Page 55 of Wild About You
Same story now. I know they don’t understand why I wanted to do this. I know they are possibly the last people in the world who would want to be on TV for any reason. But I also know I’m so damn tired of making excuses for them, and that none of the excuses lessen the hurt.
Granny Star would have been there. Granny Star would have video called me, even if she’d had to go to Best Buy and get a webcam to attach to her ancient desktop computer. It’s times like this that her loss feels that much more painful, and I don’t know if it’ll ever be less so.
I have to remove myself from the others as our evening wind-down resumes. I grab my toiletry bag and find a stump to sit on in a quiet spot in the woods. With the soft hum of conversations around the campfire in the background, I go through my nightly routine, trying to focus on each action in a meditative way—I feel the cool makeup-removing cloth against my skin, smell the light, chemical-y scent they call “unscented,” taste my minty toothpaste foam.
It kind of works, but I find myself feeling sad more than anything. As a last-ditch effort, I dig out one of the sheet masks I brought and haven’t gotten around to using, this one labeled as “serene green tea and eucalyptus.” Sure, I could use some serenity.
After unfolding the thin, cool green sheet and patting it down on my face, getting the nose, eye, and mouth holes all lined up right, I lean back against another tree beside my stump and close my eyes. I try some deep breathing because it seems like the serene thing to do.
In, one, two, three, why don’t my parents love me…. Out, one, two, three, I don’t know but if they can’t love me how could anyone else…. In, one, two, I almost lost us the whole competition today because of my scaredy-cat brain…. Out, one, I suck at this, I suck at school, I suck at being a person a lot of the tiiime….
Okay, this isn’t working flawlessly. I give up on suppressing the thoughts and just let them run away from me, with me, in circles around me, closing in tighter and tighter. At some point, I halfway hear my name in the distance, but don’t make any moves to open my eyes or find where it’s coming from. I stay put on my stump, clearing my skin while letting my mind get messier than ever.
“Natalie, are you ou— Holy shit!” My eyes pop open at the exclamation and I find Finn standing there with a hand over his heart, gasping for breath.
“What?” I ask, trying to sound as chill as the mask was supposed to make me feel.
“Your—” He waves a hand in a circle to indicate my whole face. “You scared me half to death. Not what anyone wants to run into in a dark forest.”
Oh, right. The mask.
Still, I’m a little affronted by his reaction. I cross my arms over my chest. “Well, I didn’t especially want to run into you either, thank you very much.”
He sighs, shifting his weight to his left foot and crossing his own arms while he looks my way as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with me. “Come on, Nat, that’s not what I meant. You’ve been gone for a while and I was getting worried. Well, to be honest, I’ve been worried ever since we finished the challenge today. You haven’t been yourself.”
“I think I’ve been a little too much myself. That’s the whole problem.”
His head jerks back, expression incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
I take a moment to peel my mask off first. If we’re getting into this, I don’t need the indignity of looking like a demonic ghost.
“You’ve known it since the beginning, Finn,” I say, not making eye contact as I ball up the used sheet between my bandage-covered palms. “I’m not cut out for all this stuff. I’m not outdoorsy or athletic or even all that adventurous. I’m weak, but good enough at fooling people into thinking I’m strong. Incompetent, but I fake being a badass bitch who has it all handled. It might win people over or get me far enough in the beginning, but eventually everyone sees the truth. Clearly you have.”
Finn steps closer. “Okay, whoa, where to even start with that. Natalie, when have I given you the idea I think you’re anything but amazing?”
I raise a brow. “Uh, most of the time we’ve known each other? I know, I know, it was different for a while there. But today, I completely lost it in the challenge and you knew it. You were frustrated with me, and you were probably right to be. I just lost my shit and couldn’t get it back together, and I almost made us lose.”
“No, that’s—no. Stop.” He crouches beside my stump so we’re eye level. “I’m sorry I was too intense today. We both know I can be a dick. I shouldn’t have gotten short with you, or said those things, and I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you. Including not speaking to you like that again. But that’s all on me, it’s not—you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s valid to be afraid of something that’s objectively pretty scary and that you haven’t done before.”
“Is it also valid to be too afraid to sleep in a tent by myself at night?”
“I mean, yeah?” Not the most confident answer. He rubs at the back of his neck as if he’s holding a lot of tension there. “What are you trying to convince me of, here?”
“That I can’t handle this!” I blurt out. “And it was ridiculous to think I could.”
Thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance, but Finn doesn’t bat one perfect eyelash. He reaches out and I allow him to take one of my hands in his. His grasp is soft, his thumb caressing my wrist the same, but when he speaks, the words don’t match that tone.
“Well, tough shit.”
I blink, offering a less than eloquent, “Huh?”
“You can tell yourself that all you want, but it’s not true and you’re not going to convince me. The only times you’ve struggled are when you’ve gotten too much in your own head.”
My jaw drops. “Oh, so my biggest problem is me? If I can just get over myself or, I don’t know, outsmart my anxiety, I can win this thing? Great! So glad you’ve cracked it!”
“Nat.” He sighs. “I know it’s not that easy. That our brains can tell us all kinds of bullshit, and there’s chemical stuff at work that we can’t just ‘outsmart’ and go on about our day. But you can change your thought patterns, try thinking about all the ways things can go right instead of how they can go wrong.”
This conversation is making my head hurt, and I rub at my temples. “Telling myself how great I am isn’t going to just magically make me capable of winning the money. I could be making money as we speak, had I not decided to come on a mystical forest goose chase for the minuscule possibility of a scholarship. I could’ve worked this summer like a normal human. How many times have my parents tried to tell me? But here I am, nutty Natalie, choosing the least practical path available.”