AT RISK

(Peak Wilderness, Day One, Continued)

Dear Mom,

Here’s a quick fact I’m sure you’ll enjoy: if you cook on a campfire in the dark or semidark, bugs, lots of bugs, especially mosquitoes, will fly into the food. And when you go to eat, it will be so dark, you cannot see the bugs well enough to pick them out of your bowl.

Apparently this is no problem, because the boiling sterilizes the bugs.

And they are a good source of protein.

While they are fresh bugs, and certainly local, I am not the only person who was disgusted. Ally cried. Seth and I barely ate, both of us determined to pick as many out of our bowls as possible, which meant there wasn’t much actual food left. Meanwhile, Melissa surprised me by shrugging it off and eating everything, and Peace ate with relish and talked about how eating bugs is the way of the future because the beef industry isn’t sustainable.

(Dead mosquito count: 438, not including the ones we cooked and ate.)

Love,
Ingrid

After the mosquito dinner comes something called “circle.” I figure we’re going to hold hands and sing “Danny Boy” or “The Wheels on the Bus.”

We convene on a rocky outcrop above the lake, our faces lit by moonlight and flashlights. Pat gives us a big welcome, and Bonnie echoes it, and then we’re instructed to introduce ourselves and talk about why we chose to sign up for the trip and what our goals are.

Chose. Ha. I can’t wait for my turn.

Pat and Bonnie begin. Pat’s background is in social work. Bonnie is a psychotherapist.

“I see this as an opportunity to marry two of the things I’m passionate about—the great outdoors and today’s youth,” Pat says, “particularly at-risk youth. My goal is to help empower you as individuals and to foster a sense of connectedness, of responsibility to ourselves and the earth.”

On one hand, I’m almost moved.

On the other, I’m trying not to barf.

And on another hand, if I had a third hand, I’m wondering about the word “at-risk.”

Bonnie is next with more of the same—nature and leadership, troubled youth and learning to work as a team, blah, blah, blah.

If I wasn’t “troubled” before, I am now.

Seth, whom I am fervently wishing were my tentmate, if I have to stay with boys, is first.

He clears his throat. “I’m from a very . . . traditional family. And I’m here to get tougher. Mentally, physically, spiritually. I’m here to get closer to God and to strengthen myself against . . . temptation and sin.”

He says “temptation and sin” like he wants to swallow the words.

“What sort of sin?” Bonnie asks, face neutral.

“All of them,” Seth says, looking at the ground in front of him, his shoulders slumped. “My dad . . . that is . . . let’s just say I’m not acceptable to God. And if I’m not acceptable to God, I’m not going to have a family anymore and I love my family, so . . . I have to change. I have twenty-one days to change. That’s my goal.”

Right, so he’s gay/bi/trans, or something, and he’s from one of those ignorant, asshole families that will disown him for it. Now I really wish he were my tentmate. And I want to throttle his parents.

Harvey and Henry, who are fraternal twins but still look very much alike, go next. Well, technically it’s Harvey first, then Henry, but they basically speak together, and they’re here because they thought it would be “totally extreme,” and they want to kick each other’s asses in a variety of nature-related challenges.

“Plus—” says Harvey.

“Dude,” says Henry, “no.”

“Who cares, man?” Harvey says to him, then turns back to the circle. “Plus we had a party and, uh, trashed the house.”

“Half the house.”

“Yeah, half the house,” Harvey amends. “Totally by accident, though, and the really bad part wasn’t even us. Someone drove their car through the living-room window.”

“So our parents . . . Well, they almost canceled this trip, they’re so pissed, but on the other hand, they don’t want to see us for a few weeks.”

“Time to get out of Dodge.”

“So here we are,” Henry finishes.

“Do you have a history with this type of incident, Henry?” Bonnie asks.

“Well, not exactly,” Henry says, just as Harvey says, “Oh, totally!”

“I asked Henry,” Bonnie says, with a hard look at Harvey.

“Same difference,” Harvey says.

“But you are not, in fact, the same person,” Bonnie says.

“Okay, sure,” Harvey says. “Floor’s yours, bro.”

Henry, who wears his medium brown hair shorter than Harvey, looks annoyed, but I can’t tell whom he’s annoyed with—Bonnie, or his brother.

“We get into a bit of trouble sometimes,” he says. “But nothing too serious.”

“Are you kidding?” Harvey practically shouts. “We are epic! We’re legendary!”

“Sure, okay,” Henry says, looking distinctly un-legendary. “But it’s all in fun.”

“Potato guns! Smoke bombs! And there was that time we took Principal Carter’s phone and—”

“Dude, shut up!” Henry says, punching his twin in the shoulder. “Be cool, okay?”

“Right,” Harvey says, and subsides. “We’re Boy Scouts. That’s all we’ve got to say.”

