by Finley Aaron
“That’s not so bad,” Dad insists.
“That’s assuming the weather is good for traveling,” Mom notes. She sounds really cautious, almost afraid, which is unusual for her. Mom’s a college math professor. She’s very level-headed and almost always unflappable. Just not right now.
Dad shrugs. “The kids have off from school. You and I are done with classes already. We don’t have to go in to the office. We only went today because we didn’t have anything better to do.” He points to the map. “Now we have something better to do.”
“Yes!” Judy nearly jumps, more excited than I’ve seen her in a long time. “This could be our Christmas trip!”
We’ve taken a trip over Christmas Break nearly every year. Last Christmas it was France. The year before that, Florida. “The only reason we haven’t planned a trip this year was that there wasn’t any place we especially wanted to go,” I point out. “Now, there’s somewhere we want to go.”
Mom’s whimpering turns to a groan. “I’m all for trying to track down this Mike Smith person, but traveling in Wyoming in the winter can be dangerous. And we don’t know what we’re getting into. If Mike Smith was involved in illegal activities, and he lives in such a remote area, we could be walking into a situation that—” She clamps her mouth shut.
“That what?” Dad prompts.
This time, Mom’s whimper is tiny, and slightly apologetic. “That we might not be able to walk out of.”
While Mom and Dad have been talking, Judy and I have been communicating without words. I don’t know if it’s because we’re twins, or what, but we’re strangely skilled at reading each other’s faces. Right now, Judy’s face is saying I really hope they let us go check this out. I don’t care if it’s dangerous. There’s something different about us and we need to figure out what it is.
And I’m giving her a look in return that’s supposed to say, I want to go, too. This is our only clue, and it would be foolish not to follow it. We’re already a cold case. The longer we wait, the colder we get.
So when Dad clears his throat and addresses the two of us, Judy and I are ready, our minds made up. “What do you kids think? Do you want to spend your Christmas holiday driving to Wyoming?”
“Yes!” We answer in wholehearted unison.
“It’s a long drive,” Mom cautions. “You’re probably going to get bored in the car.”
“It’s worth it,” I assure them.
Judy, ever the sensitive one, adds, “No matter what we find, you two will always be our parents. But we just need to know who Mike Smith is, and what’s at Lizard Head Road in Boulder, Wyoming. Maybe we won’t find anything, and it won’t change anything, but we’ve wondered our whole lives where we came from.”
I give Judy’s arm a little squeeze, because her voice is doing that emotional thing it sometimes does. “This is the closest we’ve ever come to having a chance to find out.”
Mom and Dad study each other’s faces. Even though they’ve been married over thirty years, I still don’t think they’re as good at communicating with their faces as Judy and I.
“I think we should try,” Dad concludes.
Mom looks less convinced. “We can try. But if the weather looks bad, or if there’s something illegal going on…”
“We’ll turn right around and come home,” Dad promises.
That much decided, I immediately start hoping Wyoming experiences the best December weather ever.
*
The next day-and-a-half pass in nervous agony. Judy and I feel like we’re keeping an awful secret from our parents, not telling them about her ability to breathe fire, or my strange teleporting skill. But at the same time, we can’t bring ourselves to tell them. We don’t know anyone else who can do these things. It feels wrong.
Like there’s something wrong with us.
And I don’t care what Mom and Dad said about the stork picking us out just for them—I don’t want them to find out about our weird skills until we know why we have them. Granted, our folks tell us all the time that they love us.
I just don’t want to test the limits of that love.
Not like this.
So we’re carrying our secret, and whispering theories to each other when no one else is around. Maybe our biological parents were drug dealers and they overdosed on experimental drugs, and that’s why we’re such freaks. Maybe our parents are some kind of genetic mutants, or maybe we’re the mutants, and we breathed fire as infants and scared them, so they left us by the roadside.
It’s a sobering thought.
