If I can’t have what I want, then maybe we can find a way back to when things were simpler. When we were just friends.
* * *
I end up getting a few things from the store: a bear canister, a pocket water filter, and a multitool gadget that has a tiny shovel. Lennon says I’ll need it for digging fire pits and cat holes. I’m not exactly sure what a cat hole is, though I have a bad feeling about it.
The walk back to the camp is mostly quiet but not entirely awkward. It’s still nippy, but the sun is burning away the fog, and according to Lennon, it should be a nice a day. I was too fixated on our breakfast conversation to utilize the Wi-Fi.
When we round a curve and enter our camp, Lennon says, “Hold up.”
My eyes follow his and spot the problem. Candy and the ranger we ran into last night are heading down the steps that lead into the girls’ tent. They turn and walk north, headed in the opposite direction. We wait for them to disappear into the trees before continuing.
“What do you think that’s about?” I ask.
“Don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. Listen.”
That’s when I hear Reagan. Her raspy voice carries, and she’s angry. We jog toward the tent cabin and rush into the middle of an argument.
“No, I won’t calm down,” Reagan’s telling Summer. “Do you understand how much trouble I’m going to be in when my mom finds out?”
Kendrick and Brett aren’t doing anything, so Lennon gets between the two girls. “What the hell is going on?”
“Everything’s ruined,” Reagan says, backing away from Summer to drop onto the sofa, head in her hands. “That’s what’s going on.”
“They found the wine,” Kendrick elaborates while Brett paces behind the sofa. “We’re being kicked out.”
“I thought you were going to go back for the wine last night,” I tell Brett.
A look of distress passes over Brett’s face. Instead of answering me, he groans and pounds a fist on the console table. “This is so ridiculous. They have their wine back. No harm, no foul. I don’t understand why they’re being such hard-asses.”
“Because you pissed on a yurt,” Reagan yells at him.
Umm . . . what?
“For the love of Christ,” Lennon mumbles, shaking his head slowly.
“I was drunk, okay?” Brett says before pleading to Reagan, “We both were.”
“You were out together last night?” I say, alarmed.
Reagan rubs her head roughly. “We drank the bottle Brett smuggled back.”
The one he stuck in his pants, I suppose.
“And we were going to go back together and get the other bottles, but . . .”
“But we were buzzed,” Brett says defensively to the group. “We forgot to take an empty backpack with us to carry the bottles. So we just took two and—”
“We planned to come back for the rest,” Reagan says. “We just . . . got distracted.”
This is not like Reagan. She’s not a big drinker. I’ve been to parties with her, including the party—when Brett kissed me—and she never drank. It affected her cross-country running times, and she was always training for the Olympics.
Guess things are different now.
“Were all of you out drinking?” I ask, wondering now if this could explain some of the noises last night that kept me up. I’m also irritated and hurt that I was left out. But I guess Lennon was, too.
“Don’t look at me,” Summer says. “Kendrick and I went to the sauna, and then I came back here and fell asleep.”
“Same,” Kendrick says.
“Does it matter?” Brett gripes, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re on vacation, and Reagan and I were just unwinding. It’s not like we’re criminals.”
“Technically, since you’re both underage . . . ,” Lennon says.
“And the destruction of property,” Kendrick adds, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You know, with the pissing on the tent.”
Brett sighs heavily. “Not my proudest moment, for sure. But what’s done is done.” He plops next to Reagan on the sofa and rubs his head. “This is all so stupid.”
“Oh, I’ll agree with that,” Lennon says, voice dripping with contempt. He turns to Kendrick. “What exactly did Candy say?”
“That the compound could lose its license to serve alcohol if they knowingly let this kind of thing happen and didn’t take action. She said if it had just been the janitorial crew who found the bottles stashed in the garbage, they might have let it slide. But another camper reported it—I suppose it was the family inside the yurt.”
Oh. My. God. There was a family inside the yurt when Brett . . . ?
“It could have been the other campers that complained about noise in the woods at two in the morning,” Summer adds.
Reagan groans and rubs her temples.
“So, yeah. It looks bad for the compound,” Kendrick finishes. “And we have until noon to vacate the tents, or they’re calling the police.”
“My mom is going to murder me,” Reagan says.
“Maybe Candy won’t tell her,” Summer says, putting on an encouraging face.
“Don’t you get it?” Reagan says. “My parents don’t leave for Switzerland until tomorrow. That means if I come home tonight with my tail between my legs, I’m going to have to tell them why I’m back so early.”
No one says anything. A sense of doom falls over the tent. At least I wasn’t involved, so my mom won’t be mad. But I’m honestly devastated that all of this is suddenly over. I revised my summer blueprint to accommodate this trip. I don’t want to go home and face my dad and his cheating. And what about the star party? It’s not for four more days, so I can’t just take a bus to Condor Peak this afternoon. No one will be there.
If that weren’t enough, I’m also freaking that Reagan was out with Brett last night. Isn’t it kind of weird? They aren’t saying that anything happened between them, and maybe it didn’t. I try to remind myself that they’ve always been friends—just friends. And Reagan knows how I feel about him.
So why I am filled with unease?
Maybe it’s because Lennon and I were “just friends” once too,
