by SJ Cavaletti
Copyright © 2021 by SJ Cavaletti
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 9798733258416
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
26. BONUS: The Way We Were Sneak Peek
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by SJ Cavaletti
1
“Get back here right now, Maeve Lewis. I cannot BELIEVE you!”
My Mom’s growling voice rumbled through the car speakers, my cell connected by Bluetooth.
“I CANNOT believe this. I mean it. Get back here NOW. This instant. Bring your father back!”
I looked over at the urn, hastily buckled safely into the passenger seat. I stole his ashes. Well, I didn’t steal them. I took them. At his request.
“Mom, this is what he wanted. I’m not coming back. Please don’t call again, I’m driving.”
I hung up even though I wasn’t driving anymore. I was parked in one of three huge lines of cars, waiting on the highway to turn on to a dirt track road.
She had called a thousand times before this. But I hadn’t picked up. This time, I had to because it was our last chance to speak for a week. And I owed my Mom at least to know I was alive, safe and that my father was indeed with me.
She must have freaked when she noticed me gone. I bet she ran immediately to the backlit glass cupboard in her walk-in closet, running as if she didn’t already know the answer.
I looked ahead and could vaguely make out, about two hundred yards in the distance, a huge arched sign, painted elaborately with various hues of red. Enticing as any in Vegas, even from afar.
Festival Uyu.
It welcomed me home for the third time. I was about to enter the dust plain that would become Nevada’s third largest city for one week only. They had everything there. Firefighters, a postal service, medics, massage parlors, bars and nightclubs. But they didn’t have one thing. Cell reception.
This was the middle of the desert, with nothing for miles around. And even if someone did want reception, or manage to find a good signal, phone usage was pretty much forbidden in the festival code of conduct. This wasn’t just a party. It was a way of life. Cell phones were seen as the death of magic.
When I hung up my bluetooth from the steering wheel, silencing my Mom’s still shouting voice, I grabbed my cell from the center console, turned it off completely and threw it down. A hundred more yards from here, it would crackle anyway. And more importantly, there was nothing left to say. My mind was made up.
I looked at my phone. It landed on the passenger seat next to my father’s urn. The symbolism crashed through me like a jackhammer. The phone, my Mom. The urn, my Dad. Sitting on the seat of my car together, this would be one of the last times they would see each other.
Mom couldn’t call and tickets were always sold out, so she definitely wouldn’t get in, even if she did have the gumption and courage to come here. In her mind, this place was a bit like “Where the Wild Things Are” only she wasn’t as open-minded and brave as Max.
My Mom was a southern belle who fit into the left-wing, airy fairy California lifestyle, mostly because she knew how to glam. She called herself center-wing, and though she denied the politics of her bigoted upbringing from an intellectual standpoint, she never seemed to be able to loosen those roots and truly walk away from the culture.
Three years ago was when my father proposed that we all go as a family to Uyu. My Mom had burst out laughing. It had been a huge, bellowing laugh that echoed down the hallway from our dining table, along the marble floors and into the vast two level foyer. Her laugh ran up the stairs, looped around the chandelier and back down the hall again until it found her mouth. She swallowed it and formed words this time.
“Oh, honey. Seriously, Mitch?” She asked with the southern drawl she proudly clung to, “Are you kidding? Isn’t that the place where people walk around buck naked?”
My brother threw down his fork, smirked and looked at the ceiling.
I had to admit, the only things I knew about Uyu at the time were similar. Naked people. Drugs. People dancing through all hours and giving themselves code names or alter egos, pretending to be Native American or something. I didn’t think it was my cup of tea either. For once, I leaned toward my Mom’s way of thinking.
Although I had been twenty-four, old enough to drink and club, that had never been my thing. I liked indie rock and live music in crappy clubs. Not raves. My imagination told me Uyu was far too colorful for my taste.
But I loved my Dad. He was my best friend. I might have said “besties forever” to Dana and Peaches, but my Dad was my hero. My guru. My role model and my idol. He was the best person, the kindest person, the smartest person and the most loving person in the world. So, I had to listen.
“Dad,” I said, “I mean, I have to confess, I know pretty much the same stuff as Mom. I can’t really see myself… or maybe any of us, well, apart from YOU, at a place like Uyu.”
At the time it had seemed absurd and like a stupid joke. “A conservative southern belle, a rock chick and a preppy dude walk into a bar…”
“I know guys,” my Dad said, “I know people talk about it like some nudist colony but I was talking to one of our clients and I think we’d all benefit from testing the ethos. No money for a week. Barter only. No tech, just talk. Pack in, pack out. Wild self-sufficiency…”
He had grown excited and flung an arm in the air.
“It could only spark a growth within us. And as a family, we could use some deep dive time. When was the last time we sat around and talked for longer than a Sunday dinner?”
He was right. But my brother argued nevertheless, “Turks and Caicos. The last time we went on a vacation we had ‘quality time.’”
