“Aahhhhhh,” Jesse lets out a huge sigh. “Man, this makes it all worth it. Every damn day in the van, every show where we make two dollars in change, every spaghetti-and-no-sauce dinner. I mean, this is it, man. This is the upside of living exactly the way you want to. Moments like these!”
“Amen.” I recognize Danielle’s sweet and mellow voice from the other side of the pool. She swims over to Jesse and nestles in beside him. I lean back, find a notch to rest my head in, and let my body float up to the surface of the water. The challenge is to hover just below the surface where I can stay warm. A streak of light brushes across the sky.
“Hey,” I cry out and sit up, looking for G.
“I saw it,” she says from somewhere nearby. “Leftovers from last night. We’ll probably see more tonight since there’s so little light pollution out here.” The stars alone are a magnificent show, like someone splatter-painted the night sky with silver. There’s so much light and so little depth perception. It’s dizzying; like staring at a window screen and through it at the same time. I reach my hand out of the water, half-expecting to come away with a fistful of the tiny silver dots in my hand.
“Dude, are you all right?” It’s Tim. I quickly submerge my hand into the water.
“Uh-huh.” I’m better than all right. I let my mind drift back to New York. I think about Alex and people at school. It’s probably snowing there or just about to. They’re probably all getting ready for Christmas—going to the mall, making massive amounts of food. It’s not that different to imagine what people are doing without me. The same things they would have been doing anyway.
Jesse’s right: this moment does make a lot of things worth it. But Jesse’s not me, and neither is G or Lyle. Or Emily. I wonder guiltily if there was something she needed. I’m sure I can make it up to her, find out what’s wrong, and everything will be okay. I let these thoughts and the warm water soothe the kernels of worry in my mind.
When we finally get out my muscles are relaxed and my skin is tingly. I’m curious about Jesse and Danielle, who seem to be sharing a towel in a rather intimate way. As we walk back towards the campground I lag behind and ask G about it.
“Danielle? Yeah, they always screw around. She’s got a thing for younger guys.”
“I thought she was with Rippy.”
“She is. But I guess they have an open relationship or whatever.”
“So he doesn’t mind?”
“I don’t think so. It’s pretty much all out in the open. They’re with each other, you know. But they can be with other people too. I don’t know. Whatever, straight people are weird.”
“Hey,” I say, feigning offense.
“Especially you, Andrew. You’re the weirdest of the weird.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it.
Back at the campground there’s a huge bonfire going and a whole bunch of people sitting around, listening to two guys and a girl play guitar and sing. I look around the circle hopefully, but there’s no sign of Emily. I sit with G and Tim, Jesse and Danielle for a while, listening to the music. Pretty soon the warmth of the fire and the soft music begin to take their toll, and I can feel my head nodding forward on my neck like a broken doll’s.
“Hey,” G says, shaking my shoulder. “I’m heading back to the tents. You should come with me before you fall asleep and roll into the fire.”
I’m too tired to argue, so I let her guide me back to our campsite. I’m thinking Emily must be there, but the inside of my tent is empty and our sleeping bags are still tightly in their rolls. I manage to unroll them and set them up the way we have been, so one is like a bottom sheet and the other’s like a blanket. I fall asleep almost immediately.
When I wake up, I’m still alone. There’s no sign that Emily has been there. What there is, is a pit in my stomach and the feeling that I’ve made a terrible mistake.
CHRISTMAS DAY
The immediate view from the hospital window is of the parking lot. But beyond that the first streaks of daylight are beginning to illuminate the sandstone shapes of the desert with reds and pinks. I stand up from the plastic chair that has been my bed for the night and stretch my hands over my head, hoping to crack my back. Nothing. I go over to the window and stare out past the parking lot to the strip of stores on the main drag next to the Roswell Hospital. A check-cashing store blinks with neon lights. Someone is emptying the trash cans at the twenty-four-hour gas station next door; otherwise, everything is gray and quiet.
