Ezra unloads the truck bed, throwing duffels of junk at me that I drop on the ground by my feet. He makes fun of me while we pitch a tent. I never claimed to be a camping expert, but the way he teases, you’d think I’d sworn on a Bible I passed Advanced High Desert Camping.
After we get the tent up and I trip over its stakes several times, pulling a side down, just when we had it standing, I shrug and mutter, “Just one?”
“Do you see another?”
“No.”
“Chill out,” he grumps. “If you’re worried about it, I’ll sleep outside.”
“Worried?”
“I have little intention of taking advantage of you.”
“For real? I just worried I’d have to go through that again.” I shake my head, pointing at the tent, then pick up a rolled sleeping bag and chuck it at him.
“Oh. Right.” He looks embarrassed.
“You’re such an idiot.”
Ezra smiles crookedly. “Why don’t we both forget the tent and sleep outside? The night sky is incredible out here.”
Grinning, I throw my own bag next to the one I chucked at him. “Sounds nice.”
As we finish setting up, Ezra tells me everything he knows about El Morro. The monument’s place in history as an ancient pueblo, and a wagon trail watering hole, and a Conquistador’s landmark sound romantic and wild, exactly the way I imagined it would be when I first saw the massive sandstone bluff rising above the valley.
When our campsite is finally up and running, we follow a path from the campground to the trailhead leading to El Morro’s mesa. The elevation changes swiftly, sucking up my breath as we climb, but rewards us with sweeping views of the Zuni Mountains, the volcanic craters across the El Malpais plain, and the El Morro Valley. We don’t talk much, and the silence emphasizes the awe I feel watching the scenery unfurl beneath the mesa.
At the very top of the sandstone bluff, I stop to inhale. My breath comes hard but looking around I know it isn’t just the climb that’s left me short. The 360-degree view is equally breathtaking.
“You look lost,” Ezra says softly.
“I am.” I turn toward him. “I could stand here forever. Please, please don’t ever find me.”
A small smile touches Ezra’s eyes. He takes my hand while I drink from my water bottle, maneuvering us along the crest of the mesa to an ancient ruined pueblo at the top of the bluff. The incredible height makes the mostly unexcavated structure feel enormous. At 450 feet above the ground, I can hardly imagine living somewhere so spectacular.
“What if you could wake up to this every day?” I ask him.
“It’s too high. It must have been nearly impossible to get up here before the park service carved the staircase into the mesa. Strategic but not very practical.” He cups his brow and stares out at the valley.
“You’re so utilitarian. I said ‘imagine’ it.”
“I have. I think the isolation would eventually tamp all that wonder.”
“You’re a killjoy, you know that?” I walk away from him toward the rangers working to restore part of the pueblo. Ezra follows, standing silently beside me while I look down into the pueblo’s partially excavated rooms, talking excitedly to the rangers about the crumbling adobe.
When we’ve seen all of it, we quietly walk the path over the mesa down to Inscription Trail. At the bottom of the bluff, next to a large protected spring recessed into the wall, a paved foot trail leads along the monolith’s base, introducing us to some two thousand messages and signatures carved into its soft sandstone walls.
As we walk, I marvel at each inscription. The sandstone tablet, covered with everything from native petroglyphs to fluid Spanish script dating back four hundred years, chronicles the Southwest’s long chain of frontier history, capturing the heart of New Mexico.
“You look … wistful.” Ezra smiles.
“It’s so amazing, I almost can’t breathe.”
Nodding, Ezra opens the guidebook we bought and reads from its pages. “The one you’re looking at, that was inscribed by New Mexico’s first Governor, Don Juan de Oñate in 1605. Sixteen hundred and five,” he whistles. “Think about it, that’s fifteen years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.”
