“To spend time with you, Ben,” was Rose’s coy answer when I asked her why. Those were words I longed to believe, but there was something in the way she said them—with not a trace of sadness or hint of regret—that felt wrong. Disturbingly so, especially in light of her it’s-okay-if-you-hooked-up-with-someone-else comment over the summer, which on its own had been enough to make me black out. My Rose, it seemed, had either changed completely, was no longer the girl I knew, or else was biding her time to let me know how she really felt. Both were options that left me beached on the shore of helplessness. I couldn’t ask Rose what was wrong because she was acting like everything was fine. But fine can so often be the very worst of feelings.
For me, at least.
Look, I’m going to tell you the rest of what happened now. How we all went up on that mountain and ran into the Preacher and his brother and got some stupid ideas that led to some really bad decisions. I’m going to tell you everything, including what happened to Rose, and exactly why I did what I did.
But there’s something I need to say before I get into all that because I don’t want my intentions misinterpreted: This isn’t meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I’m in jail at the moment. I imagine I’ll be here for a long time, considering. But I’m not writing this down for absolution and I’m not seeking forgiveness, not even from myself. Because I’m not sorry for what I did to Rose. I’m just not.
Not for any of it.
DAY ONE
8.
WE LEFT FOR Thompson Peak at noon on Friday on the twelfth of October. For her part, my mother seemed glad for my departure, which was worrisome. She usually didn’t approve of my leaving her alone overnight for reasons I mostly understood; a spinal injury she suffered in the same impact that had damaged my frontal lobe made it hard for her to move or stand for long periods of time—not without assistance.
In truth, she rarely left the house unless it was to hobble down to College Lane, our seedy neighborhood bar. Having grown up in Teyber, she knew everyone at the Lane every night of the week—both a blessing and a curse. Hell, even I was welcome at the bar, which made me feel more grown-up than it probably should’ve considering the place wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of maturity.
I guess now would be a good time to tell you that my mother can be unpredictable. It’s not just the spine thing. Or the drinking. Life’s been hard for her in ways it isn’t hard for other people. She’s sensitive, I guess. Overly so, and no, I don’t know what makes people like that. I also don’t know how to fix it.
I do know that when my mother was growing up she didn’t have a good relationship with her family. Her dad was kind of a dick, and I gather he liked to take it out on her. Marcus was the same way, really, only he had God on his side, which didn’t help matters any. Anyway, the bottom line is you should know that doing normal stuff—like holding a job or going to the store or keeping up the house—it’s all too much for her. So those were things that I did. And while I didn’t always like it, I also tried not to get too hung up about it. At least she loved me. That wasn’t something everyone had, so I tried hard to remember that shit could’ve always been worse.
That Friday, however, my mom couldn’t have cared less about my leaving. I ducked into her bedroom to say my good-byes only to find her in the grips of her bed husband—that’s what she called this stained denim pillow with outstretched arms and a pocket for the TV remote—with a beer already in hand, chain-smoking her Camel Lights. Her green eyes, the same watery shade as my own, were bloodshot and droopy. When I tried telling her the details of my trip, like when I’d be back or who to call if she needed something, she cut me off with, “I don’t need to know any of that. It’s fine, Ben. Go on. Do whatever the hell you want. It’s all okay with me.”
“It is?”
She waved a hand. “Of course. I can’t possibly expect you to take care of me when you have so many other interesting things to do.”
—
After that, I left the house and got down to the school in a hurry. I was scheduled to spend the morning with Mr. Howe before anyone else got there, going over our supplies and maps and timelines.
The plan was for all nine of us to drive out to the remote town of Cecilville, where we’d camp for the night, right on the Salmon River’s south fork. In the morning we’d drive to the trailhead and begin the backpacking portion of the trip. The route we’d plotted would have us hiking the steep trail to Hunters Camp, then climbing on toward the thin air and high altitude of Grizzly Meadows. This was where we’d set up camp Saturday night, right at the base of a towering waterfall fed by the looming Grizzly Lake.
