by Amy Reed
And now here she is in front of me, on the ground in a pool of blood, her face gone, her skin charred, her arm twisted in a way no arm should ever be twisted. Just the memory of a body, now ashes buried in the ground back home, dissolving back into the earth. The image fades until there is only the lifeless, flat clay of the salt flat in front of me.
No ghost, no monster. Just memory.
Just feelings that cannot be seen or measured.
Just love and loss that is infinite.
“Good-bye, Camille,” I say. That is all I ever needed to say.
And then, in the darkness, two eyes shining white. The black broken by headlights, Hunter searching for me.
I walk slowly toward the light, for once not in a hurry. I look up and the sky is suddenly clear, the cloud of smoke from the forest fire pushed away by the wind. A gentle breeze now blows, cooler than the hot blasts of before, as if trying to soothe the parched earth, as if telling it you have gone through enough. Stars poke through the black, little twinkling beacons of hope.
The headlights get closer, shining a long, straight path to me. I hear the hum of the car’s engine. I am held by the spotlight.
Hunter turns off the car and gets out. The sound of the car door closing is so sharp in the empty night. With the light in my eyes, I can make out only the barest outline of him in the black.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says.
“Turn the lights off, will you?”
The world goes dark again.
“Come here,” I say. I reach for his hand, pull him gently down to the ground. “Lie on your back,” I say.
We are side by side, holding hands, warmed by a blanket of diamonds.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Hunter says softly. His words float up to the heavens and mingle with the stars.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“You scared me a little.”
“Maybe it’s not so bad to be scared.”
Silence holds us. We could stay here forever.
The world is drained of color and we fill up the emptiness.
Hunter squeezes my hand. “Do you think she’s up there?”
“Sure,” I say. “Why not? She could be anywhere. Up there. Down here. In some other dimension we don’t even know about.”
“I believe in heaven,” Hunter says. Like a confession, like an apology.
I do not respond. There is nothing to say to faith.
“You think I’m stupid,” Hunter says.
“No I don’t.” I turn my head to look him in the eye, to make sure he knows I mean it. “Why would you think that?”
“You must think I’m stupid for believing. You strike me as the kind of person who would think that. No offense.”
I sigh. He’s right. I have been the kind of person who would think that—cynical, superior, untrusting of mystery. But that was me before this, before everything happened, before I chased a ghost across the country and convinced myself it was chasing me.
“You believe in heaven,” I say. “I believe in ghosts.”
“So we’re both delusional.”
Looking up at the sky like this, I can understand why people would think there was something up there, some kind of magical, mysterious promise, something better than down here. Even now, with all the things we know through science, the mystery is still there—we can imagine all those stars as other suns, with worlds like ours orbiting around them.
“You never thought about it?” Hunter says. “With Camille’s death and everything? You never thought about where she is now?”
“I was too busy freaking out that she was still here,” I say, knowing he can never fully understand what I mean. “And maybe if I let myself think about where she went, then I’d have to admit she was really gone.”
We are quiet for a while. I feel my hand warm in Hunter’s. And that is all I feel. There is no sense of Camille stalking behind me, no Camille hiding behind the car, no Camille in my head, no Camille hanging on to life. For once, no me hanging on to her. I don’t know how I know, but I am certain she is gone for good.
I have never seen so many stars.
“Maybe I believe in something like reincarnation,” I say. “Like how science has proven that matter never really dies, it just moves around as energy and eventually becomes part of something else. Maybe souls are like that too, made up of a bunch of little soul atoms that get recycled over and over again, forever. So maybe you could have atoms in you that Jesus did, or Buddha, or a whale, or a tree, or a rock, or even an alien from another galaxy.”
“And maybe Camille’s soul is getting blown around,” Hunter says. “Getting recycled and becoming parts of new things being born.”
“Like babies.”
“Or algae.”
“Or starfish.”
“Or stars,” Hunter says.
I start crying. The tears run down the side of my face and drip onto the parched earth below me. “And maybe we are breathing in pieces of her, and they get caught in our lungs and spread through our bloodstreams.”
“And maybe one little piece made it into our hearts,” Hunter says. “And it’s just going to hang around there for a while.”
“Keeping us company.”
“Yeah.”
Hunter lifts my hand and places it on my heart, puts his hand over it, and pushes gently. I can feel the slightest rhythm.
“You feel her?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Me too,” he says.
We lie there for a while, our tears turning the salt earth back into sea, feeling the tiny pieces of Camille pulse through us, watching her above us, her soul as big as the sky, turning into stars.
* * *
We are drained. We are zombies. We are colorless, powdered white with the fine dust of the salt flats.
We do not speak the half hour it takes to drive across the border into Nevada. I don’t consult Hunter as I pull into the first casino/hotel I see. I know he’s as ready to stop as I am.