We walk slowly, stopping at each numbered trail post to read the guide. A few of the Spanish inscriptions have been translated. Others fade into the sandstone, their meanings lost to time. We walk past prayers and blessings left by families heading west on the Santa Fe Trail in wagon caravans, and poems written by frontier explorers, and notes written by Spanish Conquistadors who later became the founders of many of New Mexico’s towns and missions, and signatures from every man who built the first railroad through western New Mexico. Looking at them all, I feel like an astronaut viewing Earth from space for the very first time. It fills me with a kind of wanderlust that roots in my chest and grows into my lungs, squeezing them with longing.
By the time we finally return to camp, twilight has settled over the monument, pulling a swath of crimson clouds across the purple horizon. I feel hungry, and alive, and most surprisingly, like I belong right where I am, alongside Ezra.
Still awed by my surroundings, I plunk down onto a rock and rummage through a cooler full of food while Ezra gathers sticks for a fire. “Marshmallows?” I ask, holding up a bag.
He nods. “Can’t have a campfire without them.”
Together, we prop chunks of wood into a small teepee in the firepit and set it ablaze. When it’s stoked enough, Ezra sits down next to the fire. I hand him a Dr Pepper and watch while he demolishes a sandwich.
“What?” He frowns, catching me staring.
“You’d think you never had a sandwich before.” I giggle, waving my own sandwich in the air.
“I’m hungry.”
“Obviously.”
Ezra sets his can on the ground near his shoes. “Are you glad you came?”
“Immensely. Are you?”
“Yes. Watching you, the way your nose crinkles up like a wounded hedgehog when you’re excited about something, it’s priceless.” Ezra does something with his face that may have been a pretty darned good imitation of me crinkling my nose like a wounded hedgehog, if there was enough loose skin on his face to crinkle.
“You’d think,” I start, turning my nose up at him, “that you’d be a little more compassionate about my silly face. Not everyone wants to be reminded of how stupid they look, especially when it involves hedgehogs.”
“Why? Because my own face is so awful?”
“Precisely,” I answer.
“Your face is beautiful. You know I’m joking.” Ezra grabs his can and stands up, walking over to his sleeping bag. He sits down, patting my own bag beside him. “Come here.”
“What about our marshmallows?” I really want to impale a perfect white puff and watch it sizzle, but I don’t want him to know how easily amused I am by stuff like campfires and junk food.
“Later. I want to show you something.”
Curious, I get up and sit down beside him. Without warning, he pushes me back flat against my bag on the ground.
“What …” I squawk.
Ezra quickly falls back beside me and points up at the sky. “I want to show you before it dips below the horizon.” He points at a cluster of stars to the west, making a circle in the sky with his fingers. “My grandfather called it the Pecos Circle. All twenty-three clans united.”
I count, squinting to see some of the fainter lights. Once my eyes adjust, those twenty-three stars step forward, forming a perfect circle in the night sky. I look at him and smile, marveling at how the campfire lights his face, highlighting his high cheeks and momentarily clear eyes.
“Twenty-three clans?” I ask.
“Yes.” He holds his hand above his head, moving his finger in a circle. “Story goes, every star up there is its own universe, each overseen by a separate Pecos clan.”
“What was your clan?”
“Shiankya.”
“What does that mean?”
> He turns toward me and grins. “Mountain lion.”
I sock his arm. “You’re a laugh riot.”
Ezra stares up at the sky, mesmerized by the formation. “My grandfather was a little crazy. He really believed he’d make it to the circle someday. He even had a speech he’d written to persuade the gods to send him back home after he died.”
“Like, he really believed?”
“Yes.”
“In reincarnation?”
“Absolutely.”
“That’s wild.” I pause for a moment, thinking about the ruin. “If I tell you something, promise you won’t laugh?”
“I promise to make an effort,” he says, half smiling.
“I saw my mom on Thursday. I was up the mountain, hiking, and I … I don’t know. First, I thought I fainted and maybe imagined it. She was like a ghost, but it felt so real. It was like she was trying to warn me about something.”
