Chapter 4: Aurora

-- AUGUST 28 --

Even though I hadn't been this way in over three years, I still knew the roads like the back of my hand. Without needing to consult any maps, I left I-5 and headed west from Yreka, cruising along at a comfortable pace. I wasn't in any hurry. The weather was clear and Orientation wouldn't begin for almost two hours.

Almost lazily, I guided my beater Chevy Malibu around the winding mountain roads. I let my gaze drift out to the rows upon rows of verdant redwoods that lined my path. Above them to both sides rose the imposing Marble Mountains, any surfaces not covered with trees instead exposing rocky brown-gray faces. And below ran the ever-changing, ever-moving blue and white surface of the river.

I pulled into a turnout to let the tailgating black GTI sprint past me and watched it take the next hairpin curve at about sixty-five. I waited and listened to hear if it went crashing through the far side guard railing, possibly to explode on the valley floor in a roiling fireball like in the movies. While the driver of the GTI surely wasn't actively searching for his or her violent death, I could certainly understand such an act as being ... simpler ... than life's continued existence.

But no such explosion came, and I shook aside my morbid thoughts. If I really wanted to kill myself, it would have been much easier to do so back home. I hadn't driven all this way up north just to end my life. Instead, I had hopefully driven all this way to FIND my life once again.

After checking to make sure the way was clear, I pulled back into the road and resumed my trip. I navigated the twists and turns of the mountain road as it hugged the river, sighing in melancholic nostalgia at all the familiar sights. And about forty-five minutes after leaving the highway, I made the final turn onto the main driveway and passed beneath the archway sign that read "Morris Camp".

I followed the driveway, with the creek running on my left and an open field on my right, bordered by a horse fence. About a hundred yards from the road, the Main Lodge appeared amongst a stand of conifers. There were a lot of them around this place (conifers, not lodges): Brewer's spruce, foxtail, ponderosa, and if memory served there was a grouping of mountain hemlock on the far side.

Hemlock ... A different plant by the same name was used to kill Socrates.

Enough with the death thoughts. Pull yourself together, girl.

I bypassed the Main Lodge. The parking lot was only partially full, and I still had more than an hour to get to Orientation. Instead, I drove straight on, leaving the paved asphalt and moving onto dirt roads that got narrower and narrower as I continued. My destination wasn't very far.

And there they were. They looked just the same as they had three years ago. I couldn't go inside; both cabins were currently occupied by paying guests, and would continue to be so through Labor Day weekend at least. But in my mind's eye, I could still see the interiors of both spaces. I could see his bunk in the cabin on the left and remembered the way I'd stroke his hair as he slept, right before tickling him or jumping onto his belly to wake him in the mornings to go to breakfast. I could see my own bunk in the cabin on the right, which would still have both our initials carved into the wood from when we were eight, and the very place where I'd given him my virginity on my sixteenth birthday.

I turned the engine off and lay my forearms on the steering wheel. I set my chin down on top of them, letting my mind fill up with old memories of who I was – who WE used to be. And after staring off into the past for a little while, I tilted my lips down and kissed the silver bracelet that circled my right wrist.

Ben Forever.

Here was where we began. Here was where we would end.

Someday.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

But not today.

Ben was my goal, still my goal. I craved him, needed him in my life. I felt it deep in my pores, and without him I felt like a fish with dry skin. He was the oxygen I needed to breathe. He was the nourishment I needed to survive. Regardless of whatever else had happened to us in the past, I still knew these basic facts deep in my soul. It had nothing to do with our parents. Well, it had everything to do with our parents. But their influence and their subtle (and not-so-subtle) nudging to pair us together were all a part of the past. They were things that had happened already, and nothing short of a time machine would erase them. I had lived my entire life to this point with Ben as a huge, integral, necessary cog in my existence, and the time spent away from him this past summer was nothing if not a reminder that he would continue to be so.

Would he be my husband, the way I'd always dreamed?

Hopefully.

Would he be a sibling, like Brooke or Dayna or the twins: just another part of our joined families?

Maybe.