From the blank, colorless nothingness of the salt flats, we are thrown into its exact opposite. The casino is a different kind of nightmare, where we have to find our way through a maze of ringing, blinking slot machines. We float through the smoky haze, the air heavy and poisoned with cigarette smoke illuminated by the false cheerfulness of flashing lights. Old, haggard faces are bent and distorted, glued to their slot machine screens, multicolored lights reflecting off thick bifocals. Clawlike hands grasp buckets of quarters. We are the only youth in a sea of dead eyes and loose skin.
We cannot get to our room fast enough. The elevator smells like mothballs and cigars. We do not look at each other. The only words we have spoken in the last hour were what was needed to ask the clerk at the front desk for our room.
I open the door and a blast of air-conditioning welcomes us. The room is clean enough, with a bare minimum of decor and comfort. The dust of the salt flats sticks to my skin, mixed with my sweat like a layer of concrete paste. I throw my bag on the floor and walk to the window, look out at the sad nothing of a town, the few lights in the sea of desert beyond. How did anyone decide to settle here? Why would anyone want to make a life in such an empty, dead place?
I feel Hunter’s hand on my shoulder, see his reflection in the window. We are only half there, just outlines filled in with darkness. I watch him behind me as he unbuttons and takes off his shirt. There is only the black of night where his scars should be. He kicks off his shoes and unbuttons his jeans, keeping his eyes locked on mine the whole time. He turns around and walks, naked, to the bathroom. And I follow.
Our bodies fill the small shower. Dust turns into mud and pools at our feet in gray puddles. We are human colored once again. Hunter unwraps the small bar of soap and runs it up my arm, my collarbone, my neck. I close my eyes as he washes me, as
his touch makes me clean.
I trace his scars with my fingers. His ravaged skin is like a map of his suffering, all the mountains and valleys the sites of historic events. I place my finger on a spot on his shoulder. “This is where we crashed,” I whisper. “Right here.”
He moves my finger a centimeter to the right. “This is where Camille died.”
I move my finger a centimeter more. “This is where you saved me.”
He takes my hand in his and holds me close. Every part of us is touching, the maps of our bodies becoming one big world.
The bed is hard and the sheets are scratchy, but it is heaven enough for us. We leave the lights on as we make love; there has already been too much darkness. It feels like dying, like being born, like it’s both our first and our last night on earth. We push ourselves together, erasing the boundaries between us. But through the heat and the sweetness, it feels somehow like we’re saying good-bye. This is the closest we’re ever going to get. No matter what, we’ll have to come apart. Tomorrow we’ll be in San Francisco and this journey will be over.
* * *
We wake up early, but neither of us wants to get out of bed. We don’t say it out loud, but we both know this is our last day on the road, our last morning, and we want to make it last. We splurge on room service breakfast and eat it naked. For some reason, this makes me feel more grown-up than I’ve ever felt in my life.
Checkout is at ten. We pack in silence. Hunter takes my hand as the door closes behind us and I squeeze it tight as we pass through the casino to get to the parking lot. I try not to look at the handful of people slumped over their slot machines, many with cocktails. Whether their drinking is a continuation of last night or a start to today, it’s equally depressing. I try not to imagine how sad the rest of their lives are that this is where they’d prefer to be at ten in the morning. Have they been here all night, parked in front of the same machine, convinced that if they stay in the same place long enough, their luck will change? Don’t they know that’s not how luck works?
After so many days and nights and miles of tension, Hunter and I are finally relaxed. I think back to the crazy night with Mountain and Chesapeake—which seems years ago now—when Mountain asked if I was “loose” yet. Even in his inebriated state, he already knew the answer; I could tell by the smirk on his slobbery lips. Even in the middle of the forest, miles away from home, I was still the uptight girl sitting primly on the sidelines, not participating, just judging, thinking everyone so foolish for having fun. And now, finally, I feel somewhere close to the “loose” Mountain talked about, except it didn’t take copious amounts of alcohol or pot brownies to get here. It didn’t even take running away from home, driving almost the entire way across the country, and making love to a beautiful boy in the saddest hotel in the world. It could have happened anywhere, anytime, if I wanted it to. The key is wanting to. And then it’s so simple. Then all you have to do is let go.
The sun rises and paints the desert pink. Mountains grow in the distance, waiting for us to cross them. I look over at Hunter sleeping in the passenger seat and feel so many feelings all at once—warmth, yearning, gratitude, sadness, fear, hope. Just weeks ago, I never would have believed this was possible, that I would be capable of being so human, that I would welcome it. I never would have thought that it would be Camille’s death to end up teaching me how to be alive.
Hunter wakes as the sun rises higher in the sky, the heat rising with it. The car is loud with wind from the open windows. We have to yell to hear each other.
“What’d I miss?” Hunter says as he stretches his long limbs.
“Some clouds. A few cars. Trucks. Quite a lot of dirt and rocks.”
“Fascinating.”
“Hunter, I have to tell you something.”
“Oh shit, are you pregnant?”
“Very funny.”
“Did you lie about being on the pill? The condom didn’t break, I swear.”
