“Did you hear something?”
Maggie looked up from the can, cursing as she sliced her finger with the can opener and blood dripped down wrist. Once she successfully opened the can of noodles, she looked up.
“No, I didn’t hear anything.” she answered.
Adam frowned, but still continued to look around. “ I definitely heard something. I couldn’t make that up.”
“Maybe you’re going crazy.” Maggie sucked sauce off her finger. Bugs clung to the heavy trees. The stars’ glow cast a hazy light over the campfire.The darkness seemed to thin under the gleam of the crescent moon. “Spending all these days in the woods is getting to your head. You better not leave me too like Hannah.”
“I won’t,” Adam laughed. “She hates camping, maybe it’s better she had to leave.”
Maggie nodded. “But I still wish she was with us.” The three of them—a trio since seventh grade—had spontaneously planned a trip for three nights in honor of making it halfway through junior year. Last night, Hannah had suddenly gotten a call from her mom, who had been talking about some sort of family emergency. Maggie knew it wasn’t Hannah’s fault, but how quickly she had made the decision to pack up and leave still stung a little still stung a little.
Across the fire, through bushes, the two of them heard footsteps.
Maggie sat up a little straighter.
“I don’t think you’re making that up,” she agreed, looking around. Adam stood up in snyc, and she inched closer to him.
Before she could say or do anything, a man stumbled like an injured animal out of tree.
Adam took a step forward, while she took a step backward, remotely realizing how different their actions were. Adam’s natural instinct was to be curious, while hers was to be scared.
“Help,” the man croaked, his voice rough. “Please,” He was tall, in his 20s, a bright green backpack slung over his shoulder.
“What happened?” Adam stepped forward. The man stumbled over his own feet, fell to his knees. His eyes were wide and frenzied.
“I need—need food and water,” he gasped. “I was burned. I ran out of supplies.”
Maggie looking at Adam, hoping her eyes communicated everything she didn’t want to say. She didn’t trust this man.
But Adam’s eyes didn’t echo back any understanding. Maggie tried to plead with him, but he only glanced back at the man. What’s your name?” he asked.
“Tim,” the man coughed. His shirt and pants were stained with dirt and grass. “Tim Thatcher. I’m a backpacker. Please. I don’t mean to scare you guys. I just need help.”
Again, Adam looked back at Maggie. She gave a shrug, the flames hot against her back. What else was there to do?
Adam helped Tim up, and dropped him down on one of the three chairs facing the flames. Didn’t that work out well? They had set up Hannah’s pink chair as a sort of testament to her, a reminder that in their hearts, she was still there with them.
“Where’s your burn? Maggie got a first aid certification at camp,” Adam said, glancing at her. In the warped light of the fire, his reddish brown hair was glowing. “I can get you water and food.”
Tim grimaced in pain and rolled up his pant leg to reveal peeling, reddened skin. It didn’t look that serious—maybe a bad first degree burn. Maggie could definitely clean it, no sweat.
Adam backed away, and she frowned, watching him. Huh. He had never been scared of burns or blood, even in grisly horror movies. But this, a simple burn, not even one of the gross blistering ones, was making him sick?
Though, she thought she could guess why he was having that reaction.
After grabbing her the first aid kit from her tent, half of it filled with band aids, she followed the glow of the fire and sat in front of Tim. Adam watched from a distance.
Maggie poured a bottle of water on the burn, watching the water trickle down the red, angry flesh, like a river spilling into a ditch. “So, how did this happen?”
Tim barked a laugh. “Long story. Let’s just say I made some bad decisions. Nobody burned me, if that’s what you’re thinking.” he clarified, seeing her shocked face.
Haven’t you made some bad decisions?, a voice in her head whispered.
Maggie suddenly felt nauseous. She shivered despite the fire, tucked her curly hair behind her ears, and retrieved the burn lotion from her bag. There was a sharp taste on her
tongue, and when she applied the lotion on the burn, she swallowed hard to make it go away.
