“Are you prepared to do this, Gus?”
Pfft. Like I would tell her no and have her think I was a total wimp. I took a deep breath. “Follow me, Rossi. I’ll go first in case there’s anything in there.”
I couldn’t see her face in the dim light as she whispered, “Okay.”
Before I squeezed into the hole, Matthew called, “Be careful, Gus.”
“Yeah, man,” Jessie added. “Be careful. There could be, like, a rattlesnake den in there or something.”
I grimaced. “Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t worry,” Jessie assured me, “they won’t bite you if you don’t bother them.” I looked at the tiny hole—if anything was in there, I would definitely be bothering it.
I squeezed myself into the small opening and started shimmying forward on my belly like a snake, my arms out in front of me. I willed myself not to panic and turned my mind to other things—the horrible movie I watched on TV a couple of nights ago about killer tomatoes, Matthew stealing Valentine’s cards, Jessie and I sitting on his trailer’s front porch drinking his mom’s homemade horchata, which I hadn’t had in nearly a whole year. I suddenly wanted a glass of horchata really bad.
But mostly I thought of Rossi, also inching her way through the rocky hole behind me. Rossi standing in the desert, her hair plastered to her cheek, trading Loretta for me. Rossi racing. If she never got to race again, it would be my fault.
My pants caught on a sharp rock and tore right in the crotch as I moved forward. “Great,” I muttered. There went four dollars down the toilet. I mean, they were already ripped up from climbing the rubble, but now they were unwearable.
“You okay?” I heard Rossi say behind me.
“Yeah, I tore my pants. Again. For like the millionth time.”
Rossi breathed heavily. “My shirt’s torn. And my pants. And I think I tore some of my hair out, too.”
“Don’t worry. We’re almost there. I see the opening up ahead.”
The opening actually looked really far away still. And the hole felt really small.
“Tell me something.” Rossi’s voice was getting more breathless with every word.
“About what?”
“Anything,” she said. “Anything.”
Of course my mind went totally blank. “Uh,” I stuttered. “How am I going to buy your bike back without any gold?”
“I don’t care about my bike right now. All I care about . . . is getting out . . . of this hole.” She breathed so heavily, I worried she would pass out.
“Are you okay, Rossi?”
“Just talk about something else.”
“I hope we can make it back without water.” I cringed. That was a terrible thing to make her worry about right now.
“We just drank and it’s still dark out. We’ll be fine.”
I tried to think of something else to say. “I hope my grandma doesn’t wake up and call the police when she finds me gone.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“They’ll think we all died in the mine collapse,” I said.
Rossi was quiet for a moment. “Do you really think so?”
“Well, Bo would hopefully eventually tell them that’s where we went and then they’d see the mine had collapsed in a new area. They’d probably think we were dead.”
“If we get out of here,” she said, “we could leave Nowhere.”
I stopped. “Rossi?”
“No one would search for us. Like you said.”
I moved forward again as I thought about that. I was almost to the opening. “Where would we go?”
“Baja.”
“As in Mexico?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Are you running from the law?” I joked.
Rossi let out a breathy laugh behind me. “Maybe.”
I was finally there. I pushed myself out of the hole onto another narrow ledge. I turned around and reached my hand out for Rossi. Her dark hair was gray with dust and rocks, a shiny film of sweat on her face. She grabbed my hand and squeezed out of the hole onto the ledge with me. We breathed heavily as we stood and looked at each other. We had finally made it out.
The sky was so bright from the full moon, I worried the sun might be coming up already. Rossi removed my watch from her pocket and handed it to me. From the light of the moon, I could see it was after four o’clock.
I looked down. The cliff below us was completely vertical, and the desert floor may as well have been twenty miles below, instead of the twenty or so feet it actually was.
I felt something touch my hand. Rossi entwined her fingers with mine for a moment before letting go. She sat down on the ledge and swung her legs over the side.
I sat next to her and nervously let my legs hang down as well, hoping we didn’t slip off. I shook my head. We didn’t need to talk about it. We both knew there was no getting down from here. If we tried to jump it, we’d probably break our legs or ankles. Then we’d just lie there until we died of dehydration. Or got eaten by something. The desert was an unforgiving place.
Rossi pulled the paper out of her pocket and once more attempted to read it. “It’s too faded,” she said. “I can’t make anything out. I need better light.” She folded it and put it back in her pocket.
I knew we didn’t have unlimited time, but I also knew neither of us could handle going right back in that hole. “It’s good to be outside,” I said, breathing a little more easily now. This was the coolest time of day, but I bet the temperature was still ninety.
Rossi stared out at the dimly lit landscape. We could see the lights of Casa Grande way off in the distance. “I love the desert at night,” she finally said. “Everything is silver when there’s a full moon.”
I turned to her. “What’s in Baja?”
She picked a rock out of her hair. “The Baja One Thousand.”
“Oh. What’s that?”
“It’s a long race through the Baja peninsula. A thousand-mile race. Anyone can enter—anyone in the world. And you can use any kind of vehicle—buggy, truck, motorcycle. Most people ride in some kind of truck, but you could do it in your grandma’s station wagon if you wanted to.”
