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“Maybe if we just try to go forward first? Or if I drive and you push, to get more momentum?” Meg suggested.
They tried both, only succeeding in coating them both in another layer of mud. Silas retreated in defeat, flopping down by the edge of the road in a huff. Meg joined him, knees drawn up to her chest, her arms hugging her muddy legs. She rested her chin against one knee, turning toward Silas with a look of weary resignation.
A fine speckling of mud dotted her face from the side of her nose to her lip, and his hand itched to move upward to wipe it off. But he kept his hands to himself this time, even though it meant curling his fingers around the hem of his shirt to keep them in his own lap.
“You have dirt on your face,” he told her.
She shrugged but reached up a moment later to wipe it off. She managed to smudge it across her cheekbone. “Is it gone?”
Silas smiled. “Sure.”
“Should we try again?” she asked, nodding back toward the Jeep.
Silas’s limbs suddenly felt heavy. They were on the sunny side of the mountain, and the weak rays felt good warming his back. “In just a minute,” he told her. To buy himself time. Because he was debating overstepping, and for once in his life he didn’t want to push the envelope. “What was it about?” he asked eventually.
Her eyes narrowed. “What waswhatabout?”
“C’mon,” he chided. “Your fight. With Danny.” Who else would get her upset like that?
She bit her lip, but not in a frustrated way. In a nervous way. “A while back, I decided to apply to some of the smaller California state schools. UC Davis, too.”
Silas sat up straighter. He’d had his own acceptance letters for weeks now, but unlike Danny, with all his talk of his fire-science plans at the community college, Meg never spoke of any individual goals of her own. It had grated on him all year.
“Meg. That’s great,” he told her. He meant it. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t tell Danny, either, figuring I’d deal with that if I got in.”
“Dealwith that?” But even as Silas’s hackles rose, the implications of what Meg was telling him sank in. “Wait.Didyou get in? To Davis?”
Meg offered a shy smile, tentative at the edges.
“Congratulations,” Silas breathed. If he spoke any louder, he feared that smile might crack.
“I haven’t decided if I’ll go.”
“Because of Danny?”
“No—well, I don’t know.” Meg lifted her hands and let them fall limply back to her lap. “He was happy for me and everything ...” She paused again, and Silas bit his tongue to keep from interrupting. “It’s just that Dan doesn’t like things sprung on him, you know that. And we’ve been planning to go to Feather River Community College for, like, forever.”
Something about that word,forever, made Silas wince. It reminded him of Jessica writing Meg and Danny off as a done deal already. But if hedidn’twant them to be a done deal, what kind of crap friend did that make him?
But he found himself saying, “Dannyhas been planning to go there forever.Hemay be ready to start punching the clock, just like his old man, butyoucan go wherever you want.”
Meg glanced away. “Silas. Please. I don’t need a lecture.”
“No lecture. I’m just—”
She held up a hand again. “Enthusiastic, I know.” She tried, but failed, to hide another slight smile. “When aren’t you?” She sighed. “Anyway, thanks for listening.”
The sun had lowered in the last few minutes, and a slant of light cut across her face through the underbrush. A long strand of hair had come loose from its band to fall across her face, brushing across herjawbone. Silas’s line of vision narrowed to that single strand of hair, fluttering ... teasing ... And maybe it was the sight of Meg looking so vulnerable, her dreams laid bare for him, or maybe it was his own sense of immobility, stuck here by the side of the road, but for the first time, he let himself admit it:
He didn’t care if Meg had a boyfriend, or if that boyfriend was his best friend. He didn’t want to be the third wheel, didn’t even want, he realized with a fatalistic sort of detachment, to round out the numbers with Jessica, nice as she was. And he was tired of pretending otherwise. He’d known this, deep down, for ages, hadn’t he? It was why he’d never tried that hard with Jessica. It was why he tried too hard with Danny. The twinges of guilt. The unexpected longing at the worst times. This was why. This. Meg. It was so obvious, even as the sight of her face, so close, blurred before him, his vision a lens out of focus. He should pull back, he knew this, and he blinked, hoping his retinas would adjust and compensate, but they didn’t. She wasright there, and Silas wantedto touch that jaw, that skin, that hair so badly, a wave of near physical pain sluiced upward from his gut to his chest. He wanted her. And Silas wasn’t used to that: wanting but not getting. Not winning. A rising throb of sorrow had him fisting his hands at his side, and he stood up abruptly and waded a few feet away through the mud.
“Silas?” Meg prompted from behind him, and she sounded so confused Silas nearly laughed. How could shepossiblynot understand? He felt so bare and raw and overexposed, the bitterness caught him by the throat and threatened to choke him.
He turned to face her, setting one hand on the fender of the Jeep to steady himself, as she followed in his wake, picking her way through the mud.
“Youshouldaccept Davis,” he managed, and even though the four words fell flat and hollow in the quiet of the forest, getting them out was no small victory. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t try something new.”
