Meet Me at the Summit

by Mandi Lynn

  When I check in at the campground, the woman at the front office shows me my campsite on the map, pointing me in the right direction. It’s huge compared to what I need, probably because it’s made for a full-size RV. It’s also in the far back, surrounded by trees, but there are campers on both sides, a small comfort that I’m not in the woods alone.

  I back the bus into the spot and start to settle in. I had done a few things before starting the drive here. The first was to have Ethan show me every inch of the bus and teach me everything possible about it. This meant he showed me the water and electrical hookups, and how I can use them when I’m at a campground, and how to fill my water tanks when they run low. Knowing I have a terrible memory, I recorded videos on my phone when Ethan was talking to avoid needing to call him every time I set up camp somewhere.

  On the way here, I’d also stopped at Walmart to get a few more supplies like more clothes, fruit, and snacks that weren’t canned soup or peanut butter and jelly. On a whim, I also bought fairy lights for the inside of the bus. They were close to the checkout aisle, and when I saw them all I could remember was how dark the bus was at night because it only had one tiny light over the counter.

  The lights now hang delicately throughout the entire bus and give it a special girly glow that Ethan never would have thought of. If I’m going to be sleeping in the bus for the next couple of days, might as well enjoy the space.

  It’s when I’m trying to figure out which hose is for what, that I realize what a stupid idea this entire thing was. I have a feeling I’m doing everything right, but I also have a feeling that at some point, shit will hit the fan. I rewatch all the videos on my phone and follow Ethan’s directions perfectly, but I can’t help but feel like I’m doing everything wrong.

  After an hour of hooking up hoses and wires, I start to feel a little more settled and pop open the bus’s roof to open the windows. My campsite has a picnic table, so I pull it closer to the bus and place the portable stove on it.

  The sun starts to set as I cook my dinner over the stove, a hearty can of SpaghettiOs. I dial my boss’s phone number while I wait for my meal, crossing my fingers that it’s late enough into the day that he won’t answer.

  “Hello?” he answers on the third ring, and I swear under my breath.

  “Hi, John, it’s Marly. I’m stuck in Washington. A family thing came up and I think I’ll be out here for the rest of the week.” The words come stumbling out, but John is silent on the other end. We sit in silence for probably no more than a second or two, but it feels like a lifetime.

  “When will you be back?” His voice is gruff, and I can’t tell if he’s angry or if that’s just his normal voice.

  “Monday?” I say. I’d forgotten to look up how long the drive will take, but maybe a week will be more than enough time.

  The sigh on the other end of the phone is loud and clear, and for half a beat, I think he’s going to yell at me.

  “Fine. Take care of whatever it is that’s going on and make sure you’re back here by Monday.”

  I’m about to say thank you, but I hear the click of the phone on the other end before I can open my mouth. When I finally take the phone away from my ear, I pull up Google Maps to see how much farther I have to drive, and my stomach drops when it says the fastest route will take forty-one hours.

  I try not to panic too much as I dial Lori’s number to FaceTime her.

  “Marly!” Lori says immediately as she answers. She’s in the middle of taking her makeup off, and her phone is propped up on the counter somewhere. “Are you finally having a nervous breakdown?” She’s only half-looking at the phone while she works on removing her eye makeup.

  “Not yet, but might be getting there,” I say. The words were meant to be teasing, but as soon as I say them, joking is pushed aside, and the awareness of how far home is hits me. Forty-one hours of driving is feeling less and less appealing.

  Lori’s confused for a minute and glances down at her phone, pulling her face closer to the screen as she tries to study me. “Where are you?”

  “Some campground in Liberty Lake, Washington,” I say. My SpaghettiOs are boiling now, and I take them off the stovetop, turning off the burner and gas.

  “What?” Lori practically screams, but she’s excited, that much I can tell. Now’s she’s examining me even more, looking at what’s behind me, which is the VW bus in all its twinkly glory. “Are you doing the trip?” She’s hopping up and down now. “Oh my God, Marly, you’re doing the trip!”

  “Yeah, my uncle finally convinced me. Or I just gave up,” I say, the words jumbling together.

  “Oh, Marly, you’re going to have so much fun! Have you looked at everything I sent you yet? You have to go to Yellowstone next! You’ll be driving straight through Montana; you have to stop! And then you can drive straight across and see all the Great Lakes! Or—or—even better, if you want to take the long drive home, you can swing down to Colorado and see those mountains because I know you’re a mountain girl. The Great Plains won’t impress you the same way the Rocky Mountains will.”

  Lori goes on for a while, going through every possible national park and how I can make sure to stop at every one, pointing out all these great places that I’ll have to see and visit.

  “I’m just driving home,” I finally say when Lori stops to take a breath. Her face drops when I say the words, like that was an answer she’d never considered.

  “Really?” she says after a few moments.

