by Lisa Super
Be a good little girl. It made her entire body clench.
Valentine’s Day arrived as another unassuming Wednesday. Flowers and balloons begot squealing girls at school. Other than a few more eye-rolls than usual, it was just another day for Daphne. She’d successfully buried Oliver Pagano somewhere in the back of her brain.
Had she known of any further Valentine’s drama, she would’ve bypassed the western wing hallway, going outside and around the campus before reentering through the door nearest to her physics classroom to avoid Penny Layton’s locker. But she hadn’t taken the long route because as far as she was concerned, it was just another day. Penny Layton was just another squealing girl. Daphne had almost made it out of hearing range when the name “Oliver Pagano” banged against her eardrums. The sound brought a stop to her feet. As she gaped down in disgust at her motionless combat boots, another tiny piece of her heart hardened.
She wanted to unhear his name. She couldn’t rewind, and she couldn’t move forward, the soles of her shoes stuck in the wet cement of St. Valentine. It took all her strength to scoot to the side of the hallway to avoid becoming high school road kill. While she tried to will her legs to work, she was tortured by the fading in and out of Penny’s gushing to a group of dancers: He’s so sweet…red roses…no, we can’t…chicken pox.
Sympathetic moaning and groaning from the peppiest of the pep squad wafted over to Daphne. For the first time in her scholastic career, she contemplated cutting class. She decided against it as the normal sensations of her lower limbs returned. Right now, she needed physics, needed the blend of math and theory to reaffirm her existence, that it all meant something. In the alternate universe of mathematics, everything made sense.
By the end of the day, Daphne made her Valentine’s peace. Despite her best intentions, she liked Oliver. Despite her best intentions, he didn’t like her. It was that simple. She was never going to be Penny Layton. Nor did she want to be. But the Oliver Paganos of the world never fell for the Daphne Bowmans, and she was not going to watch some stupid romantic comedy with Janine that night that tried to prove fantasy over science. They’d watch a horror movie instead. Preferably one where all the pretty people died.
In the end, Janine ditched her anyway, citing that she had to study for a test the next day. Janine wasn’t the studying type, but it was impossible for Daphne to discourage healthy student behavior just so she didn’t have to be alone on Valentine’s Day. Especially because she didn’t have to be alone. Oliver had kinda/sorta asked her out. Even though she’d deactivated this landmine hours ago, the fuse now burned brighter than ever. Once again, she became lost in the smoky aftermath.
The Drama Crew was hosting a movie night, but Daphne declined. She’d chosen to be alone and, dammit, she was going to be alone. It was time for pity popcorn, a concoction coinvented with Janine that involved melted butter, Parmesan cheese, and a touch of sriracha.
She settled on her bed with a heaping bowl on her lap, Elliott Smith singing through her earbuds. The sound from that Tuesday seven years ago snuck up on her, leaving her unprepared for the attack. Daphne tried to quash it.
The sound.
The sound.
The sound of suffering that emanates from her mother’s body as she shakes Emily’s dead weight in the car. It’s the moan of a wounded animal Daphne saw on a nature show. Was it a bear? Or an elephant? Or a sea lion?
She cranked Elliott Smith all the way up, but it wasn’t loud enough. Her heart still beat into her stomach.
Since that Tuesday wasn’t a bad dream she could wake up from, it often became the twisted lullaby that coaxed her into sleep. Tonight, all of the nightmares would be scared away. Ready to surrender to the Day of St. Valentine, she would’ve missed her ringing phone if it hadn’t vibrated against her leg. She answered without reading the caller name, assuming it was Janine.
“I made pity popcorn,” she said with a mouth full of kernels.
“Can I have some?”
Daphne sprayed popcorn spittle, almost knocking over the bowl at the sound of Oliver’s voice. She tried to swallow and choked, hacking into the phone.
“I better not. It sounds lethal.” He chuckled. “So, why the pity?”