“Bad decisions?” Adam grinned, a nervous lilt to his voice. He reached into the cooler and pulled out three hot dogs from a bag, stabbing them onto skewers and positioning them over the fire. “Sounds like the perfect story while we eat our dinner.”
While the hot dogs roasted on the fire, Maggie bandaged Tim’s burn and gave him Advil. She had brought a lot for her constant headaches. They seemed to be getting worse lately.
“We actually got into a situation with fire recently,” she told Tim. Crickets chirped behind her.
“Oh, really?” Tim raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Yeah, the three of us—us and our friend Hannah—worked at a record place, and it was burnt down. There was a leak or something, some crazy incident.” Maggie fidgeted with a bracelet around her wrist, a gift from her Mom.
Maggie’s new fast food job paid more, which was nice. She and her mom needed all the money they could get. Ever since her dad left when she was eleven, it had just been the two of them. Sometimes she wondered if Adam was jealous of her. He wasn’t close with either of his parents. Most days it seemed like they forgot he existed.
Adam suddenly leaned forward. “Okay, now what happened, Tim? The suspense is killing me!”
Tim cleared his throat. “Y’know, it’s a perfect campfire story.”
Maggie had never seen Adam more excited. She settled in her chair and took a bite of her pasta.
“My brother’s a year younger than me, and we’d been close before we set off on this backpacking trip,” Tim started. “See, last night at the campfire, everything changed. We’d talked about something from a few years ago.”
Maggie put the pasta down, suddenly interested.
“My brother used to be obsessed with kaleidoscopes. Always had been, since he was a kid. Then one day… well, the reasons don’t matter. I suppose we wanted to see how they were made. We snuck into a kaleidoscope factory.”
Maggie turned to look at Adam, who looked at her back. A kaleidoscope factory? It was ironically comical. Like this was a Dr. Seuss book instead of reality.
She grabbed a hot dog off the fire and a crumpled paper plate, smoke burning her eyes.
“We accidentally destroyed some goods and set off an alarm. The police arrived. My brother was arrested as I hid and ran away. He was in prison for a couple years, and when he came out, I lied.” Tim continued. “I told him I’d been arrested too. I built onto the lie for years. He never suspected a thing. Then, last night, well… the truth came out. He was furious. I got too close to the fire in the argument and burnt my leg. But he just took his friends and drove away.”
There was a silence. Maggie stared at the man, really, really taking him in. Maybe he wasn’t a serial killer, but he didn’t seem to show any remorse about what he had done. If anything, with a smug smile on his face, he seemed proud.
“That’s… terrible.” Adam decided. “You lied to him.”
Tim chuckled. “If you were in my situation, what else would you do?”
Yes, Maggie, what would you do?
Maggie felt sick to her stomach.
Adam tilted back to look at the stars in a moment of silence. He had never seen so many in his life.
When Tim cleared his throat, he tilted back towards the fire, leaving behind the cold glow of the sky.
“Well, enough about me,” Tim probed. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.
Adam stared at Tim. He had been wanting some epic tale, but he hadn’t quite gotten that. All he had received, instead, was some half-formed narrative. Sad, not epic. He didn’t know who he felt sad for. Maybe the whole thing reeked of desperation. Especially the lies. Years after years, built onto each other, until there was no point in letting go. Adam had lied sometimes; hadn’t anyone? But they were small ones. To his parents, his teachers, his friends. Never something like that.
Oh no. His chest was beginning to hurt.
‘Never something like that.’ Is that true?
Shut up, Adam thought to himself. That was wrong, he had never lied. He was not a liar. He was a good person.
“I’ve already told my story,” Tim raised an eyebrow. “You should tell some yourself. Something interesting. I mean… well… I just told you the worst thing I’ve ever done. What’s yours?”
