The Way Back to You

by Michelle Andreani

  “Oh. Nice.” Will nods. His abrupt weirdness disappears. “My parents used to take me there all the time when I was a kid.”

  This gets Will and Kyle talking about other places around town, stores that have closed since Kyle moved and new ones that have opened. But not too long after, the discussion ends, because sunset is beginning.

  We stand in a line, our shadows growing longer. The sun blazes its brightest right as it sinks slowly behind a massive rock, and the sky around it radiates yellow and orange and pink. At our feet, the dirt begins to glow a deep, smoldering red—like I noticed on the way, but here, it’s dialed up so many degrees. It sweeps across the canyon, coating the earth so it looks like magma, like it’s absorbing heat and hot to the touch. We’re suddenly on another planet, on Mars or Mercury—or someplace better that no one on Earth knows about. Where I’m not left behind or alone or completely absent, because those things don’t exist here.

  Kyle grins down at me, satisfaction on his face—my expression must be as dopey as I feel. He lifts his phone up, ready to take photos. “I told you so.”

  “I cannot believe you grew up here,” I say to him again, but differently this time. And I grin back at him, while the last rays of sunlight spark along his face.

  Kyle

  By the time Cloudy and I are filling up on the strawberry-and-Nutella-stuffed French toast Vivian, Will’s mom, cooked for us, it’s almost eleven a.m. It sucks that we have only five hours before we have to meet up with everyone for Hannah’s birthday thing, but I have to say, sleeping in was beyond necessary for me after the long day we had yesterday.

  “Cloudy,” Vivian says from the kitchen, “did you do all right in the Doll Room?”

  “Any nightmares from having dozens and dozens of eyes on you while you were sleeping?” I ask.

  Last night, I was on the living room Hide-a-Bed with Arm, but Cloudy was down the hall in the room Will calls “the creepiest place on Earth.” It was a guest bedroom before Will’s parents divorced about three years ago. Now, Vivian uses it to store collectibles and dolls to sell for her online business. She has boxes stacked to the ceiling, but she cleared a space big enough for Cloudy and an air mattress.

  “I did fine,” Cloudy says. “If the dolls came to life during the night, they had the decency to not murder me.”

  Vivian laughs. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her and Will until I was with them again. My dad was around as much as he was able to be while I was growing up, but for a lot of those years, it was Vivian who took care of me when he couldn’t. She drove Will and me to and from baseball practice and fed us snacks afterward. This table is where I did my homework three days a week.

  Cloudy, having dug out every bite from her halved grapefruit, sets her spoon inside the bowl. “I had an email from Coach Voss at seven. Not my favorite wake-up alarm.”

  “Uh-oh. Was it a big lecture?”

  “Could have been worse. She could have cc’d my parents. But I think she’s trying not to dwell on what I’ve done and focus instead on fixing what I haven’t done. Which is send snapshots of my best cheer memories and the answers to those preliminary questions for the Cheer Insider interview. Oh, and she also let me know the team’s photo shoot is scheduled for next Friday, so there’s that to look forward to.”

  It’s odd how she treats this whole magazine thing like it’s no big deal—like it’s annoying, even. “If you need to get your interview stuff done, we can stay at the house today.”

  Cloudy shakes her head so hard her dangly earrings smack both sides of her jaw. “Be serious. I didn’t come all the way to Sedona to not see it! I’ll go through the questions once we get to Las Vegas tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Or I can drive and let you work on the questions then? That way, you’ll have everything done before Sonia’s wedding.”

  “Sure. And today, you can take me places. The places you’ve been missing the most since you moved.”

  Vivian pokes her head into the dining room and grins at me behind Cloudy’s back. I want to roll my eyes so Vivian might get the hint that she should cut it out. Instead I just tell Cloudy, “Works for me.”

  After our hike with Will last night, Vivian was waiting up with grasshopper pie. (It’s the dessert she used to make on my birthday, with a crushed-Oreo crust and minty whipped cream filling.) Us four humans stayed up late eating and talking while Arm did cute stuff like hitting her face against Cloudy’s chest, licking my hands, and batting at Vivian’s hair. Cloudy then bowed out for bed at midnight, followed by Will, since he has school today.

