mom gave me the keys the day she picked me up from the detention facility. The truck has more rust on it than metal, and the wheel wells are nearly rusted straight through. But it’s mine, and it’s one of the very few things I now own. I’ll drive it until it dies.
I drive my pickup back to my campsite, with my little duck sitting next to me on the seat, and I unload the wood. The tree I’d cut up fell a few months ago, so I can probably use it for firewood right away. Either way, I stack it neatly next to the fire pit in my camping area, and unzip my tent, reach inside, and plug my phone up to charge. All the campsites have running water and electricity, so I ran a power cord into my tent on day one so I can charge the few electronics I possess.
Jake thinks it’s strange that I prefer living in my tent to living in one of the empty cabins, but I like my life. I like having a place to go home to that’s mine, even if it is a tent. And I like cooking over the open fire every night. I like bathing in the lake in the late evenings when no one is around. I like the solitude of the empty campground. I don’t want to move into one of the cabins where people occasionally still come and go. I prefer to do exactly what I’m doing, at least for now.
I have bills to pay, and the more money I can put toward the things that matter, the better off I’ll be.
I walk to cabin twenty-four, and nostalgia hits me straight in the chest. When I was around thirteen, I used to come here all the time, mainly to see Abigail. She hated to have her name shortened, and she would give anyone a death glare who shortened her name to Abby or, heaven forbid, Abs. On Friday nights when my parents and I would get here and claim our spot in the campground, we’d set up our tents, and then I’d run straight over to Abigail’s. We’d ride around on our bikes, or after dark we’d play Monopoly or Uno under the porch light on her grandmother’s front porch. Occasionally, we went fishing.
Abigail and I weren’t of the same social class. Her family had money, and mine had none. But nobody cared about class when you were at the lake. The campfire warmed your legs exactly the same no matter how much money you had, and the roads all led to the same sections of the lake. Nobody cared that we didn’t have a lot. The lake was special like that.
I let myself into Maimi Marshall’s cabin and look around. I close the door so the duck doesn’t come in, and he sits down on the porch directly outside the door and squawks the whole time I’m in there. The little cabin hasn’t changed, even in the years since I’ve seen it. My family had stopped coming to the lake when I was fifteen, after my dad died, and I lost touch with everyone, including Abigail. I haven’t been back at all, not until a month ago when I pitched my tent and moved into it.
I notice that Mrs. Marshall still has the same old couch, draped with the same old afghan, against the same wall, and the same old refrigerator, which you know is an antique because of its rounded corners, sits in the same corner of the kitchen. I bet if I open the tiny freezer compartment, it’ll still have those metal ice trays you have to run under hot water before you can crack the ice out, the ones with the levers that give your arm a workout every time you want a cold drink.
On one wall, there’s a picture of Abigail and the person I assume is now her husband, since she’s wearing a wedding dress in the picture. I stare at it. He looks like an asshole. But then again, I never did think anyone was good enough for Abigail, even if they were. In fact, I’d gotten into more than one fight over her that she probably didn’t even know about. I reach up and touch the bridge of my nose. Little Robbie Gentry had broken my nose in one such encounter. I’d charged at him like a bull for making Abigail cry, and he’d punched me right in