Chapter Eighteen: Mutiny as an Option in Our Back Pockets

      “I think that it’s safe to say that I officially hate nature,” Luke Daniels proclaimed as we all continued walking and despising the “great” outdoors collectively.

      “Me too,” Preston agreed, stopping where he was in order to gulp down an entire bottle of water in a matter of seconds. “This is disgusting.”

      “Ms. Ross,” Piper began, for even from a young age she had always preferred referring to my mother as “Ms. Ross,” opposed to “Elle,” as everyone else, including me, called her, “I really hate to agree with the boys, but I do. I don’t like this. I thought that we would be going skiing or something. This is yucky.”

      “Elle, though I usually don’t side with the majority, in this case I do,” I told my dear mother, disliking the scene that my eyes were now viewing. It had been a long day and my legs with aching me. I wasn’t used to the excessive physical activity, the cold air and dirt, and trees weren’t really a plus, either. The good thing was that there weren’t that many bugs due to it being February, but the bad thing was that, well, it was February…and essentially everything else.

      Today had started out like any normal Saturday. I had been sleeping peacefully, and intended on doing so for the entire day. But then at the dreadfully heinous hour of six (no one should ever be subjected to waking up then—ever), my mother came barreling into my room and said that we were going. When I asked where, she replied that it was a surprise. I inquired if I could invite my friends on the said “surprise.” She agreed, figuring that I would bring along Piper and Preston and that would be that. Well, I called the twins, and they said that they’d come, but then I called Luke, asking if he wanted to join, as well. After making fun of me for what felt like the millionth time about not getting drunk like he and his dear older brother had last week on our excursion to his house, he agreed.

      The three teens showed up at my house at around seven (I wasn’t really sure how Piper was managing), and then we all loaded up into my mother’s large SUV that was completely unnecessary for anyone to have. The entire Ross family was there, which I figured was the surprise. There was rarely ever a time that the three of us were together in the same place at the same time.

      Then Elle, who was rather flustered that I had invited Luke on the “overnight outing,” began to drive. Nick had no clue where she was going, so he was stuck clueless, just like us. Due to there being these things called “windows” in the car, I was able to see that we were leaving Boston and had entered the highway. Thankfully, despite the rest of Elle’s flaws, she was a good driver. Well, a safe one. Nick was good, too, though at times he had a tendency to speed up.

      There were road signs everywhere, and pretty soon I deducted that we had left Massachusetts and were headed north (okay, so maybe I didn’t exactly know what direction we were going, but I saw New Hampshire signs everywhere, so that was basically the same thing). After close to two hours of driving with no rest stops in between, we got to Elle’s destination: nature. There was no distinct place that we were going, it was just, well, nature.

      Elle had parked in a non-paved gravel and rocks parking lot alongside other abandoned vehicles. I was beginning to wonder why I had relatively voluntarily agreed to come on the trip. Elle announced that we were “there” (wherever “there” was), and then told us to get out of the car and grab our gear. We all cautiously got out, and then made our ways to the trunk. And that was really when we discovered how screwed we truly were.

      Not only were we placed in the Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire, but we were also being instructed to take out our “gear.” Piper had brought a (pink) suitcase larger than her entire body, probably figuring that we were just headed to a spa or something. Nick had also not packed all too intelligently, for he too possessed a rather large suitcase. Luke and I had brought backpacks, and Preston had a duffle bag that wasn’t too big, but it was still slightly obsessive. And then there was Elle.

      My mother had brought one of those ginormous backpacks that towered over her head and contained everything one would need to survive in the wilderness. It was filled to the brim with outdoorsy crap, and as I looked at it, it finally hit me as to what the “surprise” was. We. Were. Going. Camping. If that wasn’t an FML moment, I didn’t know what was.

      We had trusted her with our immediate future. Willingly enough, we had entered her car, again trusting that she wouldn’t betray us. And then we had even gotten out of the car, strangely enough trusting that it would all be okay. Then she broke our trust, taking us to the “nature,” and probably giving poor little Piper an aneurysm. It was awful.