He made air quotations and mocked my Dad. My brother, Tyran, was a bit of a selfish prick. Especially since he had turned twenty-one and started drinking more. Or maybe it was the ridiculous posse he hung out with that influenced him. It was made up of a couple B celebs and two other rich kids with L.A. entertainment exec parents. In any case, he had been slowly changing into a dickhead. He and his friends had money and access to the same things as celebrities. It inflated his ego and respect for others didn’t seem to have room in there anymore.
“Sweetie,” my Mom said affectionately, touching my Dad’s hand, “If you want more family time all you have to do is say. I’ll book a nice getaway and we’ll all promise to spend more time talking and maybe doing some activities together. Won’t we ya’ll?”
She glared at my brother. His attitude was unacceptable and a very far cry from the “yes sirs” and “yes ma’ams” of her childhood.
She continued, “Mitch, hon
ey, you work so hard. You just need to take a load off. Give me the dates and I’ll sort that out. I’m not sure a week in a tent together is going to do much for your stress levels.”
My brother scoffed, “And it definitely won’t bring us closer together. Quite the opposite.”
Mom hadn’t liked his tone, but her pinched lips agreed with him. She looked back at my Dad and reached over, swiping some hair from his crinkled forehead. He was thinking. My Dad always thought before he spoke. He had meant what he said and said what he meant. I watched my Mom look at him with concern.
For as different as these two were, there was an incredible amount of love between them. They still giggled and tickled each other. Every time I had been home on break from college, I still heard “Oh Mitch” come from their bedroom at night. They had been married for thirty years. Met each other in college and got hitched the summer after graduation. Fated lovers.
“Dixie,” Dad said, looking up from the table and into my Mom’s face, “Would you mind if I just took Maeve? As a bonding thing?”
My eyes widened, and I pulled back in my chair. Why did he think I’d go with him?
My Mom gazed into his eyes, contemplating, not even bothering to look at me for a sign of approval. Then, she gently placed her hand on his cheek and said, “Oh honey. It’s that important to you, is it?”
He shook his head.
Meanwhile, I just wondered what the hell was happening. Nobody had asked me if I felt cooperative in this matter.
But my Mom, Dixie of Nawlins, shook her head and promised me off to this adventure. And I didn’t say no, even though it had seemed like a trip to hell. Like a goth girl surviving a trip to Candyland.
Six months after that dinner conversation, on the way to our first ever time at Festival Uyu, my Dad and I spoke in the car.
“Dad?” I had asked, as he nervously drove the motorhome that we had just picked up in Reno, “Why did you want to take just me? I mean, you could have gone with someone else. God knows L.A. is full of people you know heading here.”
“Yeah,” he said, not looking away from the road, “Actually Gina is heading here this week.”
Gina was one of the execs he worked with at his music company, Reckless Integrity. She was one of the original people he had started the label with when he was only twenty-five, with my Mom’s inheritance from her Grandaddy. It was now worth just shy of a billion. One of L.A.’s biggest success stories. I liked Gina. But she wasn’t far off my Mom’s political views and cultural moors. She could have been my Mom. Apart from the fact that she was a lesbian.
“Gina? The Gina I know, Gina?”
My Dad had looked at me briefly with wide eyes and shook his head. He, as surprised as I was.
He watched the road again and said, “You know, Maeve. A lot of people are looking for more. More inner peace. More purpose. Less ego. Less stress. I’ve read and heard a lot about Uyu. It’s a social experiment, and I think we’ll get what we want out of it. People have a tendency to find what they are looking for. Whether good or bad.”
Always a sage, that had been my Dad. He had loved personal development books and YouTube videos. Obsessed with Eckhart Tolle and Tony Robbins (my Mom said he reminded her of a Baptist preacher).
“Dad… why did you bring me with you, though? You could have just gone with Gina. Or one of the many people panting at your feet for time with you. You have a million buddies you could have asked.”
He reached over and pat my thigh, then gave it a hug with his hand.
“Maeve, you’re a deep thinker and really smart. People like you mess themselves up with stress later in life. You need this. You need to know how to unwind. You need to know what’s the truth and what’s just your ego talking. You need to know how to find your safe space.”
“Oooo-kay.”
“But more than that. You need to learn to let yourself be loved. You’re pretty defensive.”
“I am not!”
Oh shit. Apparently, he was right. A huge grin from my Dad’s face taunted me with an “I told you so.”
“Maeve, if I give you two things to go forth in the world with, it’s that I want to teach you how to be kind. That part I’m kinda patting myself on the back for now. You’re… gosh, you make my heart proud with how you treat others and I know you’re going to do good. But the other thing is how to love and be loved. Lovers, friends… even Tyran… you gotta open up.”
I rolled my eyes hard enough for him to feel it, even though he stared at the open road.
