Chapter 5

CAMPING

"Are you sure you don't want to get ready over here?" my mom asked. "You can have a slumber party here after prom with all your friends."

The offer was empty.

She knew my friends didn't come over to my house - not since the last time when my dad screamed at me in front of them. After that, I only went to their houses.

"I'm going to stay the night with Gia," I insisted.

"Well, make sure to take pictures!" she said. "I want to see you all dressed up."

I had no idea how I was going to do that.

I got in my truck, tossing my new prom dress on the passenger seat, a deeply discounted thing I found on a clearance rack to sell the lie that I cared about prom. My truck was old, small, and zippy, with windows that had to be rolled up and down by hand. I had all my camping gear stuffed behind the seats.

I punched in the address that Magnus had sent me and shot him a text saying I was on the way. My hands were almost white on the steering wheel as I blasted around the curving corners of the winding street his house was on. By the time I pulled up to his parents' house my hands had stopped shaking, the nervous energy spent on whipping my lightweight truck around the corners of his road.

I pulled into the driveway in front of a cute boxy thing built into the hillside, more upright than wide. It probably had a tiny backyard, given the hill jutting up behind it. I texted him that I was outside. I folded up the garment bag with the prom dress in it and wedged it into the backseat.

He came out of the house, but he didn't have anything with him.

I couldn't unroll the window on the passenger side, so I leaned over and unlocked the door. He opened it, standing there without getting in, wearing a button up shirt and khaki shorts.

"My parents want to meet you," he said. "Can you come in for a minute?"

I nodded wordlessly.

I climbed out of the car, locking the door behind me. I also went around to open and relock the passenger door before following Magnus up the path to his house. We climbed stairs to the front door, where his mom was holding it open, a huge smile on her face.

"Lumi?" she asked. "So nice to meet you. Magnus has told us a lot about you."

"He has?" I choked out.

I could smell cookies. The front entryway was bright and clean. The few rooms I could see into were all tidy, the kind of space you would see in a Home and Garden style magazine.

When would this be over?

"Here we go!" a man said, coming down the stairs close to the door, a proper backpacking pack in his hands. He had ruddy cheeks, and the only lines on his face were around the corners of his eyes, like he spent his whole life smiling.

"Thanks, Dad," Magnus said,

"Now, take it easy. You have everything you need, right honey?" his mother crooned.

"Let the boy be," his dad said.

"I'll be fine, Mom," Magnus insisted, his face red. "Let's get going, Lumi."

Niamh chirped from the doorway. She had followed me up from the truck. Magnus's mother's eyes flicked to where my familiar was standing and back to me, a frown creasing between her eyes.

Was she looking at Niamh? She couldn't be.

Normal people couldn't see my familiar.

"Lumi, I want your mom's number so I can call her," his mother said.

No no no no no.

"My mom's dead," I blurted out.

"Oh, well what about-" she continued, but I couldn't let her ask her next question. Giving her my dad's phone number would be even worse.

"I left ice cream in the car," I lied. "It's melting."

"You what?" His mom's forehead crinkled.

"Gotta go." I rushed out of that house that smelled like cookies and healthy communication.

Magnus followed me to the car.

I unlocked both doors, letting Niamh back in, and Magnus looked inside the cab before putting his backpack in the bed of the truck. I fished out a bungee cord and climbed into the back of the truck, attaching his bag to the loop in one of the corners just in case I took a corner too fast.

I liked taking corners too fast.

He got into the cab and I put in the address of the trailhead before taking off.

"I'm sorry about your mom," he said.

"My mom isn't dead," I said. "I just said that because if I told my parents where I was going, they wouldn't have let me go. I'm not allowed to spend time with guys doing stuff like this. They think I'm going to prom tonight with my friends."

"Oh," he replied. "You shouldn't lie to your parents."

"Well, maybe if my dad hadn't freaked out and broken the computer I would have told them the truth." My hands were trembling on the wheel. I wasn't supposed to say those sorts of things to other people. Family stuff was supposed to stay with the family.

"That's why you stopped talking to me," Magnus said. "I thought it was because of, you know."

I wasn't sure what to say to that.

I glanced over at him and his cheeks were red.

He had wanted me to keep texting him? But he had only messaged me back with brief answers. If he wanted me to keep texting him, he should have asked me questions of his own.

