Chapter 12: The Campfire Confession
The fire snapped, sending a constellation of orange sparks spiraling up into the blackness above the pines. Leonid watched them die, one by one. On the log beside him, Mina shifted, her shoulder a warm, familiar pressure against his own.
“You’re a million miles away,” she said, her voice soft beneath the chatter of their classmates circling the bonfire. Someone was strumming a guitar badly. Another group was arguing good-naturedly about playoff odds. The normalcy of it all felt like a film playing on a screen in front of him.
“Just tired,” he said, the automatic lie tasting of ash. He took a slow drag from his cigarette, the ember flaring.
Mina was quiet for a moment, her gaze on the flames. “It’s okay if you’re thinking about her.” When he didn’t respond, she continued, her tone carefully neutral. “Mom called me. They had to adjust her medication again. She asked for you. Apparently, she was very specific about the brand of cigarettes you smoke. The nurses were confused.”
Leonid felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. The image was immediate: Jennie in a sterile room, dissecting the chemical composition of his Marlboro Reds as a proxy for his presence. “She’s observant,” he muttered.
“She’s in love with you,” Mina said, not unkindly. It was a simple statement of fact, and it landed with the force of a physical blow.
He flicked his cigarette into the fire. “Mina.”
“I’m not blind, Leonid. I saw how she looked at you at the gallery event. It wasn’t sisterly.” She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. “And I see how you look when your phone buzzes and it’s not me. You get this… stillness. Like a soldier waiting for a blast.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” She turned her head to look at him. Her brown eyes reflected the firelight, warm and unbearably clear. “I’m not trying to pick a fight. I’m just… I need to know what’s happening in my own life. Are you with me? Or are you waiting for permission to be with her?”
The question hung in the smoky air, more final than any ultimatum. The guitar stopped. A burst of laughter erupted from across the fire, sharp and incongruous.
“I’m here with you,” he said, the words feeling inadequate, a child’s sandcastle against a rising tide.
Mina studied his face. She reached over and brushed a fleck of ash from the collar of his jacket—his same jacket that had been wrapped around Jennie’s waist days before. Her fingers lingered for a second on the fabric. Then she smiled, a small, fragile thing. “Okay,” she said. She didn’t believe him. But she chose, for now, to accept the offering. “Come on. It’s freezing. Let’s go to the tent.”
Later, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing beside him in the darkness of the tent, Leonid felt like an imposter. The scent of pine and cold earth seeped through the nylon. Mina’s warmth was a comfort he didn’t deserve. He slipped out of the sleeping bag, the cold biting instantly through his sweatshirt.
Outside, the fire was a pulsing mound of red coals. The night was vast and silent. He lit a new cigarette, the flame of his lighter a tiny, personal rebellion against the dark. He leaned against a thick pine, the bark rough against his back.
His hand slid into the pocket of his jacket, searching for the crumpled pack. His fingers closed around something else. Paper. Stiff, unfamiliar.
He pulled it out. A small, torn square of heavy, cream-colored paper, the kind from a sketchbook. In the faint glow from the embers, he saw the handwriting. It was chaotic, the letters crammed together in some places, sprawling wide in others, the lines uneven—a seismograph of a disturbed mind.
The psychiatric ward has no windows. But I can still see you.
He stopped breathing.
The words didn’t feel like a message. They felt like an incision. How? How did it get there? The camping trip was planned, but the location was random. He hadn’t seen her in days, not since he’d left her sobbing in his bed, not since he’d ignored every one of Mina’s calls until he’d finally picked up and woven a tapestry of half-truths about a stressful exam week.
A cold that had nothing to do with the night seeped into his bones. He saw it then: the gallery event. A week ago. Jennie had brushed past him, a ghost in a silk dress, her hand trailing for a fraction of a second against his chest. She must have slipped it into his pocket then. A sleight of hand. A timed explosive.
I can still see you.
He crumpled the note in his fist, the paper crackling like a dry bone. He wanted to throw it into the coals, watch it blacken and curl into nothing. But his arm wouldn’t obey. He stared at his clenched hand, the veins standing out in the dim light.
From the tent, Mina murmured in her sleep, a soft, incoherent sound of peace.
He was trapped in the space between two heartbeats: one steady and trusting beside him, the other erratic, brilliant, and broadcasting from a locked room. The fire gave one last, dying pop. In the sudden, deeper darkness, the words in his fist seemed to glow with their own malevolent light. They were no longer just a note. They were a claim. And he knew, with a certainty that emptied him, that he was already answering it.