      If you took three, privileged, private school attending kids, a doctor who—like any other individual in the medical field—hated germs and dirt, and Luke Daniels out into the New Hampshire mountains, bad stuff was inevitable to occur.

      Piper, Preston, and I weren’t meant to ever be exposed to trees and leaves and dirt and rocks and all that stuff. “Nature” just wasn’t in our, well, natures. Elle Ross and John Kent had once posed the idea of “summer camp” to the three of us. Piper and I immediately declined, after being told that there was no air conditioning. Preston had also said no, but then had gone off to a special sports camp that was at some college, instead. We had all grown up in the city—in Boston, so weren’t exactly too “keen” on exploring other places that weren’t filled with skyscrapers and rowdy Red Sox fans. We didn’t “do” nature.

      Now, with Luke, I hadn’t really known him that long, but I figured that he was in the same metaphorical boat as us. He had lived in Boston his entire life, as far as I knew. Thus, he didn’t really seem like the type to enjoy spearing fish with sharp, pointy objects, walking on rocks until his feet felt as though they would fall off, and rowing a paddle in most-likely infected water to the point that his shoulders ached to no end (aka: fishing, hiking, and canoeing). When we had arrived at the parking lot in New Hampshire, he didn’t say much, but the expression on his face spoke volumes. He. Was. Not. A. “Nature.” “Lover.”

      And lastly was Nick. My dad worked in a large medical building with sanitary restrictions like no other. He was an avid skier—like, every weekend during the winter he would go, either by himself, with a friend, with Elle, or occasionally drag me along—and loved the snow, but straight-up nature with no blanket of soft, cold, frozen precipitation was different. Much different.

      After we had all taken our belongings out of the trunk of the automobile, Elle then expressed to us that we would be “hiking.” Yes, hiking. Piper was wearing designer boots, Luke and I had on Converse, and Preston and Nick were both wearing sneakers. The only one even moderately prepared was Elle. She had on “hiker” boots, for she had known where we were going ahead of time.

      Thus, with mutiny as an option in our back pockets, we for some bizarre reason agreed to go with Elle…and everything else that we had brought. It had been a wrong, wrong, wrong decision on our parts. We could’ve just revolted and gotten back into the car, driving home in time eat a nice frozen dinner and catch Saturday Night Live. Instead, we blindly elected to follow Elle into the “wild.”

      It was actually a pretty humorous concept, the more one thought about it. Elle Ross—the lawyer who wore pants suits every day and was uptight to no end was proposing (well, more imposing) the idea to go “camping.” Elle Ross had probably never camped a day in her life, and now she was acting as the interim tour guide to “nature.” I wasn’t entirely sure why—no one was, for that matter—but it was definitely amusing to observe.

      After Elle had pried us out of the parking lot, she had led us to a path filled with pinecones and dirt and rocks and everything else one would expect to find on a trail in the middle of New Hampshire. It was terrible. Elle had put on this “gung-ho” façade that was even more fake than the majority of Hollywood. She had never been one for “nature,” so it was just “strange” to see her so enthusiastic about it.

      And that was how we ended up where we were now—in the center of the New Hampshire wildlife, on a chilly February day, “hiking” with Elle Ross as our fearful leader. It would be a miracle if a bear didn’t eat us. The cold air was brushing our uncovered faces and no one had spoken for a long while. We had discovered within the first hour that there was absolutely no cell-service, and Piper had declared that New Hampshire was officially her “least favorite state, like, ever.” It had definitely been an eventful day, so far.

      “Elle, sweetheart, when is the ‘surprise’ part of the trip coming?” my dad asked, the sound of a snapping twig echoing his words.

      “Right,” she paused for dramatic effect, stopping where she was walking twenty feet ahead of us, so that we could catch up, “now!” And that was when I saw it. Elle’s “big surprise.”