  While Vivian was helping me make up the Hide-a-Bed, she cleared her throat. “Will called me on his way home and told me about your girlfriend passing away last year. I’m so sorry. How are you?”

  “I haven’t been great. But I might be a little bit better since leaving town,” I said, half surprised that it was the truth.

  Knowing Vivian, there was a lot she wanted to say, but she kept it brief. “A change of scenery can make a big difference. I’m glad you’re here.” She gave me a long hug. “And that you brought Cloudy along. She’s great. Sassy and smart and so pretty. You make a cute couple.”

  Embarrassed that these bigger feelings I’m having for Cloudy seem obvious to everyone else (three people mistook her for my girlfriend in one day), I told Vivian we aren’t together. Her response was, “That might not always be the case.”

  Finished with our late breakfast, Cloudy and I take our dishes to the kitchen and then find Vivian in the living room with her laptop. Beside her on the couch, Arm stretches across the cushion.

  “I’m going to show Cloudy around,” I say. “You’re sure it’s okay if Arm stays with you?”

  “Of course.” Vivian smiles up at us with her red-framed reading glasses on the end of her nose. “I’ll even give her food, water, and lots of petting. I’m very curious as to whose brilliant idea it was to bring a kitten on a road trip, though.”

  Cloudy giggles and points at me.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, I’m backing out of the driveway when Cloudy asks, “Is your old house far away?”

  I swing around the corner and park in front of a tall terra-cotta house that almost blends into the massive red-rock formations right behind it. “Not far at all.”

  “This is the place?”

  “This is the place.”

  I hadn’t expected to make an event out of it, but Cloudy jumps out, so I kill the engine and join her on the sidewalk.

  “It’s like a Spanish mini-fortress,” she says. “I know I keep saying this, but I really can’t believe you used to live here.”

  In a weird way, it’s almost as unbelievable to me as it is to her.

  I wouldn’t say I took Sedona for granted when I was growing up, but I truly didn’t see it most of the time. When I’d visit my family in Oregon during the summers, I’d come home and Sedona would seem so much more vivid and interesting than it had been before I’d left. But it would be only a day or so before I stopped taking it in and everything here became the norm again.

  Now, after nearly two years away, the haze has lifted. The house my dad had custom built probably isn’t as impressive as Cloudy makes it sound, but there’s nothing in Bend with Moroccan-style touches like the rounded brick archways over the windows and doors, and the stained glass window that makes the main stairway inside glow pink, orange, and yellow.

  My chest kind of aches; the house I lived in since before I was old enough to have other memories is so unfamiliar in some ways.

  “Do you think anyone’s home?” Cloudy’s smile is mischievous. “Or do we have to sneak around like ninjas?”

  “My dad still owns it and rents it out as a vacation house. I heard him saying the next tenants won’t be here until March, so we should be all right.”

  “Okay, good. Being ninjas would have been more fun, though.”

  I crouch low and creep up the driveway. When I glance back, she’s smiling big and doing the same. I pause until she catches up,
and then we tiptoe under the shadow of pine trees.

  The back of the house is made up of huge windows and glass doors. All the curtains are open, revealing most of the rooms on the ground floor, including my old bedroom. Cloudy peers inside and makes her way slowly down the length of the house. “It’s so different from where you live now. Has it always been this fancy?”

  It takes a second to remember when and why she’s been inside my house in Bend. (Last winter a couple of times. To watch movies with Ashlyn, Matty, and me.) “It’s always been exactly like this. This is our stuff. All of it.”

  Nothing has changed. None of the people who stayed here have repositioned one single thing. (Or if they did, the housekeeper changed it back.) When Dad and I moved out, we left behind the artwork, the electronics, every piece of furniture, even the dishes and silverware. Pretty much the only things we took were our clothes and a few boxes of keepsakes and books.

