by Jessi Kirby
Would you be asking me if I didn’t? God, I can’t do anything in this town without someone telling on me to her. “Yes,” I admit, because it’s no use lying. I’m probably on camera. Or she has multiple witnesses. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention and—”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She closes her computer with a neat snap and looks at me very carefully, eyes intent on something. “Is everything all right with you, Parker? You’ve seemed very distracted lately, like you’re all of a sudden losing focus.” She pauses. “Now is not the time to lose focus.” She’s quiet again, and I know she’s winding up to ask the big question I don’t want to have to answer. I try desperately to think of a way to change the subject before she can do it, but I’m not quick enough.
“I’d like to see your speech. Is it finished?”
“It’s—almost. But I’m not ready for you to look at it yet. I need the weekend to go over it.”
She eyes me, weighing my words. I’ve never given her any reason not to trust me, but I can see she’s not convinced, and I realize why. I probably sound like my dad to her right now.
“I just want to fix a few things before I show you,” I say. “I’m going to work on it all weekend, and I promise you can see it when I’m done.”
A few seconds that feel like an eternity pass before she answers. “Okay. But you’re not going anywhere until I have your speech. Finished. Got it?” Her eyes go big while she waits for an answer.
“Got it,” I say, because that’s what she expects me to do. I swallow hard. Nervousness at what I have planned flutters in my stomach, but today something is different. Today I have a reason that’s worth enough to step out from under her thumb and take a chance. I just need to write that speech.
I wait a moment to see if there’s anything else, but she seems satisfied. I take a step back. “Okay, then. I’m gonna head up and get to work.”
“Good,” she says. “Good girl.” And then she opens up her laptop again as if it’s all settled, and I’m glad, because I’m sure that if she actually looked at my face she’d see everything I am about to do.
I don’t actually breathe again until I’m up in my room with my door closed. It’s a funny thing, my almost morbid fear of my mom. She’s never intentionally mean, and she doesn’t yell. And she’s always been supportive of whatever I’ve done. But I’ve always done what she wanted. I haven’t ever disappointed her. That’s what it is. That’s what I’m afraid of doing. Because that’s what my dad did over and over, and I saw what happened then.
When he tried and failed, again and again, to write his second book, she saw things in black and white—he needed to suck it up and move on. Support his family. Be a grownup. Stop chasing something that eluded him, no matter how much it meant. She wanted a life of stability and practicality, one she could depend on. He wanted a life of creativity and inspiration, one he could find his voice in. And neither one could understand how what they wanted wasn’t enough for the other.
So he left, and I became careful about what I said I wanted. Grades and awards and teacher recommendations became my way to ensure my mom’s approval. AP classes, extra credit, and concrete accomplishments. They’re the things she values, as opposed to the things she associates with my dreamer of a father. I’ve worked at it and worked at it, and now I’m at the end of high school and I have all of those things, including her approval. But right now, what I really want is something that means something to me. Something that I believe in, and that I do because I want to, not because I think it’ll prove something to my mom.
I don’t know how to begin to write my speech, or if I even want to if it’s just another attempt to prove myself to her. But I do know that, come Monday, I’ll be on the road, somewhere between who I’ve always been and who I want to be.
20.
“The Courage to Be New”
—1947
The girl I want to be tries to look casual standing in front of Carl’s Jr. at six a.m., wearing a huge backpack and irrationally scanning the parking lot for any sign of my mom brandishing the speech I’d pieced together from a Google search of “inspirational speeches” and left on the kitchen table for her approval. It was a Hail Mary. I’d spent the entire weekend shut away in my room, trying to come up with words I believe in, that the scholarship committee would believe in too, but I kept coming up blank. Instead of writing my speech, I went back to other words—Julianna’s, and Robert Frost’s, and even my dad’s. So when Sunday evening rolled around, I did what I had to do in the hopes that somewhere on the road ahead of me, I’d find what I really wanted to say.