      Before us was a rather expansive clearing with relatively flat land and grass everywhere. Trees bordered it, and there were two, bright orange, vertical prisms in the distance—porter potties, I deducted. A small wooden structure made out of tree trunks stood off to the side, a ways away from the portable lavatories. After noticing a fire pit—or where a fire pit once was, really—I came to the brilliantly bright conclusion that this would be our “campgrounds.” We. Were. Actually. Going. To. Sleep. In. The. Woods…or get mauled to death by pack of feral raccoons.

      “You have got to be kidding me,” Piper said, gaping as she stared ahead at the desolate area. “Ms. Ross, I haven’t, like, taken a shower in, like, seven hours. I’m going to die out here!”

      “At least you’ll die with your bro, BFF, and Luke Daniels, though, right?” Preston attempted to put a mocking spin on her qualms.

      “We’re not…staying here, are we, dear?” my father cautiously inquired, not wanting to offend his spouse or start an argument. He wasn’t one for disputes.

      “Of course we are! Let’s go!” Elle said, leading the way to our very temporary residence. She marched right up to the cabin, and swung the door open, a swarm of bees astoundingly not attacking her face like in the cartoons. With a swagger that could only belong to Elle Ross, she ambled inside, probably assuming that we would all follow.

      Nick was the first to go in after her, and once he had peered into the “building,” he gave us the thumbs up that there wasn’t a murdered body rotting away within, and that it was pretty safe. Luke was next to bravely step through the threshold of the New Hampshire log-hut, and seemed to do so calmly. And then there were the three of us: Preston, Piper, and myself. Preston took initiative and just ended up physically dragging Piper and me by the arms into the edifice, clearly not being as fearful as us.

      When I finally decided to open my eyes that had been previously closed due to not wanting to face reality, I was able to view where we would unfortunately be sleeping, assuming that camera crew didn’t randomly pop of nowhere, with Elle exclaiming, “You just got Punk’d!” It was bad. Really bad.

      There was this molding smell mixed with the natural scent of pine and sap, and everything just smelt like pure nature. It was gross. The floor was a mess of dirt, and there were four cots set up close to the ground. That was essentially all that there was in the cabin. The roof was low and slanted, and everything about the placed screamed, “This is where murderers come to kill.” It was so beyond sketchy, and the second that I got home, I was already mentally planning how long of a shower it would take until that “nature” feeling had washed off. I had yet to go full-on panic attack mode, though I knew that I was definitely close. Olivia Ross did not do “nature.” Not even in an alternate universe.

      “So, this is where we’ll be staying for the night!” Elle announced, setting her human-sized backpack onto one of the larger cots.

      “Um, Ms. Ross, this isn’t funny anymore—not that ever actually was funny,” Piper said, clutching the handle her now dirt-invested pink suitcase with all her might.

      “Elle, if I had reception, who would you rather I call—your psychologist or psychiatrist?” Nick asked with not even a hint of sarcasm in his tone. He was being serious.

      “I never understood the difference,” Luke muttered beside me, only really audible for me to hear.

      “Between what?” I questioned, just now noticing that he had worn his classic attire of ripped jeans and a leather jacket. Out of all of us (Elle aside), though, he was probably dressed the most appropriate. Preston and I had worn sweats and a T-shirt, Nick was rocking the whole button-down look, and Piper was just so far off the reserve when it came to fashion clashing with nature that I couldn’t even process her clothing choice. Compared to the rest of us, Luke actually appeared somewhat prepared.

      “A psychologist and a psychiatrist,” he replied back, the quiet timbre to his voice still evident.

      “A psychiatrist gives people meds, and psychologists don’t,” I explained in the simplest terms I could think of. There were more distinctions than just the ability to allot legal narcotics to patients, though Luke didn’t need an in-depth analysis of the two job descriptions—though, I was probably fully capable of doing so.

      The first time I had ever walked into a psychologist’s office was when I was six. Looking back on it now, it seemed a bit ridiculous for Elle and Nick to have subjected me to such a thing as therapy at such a young age, but they were Elle and Nick Ross, so figured that anything they could do to “help” their not-so-perfect daughter would be worth it. The only real thing that I could remember about therapy at age six was that we played a lot of games. It was with this younger woman with short hair and glasses, and all we did was play games. In retrospect, the games probably had more to do with my psychological wellbeing than just allowing me an hour of “fun,” but I was six, so didn’t know it at the time.

