Kingdom of Darkness (Kingdom Journals Book 2) Page 7

  “You’re crazy,” Frida told me.

  “Try it! There’s no wind. It feels amazing.”

  “With that white skin of yours, you’re going to end up with a sunburn.”

  “I don’t care.”

  We lay on the rocks with bare arms. Rolling up our pant legs, we baked our legs. The sun behind my eyelids burned a black spot in my mind, and I slipped into a light slumber.

  Jude’s alarm brought me out of my sleep.

  “That’s time to head back.” He jumped to the ground, offering his hand to help us down. We reached the group with five minutes to spare. About half the campers were present, and when the rest arrived, Dr. Antos took a head count. Afterwards, we trekked down the mountain. Glad to have light for the descent, I followed Jude, copying his footing.

  Once we unpacked at the camp site, I met with Dr. Antos. It seemed only Jude and I had sessions with him every day, and I wondered what the other campers thought of it. When I posed the question to Frida that night, she was quick with an answer.

  “There is crazy, and there is crazy. And you’re crazy, love. At least that’s the word on the street.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it. Why are you hanging out with us then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe underneath this druggie, I got a little crazy too.”

  “So, you’re it? No one else is going to be friends with me?”

  “You’ve got Jude. Who else do you need? Plus, every girl here wants to be you.”

  “We’ve been here forty-eight hours, and they’ve already put Jude and me together?”

  “Seems so.”

  We walked back to our tent in silence, and I slipped into my sleeping bag, thinking I might be the only sane girl there.

  Monday donned the beginning of our school week. We ate breakfast and worked in the tech tent on computers until after sun up. The sunrise did little as thick clouds hung in the sky as we broke for exercise and lunch. In the afternoon, we had group sessions, lessons on ropes, rock climbing, mountaineering, ice climbing, and various physical skills combined with some psychological or emotional lesson. Wrap-ups for these classes focused on sharing a personal learning or status.

  Save my hallucinations, I began to think of myself as well adjusted compared to many of the others. My four o’clock sessions continued with Dr. Antos sifting through the details of my visions. Otherwise, Frida, Jude, and I always seemed to find each other during free time. As the week wore on, tensions between us and Asa and George heightened. I tried to team up with Asa during chore time, but it didn’t seem to help.

  The weather didn’t help the mood around camp as each sunrise and sunset came and went, shrouded behind a bank of clouds.

  “Welcome to Iceland,” George told Jude when he complained at lunch Friday. “Didn’t you request this session especially because you’d never been to Iceland? Maybe you should have done your homework. October is the rainiest month of the year.”

  The tone lifted Saturday as we were allowed to sleep in, skip chores, wander freely, and talk with family.

  “Camille. It’s so good to hear your voice.” Mom sounded as if she might be crying as she answered the phone. “How are you?”

  “Really good.”

  “Did you make some friends?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “How are you doing? I’ve been so worried.”

  I skipped telling her about passing out, choosing to focus on our hike to the summit and various activities during the week. Describing the camp setup, I told her about our trip to the glacier the next day.

  “Dr. Antos said you were good without the meds,” she commented when I finished.

  “Yes.” I realized Dr. Antos also left out the episode where I took my bracelet off. “No meds. It’s great to feel normal and not worry about anything.”

  “Well, I hope you’re thinking about schoolwork and grades.”

  “My coursework is going well. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay, well, I love you.”

  “Love you too.” I ended the call.

  That night after dinner we had a campfire. Dr. Antos assigned our teams for the next week. My group included Jude, two girls from the other tent—Beth Anne and Ruth—and another boy, John. John roomed with Jude, and he said John was cool. I’d only talked to the other girls a couple of times, so I hoped we would get along. The odd thing was I’d never worried about getting along with people before. There hadn’t been a single person I’d had a serious problem with. Perhaps the close camp setting had me on edge. Maybe Frida’s paranoia was rubbing off. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it and reaffirmed my vow to be inclusive rather than exclusive in my relationships.

  I approached Beth Ann the next morning when we reported for breakfast cook duty. “Hi, I’m Camille. I don’t think we met formally.”

  “I know who you are. You’re with Jude and Frida.”

  “It’s not like we’re married or anything.”

  “Frida is seriously scary, and I’m not sure about you and Jude. You have this whole bracelet thing going. You’re the only ones who see Dr. Antos every day. There must be something there. Sorry, but I’m picking my friends carefully. We only have a month here. It’s not worth drama.”

  “That’s okay. I get it. Recovery first.” I smiled, rubbed my hand to my pants, and retreated to find the eggs.

  “Hey, save a couple of those for me.” Jude’s voice startled me.

  “A couple, like two?”

  “Three.” His smile stretched across his face, and he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.

  Setting three eggs in a small bowl, I carried the rest to the prep table.

  “Jude wants raw eggs?” Ruth asked as I started to crack and scrambled the small quail eggs.

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “I was on breakfast cook duty last week too. He eats them raw every day.” She scrunched up her nose. “Must be some bodybuilding thing. Whatever he does, it’s working. He is some kind of hot.”