I look back at the bed where G is lying motionless. There is a tube coming out of her nose and an IV coming out of her arm. The right side of her face is starting to yellow and bruise, and her right leg is supported by a series of ropes and pulleys that resemble a medieval torture device. The only sounds coming from the bed are the beeps of a heart monitor and an occasional loud, snorty breath that makes me look expectantly over to see if she wakes up, even though the nurses told me she would sleep for a while.
All of these things, the colors of her bruises and the sounds of the machine, are vivid and very real. Even as G snores, I am awake in a horrible, jittery overtired way. I am here, and I’m prepared for whatever comes next, I think.
“We gave her enough painkiller for a small pony,” the short, pudgy, redheaded nurse I like best told me. Her nametag says Dolly. “A femur’s a really bad break. Your friend is probably in shock. She’ll wake up when she’s ready.”
There’s a tray of food at the end of G’s bed, delivered at some point in the night, but I feel too guilty to touch any of it. Eventually, the gross taste in my mouth is enough to push me to drink the red Gatorade in the pink plastic cup.
My backpack is on the floor next to the chair where I spent the night, but most of its contents are still back at the campground in my tent. I paw through it, even though I know there’s no food. My dead cell phone, Into the Wild, a semi-clean T-shirt, a few miscellaneous flyers from our travels, including a menu from Adelaide’s, and this notebook. This notebook with its stupid meaningless lists and no answers. G told me I should be writing things down, and I ignored her because I thought the point was to just keep moving and experience every new thing in the moment. It’s the sight of her with those tubes coming out of her nose that makes me realize what happens when you keep moving forward without paying attention to where you’re going.
I pick up the battered copy of Into the Wild—the back cover’s come off somewhere in my travels—and walk it down the hall to the family waiting room where there’s a shelf with a few other paperback orphans. I leave it there and walk away. I already know what he knows, and I didn’t have to read Tolstoy or starve myself to death in the Alaskan bush to figure it out.
It’s still early, but I know pretty soon there will be a police officer here to interview me about what happened. I didn’t even try to lie to the nurses about my age, and they told me that since I was a minor, they would have to call DSS and the local police. The thing is, I’m not even really sure what happened.
At the bottom of my bag is a capless blue ballpoint pen. I brush a few crumbs of granola and ink off the tip and find that it writes. The last time I wrote in here, I was back in Hot Springs, Arkansas, adding to my list of useful facts for life after high school—maybe even thinking that it was different than the lists that were in the divorce diary. But it wasn’t. It was missing the guts, the feelings, the parts worth caring about. Now I have to write about the hard things, the things that are going to allow me to go home a different person than I was a few weeks ago. Because if I don’t, then it’s just like G said, I’ll still be wondering what I’m coming to.
It’s a little before six now. I don’t know what time the police show up, but I figure since it’s Christmas morning, I’ve got at least a few hours to sort out the last few days. That will be a decent start, and it will at least keep everyone from getting arrested. I’m sure one of the first things they’ll do is call Mom, and I definitely need to get my story straight before that happens. G shifts a little in the h
ospital bed. The beeping sound of her monitor speeds up momentarily and then slows back down. The sound is unnerving. It’s like she’s reminding me to get my head out of my ass and start writing. I smile and reach over to pat her hand, avoiding the purple part where the IV is inserted. “Okay, okay,” I say softly to the beeping machines and the sleeping G. I turn to a fresh page and pick up the pen.
WHAT HAPPENED WAS
I didn’t really start to get worried about Emily until she didn’t turn up for lunch. She had missed breakfast too, but I just figured she was off having some alone time, like she had done all the time when we were in Hot Springs. After breakfast I went with Jesse, Rippy, and a few other people on an edible plant walk. At first I tried really hard to remember all the names of the different plants this guy Adrian was telling us about, but after a while it started to blend together, and I just enjoyed the hike and the warm sunshine on my face. After the hike I dashed back to the campsite, fully expecting Emily to be there or at least to find some sign that she had been by. But there was nothing. When the gong sounded for lunch I rushed over, but she never turned up. I had signed up for a cleanup crew after lunch and made a point of asking everyone on the crew if they had seen Emily. No one had.