He could still feel it. The adrenaline. Then the aftermath. The realization. The lying. He really was a good liar when he had a reason to be. His parents hadn’t cared, which didn’t surprise him. So why had he done it then?
“Nothing… that serious.” Adam admitted. “Not like your story.”
He hated refreshing the memory of his cowardice, but he knew, if he didn’t tell this tale, Tim would never leave him alone. And rather this one than another one, right? There were worse stories to tell.
“Once when I was fifteen, my good friend was getting bullied. They were about to beat him up. And they did. I saw him at school the next day. I was a coward. I… just ran away. We never talked to each other again.”
Adam had never known why he had done that. He played basketball, he could have taken all of them. Something about the situation had just… triggered something in him. Some terrible, selfish instinct. All he knew was he had to get out of there. So he did. He turned on his heel and ran.
Hannah would have yelled at them. Maggie would have gotten right in there and beat them up. But he could only run.
“Really?” Tim exclaimed, in response, as if that was not what he was expecting. “That’s it?”
Adam swallowed. Maggie was looking at him with her blue eyes like she was trying to figure him out. He looked away. “Yeah, that’s it. Not that exciting, I know.”
You have a better story.
Just imagine how good it’ll feel to get the truth out.
Why did you do it, Adam?
He had excuses. Plenty of excuses. Manufactured carefully, not to trick others (it would never, ever get to that point), but to trick himself. And it usually worked. Until he lay awake in bed, thinking and thinking and thinking, until he didn’t know up from down or truth from lie anymore.
He swallowed and massaged his chest.
“I can tell mine,” Maggie volunteered. “I got into a fistfight, um, the day after my dad left, when I was eleven.. I was suspended. When I got back home, my mom was sobbing in her room. I’ve never seen her cry like that. I didn’t feel bad for fighting, that girl was a bully. But I felt terrible for making my mom cry.”
Something was shifting in Maggie’s eyes. She looked like she was panicking. Maybe it was just because of the story she told, of the exertion of rehashing it. But maybe…
Adam couldn’t bring himself to respond. He studied Maggie like she was a stranger, all the while his own breathing was becoming shallower and shallower.
Tim was the center of gravity in the campfire, and as he leaned backwards, the gravity pulled with him. Maggie’s watery eyes shifted to Adam, and Adam forced himself to raise his head.
Crickets rose in a chorus behind them. The smell of the burning wood singed his nose.
“Well, something ain’t right here,” Tim narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I have the sense you two do.”
“Huh?” Adam guessed. “Nothing’s happening.”
Maggie fixated her eyes on him again. Adam looked down, looked back at her. Really, Tim was right. What had changed? He wasn’t sure. He looked into the campfire and saw something else in its flames, and he hated how he liked what he saw. He hated himself. Or did he? Was that another fabricated trick? Another lie to convince himself, to burrow himself deeper until he was stuck? There was no truth to any of his lies, but there were no lies, either. He didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. And really, when everything’s in your head, how can something be real? He didn’t know.
“No, something is happening.” Maggie muttered, the panic leaving her eyes. She was expressionless, like a judge deciding his fate. “You’re acting all weird.”
“Maybe because I just told that story?” The second the words left his mouth, Adam knew his tone was wrong. He wanted to admit the truth to Maggie. But all their friendship, their close bond, was disintegrating then.
“No, that’s not it, something else is up.”
“Nothing else is up, Maggie. I’m fine.” he lied.
She was shaking. Why was she shaking? “You don’t look too well, too,” Adam pointed out, trying to be calm and level-headed. He was sick of this, but he wouldn’t admit anything to her. The truth wouldn’t come out.
“I’m fine,” Maggie pursed her lips tightly. A thin sheen of sweat rose over her forehead.
“No, you’re not,” this time, it was Tim who spoke. Adam whirled to the man, confused. For not the first time, he started to wonder if inviting the man to their campsite was a mistake. “Both of you are hiding things.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Adam said, words spilling out of his mouth too quickly, too rapidly.
