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PAST

“Ikind of hate that you wanted to go camping for your birthday. How are we best friends again?” Eliza asked.

Lydia laughed as she pushed the stake into the semi-frozen ground.

“It’s freezing out here, Lydia,” Eliza continued.

“It won’t be inside the tent.”

“But we’reoutsidethe tent.”

“Because you’re not helping mewiththe tent. You’ve been standing there the whole time, just watching me put this thing up.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I’d probably just break it, and then we’d be out in the middle of nowhere withnotent.”

Lydia stood up and crossed her arms over her chest.

“What?” Eliza asked.

“We’re in a state park and on a campsite. There’s an actual bathroom with toilets about twenty feet away. The road is ten feet behind us, and my car is parked just off it. The drive from the entrance of the park to here took us about seven minutes, and there are three other campsites right next to us. I think we’d be okay. Now, can you get the sleeping pad laid out in there and put the sleeping bags on top of it while I get the rest of the stuff from the car?”

“Fine. I’m being dramatic.”

“No, you’re not. I know you’re doing this for me. And I also know that this is the first time you’ve been camping since…” Lydia faded out.

Eliza looked down and said, “It’s not the same. I mean, I don’t think of this as the same, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I didn’t want to ask you because of it. I thought it might bring back some bad memories,” she offered.

“The memories are always there, right at the surface, no matter what I’m doing. And they’re still blurry and foggy, and I wish I’d just been able to–”

“Hey, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it. Do you want to just get settled in for the night? We can talk about the hike to the falls that I want to take tomorrow.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eliza replied.

Lydia had been her best friend since high school. Eliza had been the new girl after her mother had moved them to another town. As a freshman entering school mid-year, it had been hard for Eliza to make new friends, but Lydia had been in her fifth-period science class, and one day, she’d just passed Eliza a note. They’d been friends ever since. No one had been privy to what had happened to bring Eliza to the new school. She’d told people that her mom had gotten a new job and they’d had to move, but that wasn’t the truth. Lydia had been the only one to get that truth, and that had been during the summer after their freshman year.

During the fall of their sophomore year, Lydia had come out to Eliza and told her that she liked her as more than a friend, but Eliza, for her part, hadn’t ever given her sexuality much thought back then. She’d had more on her mind than boys, girls, or dating. She’d tried to tell Lydia that it was okay that she liked her that way but that she wasn’t sure she sawanyonelike that. And it had been the truth, at first. Her life had been irrevocably changed the summer before her freshman year of high school. Right when she was supposed to be figuring out who she was, getting a part-time job, joining clubs, making friends, and maybe finding someone she liked, she’d lost someone important to her in a way that made thinking about any of those things difficult.

The move had only made it harder, even though her mother’s goal had been to make things easier on them both. The therapy sessions were also supposed to help. Her mother had hers. Eliza had her own. Once or twice, they’d also gone together. For Eliza, though, therapy had felt a little too much like when the cops had asked her questions that night, so while the doctor had been nice enough and tried to helpbyasking her questions, the whole experience felt too similar, and Eliza hadn’t been able to get much out of therapy. She’d stopped it around the time she’d also gone off the meds the doctor had prescribed her. She hadn’t been depressed. She’d been a normal, fully functional fifteen-year-old when it had happened. Then, she’d been grieving. She’d been through a trauma. She’d just needed a doctor to be patient with her instead of asking her a ton of questions and prescribing her medication, which only made her feel numb.

It was during her junior year that she’d finally gotten off the anti-depressants the right way and felt a little more like herself again. Eliza noticed it then, how she felt about Lydia, but it had been too late: Lydia had found a girlfriend. That girlfriend and Lydia had both played soccer, and they’d started dating during their summer practices.Eliza had been the supportive best friend and even the third wheel most of the time until they broke up around Thanksgiving. Eliza had helped her get through the breakup, and for Christmas, she’d gotten Lydia a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant. It had been meant to represent their friendship, but when she’d watched Lydia open the box, Eliza had rambled out her feelings.

“So, I… Uh… I know you just got out of a thing, like, a month ago – I think it was a month ago – and you really liked her, but… Um… Remember how you used to like me? I like you like that,” she’d said.

“You like me like that now?” Lydia had asked.

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Eliza had confirmed.

“Well, I still like you like that. It’s why we broke up: she thought I wasn’t over you. And I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I just know what you’ve been going through, so I didn’t want to tell you that I still wanted us to be more than friends.”