Page 75 of What Happened Last Night

“We’re going to run a whole festival?” Brit asked. “With other bands? I love it. That could be huge.”

“Will told Stone about it,” Sienna admitted. “He wasn’t sure it was going to happen until he had some organizers and backers on board. But it sounds like it’s a go. I think it’s going to be really big.” She smiled. “And I’ll be there to cover it.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Will

The golf game, I knew, was only the beginning. If I understood men like the McQueen brothers—and I definitely did—the plan was supposed to go as follows: Beat the nerd at golf, and when he’s been suitably humbled, make him walk in the wilderness for four days.

Sports, then survival and brute strength. Just great.

When I beat them at sports, I threw off their plan. I not only beat them, I noted with satisfaction, I buried them. In five hundred years, an archaeologist might find the fossilized remains of their pride. That’s how deep I buried them at that stupid game.

Practice, coordination, expert coaching, visual comprehension of spatial distances, the ability to do calculations in my head, muscle control, focus, plus talent, luck, and good weather. Mission accomplished.

At first, they didn’t take it well. Mack, especially, turned a color of red that looked like he’d spent ninety unwilling minutes in a sauna and had just escaped. He stayed that color for a long time and wouldn’t talk to me. Tanner kept saying “What the fuck,” the words bursting out of him. Jay repeated, “I can’t believe it, man,” a few times, and then he went quiet, too, though his silence wasn’t the angry kind. I noticed he stuck close to my elbow on the walk back to the clubhouse, as if placing himself to fend off attack.

“Do you think they’ll beat me up?” I asked under my breath when we were out of earshot of the other two.

“No,” Jay replied, shaking his head. After a pause, he added, “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I should have eased up,” I admitted. “I can be a little competitive.”

Jay was silent for another moment, and then he murmured so low I could barely hear, “Watching someone beat Mack like that was the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

I bit my lips to keep from grinning.

At the clubhouse, we changed into our hiking clothes, and then we got in our cars to drive to the trailhead. Tanner’s truck had gear in the back. Like the golf club situation, I’d been told not to bring camping gear with me, as Tanner was going to supply it. This was going to be special.

The sky was clouding over as we met at the trailhead. As I shouldered my backpack—of course I had a backpack, the luggage line was a joke—Tanner held out his hand, palm up. “No cell phones,” he announced.

“What?” I asked.

“That’s the rule on boys’ trip,” Mack said, holding up his own phone. “We leave the cell phones here. No phones on the hike. You’re supposed to experience nature, not stare at your phone.”

“That’s stupid,” I pointed out. “What if someone gets hurt and we have to call 911?” I pictured lying there with a broken leg and all of them leaving me to suffer, 127 Hours style.

“Jay has a Green Mile phone,” Tanner said.

“What’s a Green Mile phone?”

“Green Mile is the company I work for as a guide,” Jay said. “They give us company phones to use in case of emergencies. I’ll keep that one, but personal phones stay here.”

I stared at him. “The hiking company you work for is called Green Mile?”

He looked confused. “Yeah. It’s a nice name. What does it mean?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head. This definitely felt like I was heading for an execution. I took my phone from my pocket. “Let me call Luna first.”

“Nope.” Tanner yanked the phone from my hand and tossed it into his truck, along with his own phone. Then he beeped to lock the doors, as if he thought I’d make a dive for it.

“You want me to go four days without being able to contact anyone?” I asked. “People will think I’m dead.”

Tanner smacked me on the shoulder a little too hard. “That’s the fun of boys’ trip,” he said, misunderstanding the meaning of the word fun. “No work, no women, no real world. Let’s hit the trail.” He pointed to a pile on the ground. “There’s your tent. Hope you can carry it.”

The tent was surprisingly light. Jay took the lead. The breeze that blew smelled faintly of rain. We started walking.

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