      When I was about eight, Elle and Nick took me to a different therapist because they had gotten into an argument with my first one. I didn’t really care. As eight year olds went, I was a pretty talkative one when I wanted to be, so the sessions really just consisted of chatting with my new psychologist who was an older woman with a love of sweaters—even on the warmest days of summer. She was nice, but it hadn’t really clicked yet why I was there.

      And then I turned twelve. The old lady was retiring and moving to Florida, so I was subjected to another change in regime of my emotional stability. It was a man, this time, and I liked him more than the previous two. He was in his early sixties and had quite the reputation for dealing with kids, which pleased my parents. Personally, I thought I was fine, but then I was introduced to the term “anxiety.” In the dictionary, the definition was something like, “feelings of apprehension, nervousness, or unease, usually regarding something that will occur in the future or something with an indefinite result.” To me, there was no distinct definition to put in words, for it was a state of being.

      Anxiety was when your stomach felt like it was twisting in a thousand knots and there was this bile in your throat that wouldn’t go away. You felt nauseas—as if you could vomit at any minute, and sometimes you actually did. The only thing running your mind was pure worry, and the worry was expressed through the physical symptoms that were merely just responding to the state of your brain. You couldn’t focus on anything but the thing that caused the anxiety—sometimes it was an event, like going to school, or a person that you didn’t want to see, or even just notions of angst for things that had yet to happen, like the thought of failing a class or tripping in the middle of a crowded place. Now, that was just raw anxiety. Built onto anxiety were the dreadful panic attacks that were exactly what they sounded like.

      Panic attacks. Attacks of sheer panic. They were like anxiety, though turned up a few notches. They normally surfaced prior to something happening. For me, they often materialized before school, or before any real social event that didn’t involve the secure support structure that I had, consisting of essentially my parents and the Kent family. Panic attacks were like internal nightmares coming true from an emotional standpoint. Every bit of fear would emerge, and they usually resulted in fainting or puking. I would curl up in a ball, hugging my legs up to my chest so that my knees brushed my chin, and I would just rock back and forth, worrying and worrying and worrying about whatever trivial thing concerning people my mind was set on. And then I was told that this specific subdivision of anxiety involving people was called “social anxiety,” and that I had it.

      My third therapist didn’t really waste time playing games with me, like my previous two had. He acknowledged that I had a problem, and told me that I did. Sometimes we would just talk about my life, and sometimes he would show me various ways to deal with my anxiety. Once, he had told me that getting rid of the anxiety was as easy as taking a few breaths. I didn’t believe him at the time, thinking that the idea of inhaling and exhaling air a few times in order to calm down was absolutely absurd. Then, one morning in middle school that I was having a particularly rough day, I tried it. I didn’t magically make all my anxiety go away, but it helped.

      Then, in about eighth or ninth grade, I realized that I didn’t actually want to be in therapy. I still had anxiety attacks (and attack was the correct choice for what to call them, in every meaning of the word) regularly, but I had no interest in wasting an hour a week of my life, sitting in a comfy chair, talking to some guy who thought that he could “cure” me. I would have rather spent the time drawing or writing—it would’ve been the same, for they were both ways to express myself, as well. The only reason that I had been going to therapy was really because Elle and Nick thought that I needed to. I never questioned them about it, which was entirely my fault. My future was mine, so I told them that I didn’t want to go anymore. Predictably, they said that I still had to go.

      I spent about a year in therapy, having silent contests with my psychologist. He said we didn’t have to talk and that he would get paid either way. Thus, I remained quiet, and so did he. I didn’t want his help, and he wasn’t about to force it on me. My parents asked if the reason I had come to resent therapy was my therapist, but I told them that it wasn’t him, but rather them.

