Page 62 of Our Last Resort

That Gabriel was out there, too.

“Ethan,” I say while Madison and the actor keep bickering. “Should we maybe go back to the hotel?”

Ethan gives me a resigned nod.

“Folks,” he says, and extends his arms to herd us back into a tidy line. “Let’s head back. We’ve lost a fair amount of time, and it’s only going to get hotter from here on out.”

Defeated, he leads us down the trail. Madison and her friends walk directly behind him; the actor sulks at the back.

Gabriel and I stay quiet.

I’ll tell him about the phone when we’re back.

Maybe.

Or maybe I don’t have to.

That’s how it works between us.

You run, I follow. No questions asked.

So many times throughout our lives, it’s been vital, this unspoken agreement. We have each other’s back. Always. Even if there are things we don’t know. Especially when there are things we don’t understand.

22The Only Town We Knew, Hudson Valley

Eighteen Years Ago|And Then Seventeen And Then Sixteen

Word of our expeditions spread. Not to the adults, but to the other kids.

No one would have dared tell on us. Émile had chosen me. People knew that. They resented it, but they weren’t foolish enough to try to turn him against me.

Gabriel and I enjoyed our newfound clout. We turned sixteen. We turned seventeen. People wanted to be around us. And so, they dealt the only currency they had.

They told us secrets.

It began with small things. There were dozens of tiny transgressions, hundreds of micro scandals waiting to be whispered into our ears.

A secret crate where stale bread was stored. The mothers didn’t count the pieces. If you took one or two, no one would notice.

The mothers’ stash of forbidden books. Well, we assumed it was the mothers’. The men on the covers like an alien species, with their long hair and unbuttoned shirts, muscled torsos and pants that hung low on their hips. Illicit materials, hidden in shifting piles of unwashed laundry. We did not imagine thefathers capable of such cleverness or agency. The clandestine library was women’s work.

And then, there was the secret I refused to hear.

Gabriel and I had gotten into the habit of meeting with the others at night. Everyone was always slipping out, all the time. Edwina herself did it with her own friends. Even after she turned twenty and moved away from the girls’ quarters into the adults’ coed dorms. She kept coming by, meeting with the younger members of her posse, outside or in the dorm, sometimes walking out with one girl, sometimes with a small group.

It had been a turbulent day. Two people had been sent to the Secret Place for breaking dishes—somewhat intentionally, according to most versions of the story. Émile had been spotted whispering feverishly to a mother outside of his office. Kids weren’t paying attention in class.

We were growing older. It was almost summer, and there were wild birds inside of us.

“I’ll leave,” Simon announced. “When I’m eighteen or whatever. I’ll just go.”

A group of us—me, Gabriel, Louisa, Simon, his friend Isaiah—had been whispering under a tree, an old elm whose trunk had recently become covered in invasive black spikes.

Everyone went silent.

“What?” Simon said. “People do it.”

Louisa shook her head. “They don’t choose to leave,” she said. “Émile makes them.”

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