“Yes you are,” Maggie hissed. “Maybe I just look bad because I know you’re hiding something, Adam, just say it. I don’t understand why you are so stubborn.”
The smell of the smoke. The grin on his face. The brief panic when he realized… when he realized what he had done. The excuses in his head. The run. The adrenaline. He had never felt so alive.
“I’m not stubborn,” he said, almost to himself. “I…”
When he looked into her eyes, he only saw his own, reflected back at him. And it was miserable.
Maggie looked like she was about to be sick, but she turned her voice into a razor, thin and sharp. “Yes, you are.”
His head was swirling. Tim was looking at him with those brown eyes that saw everything, straight into his soul. He really was just like Tim. There was no difference between the two of them, not at all. Their fabricated lies were one and the same.
Did he feel guilty?
He tried to. But he had no way to know for sure. Maybe he did.
Maybe he didn’t.
Words were on the tip of his tongue, ready to spill out. If he said it, nothing would be how it used to be. If he said it, he could never go back. But wouldn’t it feel good? And Maggie wouldn’t judge him. She was Maggie. She had seen all the worst parts of him and she… she had accepted them. Maybe he just had to trust.
In the end, it was so easy to speak. He took a breath, unclenched his jaw.
“I set fire to the record store.”
At first, it was silent. Maggie’s eyes widened, then widened, then widened even more. She was deathly pale, like she would drop to the ground any second.
Tim started to laugh. “Now there’s a story!”
“Shut up!” Maggie and Adam both said at the same time. They whirled to each other.
“You did it… by accident?” she said, so softly, like she already knew the truth.
Adam shook his head.
Maggie looked at him like how you would look at a stranger. “I…”
“I just… I thought when my parents heard, they would pay attention to me. For once. But… they didn’t.” those words came even easier than the others, and once they came out, he knew they weren’t right. Maybe it was part of the reason why.
But the other half was something murkier. The store had been closed, but Adam had been bored, so he had come in that day to hang out in the peace and silence. He had been lighting a match for a candle when the idea came to him. Maybe he would just set half of the desk in fire, then grab the fire extinguisher and put it out. The desk would be easy to replace. And once his parents heard, surely, they would care about him again. He would deserve their attention. But then it got out of control. And he didn’t get the fire extinguisher. He didn’t want to. He watched the red and orange flames spill across the store, growing brighter and brighter like a sea of stars. The smoke clogged his throat and nose until he was doubled over, backing out of the place.
It filled him with something. A sense of peaceful control. For once, he was someone else. Maybe a terrible person, sure. But someone else.
And then it was so easy to forget. To blame it on his stupid parents… and so easy to say it wasn’t him. It had been a dream. He hadn’t actually done it. He wasn’t that crazy. He had dug it deeper and deeper until his subconscious until… the campfire… Tim’s burn.
He was crazy.
“You’re insane, Adam. You’re completely insane.” Maggie echoed back his own thoughts, her face twisted in both horror and anger. She looked right through him like she didn’t recognize what she saw.
Adam couldn’t respond. He was desperate to explain himself, particularly reaching for the chance, but there was nothing he could say. All the words on his tongue would just be clumsy excuses.
Tim started to laugh, a slow progression into something wilder, something crazy. Above their heads, the stars swirled. “Oh my God,” he barked. “You kids are crazy.”
Maggie’s hands twitched a little. “I’m not crazy, he is.” she turned back to glance at Adam, eyes hollow and raw, hair streaked around her face. “I…”
Adam stared at her back.
“Come on, Maggie. We all know you’re hiding something.” when Tim spoke, his voice was far away. Adam hated Tim, he decided. He was acting like this was some sick game. But how he could hate Tim without hating himself? All three of them were twisted together into the same entity.
“I’m not!” Maggie shouted, her fingers digging into the chair beneath her, all tucked into herself like at any second she would fall apart. “I didn’t do anything!”
