The Truth About Fragile Things (17 page)

She stopped talking and wiped her eyes, covering them with a hand like whatever she was hearing gave her a monstrous headache. But after a moment, she moved again, gave a nod and said okay several times before hanging up the phone.

She took a deep breath and announced, “We’re going.”

“We’re going?” Phillip asked, his eyes disbelieving.

“Does she know we’re going? Did she actually say we could?” I kept my gaze on her face, looking for clues.

Charlotte clapped her hands over her mouth like she was holding back a triumphant yell and then slumped sideways onto the bench seat in relief. “We’re going,” she whispered and covered her eyes so we wouldn’t see the happiness. “She won’t call your parents, Megan. We just have to call her and tell her where we are all weekend. And she might not know Phillip is with us.”

 I was in too deep now. “Yeah, I noticed. This is going to blow up in our faces.”

“Fireworks blow up. Everyone likes fireworks,” Phillip pointed out, relaxing back into a smile.

“I think this is more of a bomb,” I mumbled.

The strain of that little incident shut us all up for almost an hour. Phillip drove and tried to keep me from changing the radio station and Charlotte read. I took in the scenery, watched the rolling landscape as the highway cut a black path between farms and fields, all the while rehearsing what I wished I could say to Melissa. By the time we hit the middle of Missouri I’d had seven very productive conversations with her.

I didn’t get completely antsy until we had been in the car for four hours. My butt went numb and Phillip’s small car seemed to shrink with mileage. The farther we got the closer I felt him breathing next to me. I called for a restroom break and did a quick walk around the rest stop just to get the blood in my legs pumping again. “I’ve never been inside a rest stop before,” I mentioned as Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It’s gritty,” I said with a smile. I realized I had rarely been anywhere gritty. There’s a vegan restaurant downtown my mom and I tried and it had a decidedly “natural” air to it, but not quite gritty.

“It’s kind of like that poetry reading we went to,” I told Phillip. “That was scary.”

“Very.” Phillip twisted the word with sarcasm. “Megan thinks coffee shops with incense are along the same lines as Mexican drug cartels,” he told Charlotte as he held her door open. “We will be there in less than two hours. Do you mind driving for a while, Megan?”

I took his place behind the wheel and eased back onto the smaller highway that pulled us south into steeper hills and forested cliffs. I made Charlotte text her mother and tell her that we were just coming up to Highway 44 and doing fine. “Tell her we are obeying the speed limit,” I added. She just shot me an exasperated glare.

“This road is getting smaller,” I told Phillip as the tangled trees crept up closer to the street. “Where did our shoulder go? I think I am getting claustrophobic in this car.”

We passed homes with cardboard plastered in the windows and metal patches hammered to the outside. One roof tilted off one side, sagging dangerously. Other homes were tidy with gardens, but utterly alone, spread far from civilization. “I would never make it out here,” I declared after we saw one home made out of a school bus and old camper patched together with sheet metal.

Phillip pat my knee. “Come on. Give them some points for creativity. And wait till it’s just us and the hills. We are about to see one of the prettiest parts of the country.”

“I didn’t know you were so appreciative of the outdoors,” I told him.

“I didn’t know you were so adverse to nature.” Phil curled his tongue, played with the words. “It’s nice to get you out of school. You’re too comfortable there. Everything comes too easy. You need a little challenge.”

The car veered slightly to the side as I processed his statement and forgot to steer. I waited for the punch line but his face was completely earnest. “How am I comfortable? I fit in less than anyone I know. I have to ask my mom if my t-shirts look grungy enough.”

“You were going for grungy?” Phillip studied my shirt, lingering too long on my small chest. I hit him hard in the arm.

“I can’t believe you said you’re uncomfortable,” Charlotte joined in. “You walk around the school like you own it.”

I flexed my fingers against the steering wheel. “Are we all talking about the same person? I am not stuck up.”

“Not stuck up,” Phillip agreed. “She means collected. You are never upset, never embarrassed, never get teased. The oceans part for you.”

“You tease me every day,” I argued.

“I’m the one and only person not entirely scared of you.” Just to prove his point he flicked me in the back of the head.

“I’m not scared of her,” Charlotte argued.

“No one is scared of me.”

“In a good way,” Phillip amended. “They copy you.”

“There’s no good way to be scared of someone. No one copies me. You’re both hallucinating.” The heat expanded up my chest, filling up my voice.

“That is irresistible. You are the only person I know who truly,” Phillip put his hands up to emphasize his point, “truly, doesn’t pay attention to the way people treat you. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“I think I want you to drive again,” I replied, spying a sign for a cross street at the bottom of the hill. I slowed down to make the turn and pulled over, opening my door in escape. I took slow steps around the back of the car, appreciating the fresh air and a view of the world not split by the cracked glass of the windshield. I hated to get back in. In a quick second I imagined a script for myself and lowered myself into the passenger seat, determined to deliver my lines.

“I think you are giving me credit I don’t deserve. High school isn’t easy for me.” It came out cool and blank.

“Really?” Charlotte asked. “What’s hard?”

And it felt like I was trying to swallow glue because the only answer I could think of was, “sitting here with you,” but it wouldn’t come out.

“See?” Phillip exulted when I remained quiet.

I just gave a futile sigh. No wonder I just shut up half the time. No one really hears you, even when you talk.