Would he just be a friend, someone I'd grown up with and then grown up from, like so many people I'd known in grade school and high school and college who might say 'hi' if we passed in the street, but nothing much more than that?

I'd rather die.

Would we find some other balance, some way to be ... special ... to each other and yet without that defining, romantic love? It seemed to be working for Adrienne. She always said he was her rock, and she's never seemed happier than the way things were now.

Adrienne. She had been there, the last time I was here. She'd been WITH him, romantically, as his girlfriend, while I was just the friend. I remembered that day like it was yesterday, hugging him from behind with my forehead against his shoulder. We were standing ... there ... by that parking spot where they always parked his van. And I remembered my own words.

"I love you, Ben," I had whispered, softly so that his girlfriend wouldn't hear. "I'll always be yours ... forever. Don't forget that." And I'd kissed the back of his neck.

"We're still young, Ben, and we've got time. Someday, I WILL marry you."

I could have done it. It would have been so easy. Ben was the spontaneous, romantic type. For all his wonderful qualities, he wasn't the greatest at thinking five steps ahead (except between the sheets). He led with his heart, and sometimes that let him leap before he looked. I could have talked him into getting married a week after breaking up with Ryan, before starting our Junior Year. Nobody would have even questioned us. I was me. And he was him.

But I wasn't me anymore. I wasn't even sure who "ME" was. The girl Ben fell in love with got corrupted somewhere along the way, and I had to find her again. I had to become Ben's soulmate once more.

If that was what I still wanted.

Did I?

I closed my eyes and sighed. Seriously, dying in a fiery explosion would be sooo much simpler than this.

The road trip with Gwen and Robin had given me some space. I'd spent the first part of the trip just trying to FORGET Ben, because to think of him was to remind myself of the evil slut I had become. Selfish actions had led to guilt, which led to a sense of impurity, which led to anger with myself for not being as perfect as I wanted to be. Then I would try and lose myself in some new selfish action, like an overweight glutton diving into a tub of ice cream to simultaneously make herself feel better AND punish herself for previous failures. And the cycle continued to the point where I was already regretting the things I was doing AS I was doing them.

I knew better, but I did it anyway. And I cursed myself for doing it all the while.

Every thought of Ben recalled the very things I'd done to betray him. My very love for him had become a poisonous symbol of that which I'd lost, a reminder of how far I'd fallen, and I'd needed to get away from it all.

It hadn't been easy, and I hadn't been entirely successful. Sure, seeing new things and visiting new places had been a welcome distraction, and as long as I was occupied with posing for pictures with the girls or poring over the maps to make sure we didn't get lost, I had been fine. But for at least a few minutes every night, just before I could fall asleep, my bad deeds would come back to haunt me, and it was all my friends could do to keep me from driving myself insane.

It got easier to avoid my self-loathing as the days went by and as we put more and more miles between him and me. That was when I'd started blaming our families, blaming the pressure put on us to be together and unite the families as one. I began to convince myself that -I- controlled my own destiny, and it was not written in stone that he and I were meant to be together. Gwen quite insistently advocated the notion that there were plenty of guys out in the world, and I started to think I could live a perfectly happy life without him.

By then, we were clear across the country in Washington, D.C. We girls had a few drinks. The lawyer sitting with his friends at the bar was very cute. And for one night, I let myself go. For once, I would enjoy my physical sexuality without Ben around. For once, I would take a step toward an independent future on a path that DIDN'T lead to him.

It had been a mistake. Lying there beneath this stranger, all I could think about was Ben. As cute as Mr. D.C. was, there was no way he could make me feel the way I did with Ben. There was no way he could possibly push my buttons the way my soulmate could.

I couldn't find orgasm. I could barely keep myself from crying. I faked it and Mr. D.C. was satisfied. And then I left to go back to my girlfriends the first chance I got.

I couldn't move on from Ben. I couldn't go back to him. I was trapped on one side by my undying love for him and everything he represented in my life. And I was trapped on the other side by the horrors of my failings and the deep-rooted knowledge that the girl I currently was just wasn't good enough for him.