“Hmm,” Bonnie says, studying them. “We’ll come back to this another time. How about you, Jin?”

Jin throws her cigarette into the fire and sweeps the circle with a glare, meeting each person’s eyes with defiance. “I was on the street,” she says. “I was making my way all right, then one night a few months ago, I got thrown into jail for . . .”

“Yes . . . ?” Pat says when Jin fails to continue, and suddenly I get the feeling that he knows—whatever she’s about to say or not say, he already knows.

“Solicitation,” Jin says, glaring steadily at Pat.

He nods, cool as a cucumber.

“Right, well. My parents refused to come for me. I’m a humiliation. But they called my aunt. Probably because she’s richer than they are and cares less about the opinions of everyone in our community. Plus they don’t want to spend any more money on me. Unstable investment.”

Bitterness oozes from her with this statement.

“Anyway, she offered to take me in,” Jin continues. “I was . . . tired. And so I accepted. But she’s strict and she had conditions—no drugs, which sucks because I’m really only a recreational user—and I have to catch up in school, and she thought I should do this, too. Get as far away from the ‘bad influences’ as possible. Definitely no chance to call a dealer from out here anyway.”

Harvey laughs.

Bonnie and Pat gaze at Jin with dead-serious listening faces, and Harvey stops laughing.

“Anyway, I figured if I can survive on the street, this is child’s play,” she says with a shrug.

“How long have you been clean?” Pat asks.

“I’m not an addict. I just like to have fun. But as far as being clean, technically . . . except for a few weak moments, I’ve been clean, including from nicotine,” she says with a nod toward her herbal cigarette, “for . . . two months.”

A few weak moments within the last two months does not sound particularly clean to me, but what do I know? Her smoking suddenly bothers me a lot less, though.

“All right. Good for you,” Pat says.

“And now, Peace?” Bonnie says.

Peace-Bob stretches his legs out, looks around the circle.

“I reject the way we live,” he says.

Here we go.

“I reject the commercialism, the waste, the selfishness. I reject Western relationship boundaries, organized religion, war. I reject my former self.”

It’s not quite in the spirit of things, but I reject his current self.

“My mission in life, starting with this trip, is to be peaceful, to live as one with nature, to be authentic. Someday I hope to find a group of like-minded individuals and band together to live off the land. . . .”

I work very hard not to roll my eyes as he goes on.

Bonnie finally (tactfully) hastens him along, and Melissa is next. Other than her intense reluctance to share a tent with anyone male, she’s been pretty quiet. I’m expecting, due to her looking so fit, to hear she’s in training to climb Everest or something.

“I just escaped from a cult,” she says.

Wow. Not Everest.

“I disappeared. Until six months ago I hadn’t seen the sun for over a year. That’s how long I was gone. Anyway. I’m a mess, and it’s been hard trying to . . . relate . . . to my family, to my old friends. No one knows what to say to me, and I don’t easily . . . trust people. Or myself. So when my mom and dad suggested this, I figured it might help. My goal is just to get stronger, feel better, and maybe figure out . . . how this happened to me.”

We are all silent for a few moments, and again I get the sense that neither Bonnie nor Pat is shocked, or even surprised.

“That’s it for me,” she says, her voice suddenly chipper. “Ally?”

Ally is still weepy about the bugs-for-dinner situation, but pulls herself together enough to tell us she goes to a “special” high school that’s going to give her a credit for this. Plus she’d like to lose weight. Plus she’d like to get back custody of her one-year-old girl, who is currently in foster care due to Ally not being able to provide a stable environment. This is partly because Ally’s own parents are raging partiers in both senses—they are wild and loud when they’re having fun, and wilder and louder when they’re fighting, causing most of the neighbors to have the police on speed dial.

Some government grant is covering Ally’s fee to be here.

She can’t be older than sixteen.

My shin is aching, and I’m starting to feel sick inside and wondering where the genuine nature enthusiasts are (I refuse to count Peace-Bob), because that’s who the brochure said this trip was for, and that’s the type of people Ella met when she did Peak Wilderness. Nature enthusiasts.

Tavik (my other tentmate) is next, and though he’s not exactly rocking that vibe, I’m hoping he’s a nature guy. Like maybe he’s a snowboarding, dirt-biking, ATV-riding, rock-climbing nature guy.

I’m envisioning this when he says, “I just got out of jail.”

I haven’t said a word thus far, but at this I find myself blurting, “What?”

“Ingrid, you may speak when it’s your turn,” Bonnie says in a level tone.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Yes, I was recently incarcerated,” Tavik continues, eyes now on mine. “Not that it’s anyone’s business. My parents are dead. I’m on parole. Some genius of a social worker thought this would be good for my rehabilitation and got me in as a charity case.”

