Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 90211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
“It’s upstate New York, not somewhere in rural middle America.”
“Feels like an alien planet.” He squints out the windshield as we come around a bend and angle toward a large gravel parking lot with a crumbling welcome center perched at the far end. RVs, trucks, SUVs, and family minivans are crammed into the poorly lined spaces. Liam’s car stands out here.
We get out and I take the chance to stretch my legs. It was a long trip based entirely on a hunch. I’m fully prepared to apologize and eat crow if this doesn’t work out, but I’m hopeful.
Memories flood me. I didn’t expect them to hit this hard. It’s been a long time since I was last here, but seeing it again is like traveling back to when I was a different person.
“Want to hear something sad?” I ask when Liam joins me. We walk toward the main campsite.
“God, yes. Make me weep.”
“I don’t have many happy memories of my whole family together. Mostly Dad was a piece of shit, Mom was always afraid of him, I learned fast how to stay hidden, and Luke did everything he could to please him. But the few times we came out here, I felt… free in a way I couldn’t in the city.”
“Must be that fresh air.” He wrinkles his nose.
“It was more than that. I don’t know. Me and Luke wandered a lot when we were here, went swimming in the lake, met other kids and played games. I remember coming back to the camper, sunburnt and exhausted, and my dad’s bad mood didn’t seem so horrible. I didn’t worry about Dad doing anything stupid because there were always other people nearby, and we weren’t surrounded by his cronies kissing his ass. He was forced to act normal, and I think that let the rest of us breathe freely for the first time in forever.”
We pause beside the welcome center. A main path runs through the central area, branching off to various rented spaces. There’s a swimming pool, a jungle gym, basketball court, and some crumbling soccer goals in an overgrown field.
“I’m sorry it was like that,” he says quietly. His hand slips into mine.
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because you didn’t get to stay here. You didn’t get to feel that way all the time.”
“Did you? Feel free when you were young, I mean?”
He snorts and runs a hand through his hair. “Not exactly. So maybe it’s lucky you got to feel this way.”
“You never had an escape? A place you went?”
He considers as we start walking. I peer down every campground lane but don’t recognize anyone. “I was never much of a nature guy. I’m still not, so there weren’t idyllic lakeside weenie roasts in my childhood.”
“I can’t picture you roasting anything, much less a weenie.”
“But there was this book I liked. I had to read it for school during one of the periods in my life when my foster family was forcing me to attend regularly, back before I was old enough to figure out how to drop out. It was about this kid who got into a plane accident and had to survive with nothing but—“
“Oh my god,” I say, nudging him playfully. “You are not about to talk about Hatchet, are you?”
His grin is broad and lopsided. “You read it?”
“Everyone reads that book in school, and it’s terrible.”
“Yeah, I thought so too at first. What’s more boring than listening to the whiney internal monologue of an annoying asshole for like two hundred pages? But then I started thinking about that kid, and how he had to learn to keep himself alive, and how that hardened him and changed him. I started seeing myself in his shoes, not as some fucking wilderness expert, but as a young man thrown into a hellish situation. Every day I woke up thinking my life was terrible, there was no reason to keep going on, but that stupid book made me think maybe it was happening for a reason. Maybe it was happening to make me harder and stronger, and that helped me get through the day. It gave me purpose, you know? Or at least it made me think all the horrific shit I went through in the system wasn’t only meaningless torture.”
I stop walking and lean into him. I cling to his arm and kiss his shoulder, breathing him in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”
“No, it’s okay, why would you? I haven’t thought about that book in a long time, but seeing all this—“ He waves a hand at the trees. “Couldn’t help but remember the way it made me feel.”
“Do you think it was right? I mean, what you went through, it shaped you?”
“It shaped me. It hardened me too, but maybe too much.” His arms wrap around me as he pulls me close. “I learned to trust the Whelans, learned to fight, to kill, to hurt. I learned pain’s the only constant. Suffering is universal. We all bleed, right? But I never got the chance to learn other things." He dips down to kiss me.