Adam managed to say through cracked lips, “Just admit it, Maggie.”
“Okay, fine!” Maggie’s voice was fevered, high-pitched, frantic. She looked like she was about to cry. “Two weeks ago, I stole the ruby necklace from your mom’s room. Happy now?”
Adam was no longer numb. Instead, all his senses were sharp and prickling. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. Suspended in time, he only sat there, waiting for something. But he didn’t know what.
Maggie started to cry. She knew it was pathetic, but she couldn’t help herself. Was she crying because she felt guilty? She wasn’t sure. She was angry, she knew that, angry and confused and scared.
She knew what the necklace meant to Adam’s family. It was a family heirloom passed down for countless generations, worth more money than she could even wrap her head around. It was their most prized possession.
That day, Maggie had been at Adam’s house. He had been in his room and she had been creeping down the stairs when she passed by his parent’s room. Saw that familiar necklace, the rubies glinting in the light. She had crept forward and grabbed it, placed it in her bag. It had only been when she got home later when she realized what she had done.
I’ll give it to my mom, she promised. We need the money. With just the two of them, they needed everything they could get. Adam’s family was well-off. They would be fine.
She had never given it to her mom. Not because she was scared of her reaction. No, not that at all. Days passed by, and it sat in her closet, waiting there, still and shining and
precious. Everytime she told herself she would give it to her mom or take it to a pawn shop herself, she didn’t.
Maggie didn’t want to accept that it was a front, but she was forced to, in sleepless nights, when she had nothing else to think of. Truth be told, she liked the feeling of holding the necklace in her hands and shoving into her bag. She liked the adrenaline as she dashed outside, giddy with getting away with the act. She didn’t want to hurt Adam or his family. She had never known how much he would be hurt until he came to school the next day looking exhausted, proclaiming his mom had been up sobbing all night. But…
Did she feel guilty?
It made her feel like, for once, she was powerful. Like, for once, she was somebody else.
“Why did you do that?” Adam was almost pleading with her for answers. “You know what that means to my family. Was it for money?”
She choked on her tears. No, it wasn’t. Yes, it was.
No, it wasn’t.
Adam glared at her. She stared at him, back, thinking about what he had done. The sadness left her all at once, like a sudden flood.
“You have no right to be mad,” she shouted. “After committing arson.”
Tim stood up, slowly and at ease. “Well, this has been an interesting time. A lot of stories told, that’s for sure,” he looked at the two of them with a satisfied smile on his face and pointed to Hannah’s tent. “I best be heading to bed now.”
“You’re sick,” Maggie spit out at him. “You’re sick in the head.”
“I already know that,” his smile only deepened.
“So are you,” she whirled on Adam. “You should be locked up after what you did.”
Adam stalked forward, one step at a time. “Really? I should be locked up? You stole from my mom. You don’t even seem sorry. You knew what that necklace meant.”
“You’re insane!” Maggie countered.
“You’re a terrible person!” Adam walked around the campfire shoved her, hard, and she stumbled backwards. His hands were shaking.
Maggie shoved him, too. When she looked into his eyes, she only saw her eyes reflected back. His hands curled into fists, and hers did too. And when she looked at Tim, standing there, amused, she realized she was him and he was her. And she wanted to throttle him and Adam, but she’d only be hurting herself.
She staggered backwards and collapsed into Adam’s chair near the fire, let the dying flames warm her skin. She closed her eyes, a brief moment of silence, and when she opened them Adam was sitting in her chair, facing her, with a blank, unseeing look on his face. His eyes met hers.
They sat there for what felt like forever.
Rae Feldman is a freshman in high school who lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is passionate about writing fiction, especially fantasy and mystery. When she's not writing, she enjoys listening to Phoebe Bridgers, playing guitar, and hanging out with her friends.
"Campfire" by jumpingspider is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
