“Probably because that was right after I punched Brendon in the school parking lot for being a misogynist asshole.”
“Did they know that about him?”
Beck raises her eyebrows. “They don’t care. All they care about is that I did something too ‘out there.’ Notladylike, as my mom would say.”
I shake my head. “What you did was incredibly brave.” She opens her mouth, but I put my hand on her hand this time to silence her. “No. It was brave and a little wild.” I swallow. “I wish I could be that wild.”
Beck chuckles. “I wish I could be as authentic as you. Being around you makes my breath slow down. You’re just so…gentle.” She brushes her fingertips against my knuckles. “You’re even-keeled. We can have real conversations and I’m not worried you’ll weaponize what I say if I don’t say it exactly right. You’re not a narcissist and you weren’t raised by them and it justshows.” I laugh, blushing. “I love seeing the shine in your eyes when you talk about these topics I’d never think to look into. Youmake me want to talk about random movies and my pets and just stuff that my family and the rich girls on the volleyball team would call me childish for talking about.” Beck settles her hand on my thigh. “Bottom line is most people suck and I’d pick you over a hundred volleyball girls.”
Beck keeps looking at me, her fingertips hot on my leg. Her gaze flickers lower than my eyes, flooding me in warmth and kickstarting my heart.
But then Beck drops down onto her sleeping bag, her hands returning to herself. The warmth inside me drains. “You’re cool, Emma Tedesco.”
Which makes more sense. Beck might be serious about liking me as a friend, but I can’t get delusional now. She dates athletes. She dates neurotypical people. Still, maybe it’d be okay to be a little silly with her.
I scoot back into my own sleeping bag. “Amazed you know my last name.”
She smiles. “We go to the same twenty-person school.”
“You’re cool, too, Beck,” I say.
It might just be the lighting in the tent, but I swear she blushes. “Also, just so you know, I am already so cold and cannot guarantee that I won’t try to sleepwalk into your sleeping bag.”
I laugh. “If you’re cold, we can zip our sleeping bags together.”
Beck’s eyes widen. “You can do that?”
“Yeah. These two are compatible.”
Before this conversation, I never would’ve had the confidence to do this. But Beck is totally into it, egging me on. Within a minute, I’ve made Beck and myself a sleeping bag nest like Owen and I made when we were little kids.
Beck rubs her hands together as we settle into the combined sleeping bag. “Is it supposed to be this cold?”
She scoots in closer to me.
“Yeah,” I reply. “It’s always cold at night in the mountains, even in the summer.”
I scoot in closer to her. We’re so close I can see the individual hairs on her eyebrows.
I turn my back to her. I can’t handle anything else right now. Not when every movement of her fingertips and body gives me too much hope.
“Alrighty then,” Beck says. “This is about as cold as I can handle.”
We fall asleep with our backs pressed together, the weight of our words still hovering in the air.
Seventeen
When I open my eyes, it’s still dark. But before I can attempt to go back to sleep, my body floods with every other bit of sensory information. My back’s warm against Beck’s, but my fingers and toes are freezing. My shoulder and hip and spine ache from the harsh ground. Even my neck hurts, and I’m not even sure why. A pebble is somewhere under the tent, digging into my side.
All that, and the forest isloud. Bugs buzz, owls hoot, tree branches rustle together. I knew I should’ve brought earplugs, but I was convinced the sounds of nature would be soothing. Now, I’d do anything for the silence of suburbia.
I look over to Beck, who is still sleeping. The tandem sleeping bag makes me all the more self-conscious about any movement. I use the very ends of my fingers to reach toward my bag and pull out my phone and earbuds. Podcasts have never failed to lull me to sleep before.
My fingers wrap around my phone the second a branch breaks outside the tent.
My muscles go tight, gripping the phone like a weapon.An animal, I remind myself.
Then the dirt crackles.
