by Meg Jackson
Beyond the window, I knew without looking, you could see the jagged mountains in the distance, the Rockies that I’d driven down so many months ago with nothing but the clothes on my back and a bag full of cash. They were constant, the landscape never shifting, a reminder of where I’d come from, how different everything was now. I loved them for that. But I preferred the landscape of Reign’s muscled chest, the slope of his chin, the peaks of his ears, the river of his hair. He was my mountain. He was my home. And I wasn’t goin’ nowhere.
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CULVER
Part I
1
I can’t tell him. I can’t. He’ll kill me – or worse. Oh my God, what have I done?
2
It was the summer after senior year of high school, and I was 18. I loved riding with the top down, Aunt Annie’s pretzels, and my grandma. I had four Miss. Teen Missoula ribbons. I had a cow named Betty, and a flock of chickens that I just called “the girls”. I had a high school degree, a Honda Civic, my two best friends, and we were headed to Las Vegas. It was a thirteen hour trip, and between the three of us we could afford to drive straight through the night, right into Sin City.
“I spy with my little eye something….boring,” Alicia said, sarcasm dripping from her voice like a melting ice-cream cone.
“Um, is it a cow pasture?” I asked in a dopey voice.
“Try again,” Alicia replied, eyes out the window.
“Is it a horse pasture?” Becky suggested from the back seat. I stifled a laugh, wanting to play along with the charade.
“Nope,” Alicia said, suppressing a smile herself.
“Well…is it a barn?” I suggested, feigning weariness.
“Oh, wait, no! I know! It’s a barn!” Becky blurted out right after me, leaning forward in the backseat.
“Nope, you’re both wrong, it’s not a barn. It’s a silo!” Alicia said, finally getting tired of the joke. This was one of our millions of inside jokes and comedy routines: you really have to make your own fun when you live in a rural area, even if you’re right outside of the bustling, never-sleep city of Missoula, Montana. And, by the way, the “bustling, never-sleep” part was a joke, too. Sin City was going to be our first taste of a real city, and boy were we hungry.
Of course, we weren’t planning anything too sinful. Or, at least, not seriously sinful. Our parents had okayed the trip at the beginning of the year, had even pooled their money to reserve us a nice hotel room as a graduation gift. Becky, Alicia, and I have been best friends since third grade, so we tend to do everything together, and we were such good kids that our parents really didn’t have much to worry about.
But each of us did have our own agenda for going: Alicia wanted to smoke weed for the first time. Becky wanted to gamble. I wanted to make out with a stranger. Those were our ideas of sin: we’d all drank before, and at least kissed a boy, and disobeyed our parents more times than they knew (thank goodness for that), but overall we were pretty tame.
It’s going to sound cliché to you, it always does, but we had a sort of idyllic time growing up. We were all cheerleaders, Becky ran for class president every year (and usually won), I was in drama, Alicia was on the newspaper. When we dated, it was usually good-looking jocks who were easy to bring home to meet the parents. We went to the post-game bonfires, drank beer out of red cups (never too much, though), and then went home to eat popcorn and giggle over Cosmo articles.
Kind of sad, right? I mean, just the blandness of that. Not to say it wasn’t some of the best times of my life: I will always remember how happy I was, how much I felt like a part of my community, how willfully innocent I was. But there’s something sad about it, too. Never really doing anything wrong your whole life is…well, it kind of seems like you’re living half a life, doesn’t it?
I guess some of that comes from being a sheriff’s daughter. I was always a touch more rebellious than Becky or Alicia, and I think that’s why. I love my dad, don’t get me wrong, but I guess it makes me a little more…curious, maybe that’s the word. Wanting to know what’s on the other side of the curtain. I’ve always been interested in why criminals commit crime – and why they continue to commit crime even after they’ve been caught. Always seemed to me that something would have to feel pretty damn good to make it worth risking your freedom and good name time and again.