I'm not worthy of him. And I don't honestly know if I ever will be.

Perfect was impossible. Perfect was an ideal, a mathematical limit that could never be reached. My attempts to BE perfection had always been doomed to fail. Now? Now all I wanted to be was ... his.

Bless his heart, he probably would have taken me back the way I am now. I could see it in his eyes before I left him yesterday. He told me he accepted me however I was. He told me he would be perfectly happy with an imperfect me.

But I still had my pride.

God damn my pride.

Sure, it would have been easier to just crawl back to him and heal together. Easier, but not better. Not for him. He deserves better.

I wouldn't let him take me the way I am. I couldn't. To return to him now, before I'd come to terms with what I'd done, would poison our relationship. It would eat me from the inside, a rotting cancer at my core. For his sake, I knew I had to be better. The only question was: how?

This was my solution. I had come back to this place – this special, special place. It was the birthplace of "us", of the "we" we would become. They say that to find yourself you need to go backwards, to retrace your steps until you find the time when you still recognized yourself in the mirror. I was going back to the beginning, the beginning of Ben and me. I was going back to the place where we recognized each other as soulmates in the hope that one day, I might find myself again.

And I would be doing it as a completely different person.

Checking the time, I saw that I still had about fifteen minutes before the start of Orientation. Plenty of time to check in and get my informational packets. Re-starting the car, I first glanced into the rear-view mirror to make sure I could back out safely, and on impulse, I tilted the mirror down and then smirked at my own reflection.

Same sky blue eyes – apart from color contacts those would never change – but I now put on thin-frame glasses with false lenses. Although I needed no vision correction, the rectangular shape added an edge to my face and already I looked different to myself. Feeling the pads slip a little, I pushed the frame back up the bridge of my nose with my right index finger and sighed. These were going to take a little getting used to.

Above the glasses, I'd cut my bangs into a relatively even row across my forehead. The rest of my hair I'd pulled into a functional ponytail, absent of any sort of style one might consider to be "pretty". And not for the first time, I marveled at my hair's even shade of dark brown, dyed just last night.

The rest of my clothes were similarly plain. The weather was too warm for a sweater, but the baggy plain blue polo shirt was a size too large and did absolutely nothing for my figure, especially with a full coverage, flattening bra underneath. Comfort-fit Lee jeans were similarly unflattering, and the brown hiking boots on my feet were the antithesis of "sexy".

I'd given up my pride. I'd given up my beauty. For far too long in my life, I had been the golden child, the pretty girl, the one who always got her way. I'd used my looks as a weapon to manipulate those around me. I'd played on people's perceptions to make them see me as better than I truly was. I'd cruised through life getting everything handed to me, and grown up to believe such an easy path was my birthright.

I wasn't perfect. I wasn't even going to try to be. I didn't yet know who I would become, but I was determined that the future me be someone who was fully grounded, who EARNED the things she received. I was determined to truly BE a good person, and not just look like one for the sake of looking like one. And I hoped to be someone worthy of him.

I'd put myself in a good position. I was in a place of familiarity, comfort, and warmth. While the work would be hard, I knew all my basic needs would be taken care of. It was a new me in an old place. And here I would make my fresh start.

Upon entering the Main Lodge, I found the signs directing me to the auditorium where Orientation would be held. In the hallway, I saw a familiar staffer at the registration desk, and allowed myself a little smile when he looked at me without familiarity.

I helped him find me on the registration list, and smiled again as he gave me a double-take after reading my name. He slid over an 8 ½" by 11" sheet with several peel-off nametags on it, three of which were already missing. I picked up the black Sharpie, and drew a long line straight down to begin the letter 'D'.

But then I stopped. I stared down at the nametag, visualizing the rest of my name, and I realized something: This was the final thing I had to give up. My name had represented everything of who I was. It had been Ben's favorite word in the whole universe, but now had to be a source of frustration and pain. I didn't deserve that name anymore. The girl I was now wasn't the girl that name truly represented.