I check my phone again, hoping for a We’re on our way text from Kat, but no such luck.
The girl I actually am is a nervous wreck who is totally unsure about the trip, hesitant to really hope we’ll find Julianna, all mixed up about what may or may not be going on with Trevor, and petrified of how much trouble I’m guaranteed to be in when I get home. I try not to think about all that, though. I lean my back against the building and look out over the ring of mountains that surrounds our little town, hoping to channel some of the calm of the morning. The air is a touch cooler than is comfortable in the cutoffs and tank top I threw on in a hurry, so I pull a sweatshirt out of my bag and slip it over my head.
Though it’s still shadowed where I’m standing, the peaks of the mountains are washed golden by the rising sun, and cloudless blue sky stretches out in every direction. Spring is undeniably here, and with it that feeling of newness and possibility and freedom. A fresh start, which is exactly what I want. I want this day to be my fresh start. I want this to be the day I step out of my comfort zone and go somewhere new. I’ve got the small amount of cash I’ve saved up, my MapQuest printouts, the journal, and my dad’s signed copy of Robert Frost’s collected poems tucked into my bag. Somehow the combination of those things feels right. I have no idea what I will do or even say if we actually find Julianna, but I’m ready. Ready for whatever happens.
As if cued by my last thought, Trevor’s Suburban turns into the parking lot and crosses the empty spots to where I’m standing. Kat waves excitedly from the front seat, and Trevor gives a nod and a half smile before he puts the car in park. For a second it crosses my mind that it’s strange they showed up together, but that thought is overshadowed by a second one: Holy crap, we’re really doing this.
They both get out, and Kat crashes into me in a sort of tackle hug. “Holy shit, Parker, we’re really doing this! God, I’m so frickin’ proud of you! You have the journal? And the map, and everything?” I nod as best I can, my answer muffled by her cleavage and enthusiasm. She releases me. “Good. I’m gonna go grab us some food. I’m starving. You want coffee?”
“Um, sure. You want me to come with you?”
“No. You stay. I’ll be right back,” she says with a wink and a glance at the Suburban. She pushes through the red double doors, releasing a waft of grease and coffee from inside, and then she’s gone. When I turn back to the car, Trevor gets out casually, his hair still morning messy, which is adorable, and his eyes as blue and bright as ever.
“Morning, Frost,” he says with a grin that seems either a little shy or a little tired, I can’t tell which. He holds an arm out. “Let me get that bag for you.”
I slide it off my shoulders and hand it to him. “Thanks.”
“Wow,” he says, hefting it up and down a couple of times. “Kat didn’t tell me we were running away forever. You bring all your earthly possessions along?”
That familiar warmth creeps up my neck and threatens to spread out over my cheeks. “No. I just . . . I didn’t know what I would need, so I brought it all. You never know what the weather will be like on the coast. Sometimes—” Oh my God, just be quiet now. Stop being lame. Be someone new today. Brave. Bold. “Yeah, I guess I probably brought too much.”
“That’s okay.” Trevor hefts my bag into the back of his Suburban. “Just giving you a hard time.”
He shuts t
he trunk and we both slide our hands into our pockets at the same time. He takes his out. I laugh. What happened to who we both were yesterday, in my car?
“So,” Trevor says, after an awkward moment. “Is she always this . . . peppy in the morning?” We both look through the window to where Kat is inside gesturing wildy and the guy behind the counter is laughing.
I turn back to him. “Not usually. I think it’s because she’s finally getting me to do something crazy, that she would do. That I normally wouldn’t.”
“Ah,” he nods. “Corrupting the indomitable Parker Frost. It is an accomplishment, actually.”
“Indomitable? That’s a big word for you, Trevor Collins.” He laughs, and it’s enough to encourage me. “It might be an accomplishment,” I say. “But she’s been failing at that for years. There’s a chance I’m just a lost cause.”
