Page 20 of The Ripple Effect

I check my own posture: hunched, my arms wrapped protectively around the plate balanced on my knees. The sheer volume of physical work at camp has me painfully ravenous.I’m desperate to take another bite, jam in as much as my mouth can hold, guard it from any creature who would steal from me.

But I have to stay still while the bird hops sideways with its shiny black eye pointed at us, its neck dipping toward the freshly sliced honeycrisps. McHugetamesthings like the fox teaches the boy to tame things inThe Little Prince, which I sneaked a look at yesterday when McHuge left it open in the pavilion. He sits a little closer every day, coaxing, making everyonewantto come to him.

Except me, with my thorns.

The raven’s wings beat an abrupt staccato. It alights on the stool, drops a shred of red fabric from its beak, then snatches as many apple slices as it can hold and takes off.

“Did you see that? It’s trading for the food.” McHuge grins down at his meal with open-faced delight. A smile like that is wasted on a three-sectioned tin camping plate, but I guess he’d rather put it there than give it to the person who takes cheap shots at his food art instead of being curious about what he’s doing.

It’s sad, actually. Not pathetic or uncool or any other meaning of the word. Just plain sad—a slow rain that doesn’t come with any anger to keep me dry and hot.

The great thing about having been so damn broke for the last twelve months was that I didn’t have space to think about what I wanted beyond a bank balance without a minus sign in front of it. I didn’t have to worry about what kind of person I was becoming, or who I might like to be for the rest of my life.

It was a relief, after losing the career I’d grown to love, not to have to look for the next thing.

Not to have to search for myself.

But the past week of working here, and especially the last two days of staying near enough to McHuge to cram for our engagement exam, might be bringing feeling back into my soul. It’s no rosy burst of undiluted joy, either. I feel like a cramped, frozen limb, with the deadened sensation giving way to pinpricks that promise a world of pain before I’ll be able to bear any weight.

This ismycompany now, my new chance. Do Iwantanything beyond money and security and guarding what’s mine? And if I do, will the same hurts happen to me all over again?

I blink when a breakfast bite lands on my plate.

“Hey,” I blurt, dismayed at how my mouth waters. “This is yours. Besides, I don’t like mushrooms.”

“I asked Jasvinder to make them all without mushrooms.”

“Why?!” The breakfast bites are good, but they don’t warrant the cry in my voice.

“Because fungi aren’t your jam,” he says slowly, like it’s obvious. “Eat it. I had plenty.”

I hold out my plate. “Take it back.”

“No. It’s for you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Yes, you do. I saw you looking at it. If you’re not hungry, just compost it.”

I can’t compost perfectly good food—not after the way I grew up. I can’t leave it here for animals to find. And he won’t take it back.

I stare at the breakfast bite, flooded with agony where there used to be numbness. He’s kind and I’m not. He gave me the thing I wanted most, and I have nothing to give back. No scrap of red fabric, not even a slice of apple. I would never have thought to give him something just to be nice.

I feel terrible. Everything around camp suddenly looks like it could be better. Especially me.

“I’m going to finish redoing the ropes.” I talked him into letting me do fancy, aspirational knotwork around camp, but itisn’t as easy as it looks, and I’ve been struggling to get it done. In the face of his generosity, the least I can do is get working.

I stuff the breakfast bite in my mouth and stand up fast, as McHuge does the same. Next thing I know, my feet are tangled with his and my plate is on the ground. He pins me to his chest with a palm between my shoulder blades, one hand still gripping his own plate.

My first thought isAt least I didn’t jump back this time.

My second is that it’s nothowhe smells—like canoe repair compound, Earl Grey, and mountain wind—that’s so intoxicating. It’s the emotion it pulls from my soul, this strange, unidentifiable longing I used to feel on the first day of school. It’s a sense of things coming together for a brief moment in time, planets swinging close in their orbits, tides flooding high and receding low.

I step away carefully; McHuge steps back, too. Sadness, again.

“Thanks for the catch,” I say. His look of surprise gives me a burst of painful sparks. I should thank him a few times this morning. Get him acclimated to hearing nice things from me before the guests arrive, so he doesn’t do the facial equivalent of jumping away from me.

I scoop up my plate, stash it in the cookhouse, and head toward the sleeping area. On the way, I run a few mnemonics about McHuge, like the one I made for the birth order of his six giant ginger siblings. Bruce, Morag, Brigid, Angus, Lyle, Tavish, Elspeth: Bring More Bread And Let Toast Explode. It’s not my best work, but I didn’t have time for anything else.

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