The lake itself we intended to reach Sunday morning, taking time to ascend the massive Grizzly Falls and the rocky scramble overlooking the meadow. Trails twisted up from there toward the mountaintop, but it turned out it wasn’t possible to climb much higher without ice axes, even in warm weather; Thompson Glacier guarded the peak year-round. But at 7,100 feet, we’d get a full view of the summit. This was also where we planned to spend our Sunday afternoon, practicing map reading, finally packing up before too late, and heading back down for the drive home.
Before everyone else arrived, Mr. Howe and I loaded up his truck with food and gear. I liked working next to him. It was a good kind of effort, both sweaty and silent, and those brief hours ignited me with rare sparks of hope. Got me dreaming that maybe I’d have an aptitude for this physical stuff and I could get a job after high school doing something outdoor related. Be a rafting guide on the Trinity River in the summer. Bring the ice climbers out in the winter and snowshoers in the spring. Teyber would still be home—I didn’t have a choice in that—but maybe there could be moments for me elsewhere, in other places, all offering the chance for something bigger in my life, something better, like joy.
All this fantasy vanished fast, though, dissolving easily into despair. Because while it didn’t make sense to feel bad about wanting to feel good, I knew well from experience that dreaming too much could often become a helpless sort of thing.
“You sure you’ll be okay, Ben?” Mr. Howe asked. He was double-checking the first aid kits and I knew what he meant. Technically the trip was school-sponsored and seeing as he was the adult in charge, we had to give him any medications we might need ahead of time so he could administer them if necessary. He was looking at all the drugs I used to fight my migraines: Zomig in both pill and nasal form; Zofran in case of nausea; and Tylenol 3 for pain. I refused to get a prescription for anything stronger; but when I was younger and my headaches would last for days, I sometimes ended up in the ER getting shots of morphine.
“It’s just in case.” I slipped the flare gun I was holding into the backpack with the other emergency supplies. “I won’t need all that.”
“You still get them a lot, your migraines?”
“Not as much. Maybe twice a month now. Or if I’m really stressed.” Or if I ate MSG or drank too much coffee or the pressure in the atmosphere changed too quickly. I hated the look on Mr. Howe’s face, but all the teachers knew about my headaches, so there was no point avoiding it. They had to know, obviously: how they could come on without warning, in the worst cases leaving me unable to speak or with the sudden need to vomit. But they really were better than they used to be. Right after my injury, I’d gotten them three or four times a week, but they were fading now with distance. Like a memory.
“Shame how that happened,” Mr. Howe said.
“I know.”
“You deserved better.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything else. Deserving better meant I hadn’t gotten what I deserved, and even then I wasn’t so sure that was true.
9.
I’VE READ THAT “travel is a state of mind.” But as appealing AS the thought is, to me it’s always felt a little like proclaiming sex to be overrated to a roomful of virgins. No one wants to hear that about something t
hey haven’t had a chance to do. And while most people wouldn’t consider driving into the mountains, one county over, to be true travel, in any sense of the word, for me, who had never once left the cool fog and homegrown haze of Humboldt, I might as well have been setting off into the Amazon jungle or the Australian outback.
That’s all to say I wasn’t filled with any metaphysical bliss or deep philosophical insight as our small caravan departed Teyber sometime around noon. There was nothing profound running through my veins as I stared out the car window and watched the familiar landscape slip away, abandoning the only world I’d ever known: those cool, shaded rivers and wet, fern-lined canyons, that dark earth rooted deep with redwoods, solemn giants whose thick canopies spread wide to fan the forest floor before stretching toward the heavens.
I was nerves and instinct. My bones rattled with each bump and sway of the road as we wound east and upward, moving away from the coast and into land that was drier, hotter. Far more foreign. There was true pain in leaving, I found. It was in the dryness of my throat, the sweat of my palms, the dizzying race of shadows spinning across my forearm.
