The Way Back to You

by Michelle Andreani

  “Yup,” Natalie says. “Backseat only. Sergio called shotgun.”

  Hannah nods. “Kyle and William, you’ll ride in my bus with Garrett, John, and me. Claudia, you can go with Natalie.”

  Cloudy says, “Sounds good.”

  She gives me a quick wave and starts toward the car before I’ve fully processed what’s happening.

  “No, wait!” I say. “I’ll drive. We can take three cars. Then no one has to squish in, and Cloudy can come with me.”

  “But she gets to see you all the tiiiiiime.” Hannah tugs on the hem of my sweatshirt. “We’ll be there in two hours or less. William and I really want to hang out with you.”

  Hannah pushing Cloudy off onto strangers cancels out her friendliness toward me. “Then you two should ride with us.”

  Cloudy raises her hand. “Kyle, it’s fine. Hannah’s plan makes sense. You go with your friends.” She puts on a big smile. “I’m sure you’re dying for a break from me, anyway.”

  Hannah tosses her keys to Will. “Let’s go, then.”

  While two engines start up and doors begin slamming, I stop at the Xterra and grab Cloudy’s coat and Hannah’s gift. As I’m setting the stuff inside the bus, I glance at Cloudy in Natalie’s backseat. “Hang on a sec,” I tell Hannah.

  I hurry over and tap on Cloudy’s window.

  Lowering it as far as it will go (about halfway), she pulls her eyebrows together. “What’s up?”

  “To be clear,” I say, resting my hand on top of the glass, “I don’t actually want a break from you.”

  “Awww,” Natalie and Devynne say in unison.

  Cloudy doesn’t acknowledge hearing them, but my face heats up anyway. “That’s the Stockholm syndrome talking,” she says.

  I lean in closer so I can see her face better. So she can see mine. “It’s nothing like that. Not for me.”

  “Come on, Kyle!” Hannah yells from her open side door.

  “You’re holding up the caravan.” Cloudy uncurls my fingers from around her window, one at a time, looking into my eyes the whole time. “Go. I’ll see you in two hours, okay?”

  “Or less.”

  She smiles. “Or less.”

  Cloudy

  “Sorry Hannah is so bossy,” Natalie tells me from the driver’s seat. “I’m sure you’d rather be with Kyle.”

  I’m watching the bus, half expecting Kyle to climb out and come over again. Half disappointed when he doesn’t. My chest is warm from whatever’s just happened. It felt dangerously nice to have Kyle look at me like he did, as if he didn’t want to leave. “We’ve been apart for longer than this.”

  “Still.” Natalie shrugs. She puts the Toyota in drive and follows the bus out of the parking lot. “Not that we mind having you. This is Sergio”—she jabs a thumb at the brown-haired guy in front of me in the passenger seat, then over her shoulder—“and that’s Devynne and Charlie.”

  Beside me, Devynne and Charlie wave in unison.

  “Thanks for letting me squeeze in.” I turn, microscopically, to Charlie, whose bony arm is pressed up against mine. “I can sit in the middle if you’re uncomfortable.”

  “Don’t bother,” Devynne says, shaking her head. “He always volunteers for the middle.”

  “It’s the safest seat in the car.” Charlie’s voice is somehow equally gruff and squeaky. “If we get T-boned, I’m golden.”

  Sergio snorts. “Your scrawny ass would hit the roof if we rolled over a quarter.”

  “And we are not getting T-boned,” Natalie says, giving me a swift, panicked look. “We’re not getting T-boned.”

  Charlie plants a foot on either side of the hump dividing the footwell. “Repeat it all you want, that doesn’t make it true.”

  “Well,” Sergio grumbles, “I’d rather get T-boned than be going to Bedrock City right now.”

  Devynne puts a hand up. “Can we stop saying ‘T-boned’?”

  “Sergio, what are you talking about?” Natalie lowers the radio, keeping one hand on the wheel. “Bedrock City is a quirky pit-stop classic. It’s retro Americana.” She says it like Hannah would, with a fake sincerity that makes Devynne snicker.

  But Sergio grumbles again. “It’s yabba dabba dorky.”

  Devynne leans around Charlie, straining against her seat belt, to smile at me. “So are you and Kyle here for a few days?”

