“Damn, that was colder than I expected.”
“It’s melted snow.” I pointed to the white patches still tucked into the shady crags of the mountains above us. “You probably just shocked your whole nervous system.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, then shivered. “Sometimes a shock to the system is a good thing, you know? Like a reminder that you’re alive.” He sat on the log next to me, dripping ice cold water, bare skin covered with goose bumps, and the biggest smile on his face.
I looked out at the surface of the lake where the sunlight broke into tiny diamonds and spread out sparkling across it. “And that you have one wild and precious life.”
He turned to me, and we were so close I could almost smell the sun and the lake on his skin. “That’s deep of you.”
“You should talk.” I shoved him off the log, hoping he didn’t notice the sudden embarrassment in my voice. “It’s from a poem I read in English.”
“And what’s the rest say?”
“I don’t know the rest. Just the one line I liked. ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.’ ”
“So.” He smiled through chattering teeth. “What do you plan to do with yours, Julianna Farnetti?”
“In a perfect world?”
“Yeah. If you could do anything you wanted. Without worrying about what people expect of you or have planned out or anything else. What would you do with your life?” His eyes rested on mine, waiting, and it made me feel vulnerable in a way, like maybe he knew about feeling restless or understood about wanting something more. Somewhere in the trees behind us, a twig snapped. A tiny ripple splashed against the shore. And the wall I’d spent so many years building crumbled.
“I’d make art,” I said. “Paintings, that would make people feel something when they looked at them.” I paused, surprised at how easy it was to tell him what I always keep so close around everyone else. And then the rest came tumbling out before I could stop it. “And I’d leave here and travel, like we talked about. I’d watch the sun rise over different mountains and set into crystal oceans. And—” I caught myself before I could say the next thing I’d thought of. That I would have met him sooner. Or in a different situation, when there could have been a chance for something.
“And what?” he asked.
“And . . . I’d have no regrets,” I answered. “Which is why I need to do this.” I gave the water one more glance and made up my mind.
Then before I could change it, I stood, peeled off my tank top and shorts, and took a running start. The second my fingertips touched the surface, sparks of ice lit my body up and stole my breath away, but I forced myself to go under. To feel the electricity there before I came up, laughing and gasping for air.
And when I broke through the surface, I could almost swear I came up as someone new.
Orion jumped in again with me, and we swam for as long as we could stand the cold, legs brushing and hearts pounding and teeth chattering.
I’ve always thought I’m most myself when I’m with Shane, but today with Orion I was most like who I want to be. I was someone different and bold and honest. Not embarrassed or unsure about anything. Not even the feel of his eyes taking in the lines of my body, or the quiet shush of pencil moving over paper as he drew me there on the beach, drying in the afternoon sun.
I stop at the doodle at the bottom of the page. Orion’s tattoo. She went home and drew it in her journal, like a memento from the day. I’m about to go back and reread what he said it meant when the high-pitched monotone of the bell rings out above my head. I jump at the sound of it, and it takes me a good few seconds to get my bearings and go from watching Julianna and Orion fall for each other at the edge of McCloud Lake to gathering up my stuff so I can make it to second period.
I tuck Julianna’s journal in my backpack, grab the box full of the others I still haven’t finished addressing, and ease open the closet door, wondering if I’m the only person in the world besides the two of them who knows about this. I wonder where it went from there. If they saw each other again. Where Orion ended up. If Shane ever found out. What he would’ve done. The leap my mind makes at that last thought is a dark one and I dismiss it quickly before I slip out the door.
In the hallway it’s crowded and bright and feels worlds away from Julianna and the story that’s unfolding on the pages of her journal. It’s all I can do not to duck back in the closet and finish reading. As much as I want to, though, I can’t miss a second day of all my classes for that. But nothing says I can’t pick it back up after school. Maybe even up at the lake where chance brought them together and choice made them stay.
13.
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.”
—“FIRE AND ICE,” 1920
The dead trees are how I know I’m in the right place. Only now it’s not just a few at the edge of the lake. All of the trees around McCloud are dead from the volcanic gas that started leaking up through the ground years ago. It had probably just started when Julianna and Orion were up there. For a while the whole area was closed down, but then the scientists, or forest service, or whoever decides those things, determined it was safe for people to be in the area, even though the trees were dying. I never came up here after that, and the utterly deserted feeling it has makes me think not many other people do either.