The Other Way Around (26 page)

She looked at me strangely. “That's sweet of you, Drew.”
It reminded me of the way you would talk to an old person, or someone who was speaking English for the first time and doing a really bad job.

Emily sat with us at dinner but barely picked at her food. She kept sighing and staring off dreamily in the direction of the ridgeline. I could tell she was dying for someone to ask about her day, but no one took the bait. Finally Danielle took the bait. “How was your day, Emily?”

Emily shook her head. “You have no idea. This place is magical.”

I expected Danielle or someone to snicker, but no one did. “It's pretty special,” Danielle agreed. “But it's also pretty remote. If you're going to wander off, you should probably tell someone where you're going. Some people were kind of worried about you.” Emily smiled and nodded but didn't respond.

“Soooo,” said Tim. “The Bike Derby is after dinner, huh? Do you think anyone would mind if I recorded it?”

“I don't think so,” Danielle said. “They would probably be pretty psyched. Some people have been working on their bikes all week.” I thought about the pile of junked bicycles I had seen parked up by Steamers on the way in. Rippy came over to our table and stood behind Danielle. He was shirtless but still wearing the velvet jester's hat he'd had on the first day. He put his hands on Danielle's shoulders and began kneading her neck. “Everyone ready for Derby?” he asked without ever really looking down at the table. “I could use some help getting the fire going.”

“I'll help,” Jesse offered.

“Me too,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I thought I saw a ripple of annoyance cross Emily's forehead.
Before I finished my food Emily got up from the table, took her plate, and relocated herself to a stump outside the tent.

“I think that's your cue,” G said in between mouthfuls of squash stew.

“Whatever,” I said, trying to sound more irritated than I felt. It was still my turn to be annoyed.

Jesse scraped the last spoonfuls out of his bowl and stood up. “You still coming, Andrew?”

I took one last look at Emily pouting outside the tent and made my decision. “Yeah, I'm in.”

***

I lift my fingers up from the notebook paper and shift the pen from one hand to the other. I flex my hand wide open; my fingers are out of practice for this kind of thing. It's cloudy, and the day is still gray. G is sleeping, and the green bleep of the monitors goes on steady and certain.

A nurse comes in to check on G. This one is younger than Dolly but more severe-looking. Her brown hair is turning prematurely gray and is pulled back in a ponytail. She checks something on one of G's charts and plumps her pillow. I wince, waiting for her eyes to open and glare at the nurse, but G just moans slightly and settles back in to sleep. The nurse pauses at the end of the bed and eyeballs the untouched food tray. “You don't want any of this?”

“I wasn't … I didn't want to …” I mumble a half-response.

“She's not going to eat it,” the nurse says, not unkindly. “They'll just come and clear it, and it will go to waste. If you're hungry, you should eat. I've got two boys about your age, and they're always hungry,” she adds. She's barely out of the room
before I pounce on the tray. It's not much; some applesauce, a banana, and a piece of cold turkey covered in congealed gravy. At first I hesitate on the turkey, but my hunger is stronger than my squeamishness. It's not that bad, and I wash it all down with some cold water from the fountain in the hallway.

I want to run down the hall after the nurse and ask her about her two boys, their names and how they're doing in school. But what I really want to ask is how she would feel if they ever ran away. I'm rereading what I just wrote about Emily, and there's a knowing that's creeping into my gut, one cold finger at a time. No matter what the circumstances, there are serious consequences when someone you love just walks out of your life.

The blinking digital display beside G's bed tells me it's a little before seven. I try and lean back in the chair to nap, but every time I do my brain, way more awake than my body, takes over.
What if I hadn't gone to make the fire that night? What if I'd tried harder to talk to Emily and find out what was bothering her? She was so selfish, but so was I. I'm not sure if it's an addition problem or a subtraction problem, but either way I don't think anyone ends up with very much.
I look over at G. She's going to be okay. I know she won't hold me responsible.
But what if I am?