  “Just today, really,” I say, but I don’t want it to be true. The closer we get to Sonia’s wedding, the farther away I want to be. “I’d like to stay longer, though. It’s so beautiful here.”

  Natalie bites her thumbnail. “You get used to it.”

  Charlie, who’s been tapping on his knee for the past minute, whips his head around to Devynne. “Didn’t you make out with Kyle at Bedrock City?”

  Up front, Natalie groans and Sergio laughs.

  “No!” Devynne yelps. “No. Oh my God, no. We were, like, thirteen. And it wasn’t even at Bedrock City, Charlie.” She punctuates her sentence by smacking his bicep.

  The car has gone silent. Maybe they’re all waiting for me to go full-on wildcat and tear Devynne’s hair out because she kissed Kyle years before he was ever my not-boyfriend. It’s tempting. She’s all heart-shaped face and batty eyelashes and hazel eyes. Of course Kyle would want to kiss her.

  But that’s not her fault.

  I feel myself smiling. “Then where did you make out with Kyle?”

  Devynne has this delicate prettiness to her, a little like Ashlyn, where the points of her nose and chin seem like they could chip if she sneezed too hard. All this time I’ve never thought of Kyle as having a Type, but I guess I didn’t have other girls to compare to.

  “It wasn’t even making out.” Devynne sighs like she’d rather not go there, then covers her eyes. “I kissed him on the bus during a school trip to Tombstone.”

  “With tongue?”

  “CHARLIE!” Natalie’s glare practically melts the rearview mirror.

  Devynne palms Charlie’s face and presses his head into the back of the seat. “Anyway, you and Kyle are so cute together.”

  She’s changing the subject with a compliment. There was totally tongue.

  “Oh,” I say, “we’re not—”

  “Eh,” Charlie says, tilting his head to look at me. “I don’t know. You’re both blond.”

  I level a look at him.

  “It’s a little freakish,” he continues. “Not creepy, like two redheads dating. But it’s unsettling. Like Children of the Corn.”

  Sergio finally moves. He turns in his seat to punch Charlie on the leg. “You’re unsettling.”

  They all laugh, like Isn’t it hilarious how unhinged Charlie is, but that’s Charlie; what can you do? The easy way they tease one another pinballs in my gut. It makes me miss home more than I thought I would.

  Outside, road signs direct us to Slide Rock State Park. I realize we’re doubling back on 89A, the same route Kyle and I took only a few hours ago. The familiar scenery passes by as I finger-comb my hair. It’s finally dry after I jumped into the frigid water with Kyle.

  My body buzzes, and it’s definitely not frostbite. It’s everything that happened before the jump. I don’t know why I told Kyle about Ashlyn’s family-planning fantasy. One minute we’re discussing Matty, and the next, I’m remembering the dreamy expression on Ashlyn’s face whenever she talked about our combined futures. The story came tumbling from my lips before I realized. And even though I’d swat at Ashlyn whenever she brought it up—Ashlyn with a goal and a plan, as usual—the reality of it not being possible anymore is outrageously cruel.

  Two hours and zero T-bonings later, Natalie steers us off the highway and under a welcome sign that reads Flintstone Prehistoric Park. The sun has already dropped, and I feel a pang of regret that we’re here, pulling into a narrow parking lot, instead of on top of a mountain.

  The rest of the group is waiting for us, assembled by their cars. They’re nearer to the entrance—a squat, green building with a Wilma Flintstone plywood cutou
t at the front door. That’s where Hannah is, chatting with a tall guy in an apron.

  As soon as I step out, my gaze swings over to the bus, parked on the other side of a dirty black sedan. Kyle straightens when our eyes meet, and he looks at me, like he’s taking inventory of my face to make sure each part is where it should be. Was he that worried about being separated?

  I give him a thumbs-up as I walk over, and Kyle returns the gesture with a small smile. Natalie and Devynne pass, awwwww-ing and giggling.

  I come to a stop in front of him. “You know,” I say, smirking, “being in a car without a black kitten in it? Overrated.”

  “So the ride was okay?”

  “Charlie thinks we’re hell spawn.”

  “Huh.”

