A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter fourteen

f o u r t e e n

*

The tent doesn't want to go up. We've made it to our campsite, fifteen minutes from the Grand Canyon, and Arjun and I have spent the past ten minutes trying to erect the frame but we just can't get it up. The poles won't cooperate and every time we've got it halfway figured out, there's a gust of wind that blows the canvas cover out of my hands.

The first time it happened, Arjun laughed and grabbed it. The second time, he laughed a little harder when I lunged and almost impaled myself on the tent pole. The third time, he's already laughing at our ineptitude before we screw it up again, and he's bent double wheezing when I can't get the pole to straighten out.

My head's in the wrong space. It's incredibly distracting to be trying to put up a tent when Arjun's standing there in tight shorts and a billowy linen shirt, like some nineties Italian painter. Long, loose sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, showing off smooth, toned forearms and those leather bracelets that hang halfway to his thumb when his arms are down.

He doesn't look like an English teenager on a road trip. He's way too sophisticated for that, and he looks criminally good. His shorts are short, pale beige against his dark brown skin and clinging to his thighs. Even his feet look good, tan sandals showing off his arches.

I have never, in my life, admired feet before. I don't like feet. But, damn it, he has good feet.

"Fuck it, we're roughing it tonight," I say, throwing down the misbehaving pole. He raises an eyebrow and his lips twitch and god damn it.

Young-mi comes over, having put up her own tent without an issue, and she shakes her head at us. "You are useless boys," she says, tutting. As she clicks the poles into place and threads them through the holes in the canvas, she mutters, "So easy."

"Well, shit," Arjun says, running his hand through his hair. Hair that, I notice, is the perfect length for hands to run through.

Sam comes over and looks us up and down, and then he glances at Young-mi standing by the now perfectly usable tent, and he says, "I think I can say, with all certainty, that you guys won't be winning the prize for the most competent tent erectors."

I beg to differ, I think, and feel my cheeks heat up at the mere thought. I can pitch a perfectly good tent. Just not the kind we can sleep in.

"We'll get the hang of it," Arjun says, "though I think March's uselessness might be contagious."

"In my defence," I say, hands on hips, "I do have dyspraxia, and you know it. Shit coordination is, like, my whole deal." I wave my hands around. "Is that not a good enough excuse?"

Arjun's eyebrows shoot up and for a moment he looks genuinely mortified. "Shit, I'm sorry. I totally forgot," he says, a look of pure alarm on his face. Young-mi rolls her eyes at us.

"You're clumsy, yes, but you can read," she says, waving the instructions that come with the tent, which promises easy erection. Though her tone is chastising, I can tell she's only teasing: she's smiling, and her eye rolling is fond. "It's very easy, and you're English!"

I take one look at the tiny print, an indistinct jumble of letters and numbers amidst poorly-labelled diagrams, and I wrinkle my nose. I already struggle with directions – verbal instructions are totally lost on me, usually going in one ear and out the other by the time it comes to following through. I've had so many teachers flag my disobedience or my inability to follow their orders, and every time Dad has asked them to be patient and understanding.