“In the forest?” Ezra’s voice is low and steady, but his eyes are laser focused on me.
“Up near the ruin I told you about.”
“Did you faint?”
“I must have. I hit my head. Here.” I grab his hand and push his fingers to the bump behind my ear. “But it’s not the first time I’ve seen her since we moved. And I was wide awake the other times.”
Ezra rubs a thumb over my lump gently, holding my focus. “Grief is a funny thing. I believe you saw her, but that doesn’t mean she was real.” He pulls his hand away. “You shouldn’t be going up there alone. It’s not safe.”
“I fell a few feet. It’s not like I climbed a tree and plummeted to the ground.”
“But what if you had?” he asks. “My grandfather was fond of saying the forest isn’t shy about warning people off to protect its secrets. Maybe it’s best to leave good enough alone.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugs. “I don’t question things I don’t understand.”
“You really believe the forest is full of secrets?”
“I didn’t say that. My grandfather did. But I do believe the universe helps guide us.”
The forest behind my house feels hallowed, not threatening, but his answer unnerves me. I did faint. And I did see my mother, whatever that means. And Ezra knows a lot more about the pass and its ghosts than I do. I stare at him, peeling back layers that surprise me. Whether he believes what he’s saying or just messing with me, he obviously holds his grandfather in high esteem. “Tell me more about him?”
Ezra starts out reluctantly, talking slowly until his guard melts away. He tells me about his grandfather and then his father—about the difficult relationships they had, tainted by tradition, history, and pride.
“How old were you when your dad died?” I ask.
“Fourteen.”
“Oh. God. For some reason, I thought you were younger. What happened?”
“Car accident.” Ezra stiffens a little. He tips his chin back toward the sky, then turns his face sideways. “He drove himself off a cliff.”
“Wait, he drove himself off? On purpose?”
“Yes.”
“I … How do you know?”
“He left a note.”
I swallow, staring wide-eyed. “So, he …”
“Killed himself. Yes.”
For a moment, I feel numb. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to diminish your mother’s death with my own story. Plus, my dad died nearly six years ago. And I understood why he did it. It’s not the same.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why’d he do it?” I whisper.
“He didn’t have much reason to stay in La Luna, but he couldn’t really leave. It was his only way out. By the time he died, my mom and dad hated each other. And the two of us, at that point, we weren’t all that close.”
“You say it like it doesn’t bother you.”
“It doesn’t. Not anymore.”
His words are absolute, but his voice wavers slightly. Maybe he means it, maybe not. Whatever the case, his relationship with his father has clearly left its mark, and for the time being, I decide to leave it at that. It’s enough knowing we have something so terrible in common.
“What about your mom? Are you close?”
He smiles. “How come you’re so nosy?”
“I’m not nosy. I just want to know you better. Got a problem with it?”
Ezra shrugs before starting in without a hitch, as if happy to change the subject. When I finish asking the last of what probably seems like a million questions, his speech both speeds up and trickles off until there’s nothing passing between his lips but his breath and a sigh. Afterward, he exhales heavily. “You make me feel so goddamn chatty.”
I turn over on my side and smile a toothy grin, intentionally wrinkling my nose like a hedgehog. “Really?”
Ezra playfully nudges me back against my sleeping bag with an arm. He shakes his head, rubbing it against the fabric so it crackles. “I wish I’d met you a long time ago.”
“Why?”
“Just because.”
“Because I’m so ‘beguiling’?” I tease, almost blushing again when I remember what he called me earlier.
“Something like that.”
I squint at him, trying to see past his guarded eyes.
“Want to toast a few marshmallows?” he asks.
“Not yet. Tell me why you wish you’d met me a long time ago.”
“Tell me more about your family and maybe I will.”
“Uh-uh. Last time I made a deal like that, you skipped out on your end.”
“I didn’t. You know what happened to my face, don’t you? You practically know everything about me.”