I didn't know what to reply to his strange statement, so I didn't say anything.

Instead, I turned on the radio.

We sat there silently listening to the radio until I pulled up into the parking lot for the trailhead. I pulled the parking pass out of the glove compartment, my hand brushing his bare knee. He let out a heavy exhale as I touched him, but I didn't look at him. I hung the park pass up behind the mirror.

I got out of the car and Magnus copied me, grabbing his backpack from the truck bed.

I walked around to the passenger side and pulled the seat forward so I could get my own backpack out. I struggled for a moment as I tried to lift it. I'd forgotten how heavy it was. Magnus reached past me and grabbed it, pulling it out for me, his chest brushing against my shoulder. I took a step back, a weird fluttery feeling in my gut.

"I have some stuff I don't need that I want to take out of my bag if you want to put some of your things in my bag for me to carry," he said.

"I'm going to go pee if you want to just do that," I said.

I fled over to the toilet near the trailhead.

I didn't have to pee. I just needed a minute to calm down. Being around Magnus made me feel so…heated. The terrible stench of the trailhead toilet was a quick fix for that.

You don't need to be this nervous, Niamh said as I exited the stinking building and took a deep breath of fresh air. His kind are easy. Just tell him to mount you, and he will.

"No more advice," I muttered at her as I headed back to the truck.

When I got there, Magnus had his backpack on his back and was holding my smaller bag in his hand. He held it up and I slipped it onto my shoulders.

It was a lot lighter.

"Did you take everything out?" I laughed.

"I took the sleeping bag and the tent," he said.

"That's most of the weight. Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied.

I patted my pocket for the familiar lump of keys, then opened the passenger door to lock it. There was what looked like a brand new sleeping bag and tent sitting on the floor in front of the seat. They weren't mine.

"What are those?" I asked.

"Just some stuff I don't need, right?" he asked, his face a strange sort of red color, like a pastel lobster. I didn't know he could flush like that.

I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest as I locked the door and shut it.

"Shall we?" I asked.

Magnus nodded.

We hiked along a small stream, the sound of water spilling over rocks tickling our ears.

The canopy above swayed lightly with the breeze, providing just enough shade to keep the heat at bay, while still allowing streaks of golden light to highlight the rich greens and vibrant wildflowers along the trail. The earth beneath our feet was soft but firm, packed with fallen leaves and small sticks that crunched quietly with each step.

My pinky toes hurt.

So did my shoulders where the straps dug into them. I held onto the front of the straps, trying to pull the weight forward, but it didn't do much. After a while, the dull pain in one of my pinky toes grew more insistent, but I ignored it.

Beside us, the stream wove its way through the landscape, its gentle burbling the perfect counterpoint to the occasional bird call or rustle in the underbrush. Water cascaded over smooth stones, its surface glinting like silver in the sun's reflection. As we followed the stream's path, I caught the scent of damp moss and fresh earth, a crispness in the air that hinted at the coolness of the nearby water. I was lost in the sounds of nature - water flowing, birds singing, and the occasional wind brushing through leaves.

It was so different from the constant background noise of traffic and people talking.

The first time I came out here I was overwhelmed by the shocking beauty of the nature that was so close by that I had never seen. This second time that awe hadn't dimmed in the slightest. It was startling how gorgeous the world around me could be if it wasn't paved over and bricked apart. The fact that my parents had to spend so much time trapped in small rooms looking at screens when there was all this…it was unfair.

It wasn't just unfair - it was crazy.

Neither of us spoke as we walked.

Occasionally, the stream widened into shallow pools where the water slowed, revealing smooth stones beneath the surface, rounded and polished by years of gentle wear. We paused at one such spot, watching the sunlight flicker across the rippling water, creating small rainbows in the mist kicked up by a tiny waterfall further upstream.

"Do you want to stop for a snack?" Magnus asked.

We had been hiking for at least an hour without saying anything.

"Sure," I said.

I had some jerky I'd gotten from the same store that had the backpacking equipment, along with some freeze dried meals. Before I could unsnap my backpack straps, Magnus turned to put the back of his bag towards me.

"I have a bag of peanuts in the back pocket if you want to get them out," he said.

I reached over and unzipped the pocket in question.

