Free Missed Connections by Tan-ni Fan Page A

and play video games on his phone, but Rob grabbed him by the elbow and made him walk around with the rest of them. He didn't say "so as to keep you out of trouble," but he might as well have, because Stanny said "Geez, Rob, I can be on my own for twenty minutes , okay?"
    "You could, except this is your chance to figure out what's here and I'm not going to let you miss out on it," Rob said blandly. "Ten years from now we'd be reminiscing about this place and what happened here, and you'd be feeling like an idiot because you'd have nothing to add since you'd spent three days holed up in your tent doing what you could do anywhere. And I'd feel like an asshole because IIet you miss out."
    "You're not my dad," Stanny said.
    "No, I'm your brother and I owe this to you," Rob said.
    Emily and Maria were bonding again over the hints of wildlife in the little river and the sulphur smell coming from the hot springs on the farther bank. Stanny was glowering but not whining for now. Rob enjoyed the feel of the high mountain sun on his skin. Up here the sun seemed so much closer than it did down at sea level. "Yikes," he said after a while, when he noticed that the warmth was turning to heat. "We all need to go get sunblock if we're going to stay outside."
    "I'm probably already burned," Stanny said mournfully. "All because you dragged me out here."
    They turned back and soon connected with Sera and George, who were fully protected with large hats, sunglasses, long sleeves, and visible and smelleable streaks of opaque sunblock. Sera greeted them as if it had been weeks rather than hours since she'd talked to them. "And did you see Rab yet?" she asked Rob. "Charles says he's here somewhere."
    "I wouldn't know," Rob said. "I don't know what he looks like these days."
    "Oh, right," Sera said. "I'll point him out to you, then."
    But Rab wasn't to be seen. Rob didn't mind. He was certainly curious about this mythical best friend from childhood, but his curiosity wasn't the burning type. His sisters' insinuations about puppy love did not make him more curious.
    Dinner was interesting enough without meeting Rab. Apparently a small catering crew had been hired for the entire trip, but they were not there to do all the work. Everybody had jobs to do. Rob became a busboy: he ran dishes and utensils to the long folding tables before the meal and picked them up into tubs after he had eaten. Stanny was assigned to work along with him, a gift Rob supposed he owed to the mothers' backchannel communications. But he gave up being Stanny's watchdog when he realized these were camp dishes and could not be broken easily. Stanny got the job done. He dropped a few more things than average, but he didn't get any crazy ideas about it, so it was all good.
    During dinner Rob got introduced to a variety of people he was supposed to have known in early childhood. They all clucked and cooed over him the way his uncles and aunts did, which was mildly embarrassing, but tolerable. Some people were surprisingly excited when he told them he had just graduated with an environmental sciences degree. Apparently it was a popular field among the people at the campground. "Charles has a company that does environmental impact reports," Constance told Rob. "He might be able to fit you in somewhere. I'm not promising anything," she added hastily.
    Rob liked Constance. He had been prepared not to, when his mother said that she was a girl who had liked to sleep around freely when she was in high school and had never married since. She said she had only embraced a monogamous life in her early thirties because she didn't have time for an active and complex social life any more. But he couldn't see anything really objectionable about her besides her somewhat ridiculous earrings, which featured cartoon owls and snakes painted in livid colors on plastic shields half as big as his palm. Her conversation was bright and friendly and she had a surprisingly ladylike laugh. She observed that