Blue Ridge Calling, page 9
Without thinking, Kora reached out and took Hunter’s hand. It was warm from where she had been leaning toward the fire. She offered up the toasted marshmallow, and Hunter pulled it off the stick with her fingers this time, sucking on the tip of her thumb to get rid of the stickiness. When she finished, she glanced back at Kora, who nodded for her to continue.
“Now, I just don’t really see either of them much anymore,” she said. “Because seeing my mom means seeing my dad. And it’s not like I’m estranged from them, but most of the time, I just… don’t want to.”
Kora nodded while she listened, rubbing her thumb over Hunter’s knuckles. She wasn’t sure she could ever understand the intricacies of another person’s family; sometimes she was still on the outside of the Riveras, and she was practically one of them. But she was glad that Hunter was talking to her. It felt good to know her better, to listen to the gentle cadence of her voice, the one Kora had found so intimidating at first.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Hunter smiled back. “Told you,” she said. “Open book.”
“You can ask me something if you want.”
Hunter tilted her head back as she considered, and Kora’s eyes wandered over the expansive column of her throat.
“I’ll ask you the same thing,” she said.
Kora laughed quietly. “Cheater.”
Hunter grinned.
As she considered her answer, she grabbed another marshmallow and squashed it between two of her fingers.
“It’s always just been me and my mom,” she said. “We’ve had our issues. I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure out our relationship, and then when she married Paul a few years ago, I stopped trying. I never really even got to know him. But she and Paul are moving away soon, and I’m…” she paused, not wanting to remind herself or Hunter of her plans to go to New York in the fall. “I’m not going with them.”
As she paused, she listened to the chirping crickets, loudly singing in the trees.
“What about your dad?” Hunter asked softly, squeezing Kora’s hand.
“I don’t know much about him,” said Kora with a small shrug. “He was a farmhand on my grandparents’ farm when my mom was a teenager. He got her pregnant and then moved on. I guess I just didn’t think it was worth putting in a lot of effort to care about someone who obviously didn’t care about me.”
Her throat felt tight. That wasn’t quite true. Sometimes she did wonder, but her stubbornness to shove him to the back of her mind always won out. It wasn’t that her mom made up the difference—though for the most part she did everything a parent needed to do. Kora just didn’t think he was worth thinking about.
“That’s why I’m so close with Sage’s family,” she said. “Mom was close with Liz—Sage’s mom—before she died, and they basically raised us together. I’ve known them since we were babies. When I think of family, I think of them.”
When she finally looked up, she found Hunter’s eyes on her face, unwavering. It made her cheeks flush. Hunter was roasting another marshmallow, but all her attention was on Kora.
“I’m glad I can help you find Sam,” said Hunter, barely a whisper. “Now that I know how important he is to you.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” said Kora, smiling gently.
Kora heard someone turn over in the tent behind them. She remembered that they weren’t alone. And she remembered that she had a lot of reasons to keep this platonic. She didn’t want to hurt Connor. She was leaving at the end of the summer, and there was still so much she didn’t know about Hunter. Even though the weight of everything they had shared felt heavy between them.
But then Hunter looked up at her, her eyelashes casting long shadows across her cheeks, embers warming the color of her lips. Kora wanted to reach out and run a finger down Hunter’s face, pull her forward, and see if those lips were as warm as they looked. She tucked her hands underneath her thighs to keep herself from doing something she shouldn’t.
“We should probably put the fire out,” she said, her voice barely an exhale.
Hunter nodded, catching her marshmallow on fire and blowing it out seconds later. “You want this one?” she asked. Kora imagined eating it the way Hunter had, but she decided it wasn’t a good idea.
“Go for it,” she said. Hunter ate it in one bite.
Kora got up and looked for a water bucket. She threw it quickly over the fire and noticed her hands were shaking.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted to kiss someone so bad. Maybe when she and Connor had first got together, but maybe not even then. The memory of her kiss with Hunter ran through her head as she listened to the fire hiss and watched the steam and smoke pour into the sky.
When they climbed into the tent, there was room for each of them on either side of Sage. Kora was relieved. She wasn’t sure how she could lie next to Hunter in the dark right now. As they settled in for the night, all she could really think about was the way Hunter’s lips looked in the light of the fire.
Then she heard Sage’s deep, measured breathing and remembered what they were there for. She felt guilty for thinking about anything but Sam. This trip was pulling her in all different directions, and her heart ached. Outside, an owl hooted. She hoped it would be over soon—with Sam back where he should be and her heart settled back into place.
When she slept, she dreamt of fire.
Chapter 8
The sun was beating down when they started on the path. The small dirt trail was dappled by the shade of the trees, but the heat couldn’t be stopped. Summer turned everything technicolor, and Sage could feel the waves of heat bouncing off the ground and soaking into her skin.
Swelter was a word invented in the South. Even having lived here her whole life, she never seemed to get used to it.