There was an overstuffed ziplock bag and I pulled on it. It caught for a moment, but after another tug it popped out into my hand.

It wasn't a bag of peanuts.

I held it up, my brain taking a few minutes to catch up with what I was looking at. Magnus turned around and spotted what was in my hands, and his eyes widened.

He snatched the ziplock bag full of condoms out of my hand.

There were at least thirty in there.

Why did he need so many?

"My dad must have put that in," he said, his voice strangled. "He's an idiot. I don't…I didn't mean…"

"Do you think the peanuts are still in there?" I asked, my own voice sounding strange to me. I felt flushed, embarrassed, and also…not. That embarrassment traveled down deep into my abdomen, a tightening that had nothing to do with discomfort and everything to do with the flutter of excitement in my chest every time Magnus caught my eye across a room.

He turned around.

I dug back into the pocket and pulled out a bag of peanuts.

"Do you want me to put the condoms back in there?" I asked.

He held them out to me and I took them, tucking them back into the pocket before zipping it back up. I opened the peanut bag and grabbed a handful before handing it over to him. We ate for a minute in silence. I grabbed another handful from him. I didn't want to sit here and have to look at him and talk about what I'd just seen.

"I'm…" Magnus started to say something and stopped.

I took a step forward and winced.

"Do you…" Magnus said again, his gaze lifting up to my face. "Is there something wrong with your foot?"

I looked down at it.

From the outside, my foot looked completely normal. My sneakers were a little worn, and I could see the sole of the shoe was starting to detach again. The glue I used the last time the smooth bottom came off was wearing off again. I would need to redo it and take another sharpie to the outside so that it was hard to see.

"My toe hurts," I said.

"Are you getting a blister?" he asked. "I have some moleskin."

He unclipped his backpack, setting it down next to one of the larger rocks.

"Sit here," he said, patting the rock before turning to his bag. He dug into the same pocket that held the overstuffed ziplock bag, shoving it to the side as I caught another glimpse of the metallic foil. He pulled out a smaller red cloth bag with a zipper.

I took off my backpack, set it down on the ground, and sat on the rock.

"Take off your shoe," he said.

"My foot probably stinks," I replied, even as I untied my laces and slid my shoe off, dropping it on the ground and peeling off my sock. "We've been hiking."

He tilted his chin down and lifted one eyebrow, the corners of his mouth curling up just enough to forget what we were talking about for a second.

"Do I look like I care if you stink?" he replied.

"No," I said. Then on an impulse that leaned more to the part of my brain that liked to kick over sandcastles, I lifted my barefoot up in the air and shoved it towards his face, swiping my toes in the air like claws.

He shifted his head to the side to dodge, laughed, and grabbed my ankle.

His hand was warm, dry, and the touch of his bare skin on mine intensified the tension in my lower abdominals. His skin on mine was pleasure and agony all in one, and I realized this was the first time anyone had touched me gently in years.

I sucked in a breath through my teeth and pulled my foot back.

He let go of my ankle as soon as I tugged on it.

"Is my hand cold?" he asked.

"No, it's fine. It just tickled," I said, sticking my foot back out.

He took my ankle more gingerly this time, looking at my toe.

"You have a blister!" he declared, letting go of it to unzip the small red bag. He pulled out a tiny pair of scissors and a square of a tan bandage, the moleskin.

"Thanks, Doctor Magnus!" I said.

"Don't thank me," he replied. "We're going to have to amputate the whole foot."

He held up the tiny scissors and snipped them in the air, grinning.

Then he cut a small square out of the moleskin.

A few minutes later my blister was bandaged and I was pulling on my sock. Magnus bent down to pick up my shoe, frowning as he looked at it.

"You have no treads on this," he pointed out. "And it is falling apart. You need new shoes."

"No, I just need duct tape." I didn't want to ask for new shoes. Asking for things like that would lead to my dad dramatically waving his arms and ranting about money and buying things. That was if he was in a good mood.

Magnus dug in his backpack, pulling out a roll of camo print duct tape. He turned to me with a grin and held it out.

"Ask and you shall receive!" he said.

"Why are you carrying duct tape on a camping trip?" I asked, taking it from him.

"Why aren't you?" he said. "Duct tape can solve most problems."