“And what are your personal goals for your time here, Tavik?” Bonnie asks, all serene and unfazed.

The impression I keep getting is that neither she nor Pat is fazed by any of it. This fits with the luggage search and Duncan’s lack of surprise about finding alcohol and drugs. Maybe the more messed-up campers come with a file, or the leaders have been briefed in advance about all of us. If so, what would they have been told about me? That I’m a wuss of a city girl who needs her ass kicked by the wilderness in order to . . . what? Build character? I certainly have no behavior or incidents on the scale of these people—nothing of significance, anyway. But still, Bonnie and Pat might know I’ve had a hard time lately.

Tavik looks at Bonnie and laughs at her question. It’s not an unkind laugh or even a bitter one. He sounds genuinely amused, and for a second he reminds me of Isaac again.

“What’s funny?” Bonnie says. “Surely you have goals. Maybe even dreams . . . ?”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “White picket fence, chocolate lab, a pretty little wife who likes it from both sides.”

I flinch, and a choking sound comes from someone across the fire—Melissa, I think.

Bonnie just waits.

“All right, sorry,” he says finally. “I guess my goal is to stay out of trouble and spend some time looking at the sky. I’ve been thinking maybe I haven’t seen enough sky.”

The wind shifts, I look upward, and a clean, clear breath of air goes into my lungs as I look at the shockingly bright stars and try to get “both sides” out of my head.

“Your turn,” Tavik says, looking at me.

I give myself a shake.

“I . . . I’m sorry, but what is going on here?” I say.

“We’re sharing,” Pat says.

“I understand that part,” I say, trying to calm myself, trying to sound normal, and failing. “I mean, what kind of trip is this? Because I am certain I had a brochure that showed cabins. And smiling teenagers with ‘leadership potential.’”

“What, you don’t think I have leadership potential?” Tavik says with a bark of laughter.

“I didn’t mean . . . I just mean . . .” I break off as heat rushes to my face. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings. I just . . . expected something totally different from this.”

Pat and Bonnie exchange a glance.

“We do have a couple of physical camps, and some of the expeditions are run from them,” Pat says carefully. “And some, like this one, are not. For this group there is more of an emphasis on wilderness survival, group dynamics, and yes, leadership.”

“Is . . . is there a chance I’m supposed to be at one of the other ones? The camp ones?”

“This is the only Peak Wilderness program running at the moment,” Bonnie says, shaking her head.

“Why don’t you tell us why you’re here, Ingrid?” suggests Pat in his gentle-with-steel-underneath way.

I look around the circle, an aching, burning sensation pulsing inside me as I attempt to digest the fact that Mom has sent me for almost a month of actual camping, in the wilderness, with a bunch of junkies, criminals, and lunatics.

I remember seeing that “camping” might be involved in some of the trips, and I can imagine Mom deciding to book me into one of the more intense programs, and not telling me because she was angry, or because she honestly thought it wouldn’t be so different from what we discussed, or to teach me a lesson, because she doesn’t think I’m self-reliant enough.

But throwing me in with a group like this? I have a hard time believing she’d have done that on purpose.

Regardless, I made a deal. A promise. I said I would do Peak Wilderness, and I didn’t specify which program. And if I complete this, I get to spend my senior year at school in London, England. I get to live the life I want.

Bonnie, Pat, and the rest of the group are staring at me, waiting for an answer. I realize I’m rubbing my lower leg again, and stop, clasping my hands tightly together.

I shouldn’t be here.

I am a model citizen and paragon of stability compared to these people.

Okay, there were a couple of months when I could barely eat. And there was the incident with the ax. But only one person knows about that, and he promised he wouldn’t tell anyone. And I’m fine now. Mostly healed, and much calmer, and really, it was an accident. The throbbing shin is totally psychosomatic—has to be. Anyway, none of that had even happened yet when Mom signed me up for this trip, and frankly, there’s no way she knows about it now, either. Point being? No way I’m talking about any of that stuff, or about my relationship with Mom. Not unless I suddenly want all these unbalanced people thinking they’ve been invited to dig into my psyche, which is never happening. It’s not relevant to why I’m here. Not relevant, period.

Bonnie and Pat probably know something, but whatever they know or don’t know, they can’t force me to talk about it.

And yet, I get the feeling that the music-school thing isn’t going to play well for this crowd, and I have to say something.

“I had a bad year . . . at school,” I say finally. This is partially true—I had to complete eleventh grade via homeschooling. “I was having trouble.” (True-ish.) “I missed some school. . . .” (True.) “So . . . my mom decided . . . on my behalf . . . that over the summer, a . . . a change of scenery would be good for me.”

Decided a change of scenery would be good for me. . . .

That’s funny, right?