  “In Bend you have such a guy house,” Cloudy says. “Next to the river. In the woods. But it fits. Your dad seems like”—she puts on a Southern accent—“a fishin’, skiin’, boatin’ kinda guy.”

  I imitate her fake accent. “An’ he turns inta a Texan when he’s doin’ them thangs?”

  She laughs. “I’m just saying this house doesn’t fit either of you. It’s like—”

  “A yoga studio?” I suggest.

  “A temple. I’d never have pictured you two with candles and tapestries and”—she leans closer to the glass door by the living room—“statues! There are actual statues inside.”

  “There’s a meditation room, too.”

  “Shut up!” she says, grinning.

  “It’s true. Now, don’t get your hopes up, but I might be able to show it to you.”

  “Oooh. Breaking and entering?”

  “Just entering.”

  I motion for her to follow me down a trail away from the house. For the last ten feet, it’s all tangled brush on one side and knee-high cacti on the other, so we walk single file. When we reach the stone wall and archway at the edge of the property, Cloudy bends to peek inside the outdoor fireplace. “Don’t tell me this igloo thing has an underground passage to the meditation room.”

  “Not that I know of.” I go around to the other side of the wall and run my fingers inside cracks between two of the rocks. “A spare house key might still be hidden here somewhere. I’ll feel around for it.”

  Cloudy talks to me from the other side of the wall where I can’t see her. “Matty once told me about some natural water-slides in Sedona. Are they close to here?”

  “That’s Slide Rock. It’s, like, ten miles away.”

  “And we’re going today, right?”

  “If you want to, sure. The water’s too cold for sliding right now, though.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Cloudy’s smiling face pokes through a hole in the wall. “I’m still confused. Did your dad go through a major personality change when he moved back to Bend or what?”

  “Nah. This was never him. He had this house built for my mother. She was one of those people who came to Sedona for New Agey reasons.”

  “They met in Sedona, then?”

  I nod.

  “Was that before or after he’d moved here?”

  “Before,” I say. “It’s a convoluted story. You don’t want to hear it.”

  More, I’m not sure I want to tell it. My entire family pretends I never had a mother, and I like to do the same. It’s easier than trying to understand how a woman who, at times, made me feel very wanted and cared for could also walk away so callously.

  “Now you’re taunting me with this mystery.” Cloudy skips around to my side of the wall. “Convoluted stories are the best kind. Come on. Spill it.”

  “All right. So, almost eighteen years ago, my dad was thirty-four.” I continue feeling for the key. “He’d finished dental school and had a practice with his brother in Bend, but he was depressed. A patient told him the vortexes in Sedona changed her life—”

  “Oh, yes. The energy vortexes. Zoë demanded that I have you tell me all about them.”

  “Of course she did. So vortexes one oh one. What do you want to know?”

  “Not now. Go on about your dad.”

  “Fine. So after talking to his patient, he came here on vacation. First thing, he meets this waitress named Shannon, who offers to bring him to her favorite spot for spiritual clarity. He thinks she’s probably too young for him, but she’s pretty with long red hair, so he takes her up on it, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  Cloudy is smiling like it’s all so romantic. Maybe I’d feel the same way if I didn’t know my parents’ last words to each other were “Grow up, Shannon” and “Fuck off, Ryan.”

  I continue. “As it happened, the vortex didn’t have much effect on him. But Shannon did. They figured out the first day that they had the same birthday and were exactly twelve years apart, which meant they had the same astrological sign and the same sign in Chinese astrology.”

  “That’s a huge coincidence.”

  “Oh, not to Shannon it wasn’t. She believed in everything there is to believe in except for coincidences. Not long after his trip was over, she told him she was pregnant with me. He moved to Arizona and married her. Just like that. Wife. Baby. He set up a solo dental practice and started a whole new life. And that’s the story of how my kind of boring, nonspiritual dad ended up living in a house in the desert with a statue and a meditation room.”

  Cloudy bites her lip as if she’s now remembering there isn’t a happy ending.

  “Ashlyn told you about Shannon leaving, right?” I ask.