I laughed, nodding. I took my shoe and wrapped the duct tape around the sole, securing it so it wouldn't break off any further.

"Do you remember the trebuchets in physics last year?" I asked.

"Mr. McGullen never said we couldn't use duct tape to secure the joints." Magnus grinned back at me.

"I can't believe it ended up working as well as it did," I said.

"Duct tape." Magnus nodded.

I smiled. We had so many moments like that. We had spent so many years in school together, making stupid jokes and talking about classes.

I knew him every way I possibly could at this point, and yet I still didn't know him at all.

Magnus turned to put his stuff back in his backpack, only to find that the overstuffed bag of protection from his dad had popped halfway out of the pocket. He shoved it back in, his shoulders noticeably tensing. I put my backpack on and grabbed my peanuts to snack on while we continued our wordless hike.

By the time I finished my snack and a gulp of water, we reached the section of trail of switchbacks down the sides of a ravine. As we descended, the trees and underbrush reached up into the air above us, one slow slope at time.

A bird flew across my path and I turned my head to watch it dip and dive everytime it pressed its wings flat against its body. It was using gravity, playing with it, trusting that it could catch itself every time it fell. Even in my dreams, I was always the bird that couldn't fly. I would beat my wings and leap from the branch and arch up and up, only to slowly float back down to the ground. No matter how much I struggled to reach any height, I was pulled down, landing lower than where I started.

We reached the boulder that marked the hidden trail.

I turned and pushed past the brush.

"Where are you going?" Magnus asked. "That isn't the trail."

"It isn't the main trail," I pointed out, "but it is a trail."

A few steps in, the narrower path became obvious. The main trail led to the proper campsites, with lots of spots available for all the people who would slowly fill them in. This path was less known, and it would be just us. The campsite where I had summoned my familiar wasn't that far off the main trail, maybe twenty minutes, but I couldn't be sure, as I had turned my phone off. Whatever was going on out there in the world around me could wait until tomorrow.

Today was about moving on.

The small, hidden trail had long single strands of untrimmed plant matter that reached out over it, and I snapped off dried dead branches as I passed by, carefully pushing aside some of the larger, thornier live ones to avoid their grasping reach.

I heard a whistling sound behind me.

I turned to see that Magnus was several yards back, a large stick in his hands. He swung it, slicing off one of the long thorny reachers that had grown out over the rarely tended trail with a snap and whoosh.

He grinned when he saw me looking back at him.

"Can I go first?" he asked.

I nodded and he squeezed by me, his hand brushing against mine in a moment, every particle of my attention shifting away from the singing birds, the small insect buzzing by my ear, the soft rustle of leaves brushing the treetops, all fading away to be taken over by the brush of skin against skin. As he stepped in front of me, my eyes fell on a dark pink foxglove flower, humming and vibrating as a bee wriggled its way into it.

I heard the whistling sound and the crack and I turned to see Magnus hooking a broken bramble with his stick and shifting it to the side of the trail.

Then I walked behind him as he slashing brambles from our path like with the machete stick, picking the thorny ones up gingerly to toss them to the side when their landing zone was too close to the edge of the trail.

"That's weird," Magnus said from ahead of me.

I turned from the last branch I had thrown to see that he was now facing me. He held out a single, blood-red rose.

"M'lady," he said, waving the rose as he mock bowed as much as he could with a big backpack on his shoulder.

"Roses grow out here?" I glanced around, not seeing a rose bush.

"It was taped to the tree trunk up here," he said, pointing at a small tree that the trail curved around.

"The petals are dry," I said, squeezing one. "It might have been here for some time."

"Maybe an admirer left it behind?" Magnus asked.

I shrugged.

"Let's put it back," I said, walking up to find the tape still on the tree. I put it back on the trunk.

"Alright." Magnus walked past me and continued his bush whacking.

The small trail opened up into a clearing set to the side of the stream's offshoot. The ravine's walls towered above us on either side. The stream was shallow, but wide, like the length of two people lying down head to toe. I took off my backpack and set it down on a log carved out like a bench with the shallowest backrest known in existence. Niamh jumped on the log next to my backpack and began licking her leg.

"This is it?" Magnus asked, looking around. "Where are the other sites?"

"It isn't an official campsite." I shrugged. "The guy behind the counter at the camping store told me about it. We should set up the tent first."

