Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“That tattoo on your fucking ankle. Start talking.”

He appeared to be too shocked to speak, or else was trying to think up another excuse. After a minute, Nora rose and poured him a glass of scotch.

“Thanks,” he muttered sullenly. He took a sip, staring into the glass. “To know her and then not, ” he said, his voice low, “is like serving a life sentence. You see everything at a distance, through thick glass and telephones and visiting hours. Nothing tastes like anything. Bars everywhere you look.” He smiled softly. “You can never get out.”

He raised his head, gazing at us intently, as if remembering we were there. He actually looked relieved.

And just like that, he began to tell us all about her as the rain beat the windows like an army trying to get in.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Hopper said. “Six Silver Lakes was how I met Ashley. And it was true, that bet we made. She did blow me off. And that incident with that kid everyone made fun of. Orlando. When he took the ecstasy and Ash took the blame for all of us. That happened, okay? What I didn’t tell you was I’d been planning to break the hell out.”

“Of Six Silver Lakes?” I asked.

He nodded. “I’d had it with the entire operation. Even after the rattlesnake incident, we still had another six weeks. I wasn’t about to keep swallowing the bullshit. Sure, thanks to Ash, Hawk Feather was scared shitless, but so what? Every day it was a hundred degrees. The kids were budding Ted Bundys, the counselors perverted fucks. At night you could hear one of them, Wall Walker, jerking off in his tent. It was only a matter of time before he tried to get someone to join him. The only girl worth talking to, Ash, didn’t give me the time of day. So I thought, Fuck it. One of the female counselors, this headshrinker, Horsehair, she was always checking out this map she kept hidden in her backpack, thinking she was covert about it. One night, when she was having a one-on-one with one of the girls, I stole it. I saw on the map that if you made it out of Zion National Park, there was an interstate pretty close that could take you west into Nevada. If I got to the road I could easily hitch a ride with a truck driver. I’d traveled with truckers before. Most hate cops, so they’re trustworthy as hell. The others are so hyped up on meth they don’t know who the hell’s tagging along with them. My plan was to get to Vegas.

“Horsehair made a big stink about her stolen map and there was a major inquisition around the campfire. People’s backpacks got searched, but they didn’t find a thing. The counselors figured Horsehair had lost it. But I’d hidden it under the foot insert in my hiking boot. I came up with an escape plan. I’d ration my food, keeping the extra in the bottom of my sleeping bag. I’d wait for us to reach the camping spot in closest proximity to that highway. From what I calculated, we’d reach it in three days. From there, the highway was half a day’s hike. I’d sneak off after everyone was asleep. This one counselor, Four Crows, was supposed to keep an all-night watch, but she secretly retired around one, so I’d have no problem. But there was something I hadn’t considered. Orlando.”

Hopper ran his hands through his hair. “We shared a tent. You get assigned a tentmate at the outset. Orlando was mine. One night I was up studying the map, and all of a sudden I heard in the dark, ‘Hopper, whatcha looking at?’ He’d woken up and was spying on me. I didn’t know for how long. I told him I thought I saw a lizard and to go the fuck back to sleep. But he was a sly kid. He was used to people lying to him. The next morning when I woke up he’d gone through all of my things and found the map. He said he knew I was planning to run away, and if I didn’t take him with me, he was going to tell the counselors.”

He paused to take a long sip of scotch.

“I don’t think he’d ever had anyone be nice to him without him having to blackmail them into it. He wanted me to promise on Jesus Christ — he was from North Carolina, his parents born-again Baptists. He was always mentioning Jesus like he was his next-door neighbor, someone he did a little yard work for. So I said Cool. No problem. Great. I swore in the name of Jesus Christ I’d take him with me. I swore that we were a team. Like Frodo and Sam.”

He glanced at me. “I had no intention of taking him. I might as well try to escape with an L-shaped couch on my back. He was a total liability.”

He seemed anxious saying this, brushing his hair out of his eyes, resuming his concentrated stare at the coffee table.

“Within days, it was the night. We’d set up our camp in the exact location I needed to be. And I remember when everyone went to bed there was a clear night sky and a silence I’ll never forget. Usually there were insects and shit screaming in your ears all night. But on this night it was still, like everything alive had run away. I set my watch to wake up at midnight. Instead, I was woken up by a counselor. The entire group was awake. There was a torrential downpour. The whole campsite was flooded, all of us sleeping in about three inches of rain. It was mayhem. The counselors were yelling at everyone to pack up their tents. We had to move to higher elevation because they were worried about flash floods. Not that they gave a fuck about our well-being, they just didn’t want to end up dead themselves. People were screaming, freaking out. No one could find anything. I realized it was a blessing because in the chaos, it’d be so easy to slip away. I knew where I had to go, where the path was. I helped Orlando pack up the tent, but as I did, I noticed Ashley. She already had her tent together, was waiting for the rest of us. The beam of someone’s flashlight slipped onto her face, and I saw she was across the campsite, just staring at me. The look on her face — it was like she knew what I was about to do. I didn’t have time to think about it. Some of the kids were starting to make their way up the path to the next campsite. I fell in behind them. I held back, and when they were far enough ahead, I turned off my flashlight and stepped off the path, heading down a slope in the rocks, waiting. I could see some of the kids walking along the ridge, others still freaking out over the tents. The rain was coming down so hard in the pitch-black dark you couldn’t see more than a foot in front of you. They wouldn’t notice I was missing until morning. I turned my flashlight back on and took off.”

He paused to take another drink.

“I hadn’t walked ten minutes when I turned and saw another flashlight right behind me. It was Orlando. I was pissed. I shouted at him to go back, but he refused. He kept saying, ‘You promised. You promised to take me.’ He wouldn’t stop. I lost it. I said I couldn’t stand him. I told him he was fat, that everyone made fun of him. I said he was pathetic and weak, and even his own mother secretly didn’t love him. I said no one in the world loved him and no one ever would.”

At this, Hopper began to sob, a tortured choking sound that seemed to tear through him. “I wanted him to hate me. So he’d go back. I didn’t want him to like me. I didn’t want him to look up to me.”

He took a deep breath and fell silent, his head in his hands. After a minute, he wiped his face in the crook of his arm, hunching forward in the chair, visibly determined to keep talking, fighting his way through the story or he’d get lost in it, drown inside it.

“I took off. A minute later, when I looked back I could see his flashlight, a tiny white light in the dark behind me, so far away. It looked like it was getting smaller, like he was heading back up the path. But then I actually couldn’t tell if it was moving toward me or away. Maybe he was still coming after me. I continued on. But an hour later, I realized I had no way out. The trail I was supposed to follow was through a canyon called The Narrows, and as I came into it, slipping in the mud, I saw there was a raging river where the trail was supposed to be. There was no way across. I had to turn back. It took forever because the path was pretty much a mudslide. I wasn’t even sure I’d make it, and I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had the map. It felt like I stumbled forever through the dark. Three hours later, I made it to the ridge and the new campsite. It was about five in the morning, still pouring. Everyone was asleep. No one had noticed I was gone. I unrolled my sleeping bag, slipped into one of the other tents, and collapsed. When I woke up the counselors had taken a head count. There was no sign of Orlando. By the afternoon they’d called the National Guard. I remember it was this beautiful day. A huge blue sky, so bright and beautiful.”