Which is also why, incidentally, I was planning to go into criminal psychology when I went to college in the fall. Becky and I were both going to University of Montana, while Alicia would start out at Missoula University of Technology: we were all staying home in order to save money and avoid taking out loans, which made this trip to Las Vegas even more special for us. We weren’t really getting the chance to have the whole going-away-to-school experience, so we were trying to make up for it by having the best post-high school summer we could.
Which meant that we had all taken part-time jobs that would require minimal commitment and time spent at work, as opposed to the past few summers when we all worked as much as we could to save up. This summer, we were going to take it easy and backpack, camp, swim, and chill our way to September.
We’d picked Las Vegas out of some idea of tradition: after all, where else should you go if you want to signify your transition from childhood to (relative) adulthood? Of course, we weren’t quite adults yet, but our fake IDs (the graduation presents we got ourselves) said otherwise!
As the landscape changed from mountain to flatland to desert, I marveled at the alien nature of the landscape, wondering at how I’d lived 18 years without ever really seeing so much of America. To tell the truth, my family almost never left Montana, unless it was to hop over to Wyoming, which is really just like bigger, emptier Montana.
We’d been on cruises and to the Caribbean, but only to resorts, never getting the chance to really explore the landscape or culture. It seemed like I was travelling for the first time ever: that I was being reborn as a smarter, wiser, more worldly, more cultured, deeper individual. Why did I think you could find enlightenment in the most notorious city in America? Who knows: all I remember is feeling like this was going to change me forever, that I would come back and entirely new and better person. I was right about half of that, anyway.
Las Vegas has a tendency, in pop culture, to rise from nowhere like a phoenix from ashes. One moment you are staring out onto the highway, into the desert haze, and the next moment you are seeing the sparkling, green glimmer of Emerald City – except that instead of having horses of a different color and helpful barbers, there are cocktails in every shade under the sun and narrow-eyed dealers (of both cards and other less-savory past times).
I’m here to tell you that this isn’t just something they talk about to make the place more romantic: that is really exactly what it’s like to suddenly come upon Las Vegas after hours of driving under the dark, desert sky. It just about hits you in the face, especially if you’re a carful of 18-year-old farm girls from Missoula, Montana. We literally had to stop the car, pull over to the side of the road, and get out to collect ourselves
“Damn,” said Becky, encapsulating all our reactions in one perfect word. We giggled, but none of us dragged our eyes away from the city skyline for a moment.
3
“I still don’t want to leave before doing what I came here for!” Alicia cried as we lay next to the hotel’s pool, the midday sun pounding down on us. We were sipping huge, elaborate Bloody Mary’s and feeling very adult about it: we were also all making a very big deal of being hung over, even though none of us had really gone overboard.
The hotel was even more stupendous and ridiculous than we had expected. Our parents really did go all out: it was a New York-themed hotel, with a roller coaster and a replica Statue of Liberty, as well as a miniature Central Park and even a little model of Greenwich
Village. The girls and I joked that we were really getting to see two cities for the price of one!
It was our third morning in Las Vegas, and we still had five luxurious days of lounging, gambling, drinking, and eating at the all-inclusive buffet. Becky had managed to convince us to spend one night outside the city, exploring the mountains that flocked the city, but the rest of our days were full of a whole lot of nothing, which was exactly what we wanted. After all, when you don’t have anything planned, you can really be up for anything.
“Umm…seriously, Alicia?” I asked, eyebrows cocked. Okay, maybe Alicia DID go overboard, I thought to myself. She looked back at me, her green eyes puzzled.
“You so totally did. Last night. Don’t you remember? On the roof?” Becky said, grinning from ear to ear. Alicia blushed bright red, bringing her hand up to her mouth.
“Oh my God! You guys, I totally forgot! Oh my god! I don’t even remember what it was like! Oh, well, you know, that doesn’t count, then,” she said, taking a long sip of her drink and waving her hand in the air dismissively.