Trevor raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know about that, Frost. Maybe you just haven’t been tempted with the right transgression yet.”
Brave. Bold. WWKD.
“Or maybe I have,” I say with a smile I’m pretty sure looks like one Kat would give. “Maybe I just haven’t made up my mind whether to risk it.”
He smiles slow and leans in close. Close enough to touch. “That’s too bad. Because all the fun is in the risking.”
“Then maybe you should try it some time,” I answer back.
Kat comes out then, loaded up with more grease-dotted bags than it would take to feed all of us three times. She sees me looking. “What? Road trip food doesn’t count.”
“True,” Trevor says. “Let’s get on the road. So we can eat some of that food that doesn’t count.”
With that we pile into Trevor’s car—which he informs us is actually called the Silver Bullet. Kat hops in the back, and I, by Kat’s design, I think, sit shotgun. Seat belts click, the familiar chorus of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” rushes out of the speakers, and greasy fast food breakfast is distributed all around.
Kat raises her Diet Coke in between me and Trevor. “To fate, friendship, and adventure. Here we go!” We tap our drinks together. Trevor puts his arm on the back of my seat to twist himself around when he backs up, and when he does, our eyes catch.
“Wait,” I say.
“No backing out now,” he says. “You’re committed.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m not backing out. There’s just one place we have to stop before we really get on our way.”
“Let me guess,” Kat says. “Summit Lake?”
I turn around. “How did you know?”
“You might be the one with the scholarship to Stanford,” she says through a mouthful of breakfast burrito, “but I’m always one step ahead of you.”
21.
“But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
—“FIRE AND ICE,” 1920
The road to Summit Lake is off the main highway, fifteen minutes or so out of town, and is definitely out of our way, but there’s no other place this trip should begin. If we’re searching for a different ending to Julianna’s story, we need to start where the original version ended. When Trevor makes the turn off the highway, the road narrows as if that’s the only way it can manage to hug the side of the mountain it puts us on. We all kind of go quiet when we round the first turn and the view unfolds in front of us, grand and dramatic, and in my mind, a bit sinister, too.
The edge of the road may as well be the edge of the earth, the drop is so sheer. When I was little, I’d cower in the back with my hands over my eyes on roads like this, scared that the slightest shift of the steering wheel would send us right off the edge. Today I look out my window, first across to the other side of the gorge, which is thick with the green of aspen trees, and then down, down, down to the bottom, where icy snowmelt flows, fast and unforgiving. The sight of it makes me doubt everything I’ve come up with about the possibility of Julianna still being alive. It would take more than a miracle to survive the plunge from the road to the bottom of the gorge.
“I wonder what the hell they were doing out here,” Kat says from the back seat. “You know? This road is scary enough in broad daylight, with no snow on it.”
“Maybe it was an accident they ended up here,” Trevor says. “Everyone’s always said he was drunk when they left. Maybe they were trying to go out to the Grove or something and got confused. Who knows?” He shrugs, but keeps both hands firm on the steering wheel, his eyes never leaving the road as we wind around another curve. There could be a million different reasons, but there’s no one to ask.
We pass a yellow sign that says SCENIC OVERLOOK, with a picture of a camera on it, and then the dirt turnout it refers to. “Maybe they were looking for a place to talk . . . or park,” I say. “Like one of these spots.” It’s not an uncommon thing for kids in our town to go driving out into the boonies to “talk.” There are plenty of awe-inspiring spots with views that people go out to under the pretense of looking at them.
Kat leans forward on my seat. “I bet she told him about Orion that night—at the party, and that’s why they left. And then maybe they got in a fight, and he drove out here. That could happen if you were drunk and pissed off.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “It probably could.” I shiver a little at the thought of Julianna telling Shane on this road. In a snowstorm, when he’d been drinking. Finding out something like that might make it easy, in a moment of hurt or anger, to turn the steering wheel just enough to do something you could never take back.