The miles whipped by, and before long, we approached the county line, prompting me to hold my breath—a superstition I didn’t know was in me. Only rather than the expected road sign announcing our entry into rural Trinity—a landlocked county with a single stoplight to its name—I spied a large green placard that had been erected on the shoulder. In the center of it was a yellow circular seal inscribed with twin Xs. The words WELCOME TO JEFFERSON were painted above in black.
My lungs deflated with a whoosh. I knew what that sign meant. If intent mattered more than the law, then we hadn’t just left Humboldt County; we’d crossed out of California altogether. The “State of Jefferson” was the name chosen by a group of disenfranchised counties looking to secede from the Golden State in order to become the fifty-first in the Union—all in the name of personal liberty and freedom, which, from what I could tell, mostly involved being able to walk around in public with a loaded gun.
I shifted my gaze forward as the road grew windier, trying to stare through the front windshield and keep a hold on the horizon—no easy task, considering I was sitting in the backseat of Rose’s Pathfinder, wedged between Archie DuPraw and Avery Diaz. Not only was it hot and stuffy being stuck in the middle like I was, but I’d begun to feel ill, a situation not helped by Archie, who was sleeping with his mouth open and his head on my shoulder.
That seating arrangement, by the way, was not my doing. Back at school, when we’d been figuring out who would go in what car, I foolishly told Tomás to go ahead and ride shotgun—the Pathfinder was his, too, after all. I assumed Archie and Avery would want to sit together. But after Avery crawled inside, Archie took one look at the middle seat, slapped my back so hard it hurt, and told me to get on in. All six foot two of me. Not to mention, he took up so much space himself that by the time we were all situated, I was practically sitting on top of Avery. But Archie didn’t appear to give a rat’s ass if my balls were in his girlfriend’s lap or if any other part of my anatomy might be touching her. He’d started snoring the minute we got on the road.
Avery poked me in my side. “You okay?” she whispered.
I shot a quick glance up front. Rose had her eyes on the road. Tomás was fiddling with the stereo.
“I don’t feel so good,” I whispered back.
“Here.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a Ziploc bag.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Ginger candy.” She placed one in my hand. “They’re good for your stomach on long car rides.”
I took the candy and put it in my mouth. I didn’t tell her it wasn’t the car ride making me feel gross, but a combination of skipping breakfast and being forced to sit next to her boyfriend, who smelled like the Dumpster at work on the days we tossed out expired meats. “Thanks.”
“How much longer?” she asked.
I checked my phone. It was one thirty. We’d only been on the road for an hour and a half. “Maybe three more hours?”
Avery popped a ginger candy in her own mouth. We both sucked in silence. It was a soothing silence, not an anxious-making one, and I couldn’t help letting my mind wander and wonder how it was someone like her had ended up with Archie. Only when I thought about it more, I realized I knew why it was most guys didn’t go for girls like Avery. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty. Or sweet. Or friendly. Or any of those qualities guys valued because they thought they made a girl less likely to say no. Avery’s problem was that she was ordinary. Forgettably so, unless you really got to know her. That meant that even though she and Rose shared the same brown skin, smoldering eyes, and Latin roots—hell, they were lab partners in AP Bio; they probably shared a brain—what mattered more was Rose’s boldness, her family’s money, and the fact that her last name was Augustine and not Diaz. All those things added up to make Rose seem exotic and rare, and if that sounds racist or sexist or anything else terrible, that’s probably because it is.
“Do you remember my seventh birthday party?” Avery asked in a low voice. “When we rode together to the beach?”
I smiled, because I did remember. Her parents had driven a whole group of us out to the ocean to look for whales, which had been Avery’s favorite animal back then. She used to do all her book reports on them. Art projects, too. We’d sat next to each other on that car ride, small thighs pressed close together as soft guitar music spilled from the back speakers—Jobim sang to us in Portuguese. The old Buick’s windows had been rolled down the whole way, I remembered that, too, letting in the salt air to fill our heads and pepper our skin.