After lunch G waited for me to go to a workshop on nonviolent direct action. I was interested, even though I thought the workshop title sounded like a contradiction in terms. But after the lunch crew was finished, I was too distracted by Emily’s disappearance to focus on much else.
“She’s been acting a little weird since we got here,” G said.
“You think so?” I was kind of annoyed at her for being the one to notice.
“Sometimes big groups of people are harder,” G said vaguely. But there was a lot in that statement that wasn’t said. For people who attract a lot of drama. For people who are trying through sheer willpower not to use. For people who are insecure like Emily. I knew what she meant. I knew all those things. But I was kind of annoyed that she wasn’t giving Emily more credit. And I was kind of annoyed that she knew Emily as well, if not better, than I did. Did that mean I cared a lot more than I thought I did? Do I still?
I spent the afternoon wandering around the campground, asking people if they had seen her. I was starting to imagine her dehydrated and wasted in the desert or withering away in some cave, weakened by a scorpion’s sting or being devoured by wild hyenas.
Finally I ran into the girl I had seen on the first day with the drum and the toddler. The toddler was wearing a very soggy cloth diaper and playing in the mud puddle underneath a water spigot. She had been up early with her son and seen Emily heading down the trail that led to the hot springs. She didn’t know the time, but she guessed it was six or six-thirty. I had already walked over to the hot springs once that afternoon and seen no sign of Emily, but because I didn’t have any better leads I walked back that way. There were a few people in the pools, but no Emily. It was comforting to know that someone had seen her at least once that day.
Right before the dinner gong rang she turned up at the campsite. Her face was sunburned and her eyes were bright. “Drew,” she said when she saw me. “I’ve had the most incredible day!” She wrapped her arms around my neck and started swaying like we were dancing. She smelled like pine trees.
“Where the hell have you been?” I said harshly.
But she answered like she hadn’t even noticed. “It was incredible,” she said dreamily. “I walked up to the ridge last night, and I just sat there, looking at the stars and thinking about everything, you know? And nothing at all. I tried to clear my head of all the polluting thoughts and toxic feelings I was having. And I just sat there, and then before I knew it the sun was coming up. So I came down to grab a little bit of food, but you guys were all still sleeping so I hiked back up there and just sat some more, and thought about things and waited.”
“Waited for what?”
“For guidance, I guess. For my spirit animal to tell me what to do.”
If I hadn’t been so annoyed I probably would have laughed at this last part, but a quick glance at Emily’s face told me she was completely serious. I bit the inside of my cheek before I responded. “So did you figure it out?”
“I think so,” she said. But she didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask. We walked towards dinner together in silence. I was trying to come up with a way to say what I’d been feeling all day, how worried I’d been. But mostly, I realized, I was mad at her selfishness, and I didn’t know where that conversational road would take us. When we were almost at dinner I grabbed her arm harder than I meant to and blurted out, “I was really worried about you.” Those were the words I said, but in my mind it sounded like, “I’m really pissed at you.”
She looked at me strangely. “That’s sweet of you, Drew.” It reminded me of the way you would talk to an old person, or someone who was speaking English for the first time and doing a really bad job.
Emily sat with us at dinner but barely picked at her food. She kept sighing and staring off dreamily in the direction of the ridgeline. I could tell she was dying for someone to ask about her day, but no one took the bait. Finally Danielle took the bait. “How was your day, Emily?”
Emily shook her head. “You have no idea. This place is magical.”
I expected Danielle or someone to snicker, but no one did. “It’s pretty special,” Danielle agreed. “But it’s also pretty remote. If you’re going to wander off, you should probably tell someone where you’re going. Some people were kind of worried about you.” Emily smiled and nodded but didn’t respond.
