Zen and Gone

by Emily France

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “You don’t know?” Micah raised his eyebrows.

  “She was hanging out in the backyard, and she wouldn’t really talk to me. I tried,” Oliver said. “The only thing she asked me about was the trek to Gold Hill. And then she accused me of . . .”

  Being in love with Essa.

  Micah looked at him, apparently waiting for him to finish the sentence.

  Oliver didn’t.

  Micah furrowed his brow, a too-intense look filling his eyes. “She accused you of what?”

  “Nothing,” Oliver said. “Never mind.”

  Micah seemed to soften. As if he realized he was being too harsh and was trying to backtrack. “Sorry,” he mumbled. The bell over the shop’s front door jingled as a few customers came in and headed for the bin of mini animals. “I’m an only.”

  “Only?”

  “Only child. Puck’s like my little sister. We hang. She helps me memorize all the dragon figurines we sell; I help her with computer stuff. I’m protective, I guess.” Micah flashed an awkward smile.

  “Yeah,” Oliver said. “Sure.” He just wanted the conversation to end. There was something about Micah’s response that didn’t feel right. He sounded envious that Oliver had been at Essa’s house. But why? Micah had never seemed into her, but maybe Oliver had missed it. Or maybe it was about Puck. Micah got way too intense at the mention of her name, like the subject of Essa’s little sister had hit a nerve he didn’t want to talk about. Oliver wasn’t sure he bought the only-child/surrogate-brother explanation.

  “I better go make sure they don’t try to pocket any of the mini animals,” Micah said, gesturing toward the customers. “We’re missing, like, fifteen of the new ones.”

  “The new ones?”

  “Hippie Mini-Ducks. They’re wearing flower headbands. Peace necklaces. The whole nine yards. People eat ’em up.” Micah smiled another unconvincing smile and headed for the customers.

  Oliver watched him go.

  Boulder:

  Hot Zen girls.

  Jealous Theraveda guys.

  Pot-themed sub sandwiches.

  And now . . .

  Hippie Mini-Ducks.

  Micah stopped before he reached the animal bins. He turned back to Oliver. “Did she invite you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Essa. Did she invite you on the trek? It’s going to be three days. Really brutal. We have to find our way through the backcountry. And Anish can’t even come, either. Realized it’s his grandmother’s birthday this weekend. And she’s making her famous chicken korma. Anish misses chicken korma for no man. Or woman. Or hike in the—”

  “Yeah,” Oliver cut him off. “I’m going.”

  Micah looked at the floor and slowly nodded. “Great. We’re going to the Comanche Peak Wilderness. Should be fun.” He smiled and headed for the customers but looked like he was trying to hide his disappointment.

  It didn’t work.

  June 22

  22

  ESSA

  “I’ll carry the tent,” Micah said, opening the back of his rusty Jeep. “And don’t say I never do anything nice for you.”

  “If you’re going to whine, I’ll carry it.” Essa adjusted the butterfly clip in her hair and looked up in the sky, squinting in the bright Colorado sun. In the distance, patches of glimmering snow dotted the gray peaks and ridges of the Mummy Range. Snow hung around in the high elevations until midsummer. But they were well below the tree line at eighty-five hundred feet. It had already melted. “And why’d you bring a kite?” Essa asked, pointing to the limp canvas next to her pack.

  “I didn’t,” Micah said. He eyed the red-blue-and-yellow pattern. “That’s the new Lykos. Anish must have stashed it in here. He keeps saying he wants to try it. I hope he didn’t take down the one that I hung. That thing was a pain in the ass.”

  Essa took one last look at the sky over the meadows and thick forest beyond them. Dark clouds threatened from the west.

  But it’s only 7 a.m. It’s not supposed to storm until after noon.

  She’d checked the forecast over and over before they left Boulder in the wee hours of the morning. It called for clear skies until 1 p.m. and then a brief shower, typical for summer afternoons in the mountains. The clouds to west looked worse than that. Much worse.

