“We camp instead,” Hope says. “It was established homecoming of freshman year. Our parents wouldn’t let us camp alone, though, so Travis’s parents set up their tent a few sites away and came to check on us every few hours.”
“That’s sweet,” I say.
Mimi says, “Once, sophomore year, we camped in Hope’s backyard.”
“Desperation,” Hope says. “None of our parents were willing to camp in December.”
“Do you like fish?” Travis asks. “We got a trout in our teacher’s honor.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, we always grill a trout, but this time it has special significance.”
“Bad news on the booze front,” Hope says, unzipping one of the backpacks. “I was only able to get my hands on the dregs of a bottle.”
Travis examines the label. “Bourbon.”
“I prefer tea when camping anyway,” Mimi says, holding up her mug.
“Did you bring tea?” Travis asks.
“There’s mint growing everywhere around here,” Mimi says.
“So you just picked it and dropped it into your cup?”
“Yeah.”
“Gross.”
“I have no idea what you are even talking about,” Mimi says. “I do this every time. And how is mint tea gross?”
“But is it really tea,” Travis says. “Because my understanding is that tea is dried stuff.”
Mimi shakes her head, opens her eyes wide, and stares into her mug.
“We can’t even look it up,” Hope says.
“It’s possible we’ll never know,” Travis says.
“I want to try it,” I say. “The tea.”
Mimi looks at me. “So you’re with me on this one?”
I smile at her and shrug. “I guess I need to taste it to find out.”
She stands. Sets her mug down where she was sitting. She has all these little marks on her thighs from the texture of the rock she was sitting on. She walks along the path to the patch of mint, and I watch her break off a stem.
She pours water from the bottle into the tin pot and sets it over the flame.
“Did you bring a mug?” she asks me.
I shake my head.
She steps into her tent and emerges a few seconds later with a green mug, and I can’t help thinking about how her mouth has probably been pressed to it so many times, and soon mine will be, too. She drops in the mint that she picked for me. She pours the hot water and places the mug into my hands.
“Let it steep for a few minutes,” she says.
* * *
“I was thinking,” Hope says after dinner. “About your tattoo. If you get it, you should also get one on your other arm, and that one should say the beginning of love. That way, depending on whether you choose to read them left to right or right to left, it could be that love began and now it’s ending, or that love ended and is now beginning again.”
The fire they built is going strong, lighting up their faces.
“But I thought love was supposed to be eternal,” I say.
Travis sighs. “Just another lie they feed us when we’re children. At least they’re happy about it, though.”
“They’re not happy,” I say. “They’ve just obliterated themselves.”
There was a night last January, a night that Mom and I pretend never happened. The holidays had been full of stress and traffic and travel. The whole ride up to Portland, where we always spent Christmas, my heart had raced with the anticipation of coming out to my cousins and aunt and uncle and grandmother. Someone was bound to ask me if I had a boyfriend—they did every year—and I didn’t want to just say no. I was so swept up in it that I barely noticed that my parents were more hostile than usual, until the drive home, when my mind was clearer. They stayed together for most of January, but the house may as well have been a trap—one misstep and blades would plummet from the ceiling, or the living room would fill with poisonous gas.
By the end of the month, Dad was staying with his friend a few towns away. One night I was up late with homework, trying to concentrate, and I thought a snack might help me through it.
My mother was down there, alone at the kitchen table.
“It didn’t make things easier on us,” she said out of nowhere, “that you had to tell the family when you did. I’m not saying you caused it, but there was tension between us before that, and to have that added stress … And at Christmas.”
I tell them about it.
Mimi says, “And I hope you said, ‘That’s fucked up, Mom.’”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t say that.”
“Well, I hope you do.” She sips her tea. I sip mine. “I hope you tell her in the near future.”
“The nearest future,” Hope says.
“Like, tomorrow night,” Travis says. “Like, the first thing you say when you walk through the door.”
“Wait,” Hope says. “What about now?”
And she stands on her tiptoes and waves her phone in the air, searching for a signal, until I say, “Not now, not now, not tonight.”
The fire is burning down, still hot, but not as grand as before. Mimi pours simmering water into my mug.
“So, how is it?” Travis asks me.
“What?”
“The tea.”
“Be honest,” Mimi says.
“It tastes exactly like mint tea.”
Travis’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Well okay then.”
* * *
It’s too cold to stay up any longer. I take my new toothbrush out of its packaging, untwist the lid of the travel-size toothpaste. I spot Travis coming out of Hope’s tent with a sleeping bag and pillow. “Oh no,” I say. “I’m taking your place?”
“Nah,” he says. “It’s better this way. She’s always trying to get with me.”
“Oh, please,” Hope says. “You’re like my brother.”
He climbs into his bag.
Mimi says, “I’d invite you to stay in my tent, but you’d basically have to sleep on top of me.”
“Girl,” Travis says, “you know I don’t want to listen to you snore all night.”
He zips his bag higher, until only his eyes show.
“Don’t suffocate,” Mimi says. “We’d be lost without you.”
“I promise,” Travis says, and then even his eyes disappear.
“Do you have everything you need?” Mimi asks me.
She’s given me two blankets, and Travis let me scavenge through his car for extra layers. Lucky for me, he’s the kind of boy who smells nice.
I nod.
She says, “I’m so glad I drew you that picture.”
“Me, too,” I say.
“I’ll see you in the morning, right? You aren’t going to change your mind and leave us once we’re all sleeping?”
“No way.”
She touches my wrist. “Well, good night, then.”
We close ourselves into the tent. Once Hope’s in her sleeping bag and I’m in layers of sweaters, the rustle of our movement dies down and all I hear is the night. Wind and crickets. The faraway laughter from another site.
Hope whispers, “My parents got divorced when I was twelve.”
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“It was like the ground was dropping out. It was terrible. I got used to it, but ‘home’ has never felt the same since.”
The top of her tent is clear. I can see the moon and the stars, and her words feel just as vast and true. As much as people want to look on the bright side, skip straight to the future when everything will be okay, the truth is that there is this time, where you sometimes have trouble breathing, and you feel powerless. Like you’re screaming and no one hears you, and the myth of the happy future is nothing you can count on, and the only word that makes sense is escape.
The end of love. The end of family. The end of being a daughter to people who wake up together in bed, leave their toothbrushes in the same little cup, roll their eyes and sigh and maybe hate each other but still come home to the same place each evening and sit at the same table.