“Soooo,” said Tim. “The Bike Derby is after dinner, huh? Do you think anyone would mind if I recorded it?”
“I don’t think so,” Danielle said. “They would probably be pretty psyched. Some people have been working on their bikes all week.” I thought about the pile of junked bicycles I had seen parked up by Steamers on the way in. Rippy came over to our table and stood behind Danielle. He was shirtless but still wearing the velvet jester’s hat he’d had on the first day. He put his hands on Danielle’s shoulders and began kneading her neck. “Everyone ready for Derby?” he asked without ever really looking down at the table. “I could use some help getting the fire going.”
“I’ll help,” Jesse offered.
“Me too,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I thought I saw a ripple of annoyance cross Emily’s forehead. Before I finished my food Emily got up from the table, took her plate, and relocated herself to a stump outside the tent.
“I think that’s your cue,” G said in between mouthfuls of squash stew.
“Whatever,” I said, trying to sound more irritated than I felt. It was still my turn to be annoyed.
Jesse scraped the last spoonfuls out of his bowl and stood up. “You still coming, Andrew?”
I took one last look at Emily pouting outside the tent and made my decision. “Yeah, I’m in.”
***
I lift my fingers up from the notebook paper and shift the pen from one hand to the other. I flex my hand wide open; my fingers are out of practice for this kind of thing. It’s cloudy, and the day is still gray. G is sleeping, and the green bleep of the monitors goes on steady and certain.
A nurse comes in to check on G. This one is younger than Dolly but more severe-looking. Her brown hair is turning prematurely gray and is pulled back in a ponytail. She checks something on one of G’s charts and plumps her pillow. I wince, waiting for her eyes to open and glare at the nurse, but G just moans slightly and settles back in to sleep. The nurse pauses at the end of the bed and eyeballs the untouched food tray. “You don’t want any of this?”
“I wasn’t … I didn’t want to …” I mumble a half-response.
“She’s not going to eat it,” the nurse says, not unkindly. “They’ll just come and clear it, and it will go to waste. If you’re hungry, you should eat. I’ve got two boys about your age, and they’re always hungry,” she adds. She’s barely out of the room before I pounce on the tr
ay. It’s not much; some applesauce, a banana, and a piece of cold turkey covered in congealed gravy. At first I hesitate on the turkey, but my hunger is stronger than my squeamishness. It’s not that bad, and I wash it all down with some cold water from the fountain in the hallway.
I want to run down the hall after the nurse and ask her about her two boys, their names and how they’re doing in school. But what I really want to ask is how she would feel if they ever ran away. I’m rereading what I just wrote about Emily, and there’s a knowing that’s creeping into my gut, one cold finger at a time. No matter what the circumstances, there are serious consequences when someone you love just walks out of your life.
The blinking digital display beside G’s bed tells me it’s a little before seven. I try and lean back in the chair to nap, but every time I do my brain, way more awake than my body, takes over. What if I hadn’t gone to make the fire that night? What if I’d tried harder to talk to Emily and find out what was bothering her? She was so selfish, but so was I. I’m not sure if it’s an addition problem or a subtraction problem, but either way I don’t think anyone ends up with very much. I look over at G. She’s going to be okay. I know she won’t hold me responsible. But what if I am?
***
Rippy and Jesse and I hauled brush for the bonfire for an hour or so until the pile of wood was almost over our heads. Each time I thought we were almost done, one of them found another spectacular log that just had to go on top. It was becoming competitive when finally Rippy said he had to go get ready for the derby. Jesse and I cleared an area in front of the woodpile where people would ride around, and I helped him haul over two trash cans full of food scraps that Danielle had been saving since people arrived. This was for the audience to throw at the bikers as they circled around each other. “Some people bring their own stuff they grabbed out of dumpsters: rotten fruit, veggies, whatever. It just has to be biodegradable,” Jesse explained.
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