Someday ... soon, hopefully ... I would deserve that name again. Someday ... soon ... I would BE the girl for him.

But not today.

I glanced back at the registration list, reading it upside down and a new name caught my eye. It was a name that had always been mine, and yet a name I had scarcely ever used. It was the middle name my parents had given me, in honor of my paternal grandmother long since gone.

And steadying the Sharpie once more, I wrote in neat, blocky letters: Marie.

-- AUGUST 29 --

"What about you, Marie?"

"Marie?"

That's YOUR name, remember?

Jerking my head up, I blinked twice and looked in the direction of Sunflower, the girl with the hippie parents who had just spoken to me. Glancing around the circle, I realized that the other four girls sitting with us were ALSO looking right at me.

"Uh, can you repeat the question?"

Sunflower (or "Sunny" as she liked to be called) giggled and glanced at the others. "We were just sharing what made us join the program and come here. It's your turn."

"Oh, um. Yeah, uh..." I fumbled for a moment, staring at my kneecaps in my seated position. Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, I shrugged and explained, "Just needed a break from school. Took a year off."

"Which school?"

"Uh, I'd really rather not say."

Sunny's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Uh, okay then ... Have you been to the camp before?"

"Yeah, yeah. I gather that pretty much everyone has."

"When did your family usually come? I don't know if any of us has ever seen you before. Ashley and I were August kids. Zoey and Tamara were July. Lucy came in June."

I blushed and looked down. I actually recognized Tamara, although she was a few years older and we'd never hung out during previous years. I would have thought I'd recognize Zoey, my roommate, but apparently her family just came for the occasional weekend and we didn't really cross paths. Still, I didn't know who else might recognize the real me, and I kept my eyes downcast as I replied, "Well, I'd rather not say."

The girls all sort of looked at me for a second, wondering what kind of weirdo had come to join their midst. A second later, Tamara changed the topic by volunteering to share her life story. And I let out a big sigh.

I was going to have to decide soon: either come up with a fake background to give to everyone and hope I remembered all the details, or just spill the beans and hope nobody connected me to ... myself.

Or just keep saying "I'd rather not say".

Yeah, I liked that better.

-- SEPTEMBER 1 --

"Edwin?" I suggested.

"Nerd. And not in a cute, geeky way," Zoey scoffed.

"How about George? He's handsome and studly."

"Maybe. He's a lead, though. The really hot girls always go after the leads first. Look at me, I can't compete with them."

"Sure you can. You're very, very cute yourself."

"Am not. I'm weird and I've got purple hair and cute guys don't like sarcasm," Zoey sighed, picking at her cuticles. "But you're pretty hot, at least if you'd try to be. YOU could get George."

"Not interested," I drawled, waving her off immediately.

"I know, I know. Your funeral." She sighed and leaned back on her towel, adjusting her sunglasses. "I can't hook up with one of the jock-types. I need somebody weird ... quirky ... like me."

"Aaron's a certifiable nutcase," I suggested with a little grin.

"Aaron? Yeah, right. A little too nutcase, if you ask me." She turned her head and rolled her eyes.

"Maybe. But if you ask me, he likes you."

"Does not."

"Oh, yeah? Then why is he always going out of his way to needle you?" I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.

"Because I react. It's an attention thing and he's a pest. If I could get myself to stop reacting to him, he'd leave me alone."

"'You 'fight back' is more like it. It's sparring. It's you guys' way of flirting."

"I'm not flirting. Gawd. As if I'd be attracted to so repellant a human being. Aaron is a foul-mouthed, uncouth barbarian."

"Getting a little worked up over someone you claim to have no interest in."

"As IF..." Zoey rolled her eyes. "Aaron and I are about as likely to hook up as you and ... and ... Fat Nick!"

"Pssht," I scoffed. "Yeah right."

Zoey likewise started laughing. "Ohmigawd, did you see his swim trunks today? Neon ORANGE. As if he didn't stick out enough like a sore thumb already. Where is he anyway? Guy that big should be hard to miss."