“T
his is our
first stop,” Phillip announced as he pulled up to a wooden booth to pay our camping fees. They gave us a sticker to park overnight and Phillip pulled into a spot near the trail head.

“I need to pee so bad,” Charlotte cried and jumped from the car, racing for the building in front of us.

That, believe it or not, is the first time I really thought through that little detail. I felt my face whiten. “Phillip, there are restrooms at the campsites, right? Or, like along the trail?”

He paused to meet my eyes. “I just had to see if you were joking,” he said. Then he stepped out and slammed his door.

I scrambled after him. “I’m not joking. They’ll have bathrooms like this, right?” The wooden building with its signs depicting local wildlife and the wide, smooth sidewalks gave me hope.

He opened the trunk and started rummaging through our things. “Megan, let’s get all this stuff organized. We can leave most of it until tonight. Today we’re just doing the three mile loop up to the falls. We don’t need to carry it until we go to the campsite.” Just when I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all, he picked up a roll of toilet paper. “Here’s your bathroom. Be thankful I brought that.”

“Can’t I just use this bathroom?” I asked in desperation.

“Sure. Be my guest. And when you have to go in the middle of the night, camp is a half mile that way. But there’s a path and you can use my flashlight.”

My stomach did a graceful dive, twisting and falling all at once. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Go brush your hair and take a whiz or whatever you need to do and then we’re leaving. If Charlotte got up on stage and Bryon saved your life, you can water a bush.” He turned back to the supplies, his face hard with concentration.

I used the restroom and met them outside, hoping my tennis shoes from freshman gym were up for the task. Phillip handed me my backpack. “I took out all the clothes and things for bedtime. All we need now is food and water. I have first aid.”

Just when I was feeling extremely brave a young couple with two toddlers passed us. The little girl danced in circles in a sequined tutu. Phillip raised his eyebrows as they disappeared down the trail. “Looks like a brutal hike, doesn’t it?”

“Shut up. And you,” I pointed to Charlotte. “Text your mother and tell her we made it.”

While she pulled out her phone Phillip consulted the map. I took a few steps in the same direction as the young family, but Phillip grabbed me from behind and jerked me to a stop. “We’re doing the full loop,” he said like that meant something and veered right.

“You mean the hard way.”

“I mean the right way.” He gave me a pat that was half friendly, half mocking and led the way onto the packed earth trail. He stopped me a few times to point out edible plants and the best bark to burn but everything looked the same to me. Charlotte, however, was right at home. She kept running her fingers along the tree trunks in what looked like a greeting. Her small nose wrinkled in the wind and only after watching her sniff the air did I realize how dry and clean it smelled. The path climbed upward. The summit of the first hill emptied us into a clearing of low, flat boulders, half submerged in the grass like natural benches. We could look over the entire valley of trees, scattered with the first yellows and reds of fall.

Charlotte sat down on a large stone and Phillip joined her, edging in close until their shoulders met. “Do you think he would have liked this?” he asked.

“I wish I knew.” Charlotte scanned the landscape, the strange, rocky hilltop. “I can’t imagine who wouldn’t.”

Phillip gave us a few minutes to sit and drink water before he helped her to her feet. “Well you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is just the appetizer.”

The trail thinned to a dirt path, outlined by thick underbrush and shaded by the high, bending trees, before it disappeared entirely and only red markers led the way. The world turned green and orange as the canopy of leaves blocked out the blue October sky. Every few steps a small bird would flutter from its perch and let out a sharp song. It was difficult to spot them because their flying bodies blended into the falling leaves that tumbled through the branches every time the sky breathed. “Bird berries,” Phillip told me, pointing out the tiny red berries that dotted the forest floor.

“Are they safe?” I asked.

“Are you a bird?” Charlotte teased.

One hiker in full gear passed us going the opposite direction. He watched us with calculating eyes and I suddenly imagined a newspaper article with the headline “Three Teenagers Murdered on Mountain.” But he looked too professionally dressed to be a homicidal recluse. He stopped and turned around, looking at our feet. “Be careful on the rocks ahead. They’re pretty loose right now.” He addressed Phillip, the only one of us who looked like he knew what he was doing. “The falls look good today, but there’s no one around, so be careful.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Phillip said, with a friendly, one fingered salute.

That was the last person we saw on the trail. I was about to ask Phillip what rocks the man was talking about but at the top of the hill the vegetation stopped and I saw them.

“We lost the trail,” Charlotte said, frozen. She searched the ground, but the entire hillside was broken stone. “There’s no marker.”

“This is the trail,” Phillip reassured us. “We go straight up and over. The path picks up at the top.” He took Charlotte’s hand and braced his feet, letting her lean on him as she scrambled up the shallow slope. After she got to sturdier ground, he released her and did the same for me.

“Use your hands,” Phillip ordered me when I got too far for his grip. “Just bend over and pull with your hands.”

It never felt dangerous, just slow. I had to pick spots for my feet, calculating the best path. At the top I sat down and waited for Phillip, admiring the look of concentration in his eyes beneath his tangled hair. I almost told him he looked handsome, the same way I would blurt it out at school, but whenever I actually mean it I lose the ability to say it. He smiled when he reached us, his chest filling with air and puffing it out again. “You like it, don’t you?”