“Guys, it’s bad enough you’re not helping, but now you’re pawing through the snacks?” Asha was inching a pole through the gathered fabric loops of the tent. “It’s supposed to be salty and sweet together. Now it’ll just be salty.”
“You’re sweet enough to make it work.” Nolan blinked and smiled an innocent smile, revealing chocolatey front teeth. “Okay, now I’m thirsty. You think the campground vending machine has milk?” He stood up and jogged toward the entrance.
“Flattery is not going to get this tent built,” Asha called after him, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Hattie, pull on the other end. This fucking thing is stuck.”
Together, we managed to force the end of the pole into its little pocket. But the next pole was even harder. Asha and I were both sweating. Mason was laughing.
“Mason, stop scarfing sugar and get your butt over here.”
“Hey, hey. I am not scarfing. Nolan’s the scarfer. I am carefully selecting the green ones to build my manly stamina. Then I will come help you ladies with all of my testosterone.”
“Oh my God. Never mind,” I said.
“Gross,” said Asha.
Mason stood up and walked toward Asha. “All right, stop begging. The reinforcements have arrived.”
“Just like a boy to do the exact same thing the girl has already been doing but make it like he’s some knight in shining armor,” Asha said, smirking at Mason.
“You’re welcome,” Mason said, stepping into her spot.
He and I moved in sync then, wordlessly navigating around each other to apply pressure where it was needed, bending the arc of the tent until each piece settled into place. Then he unzipped the front flap with a flourish and Asha unfurled the sleeping bags. We collapsed on the soft fleece inside, congratulating each other.
“I’m actually pretty proud of us,” I said.
“We have a promising future of successfully assembling IKEA furniture,” Mason agreed.
Later, we forced Nolan to build the fire while we ate the trail mix nuts, leaving just the sad little raisins in the bag.This is it, I remember thinking.We’re independent. We’re practically adults.
The feeling carried me through the evening, the six of us sitting around the fire, each face lit by the warm glow of the flames, looking like a commercial for an expensive SUV that could take us on adventures just like this. We stayed up late, talking about our favorite music and whether female vocalists could capture emotion that male singers couldn’t (Asha thought so). Finally, we tumbled into the tent without brushing our teeth, crawling into our sleeping bags still dressed, succumbing to the deep untroubled sleep of summertime with no homework or obligations.
At some point in the night, I woke up needing to pee. I trieddesperately to tell my bladder not now and go back to sleep. I tried lying on my side, my back, curled up in a ball. There was no avoiding it.
I crawled over the snoring lump next to me and felt for my flashlight in the mesh pocket that hung from the wall of the tent. Clicking it on, I slipped my feet into flip-flops by the door, unzipped the flap, and stepped out into the night chill. The dew was so heavy that it felt like it had been raining. I shivered and hugged myself. I wanted to get this over with as fast as possible and get back to the cocooned coziness of my sleeping bag.
The bathroom looked like a lighthouse, bright fluorescents beckoning across the gravel loop of the campground. Inside, it was the same dank mess I remembered from earlier in the day, trash on the floor and water from the showers creating suspicious puddles all over. I wondered if it ever dried out in here. In the humidity, I could hear mosquitoes buzzing, so I crouched over the toilet without touching the seat, peed, washed my hands, and hurried out of there.
I stepped from the thousand-watt bathroom into complete darkness. Before I had gone into the light I had been able to see vague shapes around me, the dark mounds of tents up and down the loop, the outlines of shadowy trees against a clouded sky. Now, after all that brightness in my eyes, I saw none of that. It was flat black, like someone had thrown a hood over my head. It made me nervous. I clicked on my flashlight. A tiny circle of light appeared in front of me on the ground, revealing gravel pebbles and weeds. I inched forward, the bobbing circlein front of me showing more of the same, gravel and weeds, gravel and weeds. I lifted my head. Just black. Where was the tent? Shit.
After what seemed like an eternity, I looked behind me. I was much farther away from the bathroom now, but was I going in the right direction? I tried to remember the angle by which I had approached the building just a minute or two before, but I had been concentrating on not wetting my pants so I hadn’t really clocked what I was doing. I should have counted my damn footsteps or something. Too late for that now.
I considered the possibility that I would just have to sit down and wait until dawn, but I wasn’t sure what time it was. That could be hours. Maybe I should give it another try. I headed back to the bathroom and started again, a little more to the right this time, pushing down the panic that was rising in my throat.You’re just cold, Hattie. You’re not going to die.
Finally, something appeared in my little circle other than ground. It was the corner of a tent, but there was a pickup truck next to it. It was not our tent. Still, it was a glimmer of hope. I had not been magically transported to the surface of the moon. Maybe I could follow the line of tents to our tent. I moved down the row, past three more unfamiliar tents, then five. Now I once again felt too far away from the bathroom. Shit shit.
I kept shaking my head and blinking my eyes, trying to force more of the world to come into focus. The tree shapes were visible above me again, but now they seemed menacing, likeWizard of Oztrees. Even more menacing was the awarenessthat this was not normal. Something was very wrong with me.
I felt like I couldn’t get a good breath in all of a sudden. I was nowhere, and the distance between me and my parents seemed vast. I was not an adult at all. I was an immature child. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to feel my body at home in my own comfy bed, tried to will myself there. I opened my eyes. I was still cold.
It was completely silent, that hushed time when even the night birds have dozed off, like the world had powered down. Breaking that silence felt like breaking glass, but my fear was calling the shots now. “Asha!” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Asha! I need you!”
I waited and listened. Nothing. I whispered again. Then a zipper ran along its teeth close by. Please God let that be her. Biting my lip, I clicked my flashlight off. Now I heard gravel footsteps.
“Just when I think you can’t be any weirder.” An amused voice came from right behind me. Mason. “What the hell are you doing?”
I shrugged and tried not to look terrified. “My flashlight died when I went to the bathroom,” I lied, holding the dark flashlight up. “I was having trouble finding you guys.” I never knew exactly why I lied about not being able to see. Somehow the truth seemed more unbelievable than the lie.
I felt him take the flashlight from my hand. He clicked it on. I winced.