  Over his shoulder, I see Hannah trailing her taupe-colored sandals along the dusty ground. She’s playing with a square pendant hanging from her neck; it’s the birth-flower necklace Kyle and I bought for her. “I guess Hannah liked our gift.”

  “We barely made it out of the school lot before she opened it—and everything else. And she made Will drive while I sat in back with her.”

  I laugh. “So much for all three of you spending time together.”

  “I’m not sure she knew the two of us were spending time together. All she did was talk about herself. But”—Kyle lifts his hand; in his palm sit two dark cookies bundled up in plastic wrap—“I did get snacks.”

  “I thought we were eating here.”

  “We are. But we”—he waggles a finger between us—“haven’t eaten since this morning. I thought you might want one. Garrett and John brought them, and Hannah has a cooler full of stuff for later.”

  Garrett and John have perma-sleepy eyes and walk like they’re trapped in Jell-O.

  Grabbing a cookie, I turn it over in my hands, examining it in the egg-yolk-y glow of the streetlights. Then I sniff it through the plastic. I have no idea what pot cookies smell like, aside from pot, which these don’t. “Minty.”

  A grin stretches across his face. “Chocolate minty.”

  “You are so predictable,” I tell him, then place the cookie back into his palm. “Keep mine for later?”

  “GUYS!” Hannah shouts, and we flinch. She comes up behind Kyle and gives him a quick cuddle. “It’s time for my birthday dinner.”

  BIRTHDAY DINNER IS at Fred’s Diner, a restaurant attached to the gift shop. The three-person staff—including Hannah’s tall guy in the apron—has already cooked up a bunch of burgers, fries, and other selections from the menu. Technically, Bedrock City closed thirty minutes ago, but Tall Apron Guy is doing Hannah a Birthday Favor. The tiger-print chairs and dinner specials like Betty’s Bowl of Chili should be a mismatch for Hannah’s Mother Earth–like sensibilities, but she doesn’t seem bothered.

  “I think Hannah’s drunk on Birthday Power,” I whisper to Kyle while we’re eating, and he laughs with his mouth closed because it’s full of a Bamm-Bamm Burrito. His expression pins me to my seat.

  This is why I like you.

  It snakes its way through my mind, in and out before I can trap it. I didn’t say it at Slide Rock, but Kyle is a magnet, too. He’s more careful about drawing people in, but he does, whether he knows it or not. And he doesn’t throw me off center, not in the bad ways. With him I’m stable, unshakeable, like everything is real but colored-in more vibrantly.

  Nothing has uncoiled Kyle like being in Arizona. It’s been happening a little more every day since we’ve been on this trip, and now he’s so slack. Content. I’m better here, too—different from my murky jumble of emotions in California. And what if being here is how to keep us that way? What if seeing Sonia is just like seeing Freddie? Or makes me feel how I did that night after Ethan? What if it’s frustrating and discouraging and all the things Ashlyn would hate being associated with?

  Tonight would be the perfect time to ask him to stay. We could forget the wedding and spend the rest of midwinter break in Sedona.

  Minutes later, Hannah stands up in her seat, waving her arms. “The next part of the night is about to start, and you don’t want to miss it. Let’s go, friends!”

  She hops down, then slips past our table, tugging at Kyle’s shoulder. As she pulls him away, he grins at me. Our consensus is it’s better to humor Hannah than defy whatever Birthday Gods might be on her side today.

  Outside, I finally get my first real view of Bedrock City. It’s . . . certainly quirky. Natalie was right about that. On the way back down the Sugarloaf trail last night, Will and Kyle explained that the place was built in the early seventies as a roadside attraction between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon. There isn’t much upkeep within the grounds, but people still stop here for its offbeat charm. Now I can see why. It is sort of like walking into a whacked-out version of the Stone Age. On my right is a clearing of dirt and patchy grass, surrounded by trolley tracks and overlooked by an incredibly fake volcano—but at least the pterodactyl attached to the top looks securely bolted on. Some squat buildings, designed to resemble the ones out front, are to the left. Even with the few strategically placed spotlights, it’s too dark to catch the details from here, but I can tell they’re evenly spaced. Farther in the distance, I make out a large brontosaurus-shaped silhouette.

