It’s not that Jim didn’t love Alice Chin. He’d loved it when their fingers touched, passing a flask amongst a row of their friends at the homecoming football game. That was before he and Alice wound up making out under the bleachers, or at the homecoming dance when her perfume smelled like lavender, and at again at a Halloween party weeks later when she tasted like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He loved the earnestness with which she’d proclaimed him her boyfriend, as if it were a sacred connection. He loved the charcoal drawing she’d given him for Valentine’s Day, based on a photo of the two of them. She’d had it framed, even. He gave her a five-dollar drugstore box of chocolates. Jim loved Alice. It’s just that he loved his best friend’s little sister, Jessie, too.

It was different with Jessie. He’d known her when she was little and fell asleep slumped against his shoulder while they watched a basketball game. He knew her as she grew just as tall as him, all long-limbed and smooth-skinned, sharing Cherry Cokes as they lazed away summer days at the house.

And here they were.

Sun beat through the back windows of the Chrysler minivan, Ben and Jessie’s dad Jerry at the wheel. Jim felt the camping gear in the cargo area push up against the back of his seat, wedged against the window in the back row. Jessie sat so close their thighs touched. They couldn’t say anything to one another without breathing right into each other’s faces or whispering, hot and wet into one another’s ears.

The van was full, a camping chair, an extra cooler next to Jessie. The row in front of them, Ben, his new friend from out of town Christian, and his cousin Corey. Ben’s little cousin Mike always rode shot gun because he got carsick if he couldn’t look straight out the windshield and track how the road curved.

“Which of them do you think farted?” Jessie whispered into Jim’s ear.

He stifled a laugh. It smelled like rotten eggs in the van.

#

They set up camp in a familiar spot. Jim had learned through iterations not to interject himself in the process of setting up the tents because he didn’t have a head for it and only got in the way. He occupied himself laying out the food, but in a noncommittal way—mostly just taking it out of plastic bags. Jerry, would want to rearrange all of that, too. Jessie worked with Jim.

It annoyed Jim a little that Christian got right in the mix with the tents, problem-solving when the others struggled. He told Jerry his father ran a fencing company and he thought he might take over for him in a few years, a timeline dependent on whether he went  to college.

“That’s good,” Jerry said. “A man should know how to work with his hands.”

Jim pulled on the end of a case of Coca Cola, glued shut tight so it wouldn’t give way as easily as it should’ve. Jessie emptied a bag of ice into the cooler at his feet.

“Christian’s great with this stuff, too,” Ben said. “He says he’s bad at math, but put it in square feet of wire fencing and he’s fucking Rain Man.”

Christian demurred, the very picture of modesty. It only made it all worse when Jerry looked back at Jim, seeming, only then, to remember him, and feel a need to welcome him into the conversation. “Jim, you still dating that Chinese girl?”

The box ripped in Jim’s hands, sending cans crashing into the cooler, one onto Jessie’s foot. She screamed and Jim apologized and everyone came around until Jessie told them to relax, it just hurt her foot and “I literally have ice in my hands.” She sat down in a camping chair, the remains of the bag of ice over her big toe.

“Maybe you can give Ben some tips on getting a girlfriend,” Jerry went on. “I’d probably had a dozen at your age. You’ve gotta have the guts to ask them out, though.” He switched tacks, turning to Christian as he set a hand on a tent, testing its integrity. “How about you? Got a girl?”

Christian grinned and shook his head. “No, sir.”

They only had a few hours of daylight left and settled on taking a walk around the lake. Jerry kept inhaling deeply and alternately talked about how good it felt out in nature and how many fish they’d catch. Mike wandered behind them all, while Jim and Jessie walked side by side. Christian stopped to skip a stone across the water, which turned into a contest between him, Ben, and Corey to see who could get a rock to skip the most times. Jim’s stone sank on impact, and everyone laughed. Jessie got three bounces on her first try.

On the walk back, Christian looked all around. He was a step ahead of Jim, side by side with Ben. “It’s been too long since I’ve been camping. Thank you all for taking me.”

The nice guy act grated on Jim.

“What’s that poem?” Christian asked as they trudged through leaves and crackling bramble. “The one about two roads in the woods?”

“‘The Road Not Taken,’” Jim said automatically. One of the things that separated him and Ben from Christian was that they were book smart, college-bound, albeit that Ben was headed to a private school in New England, Jim a state school a couple hours south.

