YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT Stewart and I talked about, and I’m not going to tell you. I’m not supposed to talk about it, and I won’t. At least, not yet.
What I will talk about is the backpack, because it’s not at all what people think.
Here’s what really happened. Tabby asked me to go shopping with her for Mark’s birthday gift. She wanted to get him something special.
“I’m not going to be helpful,” I told her. “I have no idea what guys his age like.” I don’t know what guys any age like, except that they don’t like me. Or they just don’t notice me, not in the ways they notice Tabby. I am fifteen but look closer to twelve. I’m so cute and adorable and my friend Laurel’s mom even called me precious once, which made me want to die. I am supposed to be sexy by now. Boys started noticing Tabby when she was still in middle school, her new curves changing the way her clothes fit. Changing the way she fit.
“You always have good ideas. Come on, don’t make me beg.”
I didn’t. I let Tabby grab my hand at the outlet mall, pulling me into the REI in Boulder, a store I didn’t think she would ever set foot in. It was for outdoor people, the kind who liked breaking a sweat.
“What are you getting him? A new sleeping bag?” As far as I knew, Mark didn’t like the outdoors any more than my sister did. He was a swimmer, so the pool was his second home.
“No,” she said. “Something else. I’m gonna surprise him.”
Mark’s Instagram was public—I’m sure you saw it, before it got taken down. It was basically the chronology of a golden boy. Witness the great swim champion, arms raised in victory. See him at the beach with his shaved chest, hairless and tanned. At a party, a drink in each hand, a girl under each arm.
Then there’s my sister’s Instagram, the Tabby and Mark show. Kissing on a porch swing. Pressed together on Elle’s deck, sweaty from the summer heat, both in jean shorts and tank tops. They say married couples start to look alike—I don’t know if it’s true, my parents just look bored—but the truth is, Tabby has always started to look like her boyfriends. In little ways, at first. When she was with Beck, she bought a leather jacket.
Then she changes in other ways. Starts to mimic their personalities and mannerisms. When she was Beck’s girlfriend, I was “sweetheart” and my parents needed to “chill.” Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.
Tabby stopped briefly in the women’s clothing section, fingering the edge of a sports bra. Then I followed her through a display of yoga mats and running shoes, straight into a wall of backpacks. Some of them were practically as tall as me, the kind people brought on a summer trek through Europe.
“Is Mark planning a trip?” I asked.
“No. I mean, maybe. We talked about going somewhere. But not until I’m finished with school. What I’m looking for is something like this.” She pulled a camouflage-print backpack off the rack, holding it up like a trophy.
“It’s, uh … kind of ugly.”
“It’s totally ugly. But Mark will love it. He told me he wants to do more hiking and outdoorsy crap. I’m trying to be more supportive of his lifestyle. See, this one has pockets for water bottles and everything.”
“Okay,” I said. “Whatever you say.”
We walked up to the checkout. I stared at the assortment of freeze-dried foods near the cash register with a mixture of curiosity and disgust.
“He wants me to hike the Mayflower with him,” Tabby said. “Before summer ends. Isn’t that where you had your cross-country regionals last year? And where we went running once?”
I was surprised she remembered it, but I let the feeling pool in my stomach like warm butter. The memory is less my gold medal and more Tabby screaming at the finish line, arms in the air, shirt raised to show her stomach. There was a sign on the ground in front of her, bristol board with glitter paint. I ♡ YOU BRIDGE!!!!!
“Yeah,” I said. “The Mayflower Trail. There are a ton of roots. You basically have to stare at the ground the whole time.”
“Duly noted,” Tabby said. When we got to the car, she thanked me. The backpack was slung over her shoulder. It looked funny there, the camo against the baby pink of her tank top.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Typical Bridge. You always think you didn’t do anything. Sometimes just being somewhere with somebody is enough.”
It was exactly the kind of thing Tabby said that made me remember how deep she is, how thoughtful. People tend to think girls like Tabby are surface level. That if you like makeup and partying, you can’t also like books or care about world issues. Tabby is the wild one. I’m the workhorse. She’s the girly one. I’m the sporty one. She’s the slut, and I’m the prude. She’s the bad one, and I’m the good one. The universe is always trying to split girls in half. Half angel, half demon. No wonder so many of us turn into monsters.
I know every inch of the Mayflower Trail. Every root, every bump in the ground, every twist and turn, like a book with a plot that surprised me the first time around, but not anytime after that, because I’m smart enough to see everything coming.
“It’s really easy to get lost in there,” I said. Hot air puffed out when I opened my car door.
“Good thing you drew me a map,” she said with a wink.
I never told Tabby this, but one of the times I ran the trail over the summer, I smelled something other than dirt and old leaves. Pot smoke. Then I heard the laughter. It was a group of guys, sitting on the fallen tree trunk just over two miles into my route, where the Cider Creek trail ends and the Mayflower begins. Tabby hated when I ran in the woods alone. “It’s dangerous,” she would say, sounding more like a stern parent than our actual parents.
“I know where I’m going,” I always said defiantly, even though I liked that she worried about me. It felt good, somehow, to be doing something dangerous enough for somebody to worry about.
“Yeah, you do,” she said. “That’s not the problem. The problem is someone else knowing where you’re going, too.”
She made me promise not to run with earbuds in. You never know who’s watching, she told me. So I kept the promise. Besides, I like hearing my feet hit the ground, having my breath be the soundtrack to my route. Harder and more labored going up Salt Hill, almost like a hiss going back down. The only people I ever saw that deep in the woods were random hikers or the same two middle-aged women with sweaters tied around their waists, greyhound dogs running ahead of them.
Except that day, I saw boys. Then I saw who was among them. Mark and his friend Keegan, the one Tabby didn’t like. Mark had something in his hand. A joint. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with people smoking pot. But Mark was always Mr. Anti-Drugs, the poster child for Don’t Kill Brain Cells. I’d heard him chastise my sister more than once for drinking before they headed out to some party, even though he drank, too. I also remembered him telling Tabby he couldn’t believe she had tried pot, because he thought she was better than that.
Mark’s gaze flickered over me, then he looked down. He was going to pretend he didn’t know who I was. His eyes, in the moment ours met, held some kind of warning. Don’t tell your sister. I could feel the other guys leering at my bare legs and the strip of stomach my tank top didn’t cover. It was the exact way boys never looked at me before, but their collective gaze didn’t empower me like I expected it would. For the first time, I did feel scared in the woods—a girl under the trees, too far away for anyone to hear her scream. For the first time, I turned around instead of completing my full loop.
“Tell her yourself,” I shouted over my shoulder, increasing my speed as the guys laughed.
People are saying that Tabby isn’t a nice girl. But I grew up with her, and they didn’t. She brought me soup in bed when I was sick, and they didn’t. She took me to the hairdresser to fix the terrible dye job I tried to do myself, and they didn’t. She cried to me when her first boyfriend broke up with her—because she wouldn’t put out—and they didn’t. She raged to me when that first boyfriend spread rumors about her being terrible in bed, a bed she was never even in. They didn’t.
They don’t know my sister. I do.
I wondered how fast I could run in the woods that day. Maybe Tabby had to figure out the exact same thing.