She swallowed, regaining control of her voice. “Not a great day, that’s all.”
“Details?”
“Not worth mentioning.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Because I’m not spending Valentine’s Day with you.” She said it coyly, with a little bite. She didn’t even know what she meant, so she knew it would confuse the hell out of him. It had the dual effect of shutting him up, and she took immense pleasure in listening to him suffer through the silence.
“Just kidding,” she chirped. A relieved exhalation travelled from his end of the phone. “Don’t you have a date?” She regretted asking before the sentence was out of her mouth.
“I do.”
Was he really so clueless to call and brag about a date? Daphne shoved a wad of greasy cheese popcorn in her mouth to keep from saying something mean and bitter but true.
“Her name is chicken pox.”
Ah, Penny’s blurbs started to make sense. The mouthful of popcorn had been a gross miscalculation. She started chewing furiously.
He talked over the chomping, “She’s quite the catch. Get it? Because I caught it.”
How did he have the power to make her smile when she was feeling seven kinds of awful? The half-chewed popcorn scraped against her throat when she swallowed. “Fever dreams, crazy itching, inability to keep food down. You should really break up with her.”
“I think I’ll give her another seven to ten days.”
“You didn’t get vaccinated?”
“I did, but the CDC can’t handle my awesomeness. Maybe I’m a mutant.”
“Hmm. We have to figure out what your superpower-slash-curse is, now that we know one of the side effects is catching eradicated diseases.”
“So you can exploit it?”
“Hell, yeah. No use having a friend who’s a mutant if I don’t get anything out of it.”
“Don’t worry. I would mutate for you anytime.”
She grimaced. “Sounds messy. Lots of nasty sound effects.”
He laughed into her ear and the line went quiet.
“Oliver, why are you calling me?”
“I’m sick and bored.”
“No, I mean, why are you calling me?” Because I have it on good authority that you sent a dozen roses to someone who is not me.
The question hung in the air somewhere between the mile that separated their bedrooms. He responded slowly, carefully. “Because you’re the only person I wanted to talk to. You’re the only person I wanted to make me feel better.”
“And did I?”
“Haven’t you learned yet? I’m never wrong.”
Molten laughter bubbled deep inside her and erupted into the phone.
“It’s not that funny,” he said.
Trying to stop laughing only made her amusement thicken.
“I’m so glad I could entertain you,” he grumbled.
“I’m sorry.” The laughter subsided, and she regained her words. “Sorry. I’m back.”
“I think you’re sicker than I am.”
“I probably am.”
Oliver cleared his throat. His voice strengthened and signaled his true intention for calling in the first place. “So, I should be virus-free by spring break. I have an idea.”
• • •
A month later, the day in March arrived as it did every year. The marine layer hung over the afternoon for an extra hour, graying out the sun. Daphne studied for exams, books sprawled across her bed. Between subjects, she counted down the days to spring break: two weeks. Oliver hadn’t called or texted today. The date was a pop quiz she didn’t want to hand out, but she was grading him, nonetheless.
Daphne’s phone buzzed with a text. “It’s our day, not theirs.”
He’d passed.
&nb
sp; • • •
Daphne stuck a Post-it on the counter saying she was spending the night at Janine’s. She waited until snores accompanied her dad’s dozing before leaving the house with her overnight bag.
She hustled to the school parking lot, scared that a divine intervention would emerge from her home or fall from the clear sky and stop her road trip with Oliver. Daphne wasn’t much of a believer in the stories of the Bible, arks and whales, walking on water, water into wine and the like. At least, not literally. But when she saw Oliver’s car pull up, met his beautiful smile with a meek one of her own, and witnessed the city vanish into sand, she knew she was part of her own tiny miracle.