“It’s called ‘The Road Less Traveled,’” Ben said. “It’s by Robert Frost. But you’ve got the last line right.”

Ben veered toward lecture mode. Jessie might’ve made a farting sound with her mouth or Jim might’ve thrown something to shut him up, but before either could get to it, Christian coughed into his hand dramatically and said nerd under his breath. Everyone laughed except Jim. Ben laughed at himself.

That night, they ate hotdogs and baked beans, and debated sleeping arrangements by the fire. Jerry seemed intent on assigning tent-mates and started with Corey and Mike as brothers. Corey protested, saying he never got to see Ben, who said he should share a tent with Christian, because Christian had come as his friend.

“For Chrissake, it’s the first night and it’s just to get some shut-eye.” Jerry threw up his hands.  “Sleep wherever you want. The blue tent’s mine. Nobody bother me until daybreak.”

When the dust settled, Corey did share a tent with Mike, and Ben shared a tent with Christian. It left Jim with Jessie for the fourth and final tent. He asked if that were all right.

She nodded. “You can sleep with me.”

The fire petered out. Her zip-up hoodie hung loose over her shoulders, unzipped. Jim imagined their bodies side-by-side in the dark.

He didn’t have to imagine long. Jessie took off the hoodie to sleep in her tank top and gym shorts. Jim had brought another shirt to change into—he didn’t like wearing dirty clothes when he slept, even camping, but felt self-conscious about taking his shirt off.

Beyond the cover of the tent, Jim could hear the rumble of Ben and Christian talking low. He could hear Corey and Mike then, because Corey said Mike’s feet stunk and Mike questioned, “You think yours don’t?” Corey called Mike a little twerp. Mike called him an asshole, and Jerry’s voice boomed for them to “Shut up!”

Then quiet.

Jim thought he felt a spider tickle his knuckles and darted his hand away. But Jessie’s hand gave chase, clasping his. She whispered, “I’m glad it’s you and me.”

It was remarkable how easily everything followed. He wove his fingers between hers and squeezed. She slid over her hips and rested her head on his shoulder. Kissing Jessie was better than kissing Alice. Alice pouted if Jim were too conservative with a closed-mouth peck and she’d shut it down if she felt he were going too far with his tongue or getting handsy. Jessie coiled her fingers around his ear, into his hair. Ravenous, open-mouthed, wet, and tender.

Jessie stopped them, though, after Jim unzipped his sleeping bag down past his waist.

“Not here,” Jessie said. “If Dad catches us it’s all over. He’ll drive you home tomorrow.”

Jim’s mind raced, riding the wave of adrenaline. Jim had felt his heart drop, but soon caught the implications of what she said. Not here meant somewhere else. Not now meant another time.

“Tomorrow,” Jim said.

“Two nights,” Jessie whispered. “The end of the trip. Everyone’ll be exhausted and go to sleep. We can meet by the lake.”

She’d thought it through. Jim had sensed the two of them were flirting more than usual and hoped this might be the weekend something happened between them. But Jessie had had gone so far as to make plans.

Jessie kissed him good night.

Jim listened to breath as it slowed into a soft snore.

#

Jessie was still asleep when Jim woke the next morning. He heard a similar low rumble of voices from the night before, heard the sound of sizzling, smelled bacon.

Jim could still taste her lips as he got up, quietly as he could, hapless as he disentangled himself from his sleeping bag, knocking against the sides of the tent, fumbling to get his shoes on. Jessie didn’t stir.

It felt good to get outside. Jim stretched his back.

Jerry had prepared scrambled eggs and bacon. “Coffee?” he offered.

Jim took a tin mug of it, even though he didn’t much like coffee. It smelled good and the idea of something warm was appealing, before the heat of the summer day settled in.

Corey and Mike were still in their tent, up and arguing, the fabric of the tent jostling as if they were grappling or trying to press as far away from one another as possible. The tent Ben and Christian had shared was wide open, emptied out.

The two of them sat on a fallen tree trunk a little removed from the campsite, shoulder to shoulder. Ben laughed quietly at something intimate between the two of them. Christian motioned Jim over. Jim scooped some eggs onto a plate and picked up a couple strips of bacon before joining them.

They talked about wrestling, and more particularly, how fortunate Ben was not to have to watch his weight since he’d quit. Christian wrestled, too. As time went on, it annoyed Jim more that Ben quit the sport, only to grow closer to a wrestling friend afterward.

