Meet Me at the Summit

by Mandi Lynn

  Why didn’t she say anything before? I mean, Ethan was right that my mom did love going on vacations; she just wasn’t into the same vacation activities as my dad and me. Her version of the perfect vacation was exploring different little towns, seeing the shops, and testing out local foods.

  “You kept the bus all this time?” I ask.

  “Heck yeah, that thing is a beauty. I mean, not when she first bought it. She got it from some old guy for a steal and blackmailed me into fixing it up for her.” Ethan pauses and glances over at me, leaning toward me to whisper just loud enough so I can hear. “She found my pot stash and promised she wouldn’t say a word if I fixed up the bus.” Ethan leans away again and returns to normal volume. “And I did fix it up, just enough for it to be safe to drive. When she didn’t want to do her big trip, I kept it, thinking I could continue to fix it up and sell it for a profit, but I never got around to it.”

  “But now…?” I egg him on.

  Ethan crosses his arms across his chest. Everyone around the fire is having their own conversation, making s’mores and talking over each other. Ethan looks back at the bus, still parked by the side of the house.

  “We all have different ways of dealing with grief, Marly, and that bus was mine. Your mom and I weren’t close toward the end. I mean, how could we be when she lived on the other side of the country? But we were close enough. Your dad knew about the bus, and he had this dream of trying to convince you into doing the cross-country trip that your mom never ended up doing. Except he wanted you to do more than just window-shop through every town on the way.” Ethan rolls his eyes and chuckles.

  I let out a laugh, shaking my head at the comment because that’s definitely what my mom would have loved to do.

  “Your mom didn’t like the idea,” Ethan says. “She said you needed to go to college, figure out life, settle down. Sorta like she had. But your dad convinced me to secretly fix up the bus for you. When your mom died, I couldn’t bring myself to work on it anymore. It felt…wrong. But then I asked myself what you would want. And I had no clue! Because let’s face it, I don’t know you as much as I wish I did. I mean, the last time I saw you was nine months ago. Not exactly award-winning uncle material. All I knew was, at the least, I could build this bus for my sister. My sister who never got to go on the road trip she had dreamed about.”

  I wait for Ethan to say more, but he leaves it at that.

  “So now what?” I ask.

  Ethan looks down at his feet, then to the fire, the flames reflecting bright against his eyes. “Well, now I’m wondering what my niece is up to. Did she find some guy in college like my sister had that’s going to settle her down?”

  A laugh rushes out of my throat, louder than anticipated. A few people glance over and smile before resuming their own conversations again.

  “No guy in my life,” I confirm. “And I’m sorry to say I’m still a college drop-out.” It’s my first time admitting it, and the words pop out before I can catch myself. I expect some sort of reaction from Ethan, but his face doesn’t change.

  “Why?” is all he says.

  And that’s the question after all, isn’t it? Why aren’t I back in college? Because I’m working every day just fine. A boring retail job, yes, but I’m a perfectly functioning human. I’m not consumed by my grief. I can’t use that as an excuse. Maybe I’m just lazy? But it doesn’t feel that way. Mostly it just feels like I don’t belong.

  “I think I was just going through the motions when I enrolled in the first place. It wasn’t a question of ‘Do you want to go to college?’ It was, ‘You’re going to college. What do you want to do with your life?’ And I still don’t know the answer to that one,” I admit.

  “Then maybe you don’t need to know,” Ethan says.

  “Well, I want to do photography, but that’s more a side-gig thing. My mom loved my photos, and she let me choose photography as my major, but I could always tell she was hoping I’d find a better major or career. Something where I’m actually employed by a company with a 401k and health insurance.”

  “Who needs a 401k anyway?”

  I laugh a little. “You’re going to make my mom rise from the grave to slap you silly.”

  “Your mom didn’t abandon the bus because of a 401k,” Ethan says. “She fell in love with your dad. Her dream didn’t die; she just found a better one. So let me ask you, what’s your dream?”

  It’s a question my mom had asked me when I was applying to colleges, but it wasn’t as open-ended. She wanted to know what my career was going to be. What classes I wanted to take. What I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. And I didn’t have an answer to any of those questions.

  “What are you trying to get at?” I ask.

  “Well, I’m asking you what you want to do with your life. But since you don’t seem to know the answer to that question, I’m also asking you if you want to discover the answer by traveling cross-country in that bus.” He nods at the bus, watching my face carefully.

  I wait another beat, trying to process exactly what he means because he certainly can’t mean that literally.

  “I have to work on Wednesday,” I say, the words coming out automatically.

  “Oh well, in that case, your job is more important than a cross-country trip. Where’re you working these days?” Ethan asks, leaning his elbows on his knees, watching me as I put my marshmallow back into the fire.

  “T.J. Maxx.”

  “Manager? Or…?” His tone is on the edge of teasing, which is more or less what I expected as a response. That, or pity.

  “I restock the shelves,” I say, already anticipating what he’ll say next.

  “So call in sick,” Ethan offers.

  “I can’t just call in sick. It will take days, maybe weeks, to drive home, and it’s not like I have any vacation time left.”