The sweat on her neck made her feel like bugs were crawling on her. Heat only made her anxiety more palpable.
The French Broad was 218 miles long and surrounded by a combination of highways, neighborhoods, and dense hiking trails. Much of it could not be accessed directly. Sage and Noah had put together a list of points referenced in Sam’s notebook, assembled from messy lists and places he had circled on looseleaf maps, but Sage already felt lost in a vast, unknowable space. She doubted her ability to find her own way through, much less get to Sam. If he was even here. The doubt got worse every day they didn’t find him. She wondered if she should have called the police or told her dad.
But something about these woods told her nobody else had a chance of finding him. She didn’t believe in the world of ghosts and spirits that Sam did, but she could feel him out there. Science has disproved twin telepathy and other types of psychological connections between siblings, but Sage had known the night her mom died that something was wrong. She knew she would feel it if Sam were gone. Her brother was out in the Appalachian wilds somewhere, waiting for her to find him.
They completed a trail loop that took them by the river. Sage was looking for any evidence along the waterline that Sam had been there. Maybe he had gotten lost. Maybe he had waded into the water and gotten caught in a sudden flood. Those happened all the time in the mountains. She focused on the map in front of her, his hastily scrawled notes about potential sightings.
After a couple hours, they stopped on the riverbank to eat and cool off. Kora laid out a blanket and sat down with her feet in the water while Connor and Hunter brought out bags of food from their backpacks. They picked apart sandwiches and munched on chips. Sage shared her liter-sized water bottle. A ladybug crawled over Kora’s sandwich bag. Slowly and carefully, she pulled her sketchbook out of her bag and started to draw it.
Sage grimaced against her will. Kora noticed the face and raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“I just don’t like ladybugs,” said Sage.
“Who doesn’t like ladybugs?” Kora asked incredulously.
“Me.”
“What don’t you like about them?” Kora gently caught the ladybug as it tried to leave her knee, coaxed it onto her finger, then placed it gingerly back in the center. She returned to sketching it.
“One bit me once.”
“Ladybugs don’t bite.”
“Yes, they do!” Sage insisted. “Not that often, but it hurts.”
She turned to Connor for backup. He shrugged.
“That’s true,” said Hunter, still chewing on her sandwich. “They can bite.”
“Thank you!”
“But they’re also super important for the ecosystem.”
“Whatever,” said Sage. “They can nourish the ecosystem away from me.”
“I think they’re pretty,” said Kora, slowly pulling her knee up to her face to more closely admire the bug.
Sage noticed that both Connor and Hunter were tracking Kora’s movement with their eyes. Kora’s curls were pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, revealing a neck that was slick with sweat from their hike. Her eyes were lit up in the sun, turning them from light brown to gold. Sage had seen it a million times, but the two yahoos were staring like they’d never seen a pretty girl in their lives. Sage resisted the urge to fake barf. She turned to Noah, hoping to find some camaraderie that wasn’t vomit-inducing, but he was placidly reading a book on a nearby rock. She sighed and scooched another foot away from Kora and her ladybug.
They continued on their path after lunch even slower than before. Once they finished the loop, they got back in the car and drove to the next river entrance point on the map. This one was just on the side of the road. After looking around for a while, they kept driving and headed for a campground for the night. By the time they got there, the shadows were long and the orange sunset bled through the trees.
Sage sat against a tree, dropping her backpack to the side. Connor and Hunter each set up a tent while Noah built a small fire. Kora snacked on pre-packaged waffles and Cocoa Puffs.
It was still unbearably hot, and Sage knew from experience that it would never really cool off. After dark, the temperature would sink to a tepid 75 degrees, cool enough to sleep but still humid and stifling. Every summer since they were kids the high temperatures were creeping up, becoming more dangerous and unsettling. Summer was not her favorite season. She preferred cool breezes and sweaters and a set class schedule.
For dinner, Connor used a pan to make a huge pile of nachos that they all shared. Sage watched the fire flicker as the light dimmed around them and listened to the rest of the group’s chattering.
“You’re only saying that because you had a crush on her sophomore year,” Kora was saying, her voice amused. Sage didn’t bother to try and remember back that far. Connor’s crushes were usually predictably lame, present company excluded.
“I did not,” he protested a little too loudly to be believable. “She and I worked together on a few group projects. I liked her dog! I did not have a crush on her.”
Sage could hear Kora’s eye roll without looking up.
“What kind of dog?” Noah asked, as if that mattered to his decision of whether or not to believe Connor.
“Corgi,” said Connor confidently.
“Royal breed,” said Hunter, laughing. “You are so predictable.”
Connor was startled into silence. “I have no idea what you could possibly mean.”
“That proves it,” said Kora. “Whenever he gets defensive, he starts speaking like landed gentry from the 19th century.”