After a couple hours in the rising temperature of the car, a faint smell circled under Daphne’s nose. The warm aroma held notes of familiarity, but her base memory slipped away like a morning dream, on the brink of recognition and vanishing in the same instant. She glanced from rearview mirror to door, searching for an air freshener, finding nothing. Daphne closed her eyes and breathed deeply, settling into her seat. It came to her with a tickle of smoke. Jason’s cologne, now Oliver’s. She breathed it in a few more times, marveling at how much more nuanced it smelled coming off of him than it had in her bedroom air or on Jason. Oliver made everything better.
The desert welcomed them with windmill farms. The slow, unchanging pace of the rotating propellers haunted Daphne. A small ache expanded in her gut, the feeling of being left behind at the top of a roller coaster. Instead of quickening and slowing with the fickle wind, the propellers turned in methodical rhythm, unrelenting. These windmills were named of nature but trapped in machine.
The road weaved over rocky hills and when it flattened again, the desert sprang to life with Joshua trees. The eerie trees distanced themselves from each other like children unwilling to share. The ones nearest to the road bore striking silhouettes; the difference from tree to tree the difference between human fingerprints. Their figures loomed as the formidable army of the lost land. With knotted branches for armor and spiked leaves brandished as weapons, the trees extended for miles and miles, only stopping when jagged rocks protruding from the earth interrupted their sprawl.
Their first stop in Joshua Tree National Park was Skull Rock. Daphne and Oliver stood in front of its curves and indentations, critiquing how it only resembled a skull when viewed from a distance. Standing next to it, it was just another rock.
Oliver cocked his head. “I see a gorilla, actually. Gorilla Rock doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“I see an elephant seal.”
“Well, you would.”
“You don’t approve of water mammals in rock formations?”
“You always see things more complex than I do.”
“I wouldn’t call an elephant seal more complex than a gorilla. You’d be insulting your lineage.”
“And you went evolution on me.”
“You know you like it.”
Oliver’s voice went rigid. “If you were a rock, what shape would you erode into? asked the most pretentious person in the history of the world.”
She bit her lip, pondering. “Does the rock know it’s a rock? Is it aware that it’s eroding? Does it look down one day and realize half of itself is gone? asked the second most pretentious person in the history of the world.”
“Okay, I’m done talking about rocks,” he said.
“Good.”
They drove further into the park, the late afternoon sun blinding them. They turned off the main road and crawled down a narrow one made of dirt. Gravel fired into the wheel wells.
“Hope your car can handle this.” Daphne’s voice bounced against the bumps under the wheels.
“Me, too.”
An eternal mile later, they reached a small clearing that served as a parking lot. The giant rock formations surrounding them reduced Skull Rock to a pebble on a beach.
As they roamed on foot through Joshua trees from one towering plateau to the next, the desert humbled Daphne. So many of the ground plants had perished. The dead bushes weren’t so different from the live ones next to them, except that all the brown had been sucked out, leaving an ashen bouquet of rot. These briers had fought so hard to live, withstood lethal conditions long enough to leave behind a mass of decay. Joshua Tree was full of reminders that even the strong didn’t survive.
Oliver struggled to climb up a boulder. He tried to make it look easy, but his jacket and track pants quivered as he searched for the next stronghold. With one last surge of his knees and a muffled grunt, he hoisted himself up to the top.
Daphne regarded his success with a scowl, impressed at his determination and bored by his bravado. “You look like a cat up a tree.”
“Do you want me to meow for you?”
“Not really.”
“Mrow, mrow, mrow.” He yowled long, domesticated calls into the wild.
“Purring would be better.”
“This cat doesn’t purr.”
Unprompted, Oliver wobbled and fell over. Daphne gasped as he disappeared from her line of sight.
“Oliver? Oliver!”
His head didn’t pop up.
“Oliver!”
She pulled out her cell. No reception, same as since they’d entered the park. She didn’t have the car keys to go get help. Her eyes darted around in panic. The parking lot—empty. The direction of the road—nothing. The wilderness surrounding her on all sides—no one.
“Oliver!”
Silence.