“Shut up. I’m serious.”
“I know. That’s why I’m trying to make things not serious.”
I close the windows with my controller so the car will be quiet. “Hey,” Hunter protests. “We’re going to bake in here.”
I take a deep breath. The car is quiet, but already uncomfortably hot. “Hunter,” I say. “I’m not staying in San Francisco with you. I’m going back to Michigan to go to college.”
“I know.” He says it so casually, I think for a second he misheard me. “I never thought you were running away for good.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re going to love college. College is going to love you. You were born to be a college girl. Now can we open the windows?” His window buzzes down and our words fly out.
“I’m going to miss you,” I say, barely audible.
“Let’s not have that conversation,” he says, looking out the window.
“What are your plans? What are you going to—”
“Let’s not have that conversation either.”
“What conversation should we have?”
“Let’s just be quiet for a while,” he says, his head turned so I can’t see any of his face. He is only his back, his shoulders.
So we are quiet. I open the rest of the windows and the wind screams in our heads, filling up the silence.
* * *
After five hours of driving, we cross into California at the peak of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The freeway hugs the steep side of the cliff, with only a short concrete barrier protecting us from falling to our deaths. Silver rock towers above us and alpine trees grasp on for dear life. The air is crisp and pine-scented. I suck it in and feel clean, refreshed. I have never smelled air so pure.
We scale Donner Summit and begin our descent to the Pacific Ocean. “It’s all downhill from here,” Hunter says. We could coast all the way to San Francisco. We could ride there on inertia.
In the late afternoon, we stop for gas and snacks outside of Sacramento. Neither of us says it, but we both know this is our last stop before we get to San Francisco.
The restroom is a single, but there is no avoiding it. I must go in there alone. I must face whatever there is to face.
I enter and lock the door. I take stock of everything I see—the toilet, the sink, the garbage can, the hand dryer, all in their logical places. I am ultra-aware of every minuscule movement I make. I look in the mirror at my gaunt, tanned face, my sunburned nose. I adjust my ponytail. I take a deep breath.
I whisper to my reflection, “Camille.”
I feel the heavy tugging at my insides, the empty place where I store my love. I close my eyes and wait.
All I hear is the faucet dripping and the muted sound of a cash register.
“Camille,” I say again.
Nothing.
She is gone, really gone. And I am on my own.
My heart still hurts, a dull ache around the edges, and it may be that way forever—wounded, scarred by fire. But at least I know now that it is not empty. As imperfect as the filling is—Hunter, my mom and her various absences, memories of half friends, my grandmother, whatever friends and lovers the future has planned for me—I am not alone. There is a world of people yearning just like me, just as lost and lonely, just as desperate to make connections. They are living, breathing people—not ghosts, not hallucinations, not my sad, lonely brain trying to punish itself for feeling.
I splash my face with water. I take one last look in the mirror. I watch myself smile as I realize this is the first real privacy I’ve had in days. Peeing in a bathroom without the company of a psychopathic ghost—one of life’s little pleasures.
I turn off the lights and spend a moment in the dark before opening the door.
Camille, you are gone. And it hurts. But I am going to be okay.
* * *
The 80 delivers us to Oakland at
rush hour, where it’s sunny and warm as we make our way along the eastern shoreline, watching sailboats fight the wind against the backdrop of Marin County’s rolling hills.
“Eli has a friend who lives around here somewhere,” Hunter says. “A guy he met in rehab. He said he’d give me a place to stay until I get on my feet.”
“In Oakland?” I say. All I know about Oakland is its sports teams and reputation for crime.
“Apparently, it’s way cooler than San Francisco now. But I guess you have to be cool to know that.”
We inch across the Bay Bridge with the windows down and our arms out, San Francisco opening up in front of us with its famous skyline, the water sparkling below us. The sky is clear and everything glows with promise. Even the old prison of Alcatraz seems welcoming on its pretty little island.
I wonder how many like us have made similar journeys, have arrived here full of hope and been welcomed by this dazzling view. I wonder how many have shown up on San Francisco’s doorstep with their backpacks full of history, counting on the city to give them something they could never get where they came from. All those Midwestern kids, those Bible Belt kids, those rural and suburban kids, fleeing the lives they were born into, fleeing the fear of ending up like their parents—how many of them make it? How many of them find what they’re looking for? Will Hunter? Will I?
The bridge drops us in the middle of downtown San Francisco, where we have to dodge hordes of pedestrians and kamikaze bicyclists. We leave the high-rises and weave through narrow streets on what seems like an intentionally complicated route to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Are you sure this is the way?” Hunter says.
“I checked the map like five times.”
“There’s seriously no freeway that goes through the city?”
“This is the freeway.”
“This isn’t a freeway.”
“The map says it’s a freeway.”
“The map is a lying sack of shit.”
The tires squeal as Hunter breaks abruptly. We barely miss a half-dressed man pushing a shopping cart across the street in the middle of traffic.