“Alright, Dad. We’ve probably had enough talk of love for one day. I’m sure I’ll be fine. So tell me, where are we setting up and do you have any idea what we’ll do all day and night every day for a week without our devices?”
It was now almost exactly three years after that caravan conversation. But today, I waited to get in without him. At least not the him that would dance with me, laugh with me, goggle and climb incredible art. We had only gotten one more year together after that first at Uyu. Then, he got sick.
Suddenly, loud electronic bass boomed from a vehicle in the line next to me. I hadn’t even noticed during my daydream that I had moved up almost to the entrance. Only five cars between me and the Plain. The caravan come DJ booth blared beats and three people got out of the motorhome, climbed up the ladder and started to dance on the roof.
For the first time since leaving in my haste, I started to wonder what this week would be like for me. Not only emotionally, but physically, logistically. The emotional rollercoaster I was mounting was inevitably scary. I was about to let go of our Dad. Without my Mom and brother agreeing. My Mom, who in spite of their differences, adored my Dad with all her heart and would not get her final goodbye to the earthly remains of the love of her life.
But also concerning was how unprepared I was for this. Uyu was about total self-reliance. And I had left my house in a hell of a hurry.
When I had told my Mom two weeks ago, finally brave enough to tell her about Dad’s request and wishes to be scattered at Uyu, she hadn’t argued with me like she might have normally. She had become almost animalistic and instinctual in her protection of my Father’s ashes.
“You will NOT be putting my husband’s ashes out among a bunch of strangers.”
She spoke in a tone that I had never heard out of her mouth before. A menacing, low pitched snarl. A warning that if I came too close or made a wrong move, she would bite.
But my Dad had entrusted this request to me.
“Mom, I know it isn’t what YOU want. But it is what Dad wanted.”
Her pupils had dilated and the whites of her eyes had glared at me.
“I will not say this to you twice, Maeve Lewis. You will not take his ashes out of this house. E-ver.”
I hadn’t once in my life been scared of my mother before that moment. She was always the happy-go-lucky, belle of the ball that was far too demure to get angry. But there had been rage in her eyes that day. She would not lose her husband twice. It had scared me enough to think that I wouldn’t actually go through with it.
But, last night, before bed, I got an email alert from Uyu saying, “You’re almost home.” And I imagined my Dad, if he were still alive, reading the same alert in his inbox. I couldn’t let him down. I woke up at three-thirty am and threw some things in my car as quietly as I could. Living in a mansion made sneaking out easy.
And now, I was here, totally unprepared for the desert life. Temperatures could climb as high as ninety degrees and as low as fifty, though I always thought it felt much colder at night. There were dust storms, sometimes high winds. The sun seemed to have some kind of laser focus on the Plain.
I took a total sum of thirty minutes in the middle of the night to get ready for a survival week that my father and I would have planned for at least a month.
In the back of my Prius, I had: a ten man tent that Tyran used once for some mud run challenge, a foldable commuter bike, forty nutrition bars (also leftover from Tyran’s event), a box of Uyu
-wear from last year, a sleeping bag and blow up mattress, twenty gallons of water jugs bought from a gas station (not anywhere near enough for a week) and my Dad’s nostalgic Stanley classic lunchbox.
He had loved that lunchbox and bought it especially for our first Uyu.
Fuck. I had to survive for seven days in trying desert conditions with these supplies?
Seven days. Dad wanted me to spread his ashes at the final night, during the drag queen gala. When the clock tower and cathedral burned.
That sentence went through my head as audibly as if I had said it out loud. Drag queens, fire and wild people dancing was a funeral even Lady Gaga wouldn’t have requested. For the first time, this all felt insane, and I wondered if I should turn around. I suddenly understood why my Mom didn’t think this was a good idea.
But when I arrived at the gate, I gave a girl in a pink sparkly tutu and gas mask my ticket.
2
My head and body spun when I stepped out of the motorhome and onto the Plain dust. The land under my feet wobbled, like having sea legs after getting off a boat. I’d been driving for ten hours straight, only stopping to take a leak once, about two hours after leaving Seattle.
El had offered to drive, but I didn’t trust him. Sure, he was a doctor and all, but his road rage was wicked enough to make me think he subconsciously tried to create a self-sustaining business out of the emergency rooms he worked in. I drove the whole twelve hours. Rubbing my temples, I gave my body a shake like a dog jiggling off a wet day.
We had a good patch this year at Uyu. Not far from City Center. Close to all the nighttime action and the biggest art installations. Uyu contained two parts: a crescent-shaped semi-circle of streets along which people set up camp. And the middle space created by it. City Center was the open space. It seemed to reach further than the eye could see. No one was allowed to camp there. It was where artists got permission to erect fifty foot tall statues and merry-go-rounds. It was the only place people could drive art cars, vehicles that wore costumes as elaborate as their drivers. It was where most of the art turned into nightclubs. City Center. Where the action was at. I loved being this close.