Pressing a cold hand to my forehead, I stare at the remains of my berries. “The car’s in Amaranth.”
“Dylan?” she asks.
“Yeah, Ma, it’s me,” I say. I wait.
I hear her breathing on the other line. Thin, sharp inhalation. Short, hard exhalation. I remember laying next to her at night, when I was very little.
When I was afraid of lightning, or nightmares, or the moon (I was afraid of the moon; when it rose full in my window, I couldn’t breathe), I climbed into her bed. Folded against her, I was so safe. She was so soft. Her face was beautiful when she slept, the tension smoothed out of it. She changed rooms with me after a while because she said she couldn’t sleep with me kicking her shins all damned night.
I’m not ashamed to say I want that again, that before. That time when she was the most beautiful woman in the world and I loved her until I overflowed with it. She’s my mom, and I can forgive everything, I can. A fist clutches my heart, ready to squeeze or set free. I don’t know which yet. I hope, I’m a stupid little hoping thing.
“Where the fuck is Amaranth?” she asks. “And where the fuck are you? The school called, wanting to know when you were coming back to register, you little shit. I thought you were gonna register.”
She says it like it’s not her fault. Like I wasn’t humiliated at the desk trying to register alone. The anger flares up, but then . . . it dies. I rationalize: she has a right to be angry. I did take her car and leave her stranded with no notice. God, I am full of goodness and light this morning. I just want her to love me again.
“Well?” she demands.
At first, I think I’m crying. My face is hot, but when I touch it, it’s not wet. Am I sad? Ashamed? I don’t even know anymore. My whole body flexes. I’m one agonized twist, and I roll back into bed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
She snorts, and I hear her relay this information to somebody. Lynne, no doubt. Or maybe Bobby. Maybe he drummed up that two hundred dollars, and she welcomed him home. To me, she says, “Where are you?”
“Las Vegas,” I say.
“You’d better be fucking kidding,” she says. Flinty. Already calculating the distance between here and there. “Where are you really?”
My throat closes. “Las Vegas, for real. I’m with a friend. I’m fine.”
“Well you’d better find a way to get your fine ass back home. Don’t think I’m coming out there after you.”
Clutching the phone until my knuckles ache, I pull the covers closer. They smell like Arden, clean. So clean. I bury my face in them and I don’t cry. Instead, I drain. I feel it, at the crown of my head, rushing down through my throat, through my belly, all the way down my useless, aching legs. The soles of my feet tingle when it finally leaves me.
People are who they are. There was never going to be a last minute transformation. My mother was never gonna sit at my graduation, and break down to reveal: she was hard all this time just to save her soft heart. All the horrible things she said were just a shield; she made me drive to my own appointments because she couldn’t bear to see me suffer. Et cetera, et cetera, infinity.
People want families to fit together perfectly, no matter what, but sometimes they don’t. It’s when we keep trying to force them together that we get hurt.
Her life didn’t go as planned. Neither did mine. We are who we are, and I can live with that. (It probably doesn’t sound like it, but I promise you—I feel better now. I do.) I cover my eyes with my hand and I say, “I’ll see you later, okay?”
My mother hangs up on me.
(ALMOST NOWHERE)
Leaving Las Vegas doesn’t have the same glitter as meeting it. In the daylight, the town is a little dirty, a little lonely. I’m not, though. This car is closer quarters; it’s better than the Escalade because I’m right next to Arden; she’s right next to me.
My hand keeps straying to my head. There’s a buzzy emptiness in it. I keep waiting for it to twist up, freak out, start backtracking, something, but it doesn’t. I said what I said to my mother, and that’s it. But it just doesn’t. My head is clear.
I lean into Arden, my head on her shoulder as she drives, and chase her fingers with mine. The haze has receded. I think the desert burned it off. Everything is good. I feel good. Glancing up at her, I’m happy to see that Arden wears a faint smile, too.
“Whatcha thinking?” I ask, stroking my thumb through her palm.