Christian didn’t watch what he ate—least of all months removed from the wrestling season. “I’ve got that kind of metabolism,” he boasted. “I could eat a dozen eggs every morning, never gain a pound.”

“Must be nice.” Jim wasn’t sure why he said that. He was more or less the same way. His mother called it his teenage metabolism, and his brothers had it too.

Ben tipped his coffee mug back, finishing whatever was left. Jim never remembered Ben liking coffee.

“With that, I’ve a gotta take a shit,” Ben said. He was up, brought his dirty paper plate to the trash bag by the camping stove, put the mug in the bin of stuff to wash at the lake, and grabbed a roll of toilet paper. These were routine pieces of camping with Ben’s family that Jim had come to take for granted. He found solace in things that didn’t change.

As Ben disappeared into the woods, Jim shoveled enough eggs into his mouth to give him a reason not to say anything, and leeway for Christian to make an excuse and break off if he wanted to, because what did the two of them have to talk about?

But Christian hung around. “You and Alice—you have a good thing?”

“We’re happy,” Jim said. He shooed a fly from his coffee, and picked it up to chase the eggs down. The coffee wasn’t as hot as he’d thought it would be. It tasted burned and awful.

“She’s lucky.” Even Christian’s posture was annoying, effortlessly straight-backed the way Jim’s mother nagged him to sit. “Ben always tells me you’re the best guy he knows.” Christian sipped from his mug, then looked down, inspecting the surface. “That’s really bad.”

Jim couldn’t help laughing and Christian stole a look at Jerry—making sure he was looking the other way—before he dumped out what was left of his cup. Jim followed suit.

Jim could understand why Ben liked Christian. He was free with compliments. Genuinely interested in what people had to say. He wasn’t threatened by Jim and his friendship with Ben, because he was sure of himself and because he understood their relationship was different.

What was Ben and Christian’s relationship? Jim looked over his shoulder and saw Ben coming back, eyes set on Christian.

He’d busted Ben’s balls before, calling Christian his new boyfriend

Jim looked to the tent the two of them had shared the night before. He remembered how Ben insisted on the two of them sharing. Was it so different from how Jim and Jessie wound up, all too willingly, together?

Jessie emerged from the tent. Hood down on her sweatshirt, zipper up over her tank top, but when she stretched her arms high, it all shrank up on her, revealing her midriff. Two nights, and he might press his hand over her abdominal muscles. Two nights, his fingers might wander to those spaces he’d only imagined, beneath the surface of the lake’s water, warm and slick.

“Too bad Alice couldn’t make it out with us.” Christian was watched Jessie, too.

Jim folded an entire strip of bacon into his mouth. Sunlight ripped through empty spaces between branches and leaves, so the light seemed to hit everything at once.

#

There were two parts of the next two days. Parts with Jessie. Parts without Jessie.

Jim stole looks at Jessie when he could. Ben was distracted with Christian.

There were moments when Jim could put his feeling for Jessie and uncertainty about Christian aside. Like when Christian disappeared to relieve himself and it was just Jim and Ben looking out at the water, talking like old times. He remembered camping trips that weren’t complicated—the years across which Jim had become part of the family to the extent Jessie’s father wouldn’t second guess him sharing a tent with Jessie.

That second night Jessie unzipped her sleeping bag far enough to guide Jim’s fingers beneath the surface of her tank top. She wasn’t wearing a bra, he discovered. Jim couldn’t sleep, both from the distraction of a burgeoning erection and because his arm fell asleep.

The next day they all wore bathing suits to mess around in the lake. Jim splashed Jessie and Jessie pantsed Jim beneath the surface of the water. In a moment apart from the others, closer to the center of the lake, Jessie swam up close, the lower half of her two-piece pressed to the front of him. Jim glanced back. Jerry, Ben, Corey, and Mike played Marco Polo, Jerry the blind one, calling out, reaching his arms wide. Christian was in the game, too, but watching Jim and Jessie.

She folded her hands around the back of his head and dunked him under the water savagely.

They’d meet at the water again.

Jim mused about it as evening set in, while Jerry grilled fish. Jim glanced over at the long tree branch where they’d all hung their swimsuits to dry. He’d figured they’d each sneak off separately from the tent to make it less obvious they were leaving together. He figured if anyone caught him, he’d offer the pretense he was going out in the woods to pee. But why would he bring his bathing suit along?