I’m also puzzling over just what it was I did Monday evening. Did I really teleport? Or did I just somehow move very, very fast?
See, I’ve always been fascinated by flying. I’ve had junior pilot lessons and everything, and I’ve got a couple of remote-controlled planes I fly with my dad on the rare Nebraska days that aren’t windy. If I ever got to pick a super hero skill, it would be the ability to fly.
So it just seems odd to me that I apparently really do have a super hero skill, but it’s not at all the one I’ve always wanted.
Unless I just don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there’s something….
As we’re loading our bags into the back of our Bronco Wednesday morning, so our parents can pick us up straight from school and leave town from there, Judy leans in to me and whispers, “I’m scared to find out what we really are.”
Since our parents are in the house at the moment, and we’re all alone, I remind her, “We don’t have to go.”
She nods solemnly. For a moment, I’m afraid she’ll vote to cancel the whole trip.
I feel a whisper of relief at the thought, but more than that, I feel fear. Yes, I’m afraid of what we might learn about ourselves, but I’m more afraid of going through life not knowing. What if our unknown past catches up with us, and we’re not prepared to deal with it because we don’t know what it is?
Judy blows out a cloud of steamy breath. No fire this time, just exhaled air on a cold day. “I’m more afraid of not knowing,” she concludes.
And so we go. The half day of school passes and our parents pick us up, and we head out of town and eat the sandwiches my mother packed for lunch. By the time we reach the interstate, I’m bored.
Judy pulls out a notebook and crayons from her backpack.
“You brought crayons? What, are you eight years old?”
She pinches her nose at me, then laughs. “You’re jealous. I’ve brought all sorts of things—books, my crochet thread and hooks, a pad of crossword puzzles. You didn’t bring anything to keep you busy.”
“Sure I did. I have the atlas. I have my notebook.” Then, just to show that I can entertain myself perfectly well, I open the atlas and pull a notebook from my school bag, and start noting the miles between towns.
It’s eighteen miles from Hastings to the interstate.
From there to Kearney, 55 miles.
On to Lexington, 20.
To North Platte, another 59.
I play with the numbers, working out how far it is from major town to major town, factoring in our speed and how long it will take us to reach each spot. We eat supper in Cheyenne, Wyoming, then drive on to Laramie to get a hotel for the night.
By that time, it’s dark. We’ve passed through light flurries of snow here and there, but none of it is enough to cause my mom to ask that we turn around. Anyway the Bronco has four wheel drive, so it’s not like a few flurries should scare us that much.
We rise early the next morning, before the sun, and take an early lunch in Rock Spurs because frankly, once we turn north and leave the interstate, we don’t know what we’ll find.
It’s not quite ninety miles to Boulder, Wyoming. More like eighty-eight miles. By my calculation, the total trip is 708 miles, a couple miles short of our original calculations, but plenty long enough for me.
According to the sign on the edge of town, Boulder has a population of 75 people, and an elevation of 7,01
8 feet above sea level.
We’re on a wind-swept high plateau. We can see the peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the east—they’re completely gorgeous—but here everything is sparse and barren, wide open as far as the mountains. Picturesque in its own way, but desolate.
There are a few houses, a couple of gas stations, and a post office. Dad stops the Bronco at the post office.
This is it. We don’t know where Lizard Head Road is, other than that it’s somewhere near Boulder. But whoever delivered that letter in 1974 knew. Somebody at the Post Office ought to know.
They have to know.
Otherwise, we came all this way for nothing.
“You still have the envelope?” Dad asks.
“Right here.” I have the address memorized—I’m pretty sure all of us have it memorized—but I brought it anyway, seeing that it’s the only link we have to our mysterious past. It’s like evidence, or something.
“I’ll go in and ask about it.” Dad takes the envelope from me and opens his door.
“I’m going, too.” The rest of us tumble out of the Bronco and stand on legs made unsteady by the long road trip.
For an instant, I meet Judy’s eyes.