  “So how does this work again?” Oliver was in the front seat, studying a map he’d pulled out of a Colorado guidebook. He was holding the map upside down. He looked back at Essa. “We’re trying to get where?”

  Micah raised his eyebrows at Essa, making it obvious that he thought it was a horrible idea to have invited Oliver.

  “I thought you liked him?” Essa whispered. “You’re the one who invited him to the bonfire that night—”

  “And where the hell are we?” Oliver looked back down at his map.

  Essa looked at Micah. “He won’t hold us up,” she whispered. “He’ll be fine . . . I think.”

  “You just better not be into him,” Micah said way too loudly. “Puck will go apeshit.”

  “I’m not into him, okay?” Essa lied. “What’s your problem, anyway?” She walked toward the front of the car and to Oliver’s open passenger’s-side window. “Your map’s upside down,” she said, gently turning it around in his hands. The tip of her long brown hair brushed against his leg as she leaned in.

  “Oh.” Oliver smiled. “Thanks.” She caught him glancing at her tattoo.

  Sanctuary.

  He looked at it like he was still puzzling over its meaning. Like he was thinking about the koan it came from. Or maybe he was just thinking about her. She couldn’t tell, but it made her skin feel a little tingly, a little touchy. Like it was being watched. Admired.

  Essa crossed her arms on the window frame and rested her chin on her forearms. “We use our topo map and compass to find the quickest backcountry route . . .” Essa paused, studying the map on Oliver’s knees. “To there.” She pointed to a small circle of blue. “Brown’s Lake.”

  Oliver’s hazel eyes burned with a question. “But why?” He smiled.

  She knew he was giving her a hard time, but she also knew he didn’t get it. Not really. He said he’d liked their little trek to Gold Hill, but now they were much higher and going much farther. Essa loved it up here; she loved leaving her messed-up life below. Especially now, with the Portland plan looming. But she always felt it as they climbed into the mountains, like every thousand feet of elevation took her farther and farther from reality. Like height was a door she walked through, a portal to a better world. Nearer to the sky. Simplified under the sun’s close glare. She and Puck survived on so little down in Boulder. But down there, it was painful. Up here, it made her feel alive.

  “It’s a game,” she said. “Sort of. If you were camping or hiking and you’d lost your way, you’d need to know the best way to get out. It’s like practice.”

  “Right . . . practice.” Oliver shifted his long legs, his knees poking out of his ripped jeans and shoved up against the Jeep’s glove box. He looked back at the map. The worry about inviting him started to grow.

  You kiss a guy one time, and you’re already making bad decisions.

  “And are we here?” Oliver pointed to his newly righted map. “Comanche Peak Wilderness? Because my book says it’s full of coyote, mountain lion, mule deer, elk, marmot, and black bears. I mean, mountain lions and bears? Holy shit. And what the hell is a marmot?”

  “Yes, we’re in Comanche,” Essa said. “And I’ll explain what a marmot is on the way. They’re chill. Don’t worry about it.”

  She conveniently avoided addressing the mountain lion and bear issue as Micah came around from the back of the car.

  “I hate to break up this moving wilderness date, but look up.” He pointed into the sky at the approaching dark clouds. “We need to get going.
”

  With their packs jostling against their backs, they struck out across the broad alpine meadow. The plan was to head northeast on the Comanche Peak trail and then break off into the backcountry from there.

  The first three hours of the hike was on a well-marked trail. It wound through a forest and then climbed to a ridge with views of the looming Mummy range. Essa kept an eye on Oliver, and surprisingly, he was doing well. Despite the altitude, he wasn’t too out of breath. And he didn’t complain or seem all that worried about being in the wilderness.

  Until they left the trail.

  “So how do you know which way we’re going?” Oliver jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and looked over the open, unmarked field ahead of them. “Don’t we need one of those rock-and-stick compasses?”

  “You know what I have in here?” Micah patted the side pocket of his backpack. “A topo map. And a real compass. Amazing inventions.”

  “Don’t be a smartass,” Essa said. She turned to Oliver. “Gold Hill was easy. We didn’t really need to take a bearing. But here, we’re using the real deal. A real compass.”