Her smile widens. “I don’t know. Just random stuff.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t have a favorite song,” she says. She sounds a little amazed when she admits it. “Or a favorite movie, or a favorite book.”
“Me either. There’s too many. How do you pick a favorite?”
“Exactly!” Her whole body shakes when she gets excited. She pounds the wheel and her curls dance and she comes alive. “Like, I can list some of my favorites. But I need different stuff for different occasions.”
“My favorite book is A Steamy Romance Novel,” I joke. It’s junk loot in the game, and I start to laugh. “Remember the first time you pickpocketed one of those things?”
“I still have it!” Arden beams at me. “I have all kinds of dumb stuff in my bank.”
“Me too,” I say. Virtual banks. Imaginary riches. Settling against her again, I smile crookedly. “I bet that Mallet of Zul’Farrak comes in handy again.”
“Oh yeah, my Violet Signet, too.”
“You remember our first day in Burning Crusade? That’s what this reminds me of.”
Arden leans over the wheel, nodding. “I know, right?”
That means nothing to you, I’m thinking. So okay, World of Warcraft gets new content every couple years, in an expansion pack. Basically, it’s new stuff to do so people keep playing. The Burning Crusade was the very first one, a whole new planet to explore.
You had to be, I think, level 60 to get into the new stuff. Maybe 55. Whatever—I dinged first, meaning I hit the level cap before Arden did. Not by much, and it didn’t matter anyway. No way was I going in there without her. It was a big deal; we wanted to walk through the portal to the new world together.
Once we did, we stood on a terrace, looking out at Hellfire Peninsula.
Speeding down this barren highway, into the Mojave Desert, I think I know where Warcraft got some of their ideas. At angles, this desert is red like Mars. Like California, when the fires consume the sky. Dark mountains frame the horizon, but the land is red. Dusty. Tire tracks crisscross the side of the road, evidence that some people drove out here in something besides a sedan.
All the plants are greyish green, low to the ground and spiky. I haven’t seen one cactus yet, but I don’t care. Above us, the sky is bluer than it’s ever been. Deep, rich—the shade I expected to see at the Mississippi River. There’s no traffic, no street lights. No people, no houses. There’s nothing here but heavens and earth, the road the only proof people have been here before at all.
The heat presses from the outside in. The air conditioner struggles to keep up, but I can feel it losing. I like this place. Quietly, to myself, I can admit. I don’t think we’re going to find anything here but more desert, but I like it all the same.
I pull Arden’s hand to my lips and kiss it. I lay it against my cheek and I ask, “You wanna have our last fight now, or later?”
She stiffens a little. “I don’t want to fight at all.”
“After we find the ship,” I say, “and we have our news conference and we spend the night together drinking champagne and eating caviar, I want you to call your dad. I want you to go home.”
“Fuck him. No.”
Though I approve of the sentiment, I can’t get behind it. Not now. “He wants you back. He canceled all your shit, Arden.”
“Because he’s an asshole,” she says blackly.
Reaching for her phone, I admit I did a bad thing. I turned it on after I called my mom. I wanted to see. If Concrete Blocks was made out of the same stuff. If he was, I could run
away with Arden, keep her forever, never look back. Why not? Why not? People run away to California all the time.
So I listened; I listened to all the messages. At first, I saved them because I didn’t want to get caught. But when I was done, I knew there was a better reason to keep them.
“Don’t be mad,” I say, playing voice mails I heard, that I think she ought to. Speaker lights up; Concrete Blocks’ voice fills the car.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, David—”
Arden is wounded; I swear to god, she’d look less broken if I hit her or something. Just thinking that makes me sick; I can’t imagine raising a hand to do anything to her, but love her. Not ever. Never.
So I hit Delete. That one’s not important by itself; it’s all of them, listened to one after the other. That’s what’s important.
Number two: “I haven’t called the police. I don’t want this to be an issue.” Delete.
“I know it’s been a hard couple of years—” Delete.
Arden’s voice trembles. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“You could have talked to me. You didn’t have to run away. Dav—” Delete.
“Stop,” Arden says.
