The Hijinks War

44. Friends Don't Let Friends Practice Self-Pity

Shame ate at me and I moved away from Kellen before the next fire watcher showed up for duty. Had I actually bitten him? As the nest fire-tender joined us, I stood, trying to put some distance between Kellen and I. But I didn't know what to do, or where to go, or how to function in that moment.

"Morning, Salome." Kellen said; I hadn't even realized it was her. I expected him to leave, but he wove his hand through mine and gently tugged me with him. We walked away from camp, not following any of our known routes. After some time, Kellen sat against the trunk of a large evergreen with low branches that bowed almost to the ground. As I sat, I noticed him flexing his arm and rubbing the spot I'd bitten him.

"Sorry." I flushed. "Does it hurt?"

"Nah!" He flexed his arm again and draped it over my shoulder. "Not as much as you punching me."

"Ugh! Sorry!"

"I'm kidding, Hero!" He waved my apology off, pulling me back into his side again after I'd moved out of embarrassment. He twirled a long thin branch between his fingers, pondering it carefully. "What do you wanna do?"

"I dunno? I thought we were just walking."

"No." He huffed out a little chuckle. "I mean when you're, you know, like old, what do you want to do?"

"I don't really know. I'm hoping I'll figure it out in college." It seemed such a stupid conversation given our current predicament. None of us were thinking about college and being grown-ups right now.

"Yeah, but what are you planning on taking?"

"Not sure. I guess I'll try to do something with athletics... Or languages, I'm good at that. I've kind of always thought it would be cool to work for the UN as a translator."

"Sounds cool. So you speak other languages then?"

"Mostly French. The other ones... just enough to get by in the places I traveled to with my Mom. Italian, Japanese, Spanish."

"You could at least translate French for them."

"I guess. No one knows this, but I want to act—like my dad." I chewed my lip. It felt weird to be telling him something I hadn't even shared with Jess. It was stranger, still, because I felt safe telling him. Oh no, Nicole! "What about you?"

"Me? Not get people killed," he muttered.

I nudged him with my shoulder. "Hey! We're trying not to talk about this hell right now, so try again."

"A... Stunt car driver for the movies! You think your dad could get me an in?"

"Ah-ha! With the way you drove on the first day, yeah! I'm sure there are a lot of ivy league stunt drivers out there. Your parents will love it!"

"Yeah, I can see Dad introducing me... 'Here's my son the stunt driver, he crashes cars and breaks bones for a living.' He'd much sooner lock me in a closet than allow that to happen."

"You and your dad are close though, right?" My head tiled onto his shoulder like it belonged there. 

"Kind of. But things have been harder this year."

"Because of Hijinks."

"Yeah," he confirmed, tilting his head onto mine.

I bit my lip, willing myself to leave it at that; I didn't need to dig any deeper. We were just trying to get our minds off things. I should've just changed the subject to which teacher we'd hated the most, before they'd all been run off by the crazy man who wanted to kill us.