Lennon dumps his backpack on a shady bench over near the mountainside of the plateau, and I collapse next to him, sitting for a moment perched on the edge of the bench before I unhook the straps on my pack. We’re in a semiprivate, protected area, so the noise of the river isn’t as bad here.
“I’m sweating,” I tell him. “I don’t remember the last time I sweated before this trip.”
He opens up his bear canister and retrieves the same lunch we ate yesterday. “It’s good for you.”
“Is hiking how you went from skinny to jacked?”
Squinting eyes fix on mine. “I didn’t realize I was.”
“Oh, you are,” I say as my neck warms. Smooth, Everhart. I’m veering too close to the subject of me spying on him in his room with my telescope and decide to quit while I’m ahead and drop it.
“You never got to look at the stars last night,” he says after a moment.
Ugh. He was thinking about me spying too. Terrific.
“It’s fine,” I tell him.
“I promise that you’ll get some quality stargazing time tonight,” he says, and after some reflection, clears his throat. “I haven’t asked today if you want to keep going all the way to Condor Peak. The ranger station I told you about is on the other side of the mountain. We should get there this afternoon. I mean, I know I just assumed you’d be here tonight to stargaze, but if you want to call a car at the ranger station . . .”
Oh. I actually hadn’t been thinking of that.
“You don’t have to make a decision right now,” he says. “Just think about it and let me know. So I can make contingency plans.”
I nod, and the subject is dropped. We eat in silence, mostly because I’m too tired to do two things at once. Chewing is all I can handle. But by the time we’re packing back up, the tourist family has left, and we’re alone on the cliff. That’s when I start to notice Lennon’s leg bouncing like a jackhammer. He does that when he’s concentrating too hard—when he takes tests—and also when he’s antsy about something.
When he catches me staring at his leg, he immediately stops bouncing it and sighs. “This is stupid. We should just talk about it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Last fall. Look, I told you about my dad. Now I want to know about yours.”
“My dad?”
His eyes narrow and flick to mine. “I’d like to know what he told you about me after homecoming. I assume he told you something. I just want to know how much of it was true.”
“Not following,” I say, shaking my head.
“After homecoming. What he told you.”
I stare at him. “Um, he just had a talk with me and told me I’d be better off staying away from you. That it would be best to make a clean break and move on, because it was causing me . . . stress.”
“That’s it?”
I don’t know what he wants me to say. “Pretty much. I didn’t tell him about . . . you know. The experiment.”
Lennon squints at me. “And he didn’t bring it up?”
“Why would he?”
He starts to answer, but then changes his mind. Twice. After biting his lower lip and another rapid leg bounce, he finally says, “I’m trying to figure out why you cut me out of your life and started seeing Andre.”
“You ditched me at homecoming!”
“I texted you.”
“Once. ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s it. That’s all you said. I texted you back a million times and you didn’t answer.”
“Well, excuse me if I was busy with my father attempting suicide.”
My body stills. “That was . . . on homecoming?”
“It was one of many shitty things that happened that day.”
“Umm . . . Do you want to share these things with the class?”
He stares at the mountains in the distance as if they might grow legs and walk away. “That’s why I was asking about your dad. He didn’t say anything about what happened that day? At the hotel?”
“What hotel?”
He closes his eyes and mumbles something to himself, slumping low on the park bench. “Never mind.”
“Oh no, you don’t,” I say, getting irritated. “Absolutely not. You brought this up. You finish it. What hotel?”
He covers his eyes with one hand and groans.
Which totally cranks up my anxiety several notches. If Lennon thinks it’s bad, it must be far worse than I ever imagined.
“Just tell me,” I plead.
He slaps both hands on his knees, elbows bent, as if he’s about to stand, but instead inhales sharply and blows out a hard breath. “Last fall, things had been, well, changing between us. The Great Experiment was undertaken.”
“I was there,” I remind him.
“I thought it was going well. Well enough that we agreed to tell our parents and go public,” he says, leaning back against the bench and slouching lower, arms crossed over his chest. “And I guess I . . . was overenthusiastic about the importance of homecoming. I thought, well, you know. That we had the friend thing down. We were expert friends. And when we . . . I mean, my God. The things we did on that park bench.”
“Not everything,” I say, feeling my ears grow warm.
“No, but it was good. I mean, really, really good. Right?”
It was amazing. Awkward at times, especially at first. It’s odd to kiss your best friend. But also not odd. Also very nice. So nice that I can’t think about it right now, because it makes me flustered. This entire conversation is making me flustered. I think I’m sweating again.
He relaxes when I hesitantly nod to confirm. “So, yeah. Things were going well. We agreed to go public. It felt right. But then homecoming was approaching, and you
