Page 48 of Past Tents

And even though she’d offered, I wasn’t willing to tell her everything. I didn’t want her to know the part of me that sometimes struggled with feeling despondent when I was alone at home. I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me or judge me for not trying harder to be happy, as though it were a choice. “Do you know much about mental health issues?”

It’s not that I thought she was necessarily holding out on me with her own struggles, but I wanted to know how open-minded she might be about the severity of mine if I told her more.

Even in the dim light, I could see her eyes go wide with surprise. “I mean, I don’t think you can teach students for ten years and not know about mental health issues. Right?”

“True. I guess I meant more specifically.”

“You mean have I worked one-on-one?”

“Yeah.”

She patted her lips with a finger, thinking, and I stared at the plump shape of her mouth, not quite a pout but full, pillowy lips. I was such an asshole. I’d asked her an important question, and now I was sitting here ogling her lips.

“I’ve had a couple of students confide in me. Jayne is one. Last year I had two others. I wanted to make sure I was telling them the right thing and not just spouting moronic philosophy, so I did a lot of research.”

“Does Jayne seem like she’s handling it? Any red flags?”

She shook her head. “No, she’s managing. She knows what she needs to do to keep herself ‘out of the pit,’ as she calls it.”

I knew the pit. I knew that there were days when it didn’t matter how objectively fine life looked. There was no climbing out of the pit and no desire to try.

I could tell Ally how far down I’d sunk. I could let her know me better.

“Okay. Good for me to know, though. I’ll look out for her a little more than usual.”

No, I wouldn’t tell her. Not yet. I wasn’t ready for her to see me differently.

Ally was watching me, and I realized I had my palms against my cheeks, resting my chin in my hands, elbows tucked against my body protectively. I lowered my hands to my lap and stretched my shoulders, but her gaze stayed fixed on me as though she knew something about me despite my effort to hide it.

Then she leaned back and grabbed a small red duffel bag I hadn’t noticed. Her eyebrows bounced as she pulled the string and opened it, producing a package of graham crackers, a chocolate bar, and a half-full bag of marshmallows.

“You didn’t hang that in the tree with the rest of the food?”

“Not yet. I had a feeling I’d want a little extra dessert. Join me?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

I fished around on the ground for some fresh sticks and speared a marshmallow. The longer we sat out here, the less time we’d be alone together in a tiny tent.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

ALLY

Eventually, we both ran out of excuses.

I’d eaten three s’mores, which was two s’mores more than I’d ever eaten in one sitting in my life, and I felt a little sick to my stomach. Clay had stopped after two, claiming he didn’t want to open a new package of chocolate, but he was probably just as ill as me.

The fire had died down to a few lonely embers, which made the air around us much colder. We’d have to put another log on the fire if we had any chance of continuing to brave the elements, and there was no reason to do that when the whole point was to put the fire out.

So I watched as Clay scooped up the dirt and small rocks he’d piled nearby and dropped them on the embers. For a moment, a rogue flame shot up, somehow enthused by the dirt dousing. “You sure you don’t have kindling mixed in with that dirt?” I asked.

“Reminds me of a time Shane and I went camping as kids and did exactly that. Our dad told us to scoop some dirt on the dyingfire. To a couple of kids, that meant throwing the closest dirt pile on top and getting inside our tents.”

“Uh-oh. Tell me you didn’t burn down the Smoky Mountains.”

“No, but about an hour after I went to bed, I opened my eyes and saw the fire had kicked back to life and was blazing in the firepit. In the middle of the forest with no one watching it. I started screaming and kicked out of my sleeping bag, unzipped the tent, and ran out barefoot. And there was my dad watching from inside his tent.”

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