“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”
“Oh, I do. But are you sure you wouldn’t like some help? You’ll need me to hold a flashlight if this takes much longer.”
I sighed. Held my hands up in surrender. “I’m being bested by a piece of sporting goods.”
“Does your opponent have instructions?”
“It probably did at some point.”
She shook her head, stood up, grabbed the top of the tent. “Okay, you take this end. I’ll do this end. I think the long part loops over the top here.”
Ten minutes later we had the tent set up and staked down. I collected some rocks and some kindling for a fire pit and got a campfire going with the firewood I’d brought. I cooked us burgers in a pan over the fire and baked beans directly in the can.
“I’m impressed,” Mia said.
“So you like camping?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said, but she was smiling.
It was only later, after we’d had dinner and s’mores and washed our dishes in the moonlit river and I’d played some guitar around the campfire as Mia sipped tea and chowed through a pack of Starburst, that I finally understood Mia’s issue with camping.
It was maybe ten o’clock, but in camping time, that’s like two in the morning. We got into our tent, snuggled into the double sleeping bag. I pulled Mia to me.
“Wanna know the best part about camping?”
I felt her whole body tense up — but not in the good way. “What was that?” she whispered.
“What was what?”
“I heard something,” she said.
“It was probably just an animal,” I said.
She flicked on the flashlight. “How do you know that?”
I took the flashlight and shined it on her. Her eyes were huge. “You’re scared?”
She looked down and — barely — nodded her head.
“The only thing you need to worry about out here is bears and they’re only interested in the food, which is why we put it all away in the car,” I reassured her.
“I’m not scared of bears,” Mia said disdainfully.
“Then what is it?”
“I, I just feel like such a sitting target out here.”
“Sitting target for who?”
“I don’t know, people with guns. All those hunters.”
“That’s ridiculous. Half of Oregon hunts. My whole family hunts. They hunt animals, not campers.”
“I know,” she said in a small voice. “It’s not really that, either. I just feel. . defenseless. It’s just, I don’t know, the world feels so big when you’re out in the wide open. It’s like you don’t have a place in it when you don’t have a home.”
“Your place is right here,” I whispered, laying her down and hugging her close.
She snuggled into me. “I know.” She sighed. “What a freak! The granddaughter of a retired Forest Service biologist who’s scared of camping.”
“That’s just the half of it. You’re a classical cellist whose parents are old punk rockers. You’re a total freak. But you’re my freak.”
We lay there in silence for a while. Mia clicked off the flashlight and scooted closer to me. “Did you hunt as a kid?” she whispered. “I’ve never heard you mention it.”
“I used to go out with my dad,” I murmured back.
Even though we were the only people within miles, something about the night demanded we speak in hushed tones. “He always said when I was twelve I’d get a rifle for my birthday and he’d teach me to shoot.
But when I was maybe nine, I went out with some older cousins and one of them loaned me his rifle. And it must’ve been beginner’s luck or something because I shot a rabbit. My cousins were all going crazy. Rabbits are small and quick and hard for even seasoned hunters to kill, and I’d hit one on my first try. They went to get it so we could bring it back to show everyone and maybe stuff it for a trophy. But when I saw it all bloody, I just started crying. Then I started screaming that we had to take it to a vet, but of course it was dead.
I wouldn’t let them bring it back. I made them bury it in the forest. When my dad heard, he told me that the point of hunting was to take some sustenance from the animal, whether we eat it or skin it or something, otherwise it was a waste of a life. But I think he knew I wasn’t cut out for it because when I turned twelve, I didn’t get a rifle; I got a guitar.”
“You never told me that before,” Mia said.
“Guess I didn’t want to blow my punk-rock credibility.”
“I would think that would cement it,” she said.
“Nah. But I’m emocore all the way, so it works.”
A warm silence hung in the tent. Outside, I could hear the low hoot of an owl echo in the night. Mia nudged me in the ribs. “You’re such a softy!”
“This from the girl who’s scared of camping!”
She chuckled. I pulled her closer to me, wanting to eradicate any distance between our bodies. I pushed her hair off her neck and nuzzled my face there. “Now you owe me an embarrassing story from your childhood,” I murmured into her ear.
“All my embarrassing stories are still happening,” she replied.
“There must be one I don’t know.”
She was silent for a while. Then she said: “Butterflies.”
“Butterflies?”
“I was terrified of butterflies.”
“What is it with you and nature?”