***

Rippy and Jesse and I hauled brush for the bonfire for an hour or so until the pile of wood was almost over our heads. Each time I thought we were almost done, one of them found another spectacular log that just had to go on top. It was becoming competitive when finally Rippy said he had to go get ready for the derby. Jesse and I cleared an area in front of the woodpile where people would ride around, and I helped him haul over two
trash cans full of food scraps that Danielle had been saving since people arrived. This was for the audience to throw at the bikers as they circled around each other. “Some people bring their own stuff they grabbed out of dumpsters: rotten fruit, veggies, whatever. It just has to be biodegradable,” Jesse explained.

I was getting pretty amped up for the derby and had more or less forgotten about Emily and her pouting at dinner. Besides, it wasn't like she hadn't been moody before, and I figured everything would sort itself out later. I went back to the campsite and found G, Tim, and Lyle digging through a duffel bag of costumes that had been stuffed under the seat. The van was like a never-ending Mary Poppins bag of weird items. “Where have you been hiding this stuff?” I asked.

“Special occasions,” G said. She was wearing a dress over her clothes that looked like something a 1950s candy striper in a hospital would wear. Tim had on a paper Burger King crown and a very wrinkled silk smoking jacket. Lyle still had his usual anarchist garb on, but he had added an enormous blue polka-dotted bow tie and a pair of those nose, mustache, and glasses that all go together. G pulled out a shiny navy blue graduation gown and handed it to me. “Here, this is fitting somehow.” She eyed me as I pulled the robe over my head. It was designed for someone much shorter, and my arms and legs stuck out beneath it. “You're still missing something.” She bent over and rooted around in the bag until she pulled out a neon green trucker-style cap that said, “Virginia is for Lovers” in airbrushed ink. “Perfect,” she said and plunked it down sideways on my head.

The four of us walked over to the bonfire together feeling pretty proud of our outfits. We definitely weren't the only ones dressed up. It was kind of like a reverse prom, like everyone
had dug through their stuff and found the oddest clothes and costume bits to parade around in, but the atmosphere was still the same as a middle school dance with everyone checking each other out. There's definitely an art to looking weird and cool simultaneously. I looked enviously at one guy who sported a light brown suede suit with a yellow bow tie and no shirt. He had slicked his hair back and wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses that would have matched my hat nicely.

After everyone had milled around for a while Danielle brought out two big vats of punch, one labeled
Alchy
and the other
Non-Alchy
. I went for the one without booze; it seemed like the evening was going to get bizarre enough as it was. As I ladled some into my mug I noticed Danielle scanning nervously around the circle. “Did Emily find you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Was she looking for me?”

“Yeah,” Danielle said. I remember she looked like she wanted to say more. I remember she looked worried.

Rippy came out as the Master of Ceremonies, wearing his jester's hat and a pair of pants made completely of four-inch squares of different fabrics. Instead of a shirt his upper body was painted with streaks and swirls of color. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted into a small orange traffic cone turned megaphone. “Welcome to the fourth annual—”

“Fifth!” a few people in the crowd shouted out.

“Right, sorry. I lose track of time sometimes,” he continued despite a few snickers. “The fifth annual Burdock Bike Derby!” Cheers and shouts went up from the crowd. Some people were beating homemade drums. It had been hard to tell how many people were actually at Burdock. Not everyone showed up for every meal, but everyone had come out for Bike Derby. It
looked like a hundred fifty or two hundred people were there.

“All right then!” Rippy shouted into the cone. “Let the wild rumpus begin!”

He put down the cone, picked up a golf club, and straddled a bicycle designed for a kid half his size. It had a white banana seat with turquoise flowers. The U-shaped handle-bars had sparkly rubber turquoise grips, and one of them still had white and blue streamers hanging off the ends. Rippy rode the bike easily, though his knees came up to his nose every time he pedaled. He rode around the circle, one hand on the handlebars and one hand swinging the golf club. Other people on equally ridiculous bikes began to come out of the crowd and join him in the circle. Every time someone joined in a big cheer went up from their friends. The first few laps were clearly just for show. Each biker had some kind of light weapon: either a whiffle ball bat, a golf club like Rippy's, or just a big stick.

The circle was getting packed with riders when finally Rippy took a whack at someone's bike with his golf club. The crowd went wild, screaming and cheering. This was clearly also the cue for everyone to begin throwing food scraps at the riders. I winced as a girl with short, bleach-blonde hair took a ketchup-covered nature burger full on in the face.