  “So quit,” Ethan says like it’s the only option. Just quit. Who cares if that’s the only part of my life that’s given me any sense of normal? Just throw it out.

  “Ethan, I can’t.” My hand lowers too much, and my marshmallow ends up in the fire, melting off the stick entirely. I let out a frustrated sigh and pull the stick out.

  “Why not?” he asks.

  I get up to put the stick away at the little table with the s’mores supplies behind everyone’s lawn chairs. A few faces lift from the fire, glancing over. Gran especially seems to keep her eyes on me.

  Ethan gets up from his chair and follows.

  “Come here,” he says, putting a hand on my back and leading me over to the bus. It’s dark on the side of the house where the bus is parked, but the moon is just bright enough to see.

  “Ethan, I can’t just drop everything,” I say, following his lead, but glancing back at the fire.

  If he hears me, Ethan doesn’t respond. Instead, he opens the bus’s side door and ushers me to sit on the couch while he stands at the doorway.

  “I need you to stop pulling the wool over your eyes for a second,” Ethan says, his voice firm. Whatever joking we had been doing earlier is gone now. “Your Gran keeps in touch with your dad’s side of the family, especially after everything that happened last year. She wanted to make sure you were okay, and frankly, from what I’ve heard, things aren’t going great.”

  I drop my gaze, wondering how many people Gran has been talking to about me. What exactly did my dad’s side of the family tell her? That I’ve been working the same minimum wage job after dropping out of college? That I wake up every day focusing on whatever immediate task is ahead of me and never thinking about tomorrow? How would they even know? I’ve barely seen them since the funeral.

  “What do you have calling you back home that you need to be there on Wednesday?” Ethan asks. I keep my gaze lowered, focusing instead on the grains of wood on the table in front of me. “Marly, it’s okay that you dropped out of college. It’s okay th
at you’re stuck. It’s okay that you still miss your parents. What’s not okay is that you’re not happy, and we all want you to be happy.”

  I feel the tears running down my face before I’m fully aware of what Ethan is saying. The only thing I can be thankful for is the fact that I’m a quiet crier. For a moment, I’m not even sure Ethan notices.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally say.

  “Look out there,” Ethan says, pointing to everyone sitting at the fire. “Those people love you, and it doesn’t matter if you’re here, back home, or driving around aimlessly across the United States. And your family in New Hampshire? I’m sure they feel the same way.”

  I nod my head, mostly because I’m sure if Lori was here right now, she’d be saying the same thing.

  “What’s stopping you from driving away in this bus?” Ethan says, his voice soft.

  I look up at Ethan, not sure what the answer is. Because if my parents were alive, my dad would have been able to go through with his master plan of having this bus built for me. And I would travel wherever I wanted to before eventually coming home again to continue college. I would have begged my mom to let me do it. Not only that, I would have tried to convince Lori to come along with me, but even if she wouldn’t be able to go, we’d still have weekly video chat dates. I would have scheduled in time with my parents to fly out and meet me in places we’d only ever dreamed of exploring. My dad and I would hike every mountain we could find, and then afterward, my mom would meet us at the bottom, telling us how we had to check out a pizzeria downtown. So why now, when I’m offered something I’d only thought would be a dream, am I so scared of saying yes?

  “I’d have to quit my job,” I remind him. Any grown adult, excluding Ethan, would think that was a bad idea.

  “So quit. Minimum wage jobs are a dime a dozen, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure your parents’ insurance makes it so you can live for a couple of months without worrying about getting a job.”

  I laugh a little because it’s true. Life insurance works wonders in that way. But I’d much rather trade it in for my parents.

  “I feel like you might not be the best person to take job advice from,” I say, trying to laugh, but it comes out dry.

  “Marly, what’s really holding you back?” Ethan asks.

  I look around the bus. In another life, this is what I would have wanted, to travel around in a camper van. No clear direction, just exploring.

  “I don’t want to be alone,” I finally say.

  I’d never felt more alone than when my parents died. And even then, I was never truly alone. Lori was always there. And my dad’s side of the family is almost constantly checking in on me to see if I need anything. But getting in that bus? Driving off onto a long road, totally unaware of where I’m going or how long it will take to get there? It sounds lonely, and that terrifies me. Yet alone is what I’ve craved on days when people wouldn’t stop asking how I am. So why am I so afraid of driving away in that bus?

  It would be different if my parents were alive. My dad would be calling every day, asking where I was, what I explored, and what I learned. He’d meet me at the top of summits just because.

  “How about this?” Ethan says. “Monday morning, you and me are going to drive out to Mount Rainier. You’re going to hike your first Fourteener, and you’re also going to drive this bus. Then, you’re going to drive home. I don’t care if you stop at every hiking trail you find along the way or if you decide you need to take a detour to go see the Grand Canyon. Or,” Ethan’s voice quiets almost to a whisper, “maybe you just drive straight home, stopping only to sleep, and your thoughts are your only company on the way home.” Ethan pauses, staring at me until his face softens. “But I want you to drive. Your mom says you love talking to people who hike the Appalachian Trail, right? You like the stories they have to tell?”

  “Yeah, but I never wanted to be a thru-hiker,” I say. “I enjoy personal hygiene too much. Three-day backpacking is my limit.”