Zoey turned and scanned the water. It was a lazy Thursday afternoon, and with the full summer staff still in place, the camp wasn't putting us to hard labor just yet. We were still going through orientation, shadowing the regular staff, and being introduced to some of the basic "chores". Technically, we were spending the afternoon going over water safety. But that had finished twenty minutes ago and now we were just hanging out until dinner.

"Ohmigawd. Is he drowning?" Zoey suddenly gasped.

I picked my head up and followed my roommate's line of sight. Sure enough, there was a large, pale mass of human being foundering in the water just twenty feet away from us. I gasped in surprise, and instinctively got up to help. But while we were still in the getting-to-know you phase, in the interests of keeping my body under wraps and avoiding unwanted attention, I had not changed into a swimsuit and instead remained fully dressed, complete with a wide-brimmed hat and light long-sleeved overshirt.

My hands fumbled at the buttons to strip off my extra clothing, but Zoey had already taken off. We had been lying out on a grassy strip alongside the lake, where there was no sandy beach to speak of and the water dropped four feet immediately over the edge. Zoey launched herself in a perfect dive, and after three strokes she'd already reached Nick, who had gone under the water twice by now.

I ran to the water's edge myself, just in case Zoey needed more help. But fortunately, fat is quite buoyant. And as Zoey settled into a lifesaver's side stroke with Nick being towed on his back by her off-arm, I quickly realized that she was doing just fine on her own.

By now, a small crowd had formed, mixed guests and other ranch hands. A few of the guys were already chuckling to themselves about Fat Nick needing to be rescued by a 115-pound GIRL. And I shook my head as well in mild disbelief.

Hey, at least nobody was looking at me.

-- SEPTEMBER 4 --

Somewhere behind me, I heard the sounds of feet scuffling in the dirt, followed by a male voice warbling, "Whoa! Whoa!" And then there was a meaty thump.

I stopped walking and turned about to see Nick face-down on the trail, snorting out dust that had gone up his nose. Aaron and Zoey were howling in laughter, and I shot Aaron a dirty look, wondering if he'd tripped the poor guy. When I realized that no one was immediately going to help Nick up, I rolled my eyes and backtracked to the fallen schlub, kneeling beside him and touching his shoulder.

"C'mon, it's not very far now," I encouraged. "We're almost there. Really. Since you've never been, this is something you really shouldn't miss. And we're running out of time."

With a groan, Nick rolled onto his side and accepted Aaron's proffered hand. Once he was upright, Aaron made some dry comment about hitting absolute rock bottom, which didn't exactly help his spirits any. And I wondered to myself just how much more the guy could take.

It had been easy to see from the beginning that Nick was completely out of sorts here at Morris Camp. Whereas everyone else in the ranch hand program had at least come from an outdoorsy background, even if not from the Camp itself, the guy seemed like his most extensive camping experience had been pitching a Power Rangers tent on his bedroom floor. He'd started off with a little self-confidence, almost cocky at Orientation in his nice shoes, designer jeans, and expensive cologne. But then he'd been rather rudely introduced to raw physical labor, and that confidence had more or less evaporated by the end of the first day.

In a word, Nick was pathetic. He was obviously out of shape, and had picked up the nickname "Fat Nick" on Day One. I refused to call him that, and certainly I'd seen fatter people in my life. But it was a moniker that wasn't altogether untrue: Though his excess weight was more overall chubbiness than a rotund waistline, Nick was fat, especially in comparison with the rest of us.

He didn't belong here – he knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it. Seriously, who wears cologne at a rural camp in the middle of nowhere? Nick was a fish out of water, completely out of his element, and lacked even Clue One about how to fit in. A week of having the crushing realization of his utter ineptitude had completely beaten him down, ripped out his soul, and left him a walking shell of a man. He was perpetually out of breath, he sweated more than he could possibly drink, and he was clearly miserable at all hours of the day. So why stay? We weren't prisoners. This was a voluntary program with no penalties for quitting. It made no sense that he was here.