Setting up the tent was faster than I thought it would be. I'd only done it once, and that took me over an hour. With Magnus's help, it went a lot faster, the poles sliding into their spots. He bent over and his trousers pulled tight against the muscles of his rear. I looked away, clipping a clip onto the pole. Another clip went on and I realized just how small the tent was. We were going to be in there together, in that small space, so close together. I bit my lip and tried to focus on constructing it.

When we put on the rain fly, his hands brushed mine again and I pulled them back, a flush of heat and awareness rushing through me, and I dropped the part I was holding.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"No, it's okay." I shook my head, grabbing the rain fly again and trying to change the subject. "It probably isn't going to rain, but last time I didn't put it on and the dew in the morning made all my stuff wet."

"Do you not like being touched?" Magnus ignored my subject change. "I don't like it, except sometimes I do, I guess. It's intense."

I began to snap the rainfly onto the poles.

I wanted to talk about it, but I wasn't supposed to talk about family business.

But I wasn't going to see Magnus again.

I wasn't going to see my family again.

I didn't have to follow those rules anymore.

"I…" My voice trembled, and I stopped to take a deep breath. "My dad yells and breaks things and stuff, and I get…I want to touch people. I just get…"

"Startled?" Magnus asked.

"Startled, kind of." I sighed. "Like, if you lift your hand suddenly I'll-"

Magnus lifted his hand, swinging it up into the air, and my entire upper body jerked backwards, carrying my weight back so my feet had to stumble to keep up.

"Oh shit, I'm sorry," Magnus stammered. "I shouldn't have...I thought…I don't know what I was thinking."

I put my hands up, shaking my head.

"Let's just set up the tent," I said.

When the last snap clicked into place around the pole, I grabbed the bag of stakes and handed it to Magnus.

"Stake down the tent and I'll go collect firewood?" I asked and told at the same time.

He looked at the bag in his hand.

"Is there a hammer?" he asked.

"I used a rock last time." I shrugged. "I also have an ax."

"You have an ax?" His face split into a smile. "How would I use an ax to nail stakes into the ground?"

I walked over to my bag and pulled it out, holding it out to him handle first.

"Oh, one side is blunt." He shook his head and started on the stakes.

"The guy at the store recommended it," I said.

"That guy at the store must have been really helpful," Magnus said.

"Yeah, he kept asking when I was going out here, too." I headed towards the edge of the clearing. "He offered to come with me and teach me, but I wanted to do it myself. He wanted to know when I was going, but I lied about that because I felt uncomfortable."

Magnus frowned, the inside corners of his eyebrows lifting up as the edges of his eyes crinkled.

"You came out here by yourself after some guy was being creepy?" Magnus asked. "Why?"

Niamh let out a little chirping sound that I was pretty sure was her way of laughing.

I'd already told him so much, and he hadn't freaked out. He hadn't gotten upset at me or told me I was making things up when I told him about my dad breaking things. I bent down to pick up some of the smaller sticks at the edge of the clearing.

It felt good to tell someone else the things I wasn't supposed to talk about.

But this was my biggest secret.

I wasn't going to see him again anyway.

Who cared if he thought I was crazy?

"I wanted to cast a summoning spell for a familiar," I said. "It was on a pamphlet that came in the mail. It said it would work best if I was out in nature without a lot of people around."

"Did it work?" he asked, pounding a stake in.

"Yes." I didn't want to elaborate further. He hadn't asked about Niamh, so he couldn't see her. If I started talking about creatures he couldn't see, he would think I had mental health issues.

The thing was, I wasn't sure I didn't.

I wasn't sure Niamh was real.

I wasn't sure the school was real.

I walked over to my backpack, dumping the pile of sticks I had collected next to the big stone circle that served as the fire pit. Someone had arranged large stones into a little fireplace in front of a boulder serving as the backing, and several on the side of the circle that held a grate that could sit over the fire.

I pulled the flier out of my backpack that I kept with me all the time.

If I left it at home my dad would find it when he went through my stuff.

I held it out to Magnus as he stood up after pounding in the last stake.

"This is what I got in the mail," I said.

He took it from me, his eyes widening as he read the words I had spent hours staring at, hoping that they were true. When Niamh appeared after I had cast the spell, that hope erupted in my chest like a radiant sun, a warmth of potential at what the future could be if I left all the shit of what the pamphlet called "the mundane" behind.