  “I guess.” I kept my eyes on the bowl in front of me. Truth be told, I tried to not look at Jude as much as possible. The couple of times we’d been in separate groups, I’d caught him glance my way. He diverted his eyes when our gaze met. Still I couldn’t look away. He favored someone and I hadn’t figured it out until the previous day. He looked like Theron, Hunter’s evil half-brother. So, I’d added Jude’s resemblance to Theron to my paranoia of Dr. Antos being the evil wizard Thanatos.

  “You like him?” Ruth’s words brought me out of my spiral.

  “We’re friends, I guess.” I realized Frida supplied most of the conversation between the three of us, and I hadn’t talked to him one on one since the first day.

  Ruth bumped into me, making the egg I’d been cracking spill to the table. “So, he’s fair game?”

  “Course.”

  She peppered me with questions as we worked. They were mostly about Frida and Jude so I deflected almost all of them. I tried to get to know her, but she seemed intent on learning all she could about Jude.

  “You should go talk to him.” I glanced over to where he stood kneading a round of dough. He smiled and winked at me, and I shot him a glaring stare. “I’ll get the fruit ready.” I spun to face the coolers.

  As I returned to the table, I saw Ruth had positioned herself beside Jude.

  “Want help with the fruit?” John stepped up to the table, knife in hand.

  “Sure.” I finished wiping down the work surface with the cleaner they’d provided us.

  “So, we have Beth Ann who hates you, and Ruth who just wants Jude. This should be interesting.”

  “I must have been sleeping through high school because I haven’t ever witnessed drama like this.”

  “You put twenty crazy teens together, and you don’t expect crazy?”

  “I guess.” I chuckled.

  “So, what are you in for?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “Schizophrenia.”

  “Whoa, like Jude. That’s serious
stuff.”

  “I guess. It seems to be under control now.”

  “That’s good.”

  We finished chopping the fruit in silence, and I moved on to scrambling the eggs. I’d never been a big breakfast eater, and by the time we’d finished, my small appetite had vanished. In line, I chose a slice of bread and fruit.

  “Perhaps you should have some protein with that.” Dr. Antos’s voice came from behind me. I picked up a carton of milk from the table and shook it. “That’s better.” He smiled. “Got to keep our bodies strong.”

  After the meal, we finished our coursework and broke for the team activities. I was glad I’d taken Dr. Antos’s advice, as they had us packing ice climbing gear for a hike to the nearest ice flow. We were paired with another team, but unfortunately not the one Frida had joined.

  “Missing Frida?” Jude asked as he fell into step with me.

  “A little. She is good company.”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know. Frida’s easy to talk to. Well, I guess it’s more of a listening process.”

  “That’s true.”

  Our steps fell into sync, with me taking two for his one. Even though few words passed between us, I liked the security of having a known entity beside me. The thought caused me to let out an involuntary chuckle.

  “What?”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what you were thinking?”

  My face warmed, and I looked to the rising sun. “I hadn’t planned on it.”

  “Okay.” His eyes cut to the sky and back to me. “So, what if we play a game? It seems you don’t like talking about yourself, so what if I tell you something about me, and then you do the same? I’ll start. I like to lift weights.”

  “You didn’t give me time to tell you whether I wanted to play or not.”

  “Suck it up, buttercup.”

  “Fine. You have very bronze skin.”

  “What?” He stopped walking.

  “You said I do the same, so I am telling you something about you.”

  “Argh. Never mind.” The edges of his lips turned down.

  “Sorry. It was a joke.” I leaned over so my face was in front of him. “I run cross country.”

  “You said that to the whole group the first day.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, I have a brother a year older than me, like exactly, June 21. My dad calls us the children of light because we were born on the summer solstice.”

  “So, I’m thinking he’s a bit of a spiritualist.”

  “Yeah, I guess. He and my mom split when I was little. She calls him a gypsy.”

  Jude laid his hand over his chest. “Well, I’m from L.A., as you know. I live with my grandparents. My dad is sort of a gypsy too, I guess.”

  “Yeah, why do you say that?”

  “He moves for his job a lot.”

  “What about your mom?” I glanced down at the path and then back to his face.

  “She lives on this holistic communal farm.”

  We walked on in silence a few minutes. “It’s kind of funny that my mom calls my dad a gypsy. We’ve moved like six times trying to find a healthy place for me to live.”

  “And Reykjavik was it?” He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Up until six weeks ago.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Hey, that’s life. We all have our struggles, right?”

  “I had no clue I had this schizophrenia thing until a couple of months ago. Dr. Antos thinks it’s because of hormones or something, like adult onset.”

  “Is your bracelet helping?” I held up my bracelet.

  “I haven’t had an episode since I put mine on.”

  Wondering what kind of life I’d have with a fellow schizophrenic, I pondered meeting someone normal. Would they always be worried I would relapse? If I was with someone else who was sick, would I think about it all the time?

  “The sun’s coming up.” Jude pointed to the sky.

  “Behind a bank of clouds.”

  “That’s the first negative thing I’ve heard you say all week.”

