Road To Rhodes

Chapter5

The bus drove for three more hours.

Maya counted them. She counted the number of times Sasha fell asleep and woke up and fell asleep again. She counted the number of times she almost turned around to look at Rhodes and didn't.

Four. She almost did four times.

Pathetic.

When the bus finally turned onto a dirt road, the whole vehicle shuddered like it was offended. Trees pressed in on both sides, thick and green and wildly unhelpful. Somewhere in the distance, a bird made a sound that was probably normal in nature but still made Maya uncomfortable.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Donovan's voice crackled. "Welcome to Pine Ridge Campground. Grab your belongings. Find your partner. Do not wander into the woods. I repeat, do not wander. We had an incident in 2019 and I am not doing that again."

"What happened in 2019?" Sasha whispered.

"I don't want to know."

The bus groaned to a stop. Everyone stood at once, a chaos of backpacks and sleeping bags and someone's pillow that had exploded somewhere around hour five. Maya grabbed her dad's duffel and shuffled down the aisle, Sasha's hand gripping the back of her hoodie so they wouldn't get separated.

The air outside hit her first.

It smelled like dirt and pine and something floral she couldn't name. It smelled, she realized with a pang, like her dad's old camping gear that he never got to use.

She pushed the thought down.

The campground was... a lot. Rows of wooden platforms for tents. A fire pit in the center, surrounded by log benches. A small building that claimed to be a BATHHOUSE in faded letters. Trees everywhere, towering and ancient, like they'd been there for centuries and were not impressed by a bunch of teenagers.

"Okay, okay, okay." Sasha spun in a slow circle. "This is actually kind of pretty."

"It's a forest."

"A pretty forest."

"It has bugs."

"Pretty bugs."

Maya snorted despite herself.

Donovan was already herding everyone toward the central fire pit, clipboard in hand. "Partners, find each other! Tent assignments are by group color. Green group, that's Martinez, Callahan, and six other pairs, you're on the east side. Blue group, west. Red group, you're near the bathhouse. Yes, that's on purpose. No, I won't explain why."

Maya felt someone step up beside her before she saw him. She knew it was him. The leather jacket had a smell. Annoyingly, it was a good smell. Cedar and something else.

"East side," Rhodes said. "Fancy."

"Move your stuff yourself. I'm not helping."

"Wouldn't dream of asking." He swung his duffel over his shoulder and started walking. "Come on, partner. Let's go find our home for the next three weeks."

Maya didn't move.

Sasha nudged her. "Go. I'll find you later. Marcus is already waving at me." She pointed to a lanky boy with kind eyes who was, indeed, waving. "He has snacks. I can tell."

"Traitor."

"Survivor."

Sasha bounced off, and Maya was left standing alone until Rhodes turned around and walked backward, arms spread wide.

"Martinez. I'm not setting up this tent alone. Move."

She moved.

Their tent platform was at the very edge of the green group's section, tucked under a massive pine tree. It was slightly more private than the others. Slightly more isolated.

Of course.

"So." Rhodes dropped his duffel onto the platform. "Ever set up a tent before?"

"No."

"Me neither."

Maya stared at the bundle of fabric and poles that someone had left on the platform. It looked like a sad nylon burrito.

"This is going to go great," Rhodes said.

"Shut up."

They started. It did not go great.

The instructions were written in a font so small Maya was pretty sure it was designed by someone who hated joy. The poles were all the same color and somehow all the wrong size. Rhodes tried to be helpful by holding things and ended up just standing there with a pole in each hand like a very confused warrior.

"You're holding them wrong."

"I'm holding them the only way poles can be held."

"There's a diagram."

"The diagram is a lie."

Maya snatched one of the poles from him and tried to thread it through the tent sleeve. It got stuck halfway. She yanked. It got more stuck.

"Need help?"

"No."

"You sure? Because you're currently wrestling a tent and the tent is winning."

She turned to glare at him and the pole slipped out, smacking her in the arm.

Rhodes pressed his lips together. His shoulders were shaking.