There was much speculation amongst the ranch hands as to exactly WHY a fat, uptown city-boy had signed up for a year in the great outdoors with little pay and few creature comforts. People who asked got half-assed explanations about his parents sending him out here to build character and other bullshit, but I personally thought there had to be more to it. The guy was 23 and already graduated from college. Men that age don't get 'sent' where their parents tell them to go – we weren't high schoolers off to summer camp anymore. But Nick had very quickly become the "unpopular" guy, not because he was unpleasant to be around but really just because he was out of shape and didn't know how to do some of the most basic ranch chores. And no one really wanted to form their budding clique of friends around the unpopular guy, so no one really got close enough to him to find out more.

Except for us. Aaron was Nick's roommate, and whatever character flaws Aaron had, disloyalty wasn't one of them. He stuck by his roommate, doing his best to show Nick the ropes and prod him from Point A to Point B is his own sarcastic, sometimes rudely harsh way. I was more surprised to find that Zoey had some interest in Nick, not romantic in any way but an almost maternal concern for his well-being. Perhaps she felt some sort of cosmic responsibility for him after the lake-rescue. Personally, I thought she liked Aaron more than she let on – nobody banters THAT much with a member of the opposite sex without it meaning something. Hanging out with Nick would then be more of a by-product of her simmering crush on Nick's roommate.

As for me, I was still trying to keep out of the limelight. Others girls had made initial overtures at being friends, and some of the guys had noticed my attractiveness beneath the glasses, lack of makeup, and frumpy clothes. But I resisted all of them. It wasn't that I was against having friends; but for now at least, I really just wanted to focus on the job and have a little more time for self-reflection. Falling in with a crew that included the least popular person in the program was just ... convenient.

At least I wasn't worried about him hitting on me. Aaron was an unrepentant letch, but other than staring at my ass a few times, he respected my wishes to be left alone. Nick didn't even stare. He was so far gone that every ounce of his willpower seemed to be consumed by merely putting one foot in front of the other, especially as he made the hike with us up to The Ridge. And even when he wasn't hiking uphill, his ego had reached such a low point that he seemed to have lost his masculinity period. Hell, the guy barely even glanced at Deedee when the busty blonde walked by in a scoop-necked top. It was as if he'd completely given up.

And yet he hadn't walked away from the program. Why?

As it turned out, I would be the first to know ... sort of. Once atop the ridge we wound up sitting together, and I found myself asking him why he was here.

And he told me ... sort of.

I didn't get the details. He didn't offer them and I didn't press. But one thing I got was that despite the obvious differences between us, our situations weren't really so dissimilar.

We'd both made mistakes in our previous lives. We both were here as a form of penance because of those mistakes. And for both of us, this was an opportunity for a fresh start.

NOW we had something to talk about.

-- SEPTEMBER 5 --

"They keep going and going and going..." Nick sighed, watching a red Honda Pilot kick up a cloud of dust as it drove past us, went through the archway, and then made a left turn onto the main road. "How many has that been?"

"Fuck man, you seriously thought I was counting those things?" Aaron scoffed.

"That's the sixth SUV we've seen, four minivans, two sedans, and the 70s-era Oldsmobile," I stated before looking up the road to see a Dodge Grand Caravan pull out of the main lodge parking lot. "Make that five minivans."

Zoey rolled her eyes and dropped off the horse fence that we were all sitting on. "You people need a better hobby. And I need a Coke." She dusted off her knees and then looked back at me. "Coming with?"

I closed my eyes as a burst of wind rushed cooling air through my hair and over my face. We were well-shaded by a tree and really didn't have anywhere to be. It was the afternoon of Labor Day, and fully 90% of the camp guests were packing up and heading home to return to school, jobs, and the rest of their lives. Just about all the summer staff were leaving as well, and as the grand majority continued to depart, I actually thought I could feel the whole camp becoming quieter.

I liked it.

Opening my eyes after the wind died down, I shook my head and replied, "I'm good right here."

"I'm going," Aaron spoke up and hopped off the fence. "Cold drink sounds great. Nick? Surely you can't turn down an ice cold Diet Coke."