Daphne started up the boulder following Oliver’s route. In comparison, he’d made it look easy. Her arms and legs trembled in resistance, her muscles trying to protect her by shaking her off the rock. She’d gotten four feet off the ground when she heard the scrape of sand against rock at the top. Oliver peered down at her, his face pale and his lips pinched.
“Okay, I’m really, really sorry. I saw a way down on the other side, so I thought I’d prank you and then run up behind you and surprise you right when you started climbing up. But it took longer to get down than I anticipated, and I didn’t want you to totally freak out, so I had to climb back up, which also took more time than I thought.”
Her red face twisted into a snarl and her eyes narrowed to angry slits. “I hate you.”
“Let go, you’re only a few feet off the ground.”
“You don’t understand. I have a fear of falling. I have a reoccurring dream where I fall and die.”
“Everyone has that dream.”
“I’m always rock climbing when I fall.”
“Because you’re an avid rock climber, no doubt.”
“Oliver.” Her eyes pleaded up to him with the solemn helplessness of starving children on commercials. “I can’t move.”
He ran to the faster way down, the crunch of desert cinders under his feet the only sound Daphne could hear. She hoped his descent would be quicker this time after the practice run. Her convulsing limbs threatened to expel her from the rock at any moment. Her fingers slipped with sweat, but she was too terrified to adjust her grip. Her heaviness multiplied by the passing of each second, settling out and away from her center. It was all going to go. Soon. One, two, then ten fingers, too exhausted to claw at a second chance.
Losing consciousness, her mind tumbled down a wormhole to Emily in the car. Her last breaths. The fear, the peace, the finality of all that had come before and would remain after. Daphne had always found it easier to hold on than to let go. Either way, she would end up motionless on the ground. At least Emily’s way had been a shorter fall.
Her senses were so numb, she didn’t hear his footsteps sprint up behind her. His hands went to her waist. “Okay, let go.”
With his touch, she landed back inside her body.
“Daph. Let go.”
With pure willpower she pried her fingers from the rock. Her pinky might never fully straighten again. Oliver eased her down. His hands cinched the watercolor roses on her shirt against her ribs even after her feet were firmly on the ground.
>
He took off his jacket and laid it beside them. “Here, sit.”
She folded her legs beneath her with the elegance of a rusty lawn chair.
He sat in the dirt next to her. “Again, I’m so sorry.”
Daphne shook her head, half forgiving, half still filled with ire.
“Thanks for trying to rescue me,” he said.
Too depleted to be angry, Daphne assessed her surroundings from a new perspective now that she was sitting. Her eyes scaled the giant formation in front of her. It consisted of two rocks. The base rock was much larger, massive enough to cover the horizon. A smaller, rounder boulder sat on top of it at one end. The front of the smaller boulder was covered with texture. Something used to be there. It could’ve once been a face, erased by wind and time. And the back of it was smooth and sloped. It looked like a helmet—or a headdress. This head was positioned at the front of the longer rock beneath it—a body.
“Do you see it?” she asked.
He mimicked the direction of her chin toward the same two rocks. “No. What?”
“It’s a body with a head, and the face is worn off. It looks like the Sphinx.”
He smiled. “I see it. Maybe we’re not so far from the Sahara, after all.”
• • •
In the campground, Oliver unloaded the tent from the car trunk.
“Can I do anything?” Daphne asked.
“Rest easy, Cleopatra. I got this.” He grinned.
He pushed the poles through the canvas and attached them quickly and efficiently. Not a single movement was wasted. In less than five minutes, they had a home for the night.
“You are one with the tent,” she said. “Are you an Eagle Scout?”
“Nope. I only had a brief stint as a Cub Scout. But three years ago I spent my entire summer in a tent in my backyard.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to be alone.”
“Amen to that. Your parents let you?”
“I had to eat meals inside so they could make sure I was alive.”
Daphne regretted not setting up a tent in her own backyard.