  “I called my boss and asked for a few days off. I have to go into work next Monday and I’m thinking I’ll drive at least ten hours a day, maybe a little more.” I try to do the math in my head. Maybe I can find an audiobook or something to make the ride more bearable.

  Lori’s watching me, trying to figure me out through the phone. “Why?” she asks, her voice soft now.

  “Google Maps says it will be forty-one hours to get home, so I need to start driving home tomorrow in case something goes wrong, or the bus breaks down.”

  I put my phone down, resting it against the can of hot SpaghettiOs. The sun hasn’t even started to set yet, but the woods are already getting dark. The campers on both sides already have campfires going. Lori’s watching me through the phone, and I don’t want to say anything, but I also don’t want to hang up.

  “I have a job, Lori,” I say, when she doesn’t respond.

  Lori’s face drops, and her eyes turn down. For the first time, I feel like I’ve disappointed her. “I know, Marly, but you hate that job.”

  I nod, but I’m looking past the phone, out into the trees that are getting darker and darker by the second. I wonder if Lori can even see me all that well; she doesn’t give away anything. I feel tears running down my cheek. The salty water skimming across my skin only makes the loneliness harder.

  “My mom told me to never quit a job until I had another lined up,” I say, struggling to keep my bottom lip from quivering.

  “I’m sure she would understand.” Lori’s voice is gentle.

  “Well, I’ll never get to ask her, so I’m just going off of what I do know.” The words come out blunt, and Lori blinks, taking a breath before shifting the conversation.

  “What’d you do today?” Lori asks suddenly.

  I clear my throat and wipe my face, unsure if Lori saw me crying or not. Knowing her, she did. She has a sixth sense for that sort of thing.

  “Well, Ethan and I hiked Mount Rainier. Not to the top, but just a loop with some views.”

  “Ahh, so just the usual torture of an activity you call hiking,” Lori says, trying to lighten the mood.

  “It was nice to hike again,” I say, already longing to be back in those mountains. Maybe if the option had been given, I would have stayed in Washington for the rest of the week, just to soak in those views.

  “Do you want to go on this trip, Marly?” Lori asks, pulling me o
ut of the mountains.

  “Maybe, if things were different.” Like if my dad was here, and my mom was rooting me on, and I had a clear plan and a future. And maybe a knowledge that all of this would be okay.

  Lori doesn’t ask me to elaborate. Instead, she takes a second or two to think about it before saying anything else. “Can you give me a tour of the bus?” she finally asks.

  “Uh, sure,” I say, picking up my phone. I walk over to the bus and show her every corner and put emphasis on the things I know she’ll appreciate, like how everything matches, and there are hidden little storage areas, so I have plenty of space for everything.

  “It’s so cute! How comfy is the bed?” she asks.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s the comfiest thing in the world, but it gets the job done.” I pat the couch cushion.

  “The lights are a nice touch,” she says. “It completes the entire thing.”

  I head back to the picnic table and bring my food over to the bus so I can eat it at the little table inside the bus. I rest my phone against the counter while I eat. On the other end of the line, Lori walks out of the bathroom and makes her way to our dining table, where her laptop is set up. She’s not saying much as she types away, which I suspect means she’s up to no good, but I try not to worry about it as I eat.

  “It would take you maybe seven or eight hours to get to Yellowstone?”

  “Lori, I have to go straight home.”

  “Let me finish,” she says, cutting me off. “I can take a couple days off from work. I’ll tell my professor I’m sick or something. I don’t know about you, but I want to see Yellowstone, and this seems as good an excuse as any.”

  “You’re going to fly out here?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “What about your summer classes?”

  “I mean, unless you don’t want me to. But I’ll just write one of my papers early. These are online classes, Marly, and we don’t even meet through Skype. I just get assignments sent to me. Frankly, I’m a little upset about that because I paid God knows how much for these summer classes, and turns out I never even get to see my professor’s face.” She rolls her eyes as she talks.

  “Then come for the whole trip,” I say, mostly joking, but hoping she’ll say yes.

  “I can’t. I already asked for Sunday off from work, but they didn’t give it to me,” she says, her face scrunched up at the admission.

  “But you didn’t even know I was going to do the trip,” I say.

  She shrugs her shoulders. “I had faith in you?”

  I shake my head a little, laughing under my breath. Typical Lori. Not only has plan A all figured out, but plan B is in full swing as well.

  “Let’s just have fun at Yellowstone,” she says. “And while we’re there you can finally fall in love with this bus so much that you’ll never want to step foot in a T.J. Maxx again.”

  I give her a sarcastic frown. “You’re so sure,” I say.

  “I’m going to go book my flight.” She flips through her planner that she keeps at the kitchen table and uses religiously.

  “You didn’t already book it?” I ask, joking until her face turns red.

  “I’m tracking my flight for prices. I didn’t want to buy it if you weren’t actually going to go, and my mom is letting me use her credit card rewards, so the flight will be basically free.”