I don’t. I hold the phone out of her reach. The next message cues—it starts with a long silence. Then finally, simply, Concrete Blocks says, “Come home. Come home, Arden.”
No delete. Not this time. I thought Arden might want to keep that. Maybe forever. I hang up the phone and give it back. It’s not mine. It never was. Neither is Arden, and I have to put her back better than I found her.
Agitated, Arden pulls over. She throws the car in Park and turns to me. When I see her face, I think I should have waited until after we found the ship to have this talk. Anger and fear and frustration rise off her in waves. Red splotches stain her face. Her voice vibrates on my skin; she’s so angry.
“What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to break my heart?”
Clasping her face in my hands, I look at her. I really look. She’s scared and sad and I’m finally okay for once. I don’t mind reassuring her, because she’s just a couple steps back from me. She’ll catch up. She’ll be okay. Fingertips on her temples, eye to eye with her, I say, “I want to be honest with you, okay? I want you to listen and to hear me.”
“Dylan,” she protests.
“Give him a chance,” I tell her, my voice thickening. “And if he fucks it up, then blame me. And you can, all right? It’s okay. Because I’m gonna be the one who stays, Arden. That doesn’t change. I’m gonna be the one who stays.”
She cries. I hold her. She holds me; I cry, too.
(O)
The Salton Sea is a grey, imposing lake, and its shores are abandoned. At least, they are where we stop. Long stretches of warning signs and sunburned cans litter the shore. I can’t call it a beach, not really. Beaches have balls and lifeguards and suntan lotion. None of that here. I don’t even see any birds.
Once upon a time, people thought this place was gonna be an oasis. They built resorts all around it and got movie stars to come. But stuff flows into the sea and nothing flows out. The salt built up, the fish mostly died, and now it’s just a dead lake in the middle of the desert. If Iturbe’s ship hadn’t gotten stuck in the river shallows, this is where he would have ended up: trapped in the desert all the same.
When I slide out of the car, I stumble. The wind rushes past, hot like somebody’s blowing a hair dryer at me. Holding out my hands, I walk into it like I’m new or blind. Turning slowly, I marvel. The wind is like a blow dryer, turned up high. I’ve never felt anything like it.
“Are you okay?” Arden asks.
“I’m awesome,” I say, turning my face to the sky and the sun. “The wind is hot.”
She nods, smiling at me curiously. “Weird, huh?”
“It’s cool,” I say.
“Nope,” she replies. “Hot.”
Stupid joke, and I laugh at it. Breaking out her phone, Arden pulls up the map she saved from all her satellite searches. There are GPS coordinates to follow. Once the app is running, she hands the phone to me. “Lead the way, Dylan.”
She marked the teardrop shape, and the path is easy to follow. We walk out due west from the lake. Away from the water. Away from old, rusted buildings that are slowly falling back into the sand. One day, there will be nothing here. Just water saltier than the ocean, and sand. Mountains. Sky. Wind that sears when it eddies around you.
My heart pounds in a hard, uneven stroke, and I don’t care. Somewhere in these sands, a ghost ship sails. Baskets decorate its decks, full of stolen pearls. So many, there are ropes of them. Loops. Hung from the mast, they’d loop along the sails, once, twice, three times even.
“Who should we call first when we find it?” Arden asks.
Considering this, I say, “I don’t know. I was thinking we could tweet it.”
“With pictures,” Arden agrees.
“Yup, pix or it didn’t happen.”
The ground isn’t as smooth as I thought a desert would be. It’s constantly moving, thick roots hidden to trip you, then exposed, to do the same. Sweat soaks me. I’m that prize racehorse again, rivers of sweat, about to be put down. You know what, though? That horse ran as fast and as hard as it could.
“You know what pisses me off?” I ask. “I haven’t seen even one tumbleweed. What do I gotta do to see tumbleweed?”
Helpfully, Arden says, “I saw some on the way to Las Vegas.”
“Pix or it didn’t happen,” I mutter.