This is it, then. This is when we find out…whatever we came here to find out.
Dad opens the front door to the small building and we all tromp in. At first the place looks abandoned, although the lights are on and it’s a good sixty degrees warmer inside than it was outside, so it can’t have been abandoned for long. Then a freckle-faced man pops out from in back and asks if he can help us.
“We’re looking for Lizard Head Road,” Dad informs him.
The man makes a face. “There’s a Lizard Head Peak, but you don’t come at that from this side, you head in from Fort Washakie. Of course, to get there you have to go down to Farson and get on Highway 28.”
“Farson,” Mom whispers under her breath in her whimpering voice. She’s been her usual level-headed self so far this trip, but now her confidence seems to be wavering.
I understand what she’s feeling. Farson’s 48 miles south of us. We passed through there nearly an hour ago.
The man shakes his head apologetically. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because the roads are closed to Lizard Head Peak this time of year.”
“I don’t know that we need Lizard Head Peak,” Dad explains. “We just need Lizard Head Road.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no such road.”
Chapter Four
The man looks disappointed that he can’t help us. “Why do you ask?”
Dad holds out the tattered envelope and places it on the counter with the address pointed toward the man so he can read it. “We were hoping to find Mike Smith. You don’t know him, by chance, do you?”
“Never heard the name.” The postal worker scowls down at the envelope. “This is dated 1974. That’s well before my time. I only moved up here two years ago. Say.” He taps his lip thoughtfully. “Do you really want to find this Mike Smith fellow?”
Judy pipes up, “We’ve traveled over seven hundred miles looking for him.”
“Seven hundred?” The man whistles. “Tell you what. My route man, Dock, will be in to load for his south route in an hour or so. If you don’t mind waiting around, come back in here when you see his truck pull in around back. Dock’s been delivering mail in these parts for forty years or more. If there ever was a Lizard Head Road, or a Mike Smith, Dock might remember.”
We thank the man for his helpfulness, then file out and pile back in the Bronco, where Dad turns the vehicle on to get the heat running, and we evaluate what we learned.
I crack open the map and do some calculations. “Fort Washakie’s back on the other side of the continental divide,” I explain to my folks. “It’s 48 miles down to Farson, 77 miles over on highway 28, and then, I don’t know, ten more miles up to Fort Washakie, plus whatever more beyond that to Lizard Head Road.”
“That’s at least three more hours of driving,” Dad moans.
“We can’t go anyway,” Mom reminds us. “He said the road is closed this time of year. Besides, it’s past noon already. In three hours, it will be starting to get dark out.” Today’s the winter solstice, so the sunlit hours are fewer than they are any other time of year.
Maybe we should have made this trip in the summer—but I don’t want to wait half a year for answers.
“I don’t think we need to go east.” Judy’s looking over my arm at the map. “That envelope came through Boulder, not Fort Washakie. It came through this post office, to Lizard Head Road. Somebody had to deliver it.”
“Maybe that Dock guy delivered it.” Hope stirs inside me like a tiny sigh.
“Maybe he did,” Dad admits. “But that was fifteen years ago. How many pieces of mail has he delivered since then? What are the odds he’ll remember?”
Since none of us can answer that question until Dock shows up and answers it himself, we agree to head over to the convenience store. There, we park where we can clearly see the post office, and we take turns going inside—Dad and Judy first, then me and Mom, keeping a constant watch for the postal truck.
Finally, as Dad’s paying for gas (he decided to top off the tank since we weren’t doing anything else) I’m munching Corn Nuts and trying to decide if they actually taste good or if I’m just hungry, we see a speck of white rolling up the road.
“Do you think that’s it?” Judy asks.
“What is?” Mom looks in the direction Judy’s pointing.
“That truck.”
“I don’t see anything.” Mom pulls off her glasses, cleans them with her scarf, and looks again.
By this time, I can see enough of the truck to recognize the postal emblems, even though it’s still far away.