We round another curve and pass another SCENIC OVERLOOK sign, and the view from this one really is worthy of the title. From this vantage point you can see where the icy water of the river tumbles into the lake and then disperses into the stillness of it almost immediately, like it’s been swallowed by the depth and the cold. Summit Lake is one of the deepest in the country, breathtakingly beautiful, and the quintessential summer image of our town. Every Summit Lakes postcard or calendar has a shot of this lake, a blue-green gem nestled at the base of glacier-carved granite mountains. It’s dramatic, and striking, but to me it’s always been a distant, cold, kind of beautiful. It’s a place with a history of tragedy. Shane and Julianna are just one chapter.
The road begins its descent as it wraps around to the south shore of the lake. We pull into the empty parking lot, and Trevor parks facing the water, then cuts the engine and is quiet a moment. Kat is too for once, and I think it’s because we’re all sitting here looking at the water, half in the shadow, half in the sun, thinking about Julianna Farnetti. I am. I’m wondering whether she’s beneath its surface, deep in the blue water so dark it looks black, together forever with Shane Cruz, like she was supposed to be according to everyone else; or whether she somehow escaped that fate, slipped out of the lake, and found her way to a new life, far away from here and from who she was before.
“Shall we?” Trevor asks.
I nod.
We all open our doors to get out, and when we shut them, the sound echoes off the sharp, sheer ridges of granite, like three muted shots. Then silence. Kat hugs her arms to her chest. “God, this place gives me the creeps.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Trevor says. “Between those kids that fell through the ice and the guys who tried to save them, and Shane and Julianna, it’s got its fair share of ghosts floating around.” He grins. “No pun intended.”
He’s right. It’s one of those places steeped in stories that go back even past our childhoods. There was a girl, probably around Julianna’s age, whose dad drowned in this lake, along with a school bus driver, when they both tried to save four boys who had walked out onto the ice and fallen through. Before that there was a bloody shoot-out between a group of escaped convicts and the sheriffs who’d chased them there—one that ended with the sheriffs being dumped in the lake and supposedly haunting its shores for years after. And long before that there was the le
gend of a Paiute boy who disrespected the lake’s power and was swallowed by the water, never to be seen again.
“Ha. Ha.” Kat rolls her eyes, then runs them over the surface of the water. “Funny, except nobody floats here. They all sink to the bottom, then slip down the center of the hourglass.” She shivers. “Ugh. You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to go swimming in this lake. For exactly that reason.”
“Oh, come on,” Trevor says. “The bottom is so far down there, I’m sure they’re all long gone now.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Kat turns to me. “Why did we need to come here again?”
“I just wanted to see if . . . if there’s anything else here to find out. Or . . . I don’t know.” I look across the glass surface of the water, blue-green around the edges and in the places the sunlight has reached. The rest of the water is a nameless color so dark it gives nothing away. It just reflects all my questions back, sharp and impassive, like a mirror. The stillness of it is unnerving. Like it’s holding its breath, waiting for us to do something.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s walk. I think there’s a memorial near those trees.” I point to a cluster of aspens at the lake’s edge and we cross the parking lot.
There’s a narrow trail that follows the wavy edge of the lake, dotted with forest service signs detailing the history and geology of it. They’re the types of signs only tourists and old people usually stop to read, but while Kat and Trevor walk on, I linger at the first one. It’s a series of pictures showing how the surrounding mountains burst out of the ground as a result of fiery volcanoes, and then the canyons and gorges between them were carved out and scoured over thousands of years by slow-moving glaciers. Its title is “Fire and Ice.” Like the Frost poem, and a line from Julianna’s journal about the night she and Orion went to the hot springs and kissed under a blanket of stars. I make a mental note to look the actual poem up when we get back to the car. It seems fitting that there’s a reference here. Her world, the one that she knew, with Shane as her constant, ended with fire—the desire for Orion. And then it ended again, here, in the ice of the river and lake. Or maybe it didn’t.