The Kids Aren't Alright

Chapter 43: Finn

Ronan limps back into the cabin about an hour later, his skin white as a sheet and his nose plastered with tape. He doesn't say anything to me as he opens the door and shuffles into the room. We make eye contact for a brief moment, and then his gaze darts away.

"So, what's it going to be?" I ask.

He doesn't reply. My fingers, threaded tightly together in my lap, start to quiver.

The wait was agonizing. After Ronan got whisked away in the motorboat, two other counselors came out to supervise the rest of the activity. Emily and I were the first ones back to shore. There were only two of us, but we threw ourselves into the task of paddling so that we wouldn't have to talk. While the rest of the campers went to get lunch, I came back to the cabin, too wound up to eat. Sweat, blood, and lake water had made a pretty mosaic on my shirt, so I changed out of my dirty clothes and took a shower, wishing that I could scrub the memories of what happened in the canoe off me as easily as the dirt.

"Will the Director give me marks? Kitchen duty? Is she going to kick me out of camp?"

Ronan just shakes his head. He walks over to his drawers and pulls out a blue camp shirt. I avert my eyes as he drags the ruined shirt off his chest and replaces it with the clean one, not wanting to look at his bare skin.

"They're going to send me home, aren't they," I say in a low voice, once he's finished. "I knew it. They're going to expel me."

Ronan sighs.

I stare down at my vibrating hands and swallow, hard. This is all beginning to remind me of the first day, the day where this all began— the day where I met with the principal and he told me I was going away to Alaska, and it felt like that sensation you get when you drive over a hill too fast and your stomach sort of falls, and you feel that emptiness, that missingness, and think, just for a moment, where the hell did my vital organs just go?

"I'm leaving."

My chin jerks up. "What?"

"I said that I'm leaving." Ronan kneels down beside his cot and sticks his arm into the foot of space between the bed-springs and the floor. A moment later, he withdraws a small, leather duffel bag. His initials are sewn in fancy cursive across the front. "Goodbye."

"You're what?"

He unzips the duffel, and my mouth falls open. The bag is filled with money. I'm talking twenties, fifties, and the occasional Benjamin, all glaring back up at me with his disapproving, founding father eyes. I've never seen so much money in one place in my life. It's breathtaking.

"What the hell, Ronan. Did you rob a fucking bank?"

"I robbed my trust fund. Sabrina's passwords are too easy to guess." Ronan runs his thumb across a stack of twenties, counting the bills as they fly past. "It's all here. Two thousand dollars. Enough to get me settled."

"Settled? What do you mean, settled?"

Ronan leans back against his bed and runs a hand through his hair. He closes his eyes and sighs, and for a moment, he looks genuinely exhausted, like all the sleep he's missed has finally caught up to him. There's always a spark in his black eyes, but now, that fire is just... gone. "Connect the dots, Fish. I'm running away."

His words take a moment to sink in, but when they finally do, I almost choke on my own spit. "Ronan, that's insane! We're in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness— you can't just pack up and run away!"

"I wasn't planning on hiking through the forest, idiot. Two thousand dollars can buy you a lot of stuff. Like a taxi cab in the middle of the night."