“What? What do you mean it doesn’t count? You did it. You totally smoked weed last night,” I said with a snicker.
“Well, did I seem like I got high? Was I acting weird?” Alicia asked, looking somewhat embarrassed now that we were calling her out.
“No, actually. I remember pretty well – you didn’t seem different at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure you went on a little rant to those guys about how it must have been fake…” Becky said thoughtfully, looking into her own drink as though it was a crystal ball telling her about the past.
“Oh, those guys…I nearly forgot all about them…” Alicia said, sighing. Of the three of us, Alicia had the most experience with guys, and she was also the most likely to ditch the rest of us for a date. We loved her for it, though, because she never got bothered when we teased her about her boy-crazy ways.
Becky, on the other hand, liked to have steady boyfriends, and had dated two guys throughout all of high school: one in freshman and sophomore year, one in junior and senior year. Scott, who was her current boyfriend, would be going to Washington for college in the fall, and they’d decided to break up right before summer vacation so that neither would feel pressured into a long-distance relationship. That was a very Becky sort of thing to do: play it safe. She was the one we all believed would get married and have kids before the rest of us.
Me? I guess I was kind of a wild card. That’s a lie; I was really more like a joker, because I wasn’t even in the game. I’d dated guys, had a few boyfriends from time to time, but I wasn’t really about the whole relationship thing. It seemed dumb to me, to date someone in high school when you knew everyone was just going to wind up leaving sooner rather than later. That wasn’t supposed to sound so depressing, it just seemed to be the truth.
Besides, I wasn’t so much like other girls, who saw a hot guy and got all flustered about it. I thought guys were cute, or handsome, or whatever, but I wasn’t really the sort of girl who spent homeroom doodling the class cutie’s name into her spiral-bound notebook, you know? The few times I’d allowed a boy to go farther than just kissing, it wasn’t anything worth writing home about, and I usually didn’t let them do it again. I wasn’t prudish, more like selfish. If it wasn’t going to do anything for me, why should I bother letting some guy paw at me?
So we all had our own missions, and they were pretty clear-cut reflections of ourselves. Alicia, flighty and easily amused, looking for a fun drug to experiment with just like she experimented with different cute boys. Becky, always on the straight and narrow and never willing to take a chance, wanted to take a risk and possibly lose it all. Me, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and thought it would be a lot easier to enjoy myself with someone that I knew I didn’t have to impress, or even ever see again.
As boys – and full-grown men – passed by the three of us, we were all well aware of the looks they were giving us behind their sunglasses. Some of them weren’t even trying to hide behind sunglasses, and others actually drew attention to themselves by physically lifting their sunglasses. I couldn’t blame any of them: we were three young, gorgeous, healthy young women in bikinis. Plus, we were kind of like the Powerpuff Girls: orderly, raven-haired Becky, feisty and carrot-topped Alicia, blonde, baby-faced me.
I’d always thought of myself as kind of the middle ground between Becky and Alicia. I was literally in the middle if we lined up in height order, with Becky towering over both of us and Alicia only coming up to my shoulders. Becky is thin as a rail, Alicia is voluptuous, and I’m somewhere in between, with a healthy jiggle in my hips and belly and nice, round breasts that are just enough to cup.
So, at any rate, you can imagine the reaction we usually got when we went out together: something for everyone! Of course, Alicia usually ended up with most of the attention, because she was flirty and sharp-witted and was actually eager to talk to different guys, whereas Becky always had a boyfriend and I never really cared.
4
I was holding the blue fishbowl in one hand, trying to corral Alicia with the other. Like always, Alicia was way ahead of Becky and I in terms of drinking: she was almost totally wasted, but thankfully she was a pretty harmless drunk. Kind of loud, and definitely prone to running away, but overall very easy to manage and cute enough to get away with plenty of shenanigans.
