. Or scared. I’m as scared as you are.” I had to push off to the side of my brain that I had never been with a girl before, naked. Not like this, so close we were practically sharing the same heartbeat. I wondered if I should tell her that? Would it put her at ease?
Instead, when it turned dark again, I reached for her shoulder. “Come here.”
A few seconds later, as if she’d needed time to consider it, she crawled to me on her knees. She sat between my legs, facing me. I wrapped my arms around her and she wrapped her arms around me, at least as much as she could. We were chest-to-chest, skin touching skin. I tried not to think about the softness of her skin or the sweet scent of her hair. Instead, I counted backward from one hundred and forced myself to focus on survival. Staying alive. Global warming. Global cooling, more like.
I rubbed her arms, her back. “Better?” My voice cracked.
Her head nodded beneath my chin, fast. Nervous. I could hear each swallow. “You?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Much.”
Her body froze again and so did mine.
“It’s not like that, Riley. I promise.”
“Okay,” she said, but her voice was still uneasy.
“Let’s lie down.”
She stiffened again in my arms but I pushed her backward, gently. I cradled her head by my right shoulder and then curled the rest of my body over hers, doing my best not to crush her. Her warm breath heated my neck as we lay on the ground. “Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh,” she squeaked.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Uh-uh.” Another soft squeak.
“You’re lying.”
She didn’t answer.
I shifted a few inches, as much as I could in the cocoon that we’d made for ourselves. Pine needles poked every inch of my skin. Despite the branches for our makeshift bed, the ground was still rock-hard. I closed my eyes and did my best to relax. Did my best to picture being warm. I pictured a bright sun and a hot, sizzling desert—anything but the soft body beneath me. After a few silent, agonizing minutes, I said, “I know this sounds gross but it would be better if we burrowed underneath the pine needles.”
Her hands squeezed my arms. “What about bugs? And spiders? I really hate spiders.”
“It’s too cold for them,” I lied. We’d probably wake up covered in ant bites, but at least we wouldn’t freeze to death.