“Yeah, but …”
“But nothing. I just didn’t tell you right away. I really didn’t have the opportunity. You talk a lot. It’s hard to get a word in edgewise.”
“Bull.” I roll on my side again and jokingly punch his arm. “The fact that I’m interesting is just a convenient excuse to back out on your end.”
Ezra snorts. “If you don’t want to know why I wish I’d met you sooner, Ruby, then don’t tell me.”
I try to stare him down. Honing my fine-tuned wiles, I stare seductively, then threateningly, then exasperatedly. Nothing works. Finally, I just give up and begin—from birth, hoping to bore him to death long before I reach high school.
I start talking, telling myself I won’t get emotional, but when I get to Mom’s death, predictably, I start crying. Ezra winds an arm under my back and pulls me in toward his body. With my head on his shoulder, I alternate between sniffling and storytelling until I can’t talk anymore.
“You’re very hard on her, you know,” he says, drawing me in tighter.
“Don’t you think she deserves it?” I sniffle.
“I mostly feel sorry for her. Sounds like she must have been miserable.”
“She could’ve tried, at least. And she didn’t have to be so shallow.”
“She doesn’t sound shallow, Ruby. She sounds lonely, and maybe scared. That’s an indescribable feeling.”
“No matter how you look at it, she left me.”
“People leave. Like the song says, it’s the oldest story in the world. No matter what you do or how good you are, you can’t stop them.”
I grumble into his shoulder, then pull away.
“Look, if you want someone to pat you on the back and tell you you’re right, that your mother was horrible, that you have every right to hate her, then maybe you should try your hand with Angel.”
“That’s low,” I snap.
“Then don’t go all wounded-wallflower on me when you know better.”
Emotionally, Ezra tugs me in so many directions it hurts, but most of all, I hate thinking he may be right. I sit up abruptly, pulling further away. At the same time, he pulls me back, tethering me to the ground with his arm and strong grip.
“No way. You’re not going to ask me all these personal questions about my
father, which I answered honestly, and then pull away when you can’t deal with your own shit. You’re entitled to mope. But anger is poison, and once you go down that path, it’s nearly impossible to turn back.”
Ezra rolls on his side and stares down at me, piercing my heart with his guarded eyes. He’s thrown up his wall again, and as suddenly as he let me in, he’s tossed me out.
“You’re mad at me,” I whisper.
“I just wonder what it is that scares you so much you can’t even look at yourself. I’ve watched you, Ruby. You avoid windows. You won’t look in mirrors. Half the time it looks like you dressed in the dark.”
“I look like her. I see her face,” I sniffle. “It makes me feel ugly.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t die because of you. Jesus, you want to know what ugly feels like, try being me for a while.”
“Ezra,” I whisper, “it’s like this constant reminder.”
“Of what?”
“You want the laundry list? That I wasn’t good enough to make her want to stick around. That I was a bad daughter. That I’ll end up like her. Afraid to let anything matter.”
Sympathy flickers across Ezra’s face, rearranging his wary expression. When his pupils dilate, refocusing like they’ve just calibrated to the dimming light, it feels like I’ve known him forever.
“You aren’t her,” he answers softly. “You’re too aware to ever give in to that kind of emptiness. It may be there,” he pushes a finger against my heart, “until you let yourself live again. But you do know who you are. You know that what you see in the mirror is far less important than who you are inside.”
“You should talk,” I blurt out.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Do you?” I squint up at him.
“Unfortunately,” his eyes crinkle, “what I see and who I am are the same.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Ruby …”
“You may think you’re ugly,” I cut him off. “You may feel ugly. But there’s nothing about you that is, not on the inside or out.”
Ezra pulls away from me, dropping flat against his sleeping bag. “Not always,” he whispers. “Not when I’m with you.”
“Not always when you’re with me, what?”
He looks thoughtful, and sad, and terribly conflicted. “When I’m with you, I don’t always feel ugly.”
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