  Oliver nodded, and they all walked on in silence. Birds twittered around them, and the breeze suddenly picked up. Essa eyed the clouds. They looked thick and endless; she couldn’t see the back edge of the storm. That was always the thing in Colorado—the big sky. Usually, if there was a storm, you could see where it began and where it ended. Which made a storm a beautiful thing, the visible impermanence of it.

  But not this storm. The front edge of it was racing to blot out the sun, and the mountains were shielding wherever it ended.

  “Wait. Did you hear that?” Oliver stopped and turned. He scanned the rolling field behind them and the random mounds of giant rocks and sporadic clumps of trees sprinkled across it.

  “There,” Micah pointed to a rock pile ten feet away. “Just a pica, dude.” Essa and Oliver turned in time to see the mouselike animal scurry between boulders and dive into a hole.

  “No, that wasn’t it,” Oliver said, still scanning the field. “It was louder than that. Too loud for a mouse. Are bears out already?”

  “Chill,” Micah came over and put a hand on one of Oliver’s broad shoulders. “It’s going to be a long three days if you freak at every noise. This is the great outdoors! It talks if you listen.”

  “Talks?”

  Essa flanked Oliver’s other side. “We’re in a meadow. We’d see a bear easily out here. Just try not to panic. Okay?”

  “Yeah, but we’re heading in there, right?” Oliver pointed ahead at the dense forest.

  “Just trust us,” Micah said. “The first rule of wilderness survival: panic makes everything worse.”

  “I feel like you guys have at least five different ‘first rules of survival,’” Oliver said. Micah glared at him. “Just sayin’.”

  A peal of thunder sliced the thin air. They still had at least another thirty minutes until they could make it to the tree cover of the forest, and the last thing a hiker wanted was to be the tallest object in an exposed meadow when a lightning storm moved in. Dozens of Colorado hikers were killed by strikes each year. Essa didn’t want to be one of them.

  “We need to speed up,” she said. A stiff mountain breeze swept around them, tinged with cold as the sun was doused behind a cloud. “We need to get under tree cover.”

  She walked ahead, her trusty battered hiking boots crunching the stiff alpine grass. Micah followed, his pack now bouncing against his back in rhythm with his bushy hair. He pulled out a red bandana and wrapped it around his forehead.

  “Wait,” Oliver said. He stopped. Again.

  “What now?” Micah mumbled.

  “I saw something.” Oliver was standing ten feet behind them, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance.

  “There’s nothing back there,” Micah huffed. “That’s a field of big rocks and a few tree stands. Seriously, we need to keep going.”

  But Essa saw it, too. Movement. A flash of something. In a clump of large boulders and a few twisted runt pines. It was too big to just be a raccoon or a marmot. A small bear? A mountain lion? She tried to shake it off, but adrenaline moved through her veins, an icy feeling oozing from her chest down into her arms.

  Whatever it is, it’ll leave us alone.

  “Just make noise as we go,” Essa said. “Talk louder than usual. It’s like bear and mountain lion repellent. They don’t want to mess with us any more than we want to mess with them.”

  Another loud clap of thunder rumbled through the sky.

  “Shit,” Micah said. “Rain will be here any minute. Let’s go.”

  A bolt of lightning flashed to their left. And again to their right. A brilliant arc of white struck a mountain top.

  “Run,” Essa said.

  Just as the rain burst out of the sky, they reached the trees. They ran another two hundred yards, pounding across the darkened forest floor. Dead and broken tree limbs littered the ground like the craggy broken bones of people no one cared about enough to bury. Brown pine needles crunched underfoot. Thick raindrops made their way through the tree cover overhead, but it was better than being exposed in the meadow. Hopefully, if lightning struck again, it would strike a treetop and not one of them. They stopped to catch their breath.

  Snap.

  They all heard it.

  Their heavy breathing immediately stopped, and they all turned toward the noise at the same time. There was something in the woods with them. Something shifting behind a tree. Then it made a sound. Not a roar. Or an animal grunt.