I smiled. “You want to do it on a dirt bike, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“But why? I mean, why the Baja One Thousand instead of a bigger Supercross competition?”
She shrugged. “Like I said, anyone can enter. It doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you have, or what you drive. It doesn’t matter that you’re a girl. You don’t win much money. People don’t do it for money; they do it for love—love of racing, love of the desert, love of competition. There are no pretentions. No bimbos in skimpy bikinis holding up signs.” She shot me a sideways glance, like she was checking to make sure I also disapproved of bimbos in skimpy bikinis holding up signs.
I made my very best disgusted face and nodded in agreement.
“The people who finish in one hundredth place celebrate as much as the people who finish first . . . maybe even more. It’s about proving you can conquer Baja. Proving you’re more than what people think. That you’re not just some piece of discarded trash.” She looked at me. “Though you have been discarded. Haven’t you, Gus?”
discard: to get rid of someone or something as no longer useful or desirable
Her stare made me uncomfortable. “Yes,” I said.
“Are you going to let someone else’s actions define who you are or what you’re worth?”
I defined words all the time. I was obsessed with defining words. But I had never thought about how I defined myself.
Gus: nugatory, derisory, forsaken, discarded nincompoop
When I didn’t answer Rossi’s question, she said, “I’ll be defined by what I do in this life, not by what anyone else does to me or says about me. None of that matters. All that matters is what I do.” She stared into me, like she could see my darkest thoughts. “We’re not what people have done to us, Gus. We can be whatever we want.”
I wished that were true. But could two kids in Nowhere really be whatever they wanted? I wasn’t so sure.
“What are you going to be?” I asked her.
“I don’t know yet. But I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to get out of Nowhere. I’m going to make it to Baja. Somehow. And I’m going to do all one thousand miles by myself. No team. Just me and my bike in one of the most desolate, quiet, scary, amazing deserts on earth. That’s all I need. People always disappoint you. My bike has never let me down.”
I picked up a small pebble from the ledge and rolled it between my thumb and finger. “How will you do all thousand miles on one tank of gas? And what if you get a flat tire?”
She pursed her lips. “Yes, I’ll have to have a pit crew.” She sighed. “I always thought my dad would be there, that he would be my crew chief. But I don’t think he cares about that anymore. Not like I do anyway.”
I threw the pebble. It made a small clacking sound on the rocks below. “I bet he cares about you, though. I’m sure he’ll still want to be your crew chief. And I’ll join your pit crew.”
She smiled. “You’d like Baja. I’ve heard you can smell the ocean in the desert.”
“I’ve never smelled the ocean before. I wouldn’t even know what it was I was smelling.”
“You’d know.”
I tried to imagine smelling the ocean in the middle of the Mexican desert. I doubted that would ever happen. The closest I’d probably ever get to seeing the ocean was National Nerdographic. “But is it dangerous?”
“Yes, it is. Sometimes people die. But everyone has to die sometime. I hope I die on my bike.”
“I hope you don’t die at all.”
“That’s not very likely, Gus. No one can live forever.”
“Aren’t you afraid to die?”
“What’s there to be afraid of?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Pain. Whatever comes after. Darkness. Just not being here anymore.”
“I don’t feel pain.” But I didn’t believe her. Everyone felt pain, didn’t they? Or was it possible to stop feeling it if you got hurt enough?
I’m used to it now, Matthew had said.
“And I don’t care whether I’m here or not.” She swung her legs and kicked at the rock wall below us. “What’s so great about being here anyway?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. “I just guess if this is all there is, then . . .”
Rossi looked at me expectantly. But I didn’t want to finish my sentence. I remembered how I’d felt when I thought I might never see my room again. I didn’t want to tell her I didn’t care whether I was here or not, either. Because I didn’t want that to be true. And I really didn’t want this to be all there was.
She leaned in like she was going to tell me a secret, and as though she had read my mind, she whispered, “There’s more than this, Gus.”
I didn’t know if she was talking about this life or the next. But I think I hoped for both.
“Look.” Rossi pointed at something in the distance. “Javelina.”
I turned my head and saw a herd of javelina traveling toward the mountain. The moonlight was bright enough that I could make out a few babies. I looked at Rossi. She watched them, her lip tilted up just a little at one corner.
“I didn’t know you and Jessie were so close,” I said.
She turned to me, the faint smile already gone from her face. “Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “Just that he went and told you about what I was doing and you came here together.”
Rossi was quiet. She stared at me, a strange look on her face. After a moment, she looked away. “Gus, my dad works two jobs. Do you understand what that means?”
I shook my head slightly.
“It means he gets up while it’s still dark to go to his job at the Center for Youth. Then he goes straight to the gas station near Casa Grande to work all evening. I never, ever see him.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I asked her, “What does he do at the Center?”
She took her hair out of its frazzled ponytail and started running her fingers through it like a comb. “He’s a social worker.”
“Oh. What’s a social worker?”