When Jim asked Jessie about it, she told him he wouldn’t need the swimsuit.

From there, he felt consumed with the prospect of skinny-dipping. The excitement, yes, of seeing all of her. The question, too, if she’d like what she saw of him. He’d never been naked in front of a girl before, not even Alice, and for all his imagining, had never considered how sex with Jessie, or anyone would start from any sort of practical perspective.

Like the nights before, Jerry turned in first, then Mike. Jim felt a little sympathy for how awkward things might be for him, the youngest, the threat of Corey teasing him. Corey suggested they go out and explore the woods and Ben seemed game. Jessie said she was pretty tired, and Jim wasn’t sure if it would be too obvious for him to go back to the tent at the same time, or if he’s blow his chance if he went out in the woods with the others.

He struck a balance when he said he wanted to kick back and watch the fire die out. He opened a fresh can of root beer to sell this sense of relaxation as they left him alone. He wanted to enjoy the last of the flames, too, and even went so far as to get a Cherry Coke out of the cooler—Jessie’s favorite—in case she joined him.

Once he was alone, though, the soda seemed like a bad idea. He didn’t want to make the two of them gassy or to delay things. He put her can back and poured what was left of his over the last sparks of the fire where it fizzed, crackled, and settled to wisps of smoke.

Inside their tent, Jessie was lying down, but wide awake. When he sat down, she told him she’d go first. Wait ten minutes then come out and find her.

Jim didn’t have a way of telling time, and it was uncomfortable to sit, stooped beneath the tent, nothing to lean against, so he laid down. Maybe he’d try to see Alice when he got home the next day. She’d be mad if he didn’t at least call and reassure her he’d gotten home all right. This was the longest they’d gone without talking. She’d want to hear stories from the trip. He’d omit Jessie. Alice had caught on early that Jim had a crush on her, and despite his reassurances that was all in the past—boyhood silliness—he knew Alice wasn’t convinced.

A night ago, before Jessie fell asleep with Jim’s hand over her breast, she’d talked about traveling the world once she graduated high school. Yes, she’d probably do college, too, but she’d save her money for a plane ticket to London or France to spend her spring break sleeping in hostels with strangers. “No telling who I’ll meet,” she’d said, “or what trouble we’ll get into.”

Jim felt a sense of wonder when she talked about leaving behind the familiar, about becoming a citizen of the world, and when she started in, Jim imagined being a part of her story.

The longer she talked, the more he noticed how she spoke in Is and mes, never us or we. Even when she slid his hand onto her, it already felt like she was leaving him behind. That was fine, wasn’t it? Because wasn’t he hooking up with Jessie, not least of all, so he could leave his infatuation behind? He didn’t plan on a relationship or a life with Jessie. Not really. But even then, the realization of the future Jessie saw without him made his heart sink. She’d leave, and how was Jim going to spend his life? Chasing after her?

Jim got up and followed the path he imagined Jessie had walked toward the lake. It was too dark to see where he stepped and he grew wary of tripping in the dark. Out in the wilderness, there might be wasps that would sting or a snail he might accidentally press the full weight of his foot on, splattering its slimy guts all over him. Any of these outcomes, or something as benign as bramble crackling under foot loudly enough to wake Jerry—all of it spelled disaster.

But when Jim gauged he was far enough from the tents, he took his flashlight. He shone it directly on Ben and Christian.

They stopped kissing when they noticed the flashlight and saw Jim. But they didn’t scurry apart or make excuses. “Hey man,” Ben said.

Jim felt his face grow hot and was grateful for the cover of nightfall so they wouldn’t see him blush. He was the one who was uncomfortable. He was the one in the wrong place.

“You want to hang?” Christian asked. He lifted the remaining two cans from one of Jerry’s six-packs. Jim hadn’t noticed them make off with it.

Ben told Christian to hold on a second and walked over to meet Jim. “I’m sorry man, I know this is weird. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” He went on like that. A little of it sounded like the TV version of a coming out talk, but without the tears or pleas for acceptance. “I knew you’d understand. But not my dad. Or Corey. He’s an idiot about this stuff.”

Jim wondered where Corey had gotten off to—if they’d ditched him on purpose or if he’d wandered back to camp.