“It’s a postal truck,” I affirm, pointing to it as Dad gets back into the driver’s seat.
“I don’t see anything,” Dad grumbles.
Judy angles her arm over his shoulder and advises him to squint in the direction her finger is pointing. “There. Can’t you see it?”
“I see a speck. Is that a vehicle? Maybe it is, but I think you two are being overly optimistic when you say you can see it’s a postal truck. Nobody could see it that clearly from here.”
I’m about to correct him, to assert that I can, indeed, see it quite clearly, and have been able to for a minute or two. Even though it stops now and again at mail boxes, it’s drawing closer, and its identity is now clear.
But before I speak, Dad mumbles, “It’s not humanly possible.”
And I close my open mouth.
It may not be humanly possible, but I did it. What does that make me?
Not human?
Judy glances my way. I can tell she was about to say something, too, but instead she settles back into her seat. “Wait for it to get closer, then. We’ll see what it is.”
But even as she says as much to Mom and Dad, she gives me a look that says, I can see it’s a postal truck, clear as anything.
And I’m giving her a look in return that says, Mom and Dad may be old, but their vision isn’t that poor. Their glasses should correct it to near perfect. We’ve always had good eyesight…but nobody’s ever tested how good, beyond that it doesn’t need correcting.
Judy pinches her eyes shut a moment. When she opens them, she gives me a look that says, That’s one more weird thing about us. We’ve got to find out where we came from. We’re not normal, and we need to know why.
So then, even though we’re fifteen years old and it seems like a little kid thing to do, I hold my sister’s hand and give it a tiny squeeze.
We’re not normal. But at least we’re not normal, together.
By the time Judy and I are done with our silent conversation, the truck is nearly to the post office, and our parents in only slightly surprised voices announce that it is, indeed, a postal truck. Dad starts the Bronco and pulls over to the parking space we vacated less than an hour ago.
We tromp in again, our hope tempered
this time.
Is there a Lizard Head Road? If there is, does anyone know where to find it?
The same young man who helped us before calls for Dock as he enters through the back door, and tells him we need his help finding an address.
Fortunately, though Dock looks startled at first, he seems pleased with the notion that somebody needs his expert input. “What’s the address?”
“Well, there’s no number.” Dad once again takes on the role of family spokesperson. “Just a name, street, and Boulder, Wyoming, with the zip code. It was mailed in 1974, but we think it must have come through this office. Do you know—is there such a thing as Lizard Head Road?”
Dock pulls off his stocking cap and flattens his flyaway white hair with a swipe of his fingers. “There’s Lizard Head Peak, of course. Lemme see, lemme see now.” He shuffles toward us. “What’s the name?”
Dad pushes the envelope across the counter so Dock can see. “Mike Smith.”
“Mike Smith. Lizard Head Road, 1974. That would be…oh.” He shakes his head and walks off into a back room.
Everyone exchanges curious looks.
The young postal worker shrugs. “I think he’s getting a map. The park service had some printed for the tourists. It doesn’t show everything, but…”
Dock returns with a placemat-sized piece of paper fluttering in front of him. “Here’s Boulder.” He slaps the paper down on the counter and jabs a spot with one finger, tracing a trail from there. “Take the 353 past the curve south. It’ll turn straight east one mile. That’s where you get off.”
Dock plucks a pen from his pocket and clicks the ball point into action, marking a spot. “When the 353 curves back south, you stay going east on Pocket Creek Road. That’s a gravel road. It’s going to curve around and turn into Butte Road. That twists around every which way but mostly uphill. Gonna start climbing real good after bit. You stay on it all the way to the end. The gravel road will curve north here at the tip, but you’ll see a set of tracks here going east—”
“Tracks?” Mom clarifies
“Ruts in the road—tire path. Not paved or graveled or anything. Pretty overgrown, anymore. Don’t know that anyone’s been up that way in, oh, I don’t know. At least a decade. Not since Mike Smith moved away.”