“He works with the boys there. He counsels them.” Rossi picked a rock out of her hair and tossed it into the dark desert. “My dad says when the boys come out of that place, they’re not the same as when they went in. And not better. He wants to change that. The Center doesn’t give them much more than four walls and a bed, but at least they have my dad.”
Just starin’ at four walls.
I would go crazy.
“It’s just his first year, so he doesn’t get paid a lot,” Rossi went on. “He’s working to save people’s lives, but he still has to work at a stupid gas station all night so we can afford to live.”
Rossi pushed her smoothed hair over her shoulders. “It’s tough, you know. Leaving home. Leaving the people I’ve known my whole life. Moving here, to a new place. Being alone all the time. Not everyone at school has been exactly nice to me. And, honestly, I haven’t had much interest in making friends with anyone, either. It’s hard to make new friends when your heart is still back home with your old friends.”
“Can’t you go back for a visit?” I asked her.
Rossi shrugged. “Two hundred miles takes time, which my dad doesn’t have much of. And it takes expensive gas.”
An owl hooted nearby, and Rossi shook her head. “Anyway, I see Jessie’s mom at the scrapyard all the time, so one day she invited me to eat dinner with them since my dad’s always working. I eat dinner with them a lot. Jessie’s mom and I . . .” Rossi paused a moment. “We have a lot in common, I think. I really like her.”
My chest suddenly hurt, and not from all the rocks that had battered it. “I know. I miss that family.” Then I looked at her. “Why do you see her at the scrapyard all the time?”
Rossi ignored my question. Instead, she said, “Jessie misses you, too. He talks about you all the time.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. His mom’s always asking him, ‘Where’s Gus? Where is that funny guy? What happened to you two?’”
I waited. When she didn’t go on, I asked, “And what does he say?”
“He says, ‘He’ll be back soon. He can’t stay away for long.’”
I was suddenly aware of how dry my throat felt as I tried to swallow. I was terrified my eyes would start tearing up, but nothing came. I was probably too dehydrated.
He can’t stay away for long. Jessie was right. I was the one who had ditched him.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry your dad’s never around.”
Rossi gave a casual shrug. “It’s okay. I can take care of myself. I don’t need him like they do.” But I wasn’t buying it. I would have given anything to see my dad again. To have him here to take care of me. Or just to talk to me.
“My dad is going to save everybody else, Gus.” She took a deep breath as she tied the rubber band back around her hair. “But one day I’m going to ride away from here on my bike and all you’ll see is my dust.” She tossed her hair back behind her and then clenched her fists in her lap. “I’m going to save myself.”
I knew exactly what she meant. No one was going to swoop into Nowhere and rescue us. There was no top-secret government agency that was going to kidnap us. No one was going to give us a chance; we had to make our own chances. I guess a dirt bike was one way out of Nowhere. The SAT was another.
“Me too,” I said.
“I know you will.” She gently kicked my foot with the missing shoe. “I’ve seen how dauntless you can be.”
dauntless: showing fearlessness and determination
“Anyway,” she said, “the thought that I could win a trip to that camp—that’s the only thing that’s gotten me through this year. There’s no other way I could ever do something like that. And I had the silly thought that maybe if I could get there, do the impossible, then who knows what could
happen? Maybe someone would notice me. Maybe help me find a sponsor to get to Baja one day. But nobody notices you when you’re living in a hole.” She shook her head. “There’s no doing the impossible for us, Gus. Now I just want to go home.”
I cringed at her words. And it was my fault. My fault.
Worthless, worthless, worthless.
I was almost too ashamed to look at her. When I finally did, I found her staring at me, a pained, almost angry expression on her face. Because of what I had done, I was sure. What I had caused. “Don’t,” she said firmly.
I was thankful I was so dehydrated that tears couldn’t come. “Don’t what?” I asked, my voice unsteady.
A pack of coyotes started crying way off in the distance. “Three times.” She whipped up three fingers. “Three times you’ve stood up for me to Bo.” She put down two fingers, still holding one up. “The first time—two hundred fifty-two days ago. Bo was furious I had beaten him a second time. He was yelling in my face, calling me a cheater, when you cried out that I hadn’t cheated. He stopped yelling, and you ran. He chased you down and pushed your face into the dirt.” She reached out a hand to touch a fading scar on my cheek. “You had a scab here for nearly three weeks afterward.”
She pulled her hand away and held up two fingers this time. “The second time—one hundred twenty days ago. Bo was kicking my bike after a race and you yelled at him to stop. He punched you in the stomach. I watched as you lay on the ground moaning in pain. I didn’t say anything to you or Bo.” She cleared her throat and grimaced. “I’m ashamed of that. I’ve thought about it every day since.”
She looked away from me. “The third time,” she whispered. “Eleven hours ago.” She looked at me. “And here we are.”
“Here we are.”
“I couldn’t just watch again. I couldn’t not do something when I had the power. I swore after I saw him punch you in the stomach, I would never just stand and watch again. I’m not nearly as big or strong as Bo, but I swore I would do whatever it took to stop him from hurting you. You repeatedly risked beatings to stand up for me when no one else would. So I knew I had to risk something, too.”
24 Hours in Nowhere Page 9