“What made you guys move up here?” Matthew asked. Before she could answer, he smashed his empty beer can into a rock, crumpling it.
Leni couldn’t help laughing. Only a boy would do that. “My dad’s kind of … an adventurer,” she settled on as her answer. （Never tell the truth, never that Dad had trouble keeping a job and staying in one place, and never that he drank too much and liked to yell.） “He got tired of Seattle, I guess. What about you guys? When did you move here?”
“My grandpa, Eckhart Walker, came to Alaska during the Great Depression. He said he didn’t want to stand in line for watery soup. So he packed up his stuff and hitchhiked to Seattle. He worked his way north from there. Supposedly he walked Alaska from shore to shore and even climbed Mount Alyeska with a ladder strapped to his back so he could cross glacial crevasses. He met my Grandma Lily in Nome. She ran a laundry and diner. They got married and decided to homestead.”
“So your grandparents and your dad and you all grew up in that house?”
“Well. The big house was built a lot later, but we all grew up on this land. My mom’s family lives in Fairbanks. My sister is living with them while she goes to college. And my folks split up a few years back, so Mom built herself a new house on the homestead and moved into it with her boyfriend, Cal, who is a real douchebag.” He grinned. “But we all work together. He and Dad play chess in the winter. It’s weird, but it’s Alaska.”
“Wow. I can’t even imagine living in one place my whole life.” She heard the edge of longing in her voice and was embarrassed by it. She tilted her beer up, swallowed the last foamy drips.
The makeshift band was going all-out now, hands banging on buckets, the guitar strumming, fiddles playing.
Thelma and Mama and Ms. Rhodes were swishing their hips in time to the music, singing loudly. Ro-cky Mountain high, Color-ado …
Over at the grill, Clyde yelled out, “Moose burgers are ready! Who wants cheese?”
“Come on,” Matthew said. “I’m starving.” He took her hand （it seemed natural） and led her through the trees and down onto the beach. They came up behind Dad and Mad Earl, who were off by themselves, drinking, and Leni heard Mad Earl clink his mason jar against Dad’s, hitting it so hard it made a sturdy clank. “Tha’ Tom Walker sure thinks his shit don’t stink,” Dad said.
“When TSHTF, he’ll come crawling to me ’cuz I’m prepared,” Mad Earl slurred.
Leni froze, mortified. She looked at Matthew. He’d heard it, too.
“Born rich,” Dad added, his words slurred and slow in coming. “Thass what you said, right?”
Mad Earl nodded, stumbled into Dad. They held each other up. “He thinks he’s better’n us.”
Leni pulled away from Matthew; shame made her feel small. Alone.
“Leni?”
“I’m sorry you heard that,” she said. And as if her dad’s slurred bad-mouthing weren’t bad enough, there was Mama over there, standing too close to Mr. Walker, smiling up at him in a way that could start trouble.
Just like all the other times. And Alaska was supposed to be different.
“What’s the matter?” Matthew asked.
Leni shook her head, feeling a familiar sadness creep in. She could never tell him how it felt to live with a dad who scared you sometimes and a mother who loved him too much and made him prove how much he loved her in dangerous ways. Like flirting.
These were Leni’s secrets. Her burdens. She couldn’t share them.
All this time, all these years, she’d dreamed of having a real friend, one who would tell her everything. How had she missed the obvious?
Leni couldn’t have a real friend because she couldn’t be one. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s nothing. Come on, let’s eat. I’m starving.”
SIX
After the party, back at the cabin, Leni’s parents were all over each other, making out like teenagers, banging into walls, pressing their bodies together. The combination of alcohol and music （and maybe Tom Walker’s attention） had made them crazy for each other.
Leni hurried up into the loft, where she covered her ears with her pillow and hummed “Come On Get Happy.” When the cabin fell silent again, she crawled over to the stack of books she’d bought at the Salvation Army. A book of poetry by someone named Robert Service grabbed her attention. She took it back into bed with her and opened it to a poem called “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” She didn’t need to light her lantern because it was still freaking light outside, even this late.