"This is…" He hesitated. "Is it a role playing game?"

"I don't think so. Maybe," I said. "I'm going to go to the admissions interview and find out."

"Do you think this is safe? It could be a sex trafficking ring." Magnus frowned at the paper. "They want you to come to the meeting alone, without your family."

My mouth dropped open and I shook my head.

I hadn't thought of that, but I couldn't believe that was the case.

"I think it is real," I said. "This is my best shot to get away from here."

"What if it isn't real?" Magnus asked. "What if it is a trap?"

"I don't know." I shook my head, my shoulders slumping.

"Can I come with you?" he asked.

"It says to come without my family," I pointed out.

"First, I'm not your family," he said. "And second, that is exactly what a cult or a sex trafficking ring would do. They cut you off from the people who care about you so they can't protect you from being abused and brainwashed."

"I'm already being abused," I snapped. "How could it get any worse?"

Magnus sucked in his breath and stepped back away from me, as if to create a space between himself and my words. He looked at me, his forehead creasing but soft, like he was trying to be there for me but didn't know how to not feel the anger. The familiar thrill of meeting his gaze washed against the thorny vines that wrapped around my heart, cutting into it as they tightened with every pulse of my inherited anger.

He was silent for a moment.

We were both silent for a moment.

I couldn't believe I said that out loud.

It wasn't until the words left my mouth that I could see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It was in the way other kids were happy and unafraid to talk about their home lives. It was the moment I went to a friend's house and saw the elaborate dinner her mom made, and she gave me a strange look when I praised her over and over for how good it was and sucked down the food like it would vanish in seconds.

"I brought stuff to cook." Magnus broke the silence as he turned away from my gaze. He set the ax down next to Niamh as he began to pull things out of his backpack. "I'm going to make lunch or dinner? It is almost dinner, time isn't it? You want linner?"

I nodded once, took the ax, and headed further down the trail to gather wood. There was a fallen tree that I could break pieces off of for bigger logs.

I made several trips, carrying as much as I could to pile up on the other side of the fire pit. Each time I returned Magnus was doing something different. He had brought a heavy cast iron pan, of all things, and had it balanced perfectly on a tiny camping stove. Next trip back he was melting a hunk of fat in the pan. Next trip back a colorful medley of vegetables and what looked like marinated chunks of chicken were sizzling in the pan, and saucy zip lock bags lay discarded on the ground next to him.

I put the wood down and pulled an old plastic grocery bag out from my backpack. I stuffed the zip lock bags into the old grocery bag.

"Trash," I said when he glanced over at me. I hung it up on a broken branch protruding from a tree. "Isn't that pan a little heavy to bring backpacking?"

He shrugged.

"My backpack felt really light," he said. "I could carry a lot more."

I went back to gathering wood.

When I next returned, the smell of the food caused my stomach to cramp.

"Oh, I'm hungry," I breathed out.

Magnus had two large pie pans out and was shoveling a huge quantity of food into both of them.

"How did you learn how to cook?" I asked, digging through my backpack for a pair of chopsticks I had stored in there with my own, much smaller camping bowl. I was very glad for the two huge pie tins. They held a lot more food.

"My dad taught me," he said. "I asked him to help me prep some meals for this trip. I cooked everything in bacon fat."

His dad taught him?

Longing wrapped around my heart like those prickling vines, cutting into it as I compared his life with my own.

He handed me one of the pans and I sat down on a rock next to him.

I stared at the steaming mountain of food, wondering what it would be like to spend time in the kitchen with my parents, cooking together. What was it like to laugh together, to work together, to learn something other than how to flinch away?

I pushed those thoughts away. There was no point in wanting something that I had no control over, so I focused on what was in front of me.

The food was delicious, and there was so much of it.

I thought my dehydrated backpacking meals were good, but eating a fresh cooked meal was on a completely different level. It felt for a moment like I was sitting outside of myself, watching my actions, watching as I frantically shoveled the food into my mouth.

My earlier eruption made me look at myself in a new light.

I bolted down food, because if I didn't eat fast, I didn't get to eat much.

I flinched at sudden movement and touches, because I had been hit, and my body carried the fear response that would save me from the most damage should a hand connect with me.