  A giggle.

  “Hello?” Essa stepped forward. “Is somebody there?”

  Twenty feet away, like a ghost, like a vision, she emerged from behind a tree. Her blue eyes shone bright in the misty gray light like two robin’s eggs that had fallen out of a nest. Her stringy hair dripped down her unicorn T-shirt. She wore the pink backpack that was much too big for her shoulders; the wheels she’d drawn on it with a permanent marker were still clear and round, refusing to smear in the rain. A tiny smile spread across her candy-stained red lips.

  Essa dropped her pack.

  “Puck?”

  23

  ESSA

  Essa knelt on the ground beside Puck and pushed a few strands of her sister’s wet hair away from her face. Puck’s cheeks were bright pink, flushed from running in the rain. Essa held her like she was a wounded bird Essa had found in the woods, broken wings, crooked feathers.

  Then Essa got pissed.

  “Why on earth are you here?” Essa still knelt on the ground, her pants soaking up rain from the ground. “Wait . . . how are you even here?”

  Puck smiled. “I was hiding under the kite.”

  “What kite?” Essa asked.

  Micah knelt beside them. “You mean the kite in the back of my Jeep? The paraglider?”

  Puck nodded. “Yep. I was so scared! I thought you guys were going to lift it up and bust me.” She beamed, proud of her deception. “I’ve been trailing you guys for hours. Yay.”

  “Don’t say ‘yay,’” Essa said, glowering. “This is not smart. Not funny. Not cool in any way, shape, or form.”

  “I mean, it’s pretty smart,” Micah said smiling. He put his hand on top of Puck’s wet head and ruffled her matted hair. “You gotta give her that.”

  “So you’re a stowaway?” Oliver asked, his face lighting up. “I mean, that’s pretty badass. I’ve always wanted to be a stowaway.”

  Puck kept her lips pursed and glared at Oliver, making it clear to everyone that she was still not happy about whatever was going on with him and Essa. But her face softened like she couldn’t keep it up any longer. She reached into her pink backpack.

  “I am a badass,” she said with a grin. “And I brought Badass.” She held up Badass the Dragon like she was a trophy awarded to the Best Stowaway of the Year. “She ha
d to come.”

  “Right on,” Oliver said, gently laughing. Micah started, too.

  “Do not laugh, people.” Essa stood up, the rain dripping down her braid and back, her pants sagging with the weight of rainwater. “This is so not funny. We have to go home. Immediately.” She grabbed Puck’s hand and started hiking back the way they came.

  “Hold up, Ess,” Micah said. “You can’t go back now. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a storm? Lightning?”

  “I don’t care,” Essa called back. “We’re going.”

  She made it another ten feet, yanking Puck by the arm.

  “Ow,” Puck whined. “You’re pulling.”

  “Why did you stow away?” Essa asked, still marching through the woods.

  “Because I wanted to come. Duh.” Puck yanked her hand out of Essa’s, but still stormed along behind her older sister. “I’ve only been asking to come on one of these trips for a million years.”

  Thunder crackled above them. The loudest yet.

  Essa froze.

  Of course they couldn’t go back now. She couldn’t take Puck into an exposed alpine meadow with lightning striking all around them. They couldn’t hike for three hours soaking wet in a storm at over eight thousand feet elevation. Essa looked back at Micah, her eyes wide. “What are we going to do?” she called.

  Micah yanked his bandana off his head and wrung out the water. “You know what we’re going to do. Think.”

  But she couldn’t. She realized that maybe for the first time in all her mountain hiking days, she was in a complete and total panic. Thoughts skipped in her mind like tiny stones across a lake, bouncing along the surface and disappearing beneath the water.

  Thought. Thought. Gone.

  Thought. Thought. Gone.

  Essa walked back toward Micah and Oliver. She grabbed Puck’s hand again. “I can’t . . . think,” Essa said, shaking her head.

  “Okay, I’ll walk you through it,” Micah said. “What’s the protocol if you’re exposed in a storm?”