      Then, something changed. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but I began talking again in therapy. The panic attacks decreased, and the anxiety was still there, but it didn’t rule my life anymore. I went days without having my worry be the one thing centralized in my life, and I liked that. Social scenes still weren’t really my things, and my heart rate spiked whenever an incident with lots of people was proposed or mentioned, but I was getting better about that stuff. I hadn’t changed psychologists in almost five years, and the once-a-week visits had turned into once-a-month-if-it-didn’t-conflict-with-my-schedule visits. Anxiety would still probably always be a part of who I was, though if I didn’t let it rule my life, it would be able to become a much lesser element.

       The clapping of Elle’s hands snapped me out of the daze in which I had somehow found myself, and I glanced over to her, wondering why she felt the need to actually clap to get our attention. “Okay! Enough with the jokes!” Elle said, but not in the lighthearted way that one would assume—she said it in that professional voice of hers that was mainly reserved for the courtroom, though she occasionally broke it out every once in a while if needed. “Who wants food?”

      “Me!” Preston immediately said, not even questioning what he was signing up to consume.

      “Just so you know, Prest, it was just a question. She isn’t actually going to give you food. She just wanted to know if you wanted food,” my dad joked, much to my mom’s dismay. Her lips found their way into their favorite position once again—that grim line that nobody wanted to cross.

      “Funny,” Elle said with a shake of her head, throwing a granola bar that she had taken out of her monstrous backpack at the Kent child.

      Preston took one look at the sustenance that she had given him, and tossed it right back. “I want food, Elle,” Preston said, “not a granola bar.”

      “Well, I only brought granola bars, so that’s pretty much your only option,” Elle informed him, chucking the bar right back over. He took one look at the edible object that he had been given and grumbled, tearing the wrapping off and eating it in two large bites.

      “You would make a crappy camp counselor,” Preston told her, walking over to a cot and sitting down, a frown on his face the instant his butt hit the thin surface.

      “Good thing I became a lawyer, then,” she fired back with a grin.

      “I think that we should go back to the car and go home or camp in a five star hotel for the night,” I suggested, not daring to even remotely get “comfortable” in the dingy area. “Oh, and if you really want the experience of ‘roughing it,’ then we’ll settle for a four star hotel, Elle.”

      “That sounds like a great idea!” Piper said, nodding along with my offer as if I had just asserted that democracy was the way to go.

      “I don’t know,” Luke said complacently, “maybe staying here could be fun.”

      Everyone except for Elle shot him a death glare, not encouraging of his accepting viewpoint whatsoever. “We’re in the middle of nature—how could it be ‘fun’?” Piper snapped, not because Luke had somehow earned himself a spot on her long list of ex-boyfriends, but because Piper was genuinely not interesting—like the rest of us—in staying here.

      Luke’s gray eyes took on an icy glint, the tension apparent enough in the air between him and him thinking that Piper actually cared. Piper never hated her exes (unless they dumped her—which rarely happened). In fact, she had kept in touch with the majority of them, and was on civil terms with about half. Some despised her because they were secretly still in love, but for the most part, she was able to almost befriend, in a way, the rest. Luke didn’t really seem too keen on because “BFFLS” with Piper, and had shown that through the constant glares and grimness he had shown to her. They hadn’t really talked at all during the trip, and Luke made a point of not sitting next to her in the car. Piper, possessing all the same emotional traits as a puppy, hadn’t really noticed, and was focused on complaining about one thing: the nature. She didn’t have the attention span or desire to argue with Luke about their “relationship.” Luke had yet to figure this fact out.

      “I think that, uh, Luke is right,” my mother said tightly, not inclined to agree with a boy she had judged on single glance, “it could definitely be fun!”

      “What are we going to do? Roast granola bars and huddle in a prayer circle to ensure we that don’t get attacked by Bigfoot?” I probed caustically.

      With all the grace of a woman in her early forties who happened to be a Harvard alumnus, she rolled her dark eyes that I had inherited, and answered with an ironic grin. “Maybe…”