I avoided Magnus and my feelings for him, because the people who were supposed to love me hurt me with their violent words and actions, and making myself vulnerable to a new person was opening my scabbed over heart to a new source of pain.

Now I could see the reasons and the results.

I ate slower, chewing each bite with deliberate intent.

Magnus wasn't going to take my food away from me if I didn't eat fast enough to stop him. He wasn't going to hit me or break things. I'd been at school with him for six years now, and not once had I seen him yell at someone. When Gwen rejected him, all he had done was focus inward, fixating on the one thing he could control, rather than lash out at the people around him.

I looked up to see Magnus focusing on his food, his eyes glazed over as his mind traveled somewhere else.

The thing was, he'd already broken my heart.

If I was going to leave this mundane world for a better one, I needed to burn every bridge behind me so that I never wanted to go back. To do that, I would have to press the burning red iron of reality against the bleeding wound.

To do that, I would have to speak the truth.

"I've had a crush on you for years," I blurted out. "I love you."

I could see the focus in his eyes, the clarity of his gaze as his brain snapped suddenly back into the present moment, focusing on me.

"It really hurt when you asked Gwen to prom," I continued, my broken heart pounding strong and wild in my chest. I couldn't believe what I was saying, but I said it anyway, because it was impossible not to.

"I didn't know," he replied, his eyes wide and focused on me. "I don't feel the same way."

Of course he didn't feel the same way.

If he'd felt the same way, he would have asked me to prom.

How could he feel the same way when I was the weirdly dressed girl who didn't do all the things that girls were supposed to do to make boys attracted to them? Gwen dressed in cute little skirts and did her hair every morning so it fell around her shoulders in beautiful curls. She got false mink eyelashes glued to her eyelids every three weeks. She was polished and perfect.

I wore baggy clothes and sometimes went too long between washing my hair, because my dad didn't like using the heater, and I didn't like spending the night shivering from wet hair.

I probably didn't even look like a woman to him.

"I like being around you," he continued, his gaze still clawing into the open wound in my heart. "It's fun to play board games with you in the after school club. I was really happy when you invited me on this trip. It felt really good to know someone cared about me. What do your feelings mean to you? What are they like?"

Why was he asking me those questions?

I took a deep breath. This was so painful, and yet, it felt like a different type of pain, like I was airing a festering mess of need, forcing it to face the reality of what was actually there.

"I get excited when I'm around you." I let the words come out, speaking the truth of what had been coiled in my heart, compressed in the various stories I told myself in my mind, wrapped up in the darkness of the nights when I put my hand between my legs and imagined it was him. "When I look into your eyes it feels like a beam of sunlight is piercing my chest and igniting this warm glow in my center. I think about you when I'm not around you. I…"

Should I say the rest? Should I tell him everything?

Fuck it.

Time to burn this whole thing to the ground.

Let him reject me so thoroughly that I never look back.

"I imagine what it would be like to have you touch me. I imagine what it would be like to…" I took a deep breath and the rest of the words came out in a rush, because if I didn't say them quickly I wouldn't say them at all. "I imagine what it would be like to have sex with you. I imagine what it would be like to thread my fingers gently through your hair and kiss you. I think about it a lot. I know it is weird and you don't want that, but that is what it is and I'm sorry."

I said it out loud.

I actually said it all out loud.

"I…" Magnus was looking at me, his eyes so wide I could see all of the whites.

He was going to do it.

He was going to say how he didn't want me, how gross I was, how it disgusted him that I would spend years touching myself while thinking about him, and how I was a pervert who tricked him into coming out here. He was going to reject me. He'd say he only thought of me like he did one of his guy friends, and he was going to leave, and we had to pack up and hike back, and this part of my heart would be seared shut, never to open up again.

That would be the end of it, and I would cry, and I would never look back and wonder what could have been, because I would already know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it couldn't.

"I would like that, too," he said.

"What?" I stared at him, shocked at his response, even more shocked by the fact that he was bright red, an odd even shade that looked more like his skin was completely changing color, rather than flushing. He was looking at me, but now he was having trouble meeting my gaze, looking away every few moments, then back at me.

"I mean, I don't." He took a deep breath. "I didn't really think of you in those ways before. I've always seen you as a friend, not a woman, you know?"

