There was no sun—every trace of it was obscured by clouds—but it was still a pleasant day. She felt almost cheerful for the first hour. By the third hour... she wanted to lie down and never move again.
As they continued, the shore became more difficult to walk over. Instead of pea-size pebbles, there were jagged rocks that they had to climb over. None of them particularly wanted to go into the shadows of the woods again, so they kept clambering over the shoreline.
She heard the trickle of another stream that tumbled through the forest and spilled out into the lake. It spread out into a delta between wet rocks. Careful where she put her hands, Claire climbed over the rocks, keeping her feet out of the water—andrealized that the sharp points she was barely looking at in the gravelly water were shells. “Reyva? Mariana?”
There were dozens of them, half buried in the sandy gravel of the streambed. Water curled around them and spilled over them. Most were coated in silt, but all were unmistakably live mussels.
Her hands shook as she touched them.
She’d neverlikedmussels. Slimy things. But she knew they could eat them. Jack had said so. Freshwater mussels. Safe from red tide bacteria.
“I’ll build a fire,” Mariana said, crossing over the stream.
Claire plunged her hand into the stream and dug them out. They’d have to heat them up to get the shells to pop open, she knew that much. Maybe sticking them next to a fire wasn’t how a five-star chef would do it—better to sauté them in white wine or boil them in broth. But just plain heat should work too. And then they would eat!
They’d saved some of the wood scrapings from the fallen log, and Mariana started the fire with her gum wrapper and battery.That should continue to work until we run out of wrappers, Claire thought.Or the batteries die. Or...
“Claire,” Reyva said.
Claire fixed her eyes on her.
“You’re breathing fast,” Reyva said. “Tell us how to help.”
She almost hadn’t noticed this time. Her brain had begun to spiral so quickly, without anything specific to set it off. But then, she didn’t always need a trigger that anyone else would recognize as significant. That was part of what made it so difficult to explain to others, or to herself. “Counting helps,” shesaid. “Puzzles. Math. Sometimes I run through the Fibonacci sequence or Pythagorean triples or even just the times tables. Or I recite ballet combinations.”
Coming around her other side, Mariana said, “Okay then. Fibonacci...”
Together, they went through the sequence until Claire’s breathing steadied. And then Claire began to talk. It spilled out of her—all the times it had happened, at home, in school, at the supermarket. Sometimes, like now, she could prevent it, but other times... Like after the cliff, as they had seen. She told them about how others had reacted, especially her classmates and supposed friends at school. She told them about how her parents always acted like she needed to be fixed, how they saw her as fragile. She told them about how she kept her distance from people, not wanting to deal with their judgment, their pity, or their advice. She talked about how it made her feel, when the attacks happened, and how she felt afterward—all the things she’d never told anyone else.
While she talked, they used a rock like a griddle and tucked the mussels near the flames. When Claire ran out of words, her friends did the best thing they could have done: they both hugged her—a tight bear hug from Mariana and a one-armed squeeze from Reyva with a pat on her shoulder. They didn’t try to tell her what she should feel, or do, or how to fix it. They merely showed her that they had listened. And that was perfect.
Side by side, they all watched the shells, waiting for them to cook. A few more minutes passed, then a few more. “Anyone know how long they take to cook?” Claire asked.
One of the shells popped open by a few millimeters, then another.
“I think that’s how long,” Reyva said.
Grabbing a stick, Claire used it to scoot the cooked mussels away from the fire. While they cooled, she emptied the bait out of the can, filled it with lake water, and set the fiddleheads to boil. Mariana dug out more mussels and positioned them around the fire.
Once the mussels in the first batch were cool enough to touch, Mariana opened the shells for Reyva, and all three of them ate. “I take back every doubting, pessimistic thing I ever said or thought,” Reyva said as she swallowed another.
“I don’t,” Claire said. “But this is good.”
When the fiddleheads were done, they ate those as well, and they drank the water.
“You ever tell anyone how bad it is sometimes?” Reyva asked Claire. “All the stuff you told us—does anyone else know?”
“My parents know,” Claire said.
“And they don’t help?” Mariana asked.
Her parents did try. They believed they were helping. Even this summer... Sending her here was their latest attempt to help her. “I don’t think they know how,” Claire said.
“We don’t either,” Mariana said, “unless you tell us.”
She looked at both of them and wanted to cry. “I’m glad we met.”
“Definitely wish it had been under different circumstances,” Reyva said.