  I practically choke on my laugh. “You what?”

  “Look, I really want to go to Yellowstone, okay?”

  I try to fathom when exactly she started to plan her trip to Yellowstone.

  “When would you be flying in?” I ask.

  “Thursday morning.” She starts clicking away on her computer.

  “How am I supposed to get home in time for work? I need to be in Minnesota or some other state by Thursday.”

  “Umm.” She thinks for a few minutes, trying to do the math herself, but we both have an equation in front of us that won’t work. If I stay in Yellowstone for a mini vacation, I won’t be home in time for work. “Ask for a few more days off,” Lori finally says.

  “I can’t do that!” I say, mostly because I don’t want to call my boss again.

  “Use the family tragedy card again. Ask for another week,” she says, then seems to think it through more. “But wait until last minute. Make it seem like you tried really hard to get home on time. Maybe your Gran can vouch for you? I’m sure she’d be happy to lie to your boss for you.”

  “Lori!”

  “What? Would it really be the end of the world to get fired from that job?”

  I know the answer is no, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, because I know what that feels like. Losing my job would be a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what I’ve felt in the past nine months. I know the truth is that I don’t want to work there anymore. The thought of calling my boss again is not only intimidating, but the thought of walking into T.J. Maxx again is just plain depressing. I just can’t find it in myself to quit.

  “Just trust me, okay?” Lori says.

  I want to trust her, because I know Lori, and I know she wants what’s best for me, but I also can’t help but panic a little, even if I want to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone with her. Yellowstone has always been on the top of my bucket list, and Lori knows that.

  “Okay,” I say, pushing the worry away.

  Lori smiles softly. “I’ll see you Thursday,” she says before hanging up.

  I fall asleep that night, pulling Netflix up on my laptop. I turn it on almost immediately after hanging up the phone so I don’t have to think about the fact that in another week, I’ll have to call my boss again. It would be easier to quit. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

  Netflix plays on an endless loop on my laptop, and I try to invest my time into the show, thinking about the characters, the plot, anything but myself. It’s easier that way.

  Chapter 8

  As the type of person who works almost every day to stay busy, it’s unnerving to wake up and know that I don’t have anything to do before I leave for Yellowstone. I know a lot of people who would be thankful for the peace and quiet, but for me it just makes it a little bit harder to get out of bed.

  At some point, I start nosing through every cabinet of the bus to memorize where everything is. Ethan did a pretty good job of stocking the place up with utensils, pots, and pans, and I spend the morning reorganizing the entire bus. Since the bus is small, it only takes about an hour.

  I live by the art of staying distracted. At home, I would obsessively clean the apartment or figure out ways to organize things, but here there’s a little less to work with, and I find myself twiddling my thumbs again before noon.

  After lunch, I pull out my laptop to keep myself occupied. On a whim, I google how to make money as a photographer. The only thing that catches my eye is selling stock photos.

  When I first started taking photos in high school, my mom mentioned I should try selling my photos on stock websites. At the time, I thought it was a stupid idea, mostly because I thought my photos were too good for stock websites. I envisioned them on the cover of National Geographic or some other prestigious magazine. But the memory of my mom’s advice echoes back at me. She’d want me to at least try.

  I create an account on Shutterstock and upload some of my favorite photos. There are a few blog posts I read on how to optimize the photos, which means I spend about three hours adding titles, descriptions, and tags in an attempt to make them show up when people search. Once I’m done, the website sends me a message saying that I have to wait for my photos to be accepted, which makes the entire afternoon unrewarding.

  Even worse, I didn’t bother to see how much stock photo websites paid until after I’d spent three hours uploading my photos. Assuming my photos get accepted and someone actually downloads, I’ll be making twenty-five cents. I think my mom should have suggested I get into wedding photography.<
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  By the time I close my laptop, it’s almost 7 p.m. Late, but not late enough to call it a night. I end up walking around the campground until I notice a small trail that comes to an end at a tall metal-framed watchtower. It’s almost sunset by the time I get to the top of the tower, which has a small family with two kids sitting at the far end. The parents give me a small wave when I get to the top, and I sit on the opposite end.

  “Can we make s’mores tonight, Mommy?” a little voice says a bit too loudly.

  One of the parents begins to shhh her and responds in a whisper.

  The feeling that overwhelms me in that moment is crushing. I’ve had panic attacks in the past, and for the most part, they always came in private moments when I didn’t have to worry about other people around me. It’s not the first time since my parents’ deaths, but it’s the first one where I have nowhere to hide. Panic attacks used to happen a lot when I was at work, and when they did, I would make it a point to escape to the break room or bathroom. But there’s nowhere to escape here.

  It comes out of nowhere. I was fine one moment, and then the next, it’s like I don’t know how to breathe. All day, it felt like a dark cloud hovering over my head. That cloud has become so common and normal in the past few months that I’ve grown accustomed to it. I never forