by Emily France
Oliver waited for Essa to say it was called off. That she couldn’t trek into the woods alone with a city kid who couldn’t even put up a tent, let alone find his way through the wilderness with a compass.
“You okay to play with just me?” she whispered.
He thought about it. For one-eighth of a nanosecond. “Yes.”
“You’ll have to do what I say to do, okay? It’s pretty serious. We could get lost.”
“No problem.”
Essa paused again.
Oliver shifted in his seat, and his leg rested against hers. He thought she’d pull it away. He thought she’d move over.
She didn’t.
“Anish,” she said. “Keep driving.”
“Can I take this off now?” Oliver asked as the sounds of Micah’s and Anish’s footsteps faded away.
“Yes,” Essa said.
Oliver blinked in the bright sunlight. They were surrounded by tall pines and waist-high boulders. The ground was dry and covered with wiry sagebrush and pockets of wildflowers and buffalo grass. He turned in a circle, looking for . . . he didn’t know what. When Essa had said they’d be dropped off in the woods, he’d imagined a big park or a golf course, somewhere with signs pointing the way. Bathrooms. A snack bar.
Outdoors, Chicago style.
But this?
He looked out over the meadow in front of them, a field of emptiness. Beyond that, he could see across a wide, wild valley to mountaintops in the distance. Mountain after mountain surrounded them, tree covered and hunched together like the nubby green backs of turtle shells. There were no man-made structures in sight.
He heard something above him. A rustling. He looked up and saw a large black bird high on a pine branch, adjusting his feathers and looking back at him. It cocked its head to one side and then the other, like it recognized Oliver and Essa, like it had been waiting for them. Something about the sheen of his feathers, the inky blackness of his curious eyes, the way his talons dug into the branch, convinced Oliver the bird was a bad omen. Like it had a message for them and it wasn’t good.
“First things first,” Essa said. She pulled her long braid over her shoulder and fiddled with her backpack. “We drink.”
She wants to get wasted? Up here? Plus I thought she didn’t . . .
Oliver could tell Essa read the expression on his face. “Ease up there, Chicago,” she said. “I meant water. We need to drink some water before we start. First rule of survival . . . stay hydrated.” Essa whipped a long plastic tube out of her backpack and stuck one end in her mouth and took a long drink. Then she held it out for Oliver. “Here. Take a drink.” Oliver looked confused. “It’s attached to a bladder full of water in my pack. You really have never done any outside stuff, huh?”
“Zero,” Oliver said. He took the tube and pulled in a long swallow of lukewarm water. The fact that they were sharing, that her lips had just been wrapped around the water spout before his, made him feel like there might be hope for the two of them after all.
“We always take one bladder for every two people. At least,” she explained. “You can get so dehydrated up here.”
Or maybe this is just what you do. Share water tubes.
Essa picked her way around a stand of pines to a place with a better view. “See that peak,” she asked, pointing. “The one way off, with the square top? That’s Long’s Peak. People die on that thing every year. It’s in the national park. We’re miles from there. We’re in the foothills, but where, exactly, I’m not sure yet.”
Oliver thought she’d know right away where they were. He looked up in the trees again, searching for that big black crow. It was gone. Silently flown off when Oliver wasn’t paying attention. He wondered if the bird had seen a bear or a pack of coyotes nearby, if it had flown to safety. He wanted to ask Essa about the animals up here, about the chances of them getting attacked and eaten. Or just lost and starving to death.
“Cool. We’ll find our way. No worries,” he lied.
Essa smiled. “Don’t be scared.” She looked him in the eye. Held it a little too long.
“How could you tell?”
“I just can.” She held out the water tube again, and he took it.
“Staying hydrated, right?”
“Right,” she said.
“So how do we find our way out of here?”
Essa adjusted her backpack and squinted into the sun. “Well, even if we didn’t have a map, we could start to figure out where we are. Start with the mountains we can see. The big ones.” She walked farther away from the stand of pines and sat on a large boulder. Oliver followed close behind. There was just enough room on the rock for him to sit next to her. “See those two peaks close together?”
“Yeah,” Oliver lied, looking in the direction she was pointing. He thought all the peaks looked close together.
“Those are in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. That’s Kiowa Peak and Apache Peak.”
He looked harder, but they still all looked the same to him. Just a long, bumpy ridge of indistinguishable, choppy granite peaks. One after the other under a blistering blue sky. The mountain range reminded him of the stegosaurus skeleton at the Field Museum in Chicago, each peak like one of the bony plates that lined the dinosaur’s spine. He couldn’t believe she could tell them apart.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I totally see that.”
“Then go way over to your right. That next big peak is Mount Audubon. It’s big and sloped. See it?”
Oliver nodded. Essa turned and studied his face. “You’re full of shit,” she said, smiling.
Oliver squinted again at the horizon. “You are correct. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Essa pointed again. “Lean this way. Now look directly where my finger is pointing.” He leaned into her shoulder. She put an arm around him and pulled him close, still pointing at the ridgeline. “See now? Look. Audubon is right there.”
Even if there had been an airplane flying over the mountain dragging a gigantic neon sign behind it that read, dude, this is mt. audubon, Oliver wouldn’t have known where it was. All he could focus on was the sun-kissed glow of Essa’s arm, the freckles on her shoulder, the wooden beads on her wrist.
She hopped off the boulder and started looking around at the ground.
“What are you doing now?” Oliver asked.
“Help me find two rocks about this big.” She pointed at her open palm. “We generally know the mountains are west of here, and we could also get that from the sun’s position. But it’s always good to be precise. And for that, we need a compass. Which we have. But if we were lost without one, I could make one. With two rocks and a stick.”
She wasn’t kidding. She found two palm-sized rocks and a stick about a foot long. She jammed the stick into the ground and placed one of the rocks at the end of the stick’s shadow. She looked at him and smiled triumphantly.
“That’s a compass?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.
“That’s a compass.”
“Seriously?”
“As time passes, the shadow will start to move,” Essa explained. “After about twenty minutes, we put the second rock at the end of the shadow’s new position. The line between the two rocks is your east-west line. The first rock marks west, because the sun moves from east to west during the day. Get it?”
“Wow. Yeah. I actually do. So now we . . . wait?”
“Yep. And we’ll have an accurate compass reading. From the looks of where we are in relation to Kiowa, Apache, and Audubon, we must be in the foothills near Sunshine Canyon or Lefthand Canyon.” Essa pulled out her topographic map. Anish had marked their drop spot. “Yep. We’re up Lefthand Canyon. Looks like he wants us to find the quickest route to Gold Hill from here.”
“Gold Hill?”
“Old-school gold rush town. It looks like a movie set, honestly. Populati
on two hundred something.”
Essa studied the map, showing Oliver how to read a topo. How each skinny curved line represented an elevation. How to avoid climbing too much or hiking to the edge of a ridge. How to take a compass bearing and plot the fastest way there.
She sat down and held the map in her lap. She looked so at home on the hard, dry ground. Like she was made to live outside, like the sage and the sun and the granite were family, siblings who were so happy to have her up here for the day.
“You’re a badass,” Oliver said, sitting next to her and peering over her shoulder at the map.
Essa’s face lit up at the compliment.
That’s when Oliver noticed it. The same feeling he’d had in the wildflower garden outside the Zendo. The dry mountain breeze around them, the trees looming overhead. The air feeling alive and moving and electric, but still at the same time. He looked at her lips.
Essa ran a finger along a crack in the dry dirt next to her. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
She looked up, her eyes soft. “What’s wrong with your sister?”
This. Always this. Always Lilly.
He looked at the compass. The shadow had started to move. Soon they’d know what direction to head in. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to go into the whole tragic ordeal. He wanted to turn to Essa, to wrap his arms around her waist, pull her next to him and kiss her. And kiss her and kiss her and kiss her. Until the sun went down. Until the wind grew cold. He wasn’t scared anymore; he didn’t care if they had to sleep out here all night.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t—”
“She has schizophrenia,” he said. “She’s sort of in and out of reality all the time. When it gets really bad, she has to live in a hospital. That’s where she is now.”
Essa stopped running her finger along the ground. She was still and didn’t say anything for what felt like a long, long time. Oliver watched the stick’s shadow silently slide across the ground, the sun whispering a clue about how to get them home. Oliver knew what was coming next, what Essa would say after learning about his sister’s illness. Most people had the same response: I’m so sorry.
Or, That must be so tough.
Or, How awful.
As if his sister had died. Or she was a bad day, bad luck, a bad hand.
“Are you ever in the same one?” Essa looked right at him, the sun glinting off the butterfly clip at the end of her braid. “The same reality, I mean.”
A smile slipped across Oliver’s face. No one had ever asked him anything even close to that. He thought about all the wild things Lilly thought were real: messages hidden in the bricks of buildings, secret codes in crossword puzzles, newscasts asking for her help with unsolved murders.
“No,” he said finally. “I just lie and pretend I’m in hers. That I believe all her conspiracy theories and paranoia.”
He thought back to her first real delusion. It wasn’t about anything glamorous, like a secret code or a hidden treasure. It was about the tumble dryer.
“Put your hand on it,” she’d said, pressing her palm to the top of the cold, lifeless dryer. They were in the basement of their Chicago townhouse. “Feel it vibrating?”
She was seventeen at the time; Oliver was fifteen. They’d taken her to different counselors and doctors. They knew something wasn’t right, but she’d never hallucinated. Not like this.
“Um . . .” Oliver touched the dryer and stalled, trying to figure out what to say.
“They’ve put a device in it,” Lilly whispered. Her eyes were so intense, fiery, sharp. “They’re listening to us. They’re going to pump poisonous gas in through the dryer any minute.”
“Lilly, I don’t think . . .” He stopped when he saw the rage. The distrust. She was testing him by telling him her theory. Testing his loyalty. A chill went down his back. For the first time in his life, he was afraid of his own sister. He didn’t know this new person standing in front of him. He had no idea what reality she was in, what she might think next.
“I think our parents have enemies.” She nodded slowly, as if that would clear everything up. “There. It’s vibrating again. Feel it? They’re recording us.”
Oliver wasn’t sure he had a choice. “Yeah,” he said, resting his hand on the cool white metal. “I do.”
From then on, that’s what he always did. Acted like he believed her. Like they were pirates on the same ocean again.
Now Oliver looked down at the dry cracked ground. “It’s the reason I’m the only one she trusts. It’s the reason we’re close.” He picked up a small stone and tossed it, watching it arc into the sky and make its way down again. “Or were.”
Essa paused. Raised her eyebrows, silently asking for more of an explanation. Oliver didn’t offer one.
“It’s sort of the same with my mom,” she said, looking at the mountains in the distance. The sun was shining on their granite faces, making gray look like a cheery, graceful color able to compete with the optimistic blue of the sky. “She’s not really here when she’s here. Or at least, you can never be sure.”
Oliver followed Essa’s gaze and thought he could identify Mount Audubon this time. The gentle slope Essa had described, the ridgeline between it and the peaks of Kiowa and Apache. He wondered if mountains were like a language. Maybe he had to study them and listen to them, be around people who knew them well, until suddenly they started to make sense. Word by word, peak by peak.
“It sucks,” he said. “Feeling lonely beside someone you love.” Oliver worried the second he said it. He worried it was too much. Too sappy. Too emo. Too much of a downer.
“Exactly,” Essa said.
Essa looked at the stick’s shadow, and Oliver thought he saw tears pooling in her eyes. She blinked them away. The shadow had moved almost an inch. “There,” she said, placing the second rock at the end of the new shadow. “That’s our east-west line. Which makes that way north. And that way south.”
Oliver looked in the directions Essa was pointing. Any second she would get up and they’d start walking. This little moment without any direction, without a fixed way to go was about to end. He looked at her sanctuary tattoo and wondered if she was like a language, too. Like the mountains, like the mysterious koan story he’d heard in the Zendo. That maybe if he studied Essa long enough, he’d learn how to know her, how to make an inroad, to make her open up and let him in, if only for one brief summer.
“I don’t have to explain things to you,” he said. “It’s like you’ve known everything I’m going to say all along.” It tumbled out of Oliver’s mouth before he could edit his thoughts, before he was even sure what he was saying.
Essa had pulled the sun stick out of the ground and was getting ready to stand up. She stopped. He worried that he’d fumbled the words, that what he said hadn’t made sense. That he’d actually have to explain to her what he meant by saying that he—didn’t have to explain things to her.
Essa put the stick back on the dry ground and stayed next to him. She didn’t ask him to explain; she didn’t have to. “It’s like we can just . . . be,” she said.
Oliver smiled. Exactly.
He stood and held out his hand. She took it and let him pull her up. A swirl of dust blew against their legs, a gust of wind that moved the pines. Just behind her, Oliver saw the crow again. It had alighted in the tree, this time on a lower branch. The bird had the same knowing look in its eye, the same otherworldly presence, but Oliver decided that it wasn’t a bad omen after all. It was a good one.
A few weeks in Boulder, and I’m already reading omens and kissing hippie girls.
And he was. His hand gently slid around the nape of her neck, just under her thick braid. She leaned so close he could feel the curve of her breasts, the hill of her hip. He kissed her. Again and again. It was all the things: Tingly and warm and addicti
ve. A little awkward and clunky and rushed. He was worried he had too much spit in his mouth. He was worried he was a bad kisser.
But the way she was kissing back, he suspected he wasn’t.
Essa finally pulled away, smiling. “So . . . north?” she asked.
“I’ll go wherever you point me.”
19
ESSA
Essa was right. They were in the foothills, not far from Sunshine Canyon. They headed north and used the topo map to find the easiest route to Sunshine Canyon Road.
Essa smiled, still flushed from the kiss. “Okay, then we should go west,” Essa said, pointing. The road was dry and dusty, and looked like a worn and weathered leather belt stretching into the distance. Essa pulled two granola bars out of her pack as they started walking. “Don’t let yourself get too hungry.”
Essa couldn’t believe how easy it felt to be with Oliver, how natural. Like they’d been hiking these hills together since they were kids. Like they’d been stealing kisses in the shadows of stick compasses for years. Which made her feel like she suddenly had a boyfriend. Which made her feel guilty. Which made her think of Puck. Before she zipped up her backpack, she reached for her cell phone. She was sure she wouldn’t have service until they got closer to Gold Hill, but she wanted to check anyway. Puck was at a friend’s house all day, a friend with a very dependable mom. She would be well taken care of, but Essa hated being out of reach all the same. That was the biggest downside to her love of the wilderness.
Her screen lit up. No bars.
“Checking on Puck?” Oliver asked.
Essa nodded. She loved that he knew that right away. “No service up here.”
“Do you always feel guilty? Being away from her?”
“Pretty much.” Essa gently kicked at a piece of gravel on the road and sent it flying into the tall, dry grass beside her.
Oliver forced the last brittle bite of granola bar down his throat. “Same here. Being away from Chicago and all. Leaving Lilly.” He tucked the wrapper in his pocket. “My aunt keeps telling me to have fun this summer. But half the time I feel so bad . . . You’re lucky that your sister gets to hang out with you so much.”