"Don't," she warned.

"I'm not."

"You're about to laugh."

"I'm absolutely not about to laugh at the girl who just got defeated by a piece of nylon."

A beat of silence.

Then they both cracked.

Maya laughed. It was small and surprised and it caught her off guard, like a sneeze she didn't know was coming. Rhodes laughed too, louder, head tipped back, and for a second it wasn't annoying at all.

She stopped laughing immediately.

"Okay," she said, clearing her throat. "Let's just... follow the diagram."

"Whatever you say, boss."

It took forty minutes. Forty minutes of tangled poles, misread instructions, and Rhodes accidentally stepping on the tent fabric and almost ripping it. But eventually, the tent stood. It was slightly lopsided. The rain fly was definitely on wrong. But it was standing.

Rhodes stepped back, hands on his hips. "We did it."

"Barely."

"I'm going to say we did it and I'm going to be proud of it."

"Be proud quietly."

He wasn't quiet. He took out his phone—which they weren't supposed to be using, but Rhodes clearly didn't care—and snapped a photo of the tent.

"For posterity," he said.

"For evidence when this thing collapses on us in the middle of the night."

He lowered his phone and looked at her. "Us. You said us."

"I said the tent. The tent will collapse on us. Not us us."

"Sure, Martinez."

Maya grabbed her duffel and crawled into the tent before he could say anything else.

***

The inside was small. Smaller than she'd expected. Two sleeping bags, two thin camping pads, and about six inches of personal space between them.

This was fine. This was totally fine.

She chose the left side and started unpacking. Her clothes. Her toothbrush. The book she'd brought and probably wouldn't read. The note from her mum.

She tucked that under her pillow.

The tent flap rustled and Rhodes crawled in, filling the small space with his stupid leather jacket and his stupid cedar smell and his stupid face.

"Cozy," he said.

"It's a closet."

"A cozy closet."

"My side. Your side." She drew an invisible line down the middle of the tent floor. "Don't cross it."

"What if I need to sneeze?"

"Cross your side and sneeze there."

"What if there's a spider?"

"I'll handle the spider."

"What if there's a bear?"

"Then we're both dead and the line doesn't matter."

He grinned. "So there are scenarios where the line doesn't matter. Good to know."

Maya turned her back to him and started unpacking her bag with more force than necessary. She heard him settle onto his sleeping bag, heard the rustle of his jacket coming off, heard him sigh like he was perfectly content with the situation.

"You know," he said after a moment, "you laughed back there."

"Brief moment of insanity."

"It was nice."

She didn't answer.

"Your laugh," he continued. "It was nice. You should do it more."

Maya's hands paused over her bag. She was glad she was facing away from him. Glad he couldn't see whatever her face was doing.

"Go to sleep, Rhodes."

"It's three in the afternoon."

"Then go bother someone else."

"Don't want to."

The words hung in the air, simple and direct. Maya didn't turn around. She listened to him shift on his sleeping bag, listened to the birds outside, listened to the distant sound of other students struggling with their own tents.

She thought about what Sasha had said on the bus.

He's not just messing with you.

She was starting to think Sasha might be right.

And she had no idea what to do with that.

Later, when Donovan called everyone to the fire pit for the first camp dinner, Maya crawled out of the tent and didn't wait for Rhodes. She found Sasha immediately, linked their arms, and refused to talk about anything except how terrible the camp food smelled.

"It's beans," Sasha reported. "I saw the cans. Approximately seven hundred cans of beans."

"We're going to die of bean poisoning."

"At least we'll die together."

Maya leaned into her friend and let the chatter of the group wash over her. She didn't look for Rhodes. She didn't notice where he was sitting. She didn't notice that he was sitting with his crew but not really talking to them, his eyes somewhere else entirely.

She didn't notice.

She was very good at not noticing.

But when dinner was over and she walked back to the tent, there was a single sour gummy worm on her pillow. No note this time. Just the gummy worm.

She ate it in the dark, long after Rhodes had fallen asleep, and tried not to think about what it meant.