“They can only hit the bikes with their weapons, not the people,” Jesse explained. “The point is to disable the other rider's bike. The last person still pedaling wins.” The crowd groaned as a guy with a purple Mohawk took out the blonde girl's front tire with a swing of his aluminum bat. She fell over and then pulled her bicycle carcass to the side of the ring. The crowd cheered for her as she good-naturedly took a bow. We watched as, one after another, the bikers took each other out,
shoving sticks in spokes and whacking away at the metal frames. Rippy was clearly a crowd favorite, although he also took more than his fair share of food-scrap bombs.

After a while there were only three riders left circling each other: Rippy, the purple Mohawk guy, and a girl named Rosie with biceps bigger than my thighs. That's when Emily showed up and wrapped her arms around my neck, sinking her chin into my shoulder. “Drew, I need to talk to you now,” she said, pressing her breasts into my back in a way that was totally distracting.

“Um, okay,” I said. “What is it?”

“Alone. I need to talk to you alone.”

There was something strange about her voice. It was muddled, almost slurred. I wasn't that psyched about leaving the derby before seeing the outcome. “Can it wait a minute?”

G was sitting next to me and sniffed sharply in Emily's direction. “You stink,” she said. “Have you been drinking?”

Emily ignored her. “No, it can't wait a minute. I need to talk to you now,” she insisted. Her closeness and the insistence in her voice had an almost hypnotic effect on me.

Where were you all day?
I thought to myself as I grudgingly gave up my front-row seat at the derby. I turned back around in time to see Rippy take out the purple Mohawk guy with a swift stroke to the rear tire. Emily took my hand and pulled me away from the derby, back towards the kitchen tent and the trail that led to the hot springs. I let myself be led for a little while, but finally I jerked my hand away and stopped walking. “What?” I said. “What's so important that it can't wait?” Maybe if I'd known what she wanted to say, I wouldn't have been so abrupt. Maybe if the derby hadn't been so fun, I wouldn't have cared about going off with her. But I did.

“I want to be with you, Drew,” she said simply.

“Okay. Well, here we are.” I looked back towards the fading light of the bonfire, wondering if anyone had been crowned the winner.

“No, I mean I want to be
with you
. I want you to make love to me on top of this mountain.” My jaw fell open. I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd told me we'd just won a dishwasher on
The Price Is Right
. I stared at her.

“
Have you
?” I finally said after a few more awkward moments of silence. “
Have you
been drinking?”

Her voice turned bitter. “I thought that's what you wanted. I thought that's why you were always shoving my hand
down there
.”

Her description of my lame sexual fumblings sounded out of place after declaring that she wanted to make love to me on a mountain, but that wasn't the only thing that seemed out of sync. “No,” I said. “I mean yes. I mean I wanted you to touch me.” My face turned bright red. “I wanted you to
want
to touch me.” I took a deep breath, “The way I wanted to touch you.”

“Well that's what I'm saying.”

But it wasn't and I knew it wasn't. And what I felt wasn't confusion or lust or even curiosity. What I felt was mad. “You know, ever since this whole thing began, whatever it is, it's been on your terms. When you wanted me I was there, and when you wanted to be alone I gave you time alone. So, so …” I stuttered, unsure of where I was going with this. “I don't really think it's me and my needs that you're thinking about.”

Emily narrowed her eyes at me. “So I'm the one being selfish? I'm offering you the greatest gift a woman can offer a man, and you think I'm being selfish? You're really screwed-up, you know that, Drew?”

Oddly enough, the voice that I heard in my head in that moment wasn't my eighth-grade health teacher warning us about the dangers of teen pregnancy or genital rot. And it wasn't my mother alluding in a roundabout way to the existence of condoms underneath the bathroom sink or my father telling me to keep it my pants and not mess up my life. It was Lindsay. In that moment Emily reminded me of Lindsay, and I didn't want to have sex with her any more than I wanted to have sex with Lindsay. “I'd rather wait,” I said. “Until you're sober and you're sure that's really what you want.”