Once at the beach, while the other kids clambered around and stood on boulders with binoculars, hoping to spy humpbacks on their migration toward the warm waters of Mexico, I did my own thing, preferring to stay on the rocky shore, closer to the waves, walking in circles with my head down to scour the ground for pieces of cobalt sea glass and driftwood in a rare daze of contentment.
Sitting beside Avery now, I realized I recalled that day with such vividness for two reasons: One, our house was scattered with pieces of blue glass and driftwood—long-ago remnants of my father, who’d clearly been enamored by the roiling surf and the gifts of its fathoms—but Avery’s birthday was the first time I’d ever actually seen the ocean, despite living no more than fifteen miles from the coast; and two, the peace of that day had been shattered the next when my mother woke me with tears in her eyes and pain in her voice to tell me there’d been a terrible accident at the city pool.
I don’t know. Some accidents are more unfair than others. That’s what I believe, even though the word itself implies no one meant for it to happen. But on that long-ago morning, Avery’s mother, who swam laps every day as the sun rose over the eastern hills, was the first person to arrive at the pool the way she always was. And unlike my father’s wild ocean, I like to imagine the water’s surface was calm for her the moment she dove in. There was no way she could’ve known a short circuit from an ungrounded pool light had charged the deep end with hundreds of volts of electricity. No one could’ve known. And maybe that’s the point of tragedy—to remind the living that fate is always waiting, just right around the corner. But if you ask me, dying for that kind of reason seems like the most unfair thing of all.
I glanced over at Avery, still sucking on the ginger candy, and I wondered if she was thinking of the same thing I was. Of her mother’s heart stopping from shock and all the misery that followed. Or was she able to isolate that one pure, good moment—riding with me in a car on the day she turned seven, when we were both small and happy and headed toward the beach? I didn’t ask, though. Given what I knew of loss and pain, the answer seemed obvious.
My gaze drifted southward. I wasn’t looking at Avery’s cleavage, which was covered by her T-shirt, but at the gold pendant hanging around her neck. It was an animal of some sort, and it ha
d a sparkling crystal for an eye that glinted in the sunlight. I kept staring and I guess I just assumed the animal must’ve been a whale, a memory of a time in her life when her mother was still alive to bring her to the water’s edge.
But it turned out the pendant wasn’t a whale. It took me a minute to figure that out. No, the tiny gold animal resting against Avery’s throat wasn’t a sea creature at all. It was a fox. A vixen, even.
A beast both cunning and sly.
10.
WE STOPPED IN the rural blink-and-you-miss-it town of Cecilville for gas. I guess I should say Rose and Mr. Howe stopped for gas, since they were the ones doing the actual driving. Everyone else just did whatever the hell they wanted. Tomás and Avery went to use the restroom, Shelby made a phone call, Clay stayed in the truck, reading a book, and Dunc and Archie snuck off behind the nearby saloon to get high.
Me, I kind of wanted to follow those last two. Not that I liked smoking weed all that much, but I hated being around people who were stoned when I wasn’t. Somehow I always ended up feeling like the dumb one.
But I knew better than to wander. Rose liked me close. So I got out of the Pathfinder, slid my sunglasses on, and gently closed the door. Cecilville itself was nothing but a gateway to the mountains—a mere smattering of buildings. Most of its storefronts were boarded up and the streets desolate. But I stood and breathed deeply. I’d never been this close to wilderness—true wilderness, the kind you could get lost in—and I wanted to savor it all: the rush and roar of the mighty Salmon River; the bright chatter of birds—a whole chorus of killdeer and chickadees; the cloying late-day heat; the dust-filled air; and more than anything, the rich beauty of the Alps, those rocky edges and snow-capped peaks that filled the vista with their staggering rise and fall, seemingly stretching on forever.
When I Am Through with You Page 4