  “Sorry, I don’t like thinking about my disease.”

  He leaned down to look me in the eyes. “Hey, no apologies. We’re all in the same boat. Your words.” He pointed at me and spun in the direction we’d been headed, taking faster strides away from me.

  Spinning around, I realized we were the last of the pack, and I increased my speed. Near the glacier the clouds cleared, and the sun reflecting off the ice and snow blinded me. We sat along the edge and fitted our crampons onto our shoes. Venturing out onto the surface of the ice flow, I spun to view the walls of white stretching into the intense blue sky.

  Making our way into the ice canyon, we rounded a bend to find a wall fitted with ropes. A gust of wind blew strands of hair across my face, and I looked up to see the sun disappear behind the clouds. Shivering, I secured my wool cap on my head. The cliff loomed at least thirty feet high in front of me, and I wondered what I had been thinking when I signed up for this.

  My brother Tyler loved stuff like this, but with a neurotic mother, I’d had little exposure to rugged terrain. Hiking and running I loved, anything with my feet planted on the ground worked. But climbing was not my thing. Hanging back, I studied the ascent.

  “This is awesome.” Jude picked up his pace and made it to the wall first. Turning around, his eyes scanned the crowd until he found me. He motioned for me to join him, and I inched to his side. “We’re partners, right?”

  “Sure,” I said, thinking humiliation eminent.

  After one leader scaled the climb, Allen asked for volunteers to go first. Jude’s hand shot up, and I looked to the ground. All I wanted was to be in my warm tent right then.

  Using a pick and the spikes on his shoes, he scaled the wall with ease. I clicked into the ropes and placed my gloves on the ice, studying the cliff. Heights weren’t my problem. I could stand on the top of a high building with a substantial railing in front of me all day. What I was terrified of was falling.

  “You good?” came Allen’s voice.

  I swallowed and nodded. Focus on the top, one step at a time, I told myself as I buried my pick in the ice and hoisted myself up a foot. For two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight steps, it worked.

  “You’re doing great! Almost a third of the way there!” Allen called from below.

  I clenched my jaw thinking it would have been better for him to say nothing.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I looked down at him and realized just how far I’d climbed.

  Gazing up to the top, all my muscles seized. I couldn’t make it. What had I been thinking? Why didn’t I stay home? Facing all the kids at school was far better than this.

  Jude appeared beside me. “What’s up, Cami?”

  I forced a smile. “I hate to be called Cami. You know that.”

  “Well, I had to get some reaction out of you. Are you still with us?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “So, what’s up?” he asked.

  Tears started to form in my eyes, and I squinted to try and clear them.

  “What are you thinking?” he coaxed.

  “That I’d rather be at school than here right now.”

  “That’s your worst fear?” His large eyes peered into mine. “You know all these challenges are to just get us to have enough courage to face our biggest fears. If you’re on a cliff and thinking school would be better than this, I’m thinking you don’t have huge anxiety issues.”

  “So, the fact that you scaled this like it was nothing means you don’t have any fears?”

  “No, it just means I’m not scared of falling, which I’m guessing you are. Should we make it a race?” He drove his pick in the ice above us.

  “Why would I race you? There’s no way I’d win.”

  “You’re a competitive person. I thought I’d give it a shot.” He pulle
d himself up to his pick and looked back at me.

  “I’m not a competitive person,” I told him.

  “You want people to think well of you, and you run cross country, so you are.”

  “Since when are you such a psychiatric authority?”

  “Since I have a photographic memory.” He tapped his temple and took another step up.

  I slammed my pick in the ice above my head and took a step. “So, you’ve got everyone, including me, figured out just like that.”

  “Pretty much. You don’t like people to think you’re crazy.”

  Climbing until we were eye level, I stopped. “I don’t care what people think.”

  “You don’t want to be labeled as crazy.” He proceeded up the cliff.

  My anger fueled me upward. “Nobody wants to be crazy.”

  “Some people do. They like to stand out. Not you, you want to blend in, be invisible.”

  “I don’t want to be invisible.”

  With one more step, he grabbed the top of the ledge and hoisted himself up.

  “It’s not a big deal.” He offered me his hand as I pulled myself over the edge. “Most introverts do.”

  If he hadn’t gotten me up the ice cliff, I would’ve decked him.

  “I figure you’re not going to talk to me for a couple of days, but you made it up the cliff.”

  “Leave me alone.” I walked away from him and bent over, catching my breath. Hating that my desire to kiss him rivaled the urge to hit him, I pulled my water bottle from my pack. Why was he so darn handsome?

  Hating that I had to apologize, I made my way back over to the edge where he and the guide were coaching the next person up.

  “You forgive me yet?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks, and I’m sorry.”

  “It was all just a ploy to get you unstuck. The guide figured I knew you better than anyone.”

  “I can’t believe I made it.”

  “It’s all in the head.”

  I couldn’t look down and watch the others climb up, so I lay my pack on the ice and sat on it to wait. It must’ve been a good hour before everyone made it up. We ate lunch and continued our hike. I wanted to enjoy it more, but kept thinking about going back down the ice wall.