“I’ve always known I could trust you.” Ben chuckled. “You’re the only guy I’d trust alone in a tent with my sister at this point. Where is she, anyway? Did she conk out?”

Jim chuckled, too, straining to sound normal, hoping Ben would chock up his weirdness to the kiss he’d happened upon.

“I’ll leave you guys to it,” Jim said at last. Ben insisted on sending him off with a beer, at least, but didn’t try to convince him to stay. Jim turned off the flashlight.

The flashlight had been Alice’s idea. Jerry brought along a few cheap ones, but Alice gave him the big one, made for camping—that her family never used, because they never went camping—loaded with fresh D batteries. Once he figured he was far enough Ben and Christian wouldn’t see his light and track where he was headed, he clicked it back on.

He found Jessie.

She was far enough, out in the lake while he was still at the edge of the trees, that it could’ve been someone else, but they hadn’t seen another soul on this camping trip—Jerry’s gift for picking a secluded spot and the right weekend.

It was Jessie. She had her bare back to him, wading waist deep in the dark water. He recognized the slope of her shoulders, the mess of curly hair on her head that might have looked disheveled if she weren’t such an unencumbered beauty. He imagined she kept her back to him on purpose. The allure of waiting to see her face.

Just then, a commotion. A rustling of leaves, a belch. Corey made no attempt at all to maintain peace and quiet as he ambled out of another segment of woods toward the water, stumbling, a beer in hand.

When Jim looked back to where Jessie had been, he saw no sign of her. Was this what sailors ages ago had thought about sirens? Visions of what they wished they’d see, and no telling if it were a mirage brought on by sea-weary eyes, or if any disturbance at all might have frightened the creature into hiding.

Corey stood at the water’s edge, drank, and pulled down his pants. Jim was a beat slow in looking away before Corey started to pee into the lake. It sounded like a waterfall.

Jim hadn’t noticed how tall the trees were before. Everything looked bigger when you really stopped to look at it, he supposed, not to mention the tricks of moonlight and shadows. He was looking up at a spruce when something from the school year before popped in his head. He remembered the day Mrs. McClean taught that Robert Frost poem about the two roads. Everyone in class nodded along or mumbled their ascent, they’d heard of it before. The teacher was so excited to parse the lines with them just the same. It had been interesting at first because she’d claimed it wasn’t all so simple as someone taking an offbeat path. It wasn’t about taking any path at all, so much as a choice and why someone would make it. Was “the road not taken” the road not taken by the speaker of the poem, or did the title refer to the road most people didn’t take, but Frost did? Jim had been drawn into the lecture at first, but found his head spinning and lost the thread of the explanation. He couldn’t pick it up again. When Mrs. McClean called on him to say what he thought the poem was about, he tripped over his words, before settling on the idea that maybe people shouldn’t overthink their choices. The teacher nodded slowly and kept going the way she did when students gave wrong answers, but she didn’t want to embarrass them. He decided he hated Frost and his stupid poem.

Corey wandered back into the woods.

Alice’s flashlight weighed heavy in Jim’s hand. He thought if Jessie found him before he found her again and got her hands on him, he wouldn’t be able to resist her.

He turned back to the woods. The walk back to camp seemed shorter than the walk to the water.

Jim pretended to go to sleep. He thought maybe he could pass it off to Jessie that he hadn’t so much blown her off as accidentally fallen asleep by mistake when she told him to wait ten minutes. Because weren’t they all tired? He assumed a flat-back position, sleeping bag undone, as if he’d only stopped to rest his eyes a moment.

He heard the other guys return to camp—each of them in turns laughing and shushing the others—Ben, Christian, and Corey back together.

Jessie came back later. After the laughter had quieted, and after Jim really was on the cusp of sleep. He kept his eyes closed when the tent unzipped. There was a stillness when Jessie might have studied him.

She gathered her sleeping bag, pillow, and, clothes and left him behind. Jim heard a rustling, heard Ben say what the fuck? Jessie had chosen another place to rest.

Jessie hadn’t bothered to zip Jim’s tent behind her, and for a moment he thought it was nice the way the smell of the lake water, woods, and burned-out fire intermingled. He thought he might fall asleep like that until a fly buzzed in his ear and he sat up to shoo it, only to find more flies inside already. He zipped up the tent. He tried to shut out the noise long enough to fall asleep, the flashlight cradled in his hands.