  “She said your parents got a divorce. That’s all I know.”

  I’m not surprised Ashlyn didn’t say more. She’d already been my girlfriend for a couple of months before I was willing to answer questions about why Shannon wasn’t around. I’d worried that if she knew my own mother didn’t think I was worth calling or visiting (much less sticking around for), she’d view me differently—as something less than before. Instead, Ashlyn had fiercely taken the same stance as my family: my absent mother wasn’t worth talking about.

  What I wasn’t able to explain to Ashlyn (or to anyone) is that when Shannon lived with us, life was better. She laughed all the time, she didn’t care what people thought of her, and she made everything an adventure. Maybe Dad would disagree, but I always felt that when we had her, we were the best versions of ourselves. Without her, we’re always going to be something less.

  “Shannon’s been gone since I was ten,” I say to Cloudy. “She could be dead for all I know.”

  Her eyes go wide.

  “I mean, I don’t think she’s dead. I’m just saying, she might be. I have no idea. And no way to ever find out.” I focus on my search instead of Cloudy’s concerned gaze. “Shannon disappeared a lot. It’s what she does. She ran away from home when she was fifteen and never went back. Never contacted her family again. I don’t even know who they are. When she was twenty-two, she married my dad, but she still kept running. She couldn’t stop. Or she didn’t want to. She left him the first time when I was a year old. Then she came back, like, six months later and said she wanted to work things out. So he bought the land and had this house built. She stayed with us until I was five, and then she was gone again. She’d visit maybe twice a year. For their birthday and mine, usually. When I was nine, she was ready to come home. For good this time, she said. But ‘for good’ turned out to be a few months. We haven’t seen or heard from her since the day she walked out seven years ago.”

  “So they’re still married?”

  “No. When I started high school, my dad went through a special spousal-abandonment process to get a divorce; he could never find her.”

  My fingertips brush a jagged metal edge between two rocks. I’ve located the key. I’m about to pull it out to show Cloudy, but her eyes are so sad that I let my hand fall to my side without it.

  “Kyle, I’m sorry.” Her voice is gentl
er than I’ve ever heard it. “It must be hard for you, not knowing where she is.”

  I want to say it isn’t hard at all, but I tell the truth instead: “I like to believe I don’t care what she’s doing, but I know I’m fooling myself.” Cloudy waits, so I explain. “If I were indifferent, thinking about her would make me feel nothing. I don’t feel nothing. And my dad. He really is a good dad, but we’re too much alike. After Ashlyn’s accident, he was giving me all this space, but maybe it wasn’t what I needed? As pathetic as it sounds, I kind of started missing Shannon again.”

  “That’s not pathetic,” Cloudy says. “Of course you’d be thinking about her more when something like that happens. She’s your mom.”

  People say I look like my dad when he was my age, and that’s true, with my height, build, and coloring. But I went through pictures of Shannon when Dad and I were packing up to move and realized that my forehead, nose, mouth, and chin are all like hers. Biologically, she is my mother. I can’t deny it. She isn’t my mom, though. She’s chosen not to be.

  I sigh. “I pretty much avoid talking about Shannon, and then I get you out here and it’s like . . . word vomit. Sorry about that.”

  “You’re allowed. And I was asking. As long as it’s words and not the other kind, you can vomit around me any time, okay?”

  “Thanks.” I touch Cloudy’s arm. “Seriously.”

  She smiles. “Of course.”

  I no longer have the urge to go inside the house where Dad and I spent years surrounded by reminders of someone who didn’t want to be with us. Reaching between the rocks again, I push the key until it wedges back so far I can’t feel it anymore. “My entering idea’s a bust,” I tell Cloudy. “What should we do now?”

  “SO THE PLAN,” Cloudy says, pulling her hair into a ponytail, “is to jump, swim, slide. Right?”

  I stare over the edge of a twenty-foot cliff and into the gurgling greenish water of Oak Creek, which I know from experience is achingly cold. (Especially now, since there are still scattered patches of snow on the property.) “We don’t have to jump. We can climb back down and wade to the slides.”