  “Everyone who goes on that trail goes on a journey. And I’m not talking about the walking; I’m talking about what happens in here.” Ethan lightly taps his finger against his forehead.

  I lean back into the couch and take a deep breath. “You really want me to quit my job?”

  “I think you and I both know that job is just to keep you occupied,” Ethan says.

  I wrap my arms around my chest. The air is cool as it flows in through the open door of the bus. There’s a light breeze that makes me miss sitting in front of the fire.

  “I’ll go on the hike,” I say, trying to appease him.

  “We’ll do one of the easier trails. Trust me, do I look equipped to make any other kind of hike?” Ethan says, gesturing to his body. He’s not what I would call physically fit. Let’s just say he probably lives by the motto live to eat rather than eat to live. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he’s unhealthy. But his heart probably isn’t prepared for the thousands of feet elevation we’d have to cover in order to get to the summit of a 14er. Usually, only about half the attempts to get to the summit of 14ers even make it. And that’s a very general statistic.

  “What are we hiking?” I ask, curious.

  “The Skyline trail. It’s a loop below the summit that should have some pretty good views. There’s a waterfall and a meadow. It’s all very picture-perfect, without the fear of death that comes with hiking on a glacier.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Well, that’s no fun,” I joke, though part of me is disappointed because that won’t count as summitting. At least there should be views.

  “Look, kid. If we go to the summit, I’ll end up like one of those dead bodies on Mount Everest used as a landmark to find the trail.”

  I sigh and pull out my phone. I search the trail on one of my hiking apps. It’s about six miles with less than 2,000 feet elevation gain. It should be easier than the hikes I’m used to back home. The trail will take us nowhere near the summit, but it looks beyond worth the effort based on the photos. There’s a recent trail report with a photo attached where you can see glaciers off in the distance. The same trail report also has a picture of a valley full of flowers along the trail, so it definitely gets points for having a view.

  “What are you doing?” Ethan asks, leaning forward to look at my phone.

  “Fact-checking your research. If I’m hiking a mountain with you, I want to make sure we know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

  “So you’ll do it?” he asks.

  I scroll down to view the map of the trail. It’s pretty straightforward and labeled as high traffic, so even though I’m unfamiliar with the area, we should have no issues.

  “What does this have to do with the bus?” I ask, turning the screen of my phone off and putting it back in my pocket.

  “It will give you a taste of what’s to come on your trip.”

  “I haven’t even agreed to the trip yet,” I say.

  “But you won’t be able to say no once you get that bus on the road.”

  I raise my eyebrows, doubtful of that. But Ethan knows exactly how to pique my curiosity. Now that I’ve seen photos of what the trail will be like, it will take a lot of convincing to not go.

  “I’ll do the hike, but only because it’s short enough for me to still catch my flight on time that night,” I tell him.

  “You’ll do the hike, and then afterward decide how you want to get home,” Ethan counters.

  “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”

  “You’ll see, Marly. These mountains are magic. I have a feeling they might work their charm on you.”

  Chapter 6

  Ethan insisted I drive the bus to the trailhead. He also insisted that he take his own car so I could drive off and begin my journey home after the hike. I told him multiple times that it was a stupid idea because after the hike, we’d be heading back to Gran’s place to drop o
ff the bus before we had to rush back to the airport, but he refused to give. Ethan went as far as telling everyone I was leaving first thing Monday morning and to say their goodbyes in case I didn’t come back. All he could talk about Sunday was the trip. At first, I tried to correct him, but he was more persistent than me, and it didn’t take long for me to give up.

  I say my goodbyes to everyone Sunday night. When I wake up at 6 a.m., the sky is just starting to lighten. Gran is watching me from the house’s doorway while Ethan’s packing up.

  “Marly, can you help me with something real quick?” Gran gives me a soft smile and waves me over. I follow her into the house. “I just wanted to give you a couple snacks for the ride,” she says, handing over a bag filled to the brim with food. They aren’t exactly snacks. In fact, most of the food is items to make a meal like bread, peanut butter, and canned soups. Really, it’s just a bunch of food pulled from the pantry along with actual snacks like crackers and trail mix. Not exactly plane friendly, but I’ll leave whatever I can’t take with Ethan.

  “That’s a little much, don’t you think?” I say, eyeing the bag. Heck, there’s even a box of mac and cheese.

  “Well, Ethan told me about the trip he wants you to go on, so I thought this might help you until you get the chance to stock up the bus,” she says, her face earnest.

  “Gran, I’m not going on the trip,” I tell her. I push the bag back toward her, but she puts a hand up, refusing.

  “I know you don’t want to, and I know it’s not my place, but I think it might be good for you.” Gran sits at the table. She frowns, thinking about something. I sit across from her, leaving the bag of food between us. “I remember when your mom bought that bus. She was so excited. She spent day after day researching how to fix it up and trying to convince Ethan to help her. I’ll admit, I wasn’t thrilled. It seemed like a terrible idea, traveling across the country alone, and as a woman nonetheless! I’m all about women’s empowerment, but you have to understand how much more dangerous that would have been for Jill than for Ethan.”