  The group is following Hannah’s lead into the clearing. Once we reach the middle, I notice paper lanterns strewn on the ground. Someone’s already arranged them neatly in two rows. They’re pretty much like the kind people string up festively for parties and barbecues, except these are all cream-colored and more lightbulb-shaped than round.

  As everyone gathers near Hannah, I sidle up to Kyle, who’s standing off to the side.

  “I want to thank everyone for coming tonight,” Hannah begins. “I invited you all because birthdays are about celebrating the things that make your life special.” Her hands are clasped together, perfectly displaying the multiple rings stacked on her fingers. “Every year, the Taiwanese hold a festival where people wish on lanterns and release them into the sky. I was so deeply inspired by that, and I thought, what better way to spend this magical day than by giving something back to you? So I’m sharing my birthday wishes.” She hops up and down, adding, “And I brought a wish lantern for everyone. Come and get yours!”

  Slowly, people begin shuffling forward. Before one girl bends to pick up a lantern, she looks skeptically at her friend. “The Taiwanese?”

  The friend smooths her dark hair. “Please. She for sure got this from watching Tangled.”

  Out of nowhere, Hannah plants herself directly in front of Kyle and me. “I have some bummer info: I only brought one lantern for each guest I was expecting, and since you guys were last-minute additions, there aren’t enough. But here’s the lucky news! I packed two for me—one wish for now, one to grow on, naturally. And I’m more than happy to give my second lantern to Kyle.” She turns to me and pouts. “Unfortunately, there still won’t be one for you.”

  Kyle shrugs with one shoulder. “That’s fine. Cloudy can have mine.”

  “No. Kyle,” Hannah whines—Ky-uuuhhll. “You’re an old friend, and it’s important to me that you’re part of this. Claudia understands. She gets why I want this moment for those dearest to me. And she doesn’t have to feel totally left out. There are countless other ways for her to offer up a wish to the universe.”

  She looks to me for confirmation, and I say, “I’ll rip out an eyelash.”

  Hannah is satisfied with this, and although he’s reluctant to go, I nudge Kyle away to grab his inherited lantern. I stay behind and watch as everyone picks their own, putting lighters to the small squares at the base. The flames catch easily, puffing air into the lanterns’ empty spaces, filling them up and out.

  “You can take mine.”

  It’s Will, holding out his unlit lantern. When I refuse it, he says, “You can’t just stand here; it’s not fair.”

  “I’m not much of a wisher lately.”

  His mouth bunches up to one side. “All the more reason for you to have
it, don’t you think?”

  I consider that. “Let’s share it, then?”

  Will helps me straighten the lantern out and ignite the base, and once it’s inflated, it’s almost half my size. Finally, everyone is grasping one, the glow illuminating our faces and turning the darkened clearing to a flickering gold. Candlelit and ethereal.

  Hannah steps forward again, raising hers up high. “Now, meditate on what you want the most. By releasing our lanterns up into the air, we’re sending our wishes out, where they can come true.”

  “Or confuse the hell out of some birds,” I hear Charlie mumble behind me.

  “So,” Hannah continues, “make it a good one! And when you feel the time is right, let go.”

  Kyle and I share a look across the field. These are your friends is what I’m telegraphing, and whether or not he gets it, he smiles at me. Hannah returns to him, redirecting his attention, and he says something that makes her laugh. They close their eyes—meditating on their wish, like Hannah instructed. Seeing them together, even though they’re not together-together, sends a seasick current through me. Sometime, maybe even soon, Kyle will be ready to date again. He’ll want to be in love with another girl. And that girl won’t be Ashlyn, so I won’t be able to cork shut everything I feel for him, and I won’t be able to ignore it without hurting him all over again. It’ll be more pain for me to wade through.

  I’ve had enough wading. I don’t want my stomach to churn at the thought of Kyle with a new girl. He deserves to move on, and I want to be good enough to let him. I want us to stay friends, just like this. And I want to move on, too.

  So I press my eyes shut. I make all of that my wish.

  “Ready?” Will asks.

  When my eyelids flit open, Bedrock City is shimmering. Will and I are the last ones holding on to our lantern—the others have already been released, and they’re rising from the earth at different heights, fireflies taking flight. They gleam against a night sky that’s silky black, and make this space look bewitched. Like our wishes might really come true, despite how fairy-tale it all might be.