Page 42 of Past Tents

“You said that ten minutes ago and we’ve gone up three since then.” I couldn’t catch a glimpse of which student it was, but I had my suspicions. Cammie Longmeyer had been in my class last year and she always asked the same thing when I assigned a reading: “How many pages is that? How many chapters?” Some kids always needed numbers. Some adults too.

“Quit counting and you’ll feel a lot better,” Ally said, and I smiled to myself. She was great with these kids. No wonder they all clambered to be in her class.

I needed her to lead the group and set a reasonable pace. If it felt comfortable to her, it would be comfortable for the students. They wanted to go at a leisurely pace and talk while they hiked.

I had a tendency to tear up the trails without realizing it. I’d get into a thought cycle and not realize I was vaulting up a mountain until I turned to find no one behind me. Long ago, I learned I did better bringing up the rear of the group and letting someone else set the pace.

That meant that I’d been hiking up a mountain for the past half hour like a bunny chasing a carrot, always there in the distance but too far away for me to take a bite. Safer that way for both of us. Even if Ally had wanted me to kiss her in the tent in mybackyard, I couldn’t exactly do anything to test my theory until we got the kids into their parents’ cars, safe and sound. Forty-eight hours from now.

Might as well have been a month.

“The doorway of your tent should face away from the lake,” Ally’s voice called out amid the sea of snapping tent poles and the ruffle of nylon. “You want to be facing downwind, otherwise an animal will follow its little curious nose right into your tent in the middle of the night.”

“Really?”

“What kind of animal?”

The chorus of voices were more curious than panicked, and it amused me that Ally was threatening them with the very thing that frightened her the most.

I looked over to see her standing amid three tents with her hands on her hips. Head tilted to the side, she seemed to be considering how big a lie to tell. When she caught me looking at her, she grinned, caught. “Bear, most likely.”

I shook my head at her as she bit her lip and turned back to the students. “Okay, probably not, but just face the right way anyhow. Because I said so.” I continued to watch her take command over two of the guys who’d decided that seniors no longer needed to turn in homework and were annoying half the faculty with their antics. They each towered over her by a foot and probably weighed double what she did. Cassius yanked the wool beanie off his dark blond hair and shook it like he’d justleft the ocean. Picking up one of the tent poles, he bent it into a U shape and let it snap open in his hands, making afwaksound that sounded like a loud fart.

It was off to the races from there. Nothing beat a giant fart in the woods for these guys.

His buddy Miles liked that trick, so he did the same with the second pole. I’d have been more annoyed by them except that they were doing the exact kind of dumb shit Shane and I used to do growing up.

I started to go over there, ready to put them in line, but I stopped myself. She hadn’t asked for my help, even if I wanted her to have it. So I waited. And watched.

Ally stood staring at them, expressionless, arms folded across her chest. They continued flapping their tent poles around and a couple kids next to them caught on and started doing it too. She pointed at those kids and shut them down in half a second. “You want to lose an eye with that thing?”

There was some mumbling and head hanging before those two got back to putting their tent up. As to Cassius and Miles, Ally continued staring at them, saying nothing, while they flexed their poles a few more times, each time looking up at her and expecting her to blow her top.

Then, they finally realized they weren’t going to get her goat, and they stopped. “You know what’s cooler than making fart sounds?”

Neither one answered, but both of them gave it a fair bit of thought.

“Carrying a few poles and some fabric on your back and turning it into a man cave in under five minutes. You want to give it a go? Were you listening when we explained it before?”

Some nodding and grunting followed. Ally pointed to the poles and the slots on the tent, and the guys coordinated their efforts, sliding the tent poles in and anchoring them, then using the full power of their gym-honed backs and shoulders to pound in the tent stays. Within minutes their tent was up and they swaggered away high-fiving each other.

Ally moved on to the next group of tent builders, and I found myself unable to move on at all. I was fully stuck on her.

“Who’s hungry?” I yelled, tapping a metal spoon on the side of a pot.

“Yes!”

“Me!”

“Yes, please!”

“Word.”

The chorus of responses came from down near the lake where half the group had decided to skip rocks before dinner. The rest of the kids were lazing in camp chairs around the firepit where we had a small fire burning. Ally and I had led the kids through the forest to select good-sized logs and kindling, which they’d stacked just off to the side.

A few yards away, twelve pitched tents sat in a clearing, some listing to the side if the kids had pulled too hard on the stringsthat held them to the ground with metal pegs. Others had their tent flies flapping with the breeze. And despite my very clear instructions, two of the tents faced Sky Lake instead of away from it.

Always one kid who didn’t get the memo. Or two.

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