The phone leads us deeper into the desert. By deeper, I mean when I look back, I know where the car is, but I can’t see it. Nor the Salton Sea, nor the signs, nor the debris. This is the literal middle of nowhere, but a safe version of it. One where we have GPS to walk us right back to civilization if it gets too scary.
Stopping, I reach for Arden’s hand. The wind blasts us, hot and insisting. “Hold up,” I say, because I want to listen.
Sand slides against sand, a whisper that echoes in every direction. There are no voices, no music. There’s nothing but our breath and the breath of the wind. Beneath the sun, I’m burning and bubbling up, but for just this moment, I don’t hurt at all.
This moment, this second, is worth the whole trip. This is what I hope I dream about from now on. Whispering sands, and Arden standing close to me, her hand in mine. All those miles behind us, arguments and jokes, new places, terrifying places. The biggest ball of twine, and my best, new, first kiss with her. One night in the state park; another all luxe at the top of Las Vegas. I don’t want to cry anymore; I’m not afraid. I just am, right now; the two of us, we exist and that’s enough.
“You okay?” she asks, drawing closer.
“Almost there,” I say. The moment’s over, but it’s not gone. I wear it around my shoulders; it slips onto my fingers like rings. I tug to get her moving again.
Over a rocky ledge, and into a cool shadow, we follow the GPS as it points the way. The red line slowly turns green, brightening, then flashing. Then at once it turns white, with a little trumpety fanfare. This is the place. This is what Arden found on the satellite maps.
I expected to be elated. Or disappointed. But what I am is peaceful. With the wind whispering on the sand, it’s peaceful. The desert breaks through the constant cold on my skin, and I sink to sit. We crossed two thousand miles for this. For the first time in my life, I’m satisfied.
Arden turns; we both search. I trail my fingers through hot sand and squint up at the sky. This band of exposed stone makes a nice wall. A shady place to sit and play. Scooping up handfuls of sand, I let the grains slip between my fingers. It’s too dry for sand castles. If I draw in it, the shapes blow away almost instantly. So I dig, and I weigh, and I am happy.
“I think . . . ,” Arden says, turning in a circle. She looks bereft, dust lining the streaks on her face. “I think what I saw was this ledge.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
Sinking next to me, Arden covers
her face. This, I hate. Because I’m exactly where I want to be, and it’s really obvious she’s not. Maybe she believed more than I did. I don’t think she’s crying, though she doesn’t raise her face. More like, she crashed, and now she has to put herself back together. She has to go home and be alive and do all the things you do when you breathe and your heart beats.
Rubbing my shoulder against hers, I raise another handful of sand. It’s like a kiss when it spills between my fingers. Though I know Arden’s wounded, I’m not. I’m just not. We made it. We’re here in an impossible place that never existed before. Just like the world in the game, I saw it through glass—but now it’s real.
As the last of the sand drains from my hands, my heart skips. It jumps, it twitches like a living thing. All these acrobatics, because something remains in my palm.
“Arden,” I say.
Her reply is muffled. “What?”
“Arden, look,” I say.
A burst of energy fills me. Scrambling to her, I pin her down and straddle her hips. Electricity zings through my veins. It activates me, and I laugh, oh god, I laugh. The world shifts beneath me, and so does Arden. Her body wriggles; she tries to sit up.
I plant one hand in the middle of her chest to hold her still. Then I hold it out, right above her head. Just far enough away that her eyes cross when she tries to look at it.
One perfect pearl.
(O)
You already know what happens. Maybe you’re not ready to admit it. I understand that. Maybe it’ll make you feel better if I tell you that we kissed, and we had dinner in Palm Springs. We made plans to see each other again; I made her write her name on my skin. I cried when she left, and she came back an hour later for one more kiss. Does that make you feel better?
After she’s gone, I spread the porch doors in my room. She gave me what was left of the cash, and I rented a run-down cabana near the shores of a lifeless sea. The doors open onto the desert; they let all that good heat in. The sky is forever. The sand is forever. I sit there and watch the sun go down, and I don’t cry.
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