I shook my head.

"I don't know. I see you as a man," I replied. "When you got up on that stage and did something that brave, there wasn't any other way that I could see you."

"What I'm saying is, I'm open to kissing and stuff," he said.

"You're…open to it?" I repeated, not sure if I should be offended or elated. If he wanted me, shouldn't he pick me up and pin me back against a tree and take me like he couldn't stand another second being separate from me?

That was what they did in my books I liked to read.

No male love interest was ever just…open…to the idea of carnal relations.

"I mean, if you want to," he stammered.

There was only one way to kill this feeling inside me, this desperate, clawing need to be loved by someone who wouldn't hurt me. He had to hurt me so I could let him go. I had to let him hurt me. Being with him when he was just open to it and I wanted him so desperately would hurt more than anything else I could think of.

I had to just go for it and get it over with.

I set my pie pan down and rose to my feet, covering the distance between us.

He watched me from his seat on a rock low to the ground, his knees almost to his ears. He barely managed to put his food to the side before I straddled him. His lips parted in surprise. I slid down, pressing the mound between my legs against his belly, until his knees trapped me against him.

I gently touched his hair, sliding my fingers into it, mindful not to pull on any tangled curls. His hair wasn't the kind I could run my fingers through with wild abandon. His was the kind of hair to touch gently, to go in and out and not drag… unless of course he wanted me to yank him around.

A vicious part of me rose to the surface, but I controlled the urge to grip my fingers tight and yank his head back.

Instead, I leaned my face down towards his as he tilted his own up to mine.

I pressed my lips against his.

I stuck my tongue out, like I'd read about, and licked the seam of his lips, soft against mine. His lips moved for a moment before I pulled my face back, my heart pounding in my ears as I looked into his eyes.

"You kissed me!" he said, his own eyes wide.

"Yes, and I'm going to do it again," I replied.

I kissed him again.

This time his hands came up to my back, sliding against me, pressing me against him as the gentle touch of our lips against each other morphed something animalistic. I groaned as his tongue pressed in between my lips, as his teeth grazed my bottom lip, as his legs shifted underneath me and my hips rocked.

I came up for air like a drowning woman, gasping and pulling back from everything I'd ever wanted, but couldn't have.

Except for right now.

I could have a taste of him to take with me, something to remember him by, something to hold on to when I'd lie awake at night in my new life, wondering what could have been if he had looked back at me with those gorgeous ice blue eyes and told me that he loved me back.

"There's an inflatable mattress that goes under the sleeping bag," I said. "We could do more stuff in the tent."

There was no holding back for me, because there was no coming back.

I knew that once I got a taste of magic, real magic, I wouldn't want to return to this shitty little world full of people who mocked you for putting your heart on display. I wouldn't return to a household filled with shouting and broken pieces of a family that didn't know how to love.

This one night I could pretend that I was wanted.

His eyes were glazed over with a smoldering heat as he looked back at me, a fire hidden under layers of ash and blackened wood, red coals that would burn for an eternity if left alone. He flushed light red in an even tone that covered every part of his visible skin.

He leaned in towards me, pressing his belly against my hips as he pinned me there with his weight. Heat raced through me like a wildfire, and I shifted my hips, rubbing my need against his bulk.

I'd drooled over him during swim class. I knew what his body looked like - at least the parts of him not covered by swim trunks. I knew that under the softness lay strong muscle, and I loved all of it. The heroes in my romance books were ripped, gorgeous men who could clean clothing on their abs if they scrubbed hard enough, but I wasn't in love with them.

Those fantasy men weren't the one pressing his body against mine, returning my heat with the rising fire of his own.

"I'll do the dishes," he said, his eyes intent on mine.

I nodded, and he leaned back so I could stand up.

I moved with efficient precision created by an overdose of adrenaline mixed with intense sexual excitement. Who cared if he didn't feel the same way? Who cared that when his gaze met mine across the classroom he didn't feel that same sparkling sense of wonder?

I ignored that small part of my heart, the rational part that knew that the emptiness I felt from growing up as an afterthought couldn't be solved by another person's body against mine. I couldn't be healed by giving my heart away - I could only have it torn from my broken chest.

But right then I didn't need to be healed.

I needed to get laid.