“You’re all hooligans and scoundrels,” said Connor, leaning into the accusation with a reluctant grin. “I would best any of you in a duel.”
“Oh, I’d like to see that,” said Kora. “Hunter, will you be my champion? I’ll give you my last bag of peach rings.”
“That’s not fair,” Connor whined. “Face me yourself like a real man, Mason.”
“Nah, I think I’ll have a woman do all the hard work for me and take the credit for myself like a real man, Riley.”
“Damn, dude, she really got you there,” said Noah. “I gotta side with her on this one.”
Connor and Hunter leapt up and began mock-jousting with last night’s hot dog skewers.
Noah turned to Sage. “I’m learning all about the social dynamics at your weird hipster school,” he said, taking a bite from the nachos and reaching for the bag of marshmallows. “Sam told me a little bit about it, but it’s totally different hearing it from you guys. Is it true you had to maintain a 3.0 to stay enrolled?”
“Yup,” said Kora, popping her lips on the P. “But there’s a lot of flexibility with class, so you can choose to take ones that suit your learning style. If, for example, you hate taking tests like me, you can mostly focus on your specialty subject, like art.”
“What’s your specialty subject?” Noah asked Sage.
“I’m in the STEM program,” said Sage, skewering a marshmallow to roast. “Science, technology, engineering, and math.”
“Oh, like your dad,” he said with his mouth full of s’more.
Sage looked up at him. Logically, she knew that he and Sam had spent a lot of time together, but their family was pretty private. Neither she nor Sam made a lot of friends. Having someone she barely knew already know so much about her and her family was unsettling. She just nodded.
“Do you want to be a professor like your parents?” he asked, undeterred by her hesitation.
“I just want to survive high school,” she said with a shrug.
“Did you have any scandalous crushes or forbidden loves like Kora and Connor?”
Sage really hoped Noah wasn’t asking because he wanted to ask her out. That was just going to make everything more awkward and uncomfortable than it already was, thanks to Kora and her bisexual melodrama.
“Yeah,” said Kora before Sage could say anything. “With the chem lab. It was explosive.”
Sage rolled her eyes. She had never really been interested in anyone like that. While everyone else was having crushes and getting all giddy over asking each other out, she was finding obsession after obsession to fuel the ADHD goblin that lived in her brain and demanded entertainment. She was lucky that there were at least some school subjects that were interesting enough to hold her attention, otherwise she never would have kept her grades up enough for Oakcrest. But when she wasn’t swimming or doing extra reading from the chem and physics textbooks, she was playing Skyrim and learning to skateboard and teaching herself complicated sailing knots she would never need to know.
It hadn’t really occurred to her that it was weird she didn’t like anyone until further into high school when some of her peers were in their second year of relationships and were talking about staying together after graduation. That seemed silly and frivolous to her, though she had respectfully cheered on Kora and Connor until their inevitable end.
And then her mom died, and Sage lost her chance to ever ask her about it. She also stopped caring about what she was supposed to be doing. It was easy to reject society’s expectations for her when it was hard enough just to keep breathing.
She realized Noah was still waiting for her answer.
“No need,” she said dryly. “Kora had enough crushes for the both of us.”
Thankfully, Kora took the cue and launched into the story of her first kiss, which had resulted in their principal installing security cameras in the orchestra room storage closet. No one asked Sage any more questions.
Once the fire started to die down, the group divided up between the tents. Sage considered asking Connor if she could crash with the boys so she wouldn’t have to third-wheel, but she thought pointing out Kora and Hunter’s sexual tension would probably upset him.
She stayed by the fire while everyone else got ready for bed. Their campsite was only a few yards from the river. She could see the reflection of moonlight on the surface and closed her eyes. The beauty only made her angry.
She wasn’t there to camp or hike or admire the natural splendor of the great outdoors. She wasn’t there to eat dinner with her awkward and haphazardly assembled friend group. She wasn’t there to sleep in a tent with two people who just started dating.
She didn’t blame any of them for enjoying themselves when they could. It was hard for anyone to understand how Sage knew that Sam was in trouble. He was known for his disappearances.
Still, their lack of progress ate at her. It felt like every hour the forest expanded around them, the mountains growing taller and the valleys deeper. Even with Sam’s notes, it seemed like the trees moved around while no one was looking. Sage wanted to punch something.
This feeling happened to her a lot. Sometimes at swim practice when the coach yelled at her, sometimes at home when she got frustrated with her dad. It used to happen whenever Sam came into her room to bother her. Now she wished she had paid more attention.
Her hands shook. Punching a tree would be satisfying but would probably require a trip to urgent care. Instead, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her backpack and walked down to the river.
Sage knew smoking was bad for her. She was an athlete and a scientist. She had seen the commercials that showed you what a smoker’s lungs looked like—black shriveled-up meat sacks. But there were only so many ways she could keep herself from breaking her hand on a 150-year-old birch.