I’d just bought one of the hotel bar’s signature fishbowl drinks, a mysterious-smelling drink of many flavors, tinted a brilliant, nearly glorious, blue. There were two crazy, colorful, swirly straws (one for me, one for Becky: Alicia was demoted to water for the next hour).
“Oh my God, Samantha, just like, let me dance!” Alicia said, way too loudly, right in my ear.
“Not until you get some food in you,” I said, trying to direct her to the table where Becky was waiting with a plate of French fries.
As I tried to pull Alicia next to me, she veered towards the crowded dancefloor, and the heavy drink wobbled in my hand. It was like everything suddenly moved in slow motion: I could feel Alicia’s weight pulling me one way, the gravitational force of the drink pulling me the other way, my grip on both loosening, and then finally a last-ditch effort to keep hold of both of them that ended in me losing control of both.
I decided the drink was a lost cause, and turned towards Alicia, grabbing her by the elbow as she stumbled away from me. I closed my eyes, waiting for the telltale crash of the fishbowl against the floor, preparing myself for embarrassment.
When I never heard the crashing, I looked back to where the drink should have fallen. Alicia bumped back into me, causing me to stumble over slightly. To be honest, though, it wasn’t just Alicia’s drunken antics that caused me to stumble: it was the sudden vision I had of a Norse god holding my bright blue fishbowl drink, a devilish smile in his eyes.
“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you with this one,” said the tall, blonde, blue-eyed, Thor-like man as he held my drink out to me. “I hope that second straw isn’t for your friend here?”
“Oh, no, she’s on a water diet for the next hour,” I said, blushing bright red. Jesus Christ, this guy’s handsome, I thought to myself as I grabbed the fishbowl. “The second straw is for my other friend.”
“Oh, okay,” said the stranger. He eyed me up and down, taking in my blue party dress and done-up hair, before giving me another smirk and turning.
“Wait,” I said, trying to get his attention before he disappeared into the crowd. For the first time in my life, I’d stumbled upon a man who actually stopped me in my tracks with his good looks, and I wasn’t about to let this opportunity get away. After all, my objective during the trip was to kiss a random stranger, and I thought I’d found the random stranger for me. “Can you help me with her? She’s a handful and…and I’m worried what’ll happen if you’re not around to catch my drink next time.”
I prayed that what I’d said didn’t sound desperate or anxious, but cool and flirty, like I intended. The stra
nger turned to me, a glint of humor in his eyes.
“Should I be in charge of the drink, or the girl?” he asked, giving me a lopsided grin. I felt myself blushing under his gaze. I’d been so enamored with his boyish but burly good looks that I hadn’t actually looked at the rest of him; as my eyes glanced over his long, tall body, my heart sped up.
He was covered in tattoos, which poked out from under his t-shirt and ran all along his arms, even on his knuckles. He wore tight, black jeans and an equally tight t-shirt under a brown leather vest; his hairy, muscular arms bulged under the sleeves of the shirt, and you could follow the deep V of his body all the way down…
I automatically drew my eyes back up to his face, embarrassed of myself for letting my attention wander in such an uncouth direction. I grinned nervously. “The drink, please.”
The stranger took the drink from my hand and followed me as I walked Alicia towards the table, where Becky was sitting with her hands over her mouth, watching us and laughing at the Three Stooges-esque antics. She gave me a look as I approached, one which I knew as well as the back of my hand.
It was Becky’s Really, Samantha? look, one she reserved for moments where she didn’t quite approve of my decisions but also didn’t feel it necessary to step in and actually stop me. I shot her one of my own patented Yes, Becky, Really, looks. Alicia was looking at just about everyone with her I Love You Guys So Much! look, and as I corralled her onto a seat she caught sight of the plate of French fries and gave them the same look.
“Oh my God! Are these mine? Can I eat these? I’m so hungry, guys,” Alicia said, not waiting for permission before grabbing a handful and shoving them into her mouth. A look of drunken bliss came over her and she laughed, her cute little laugh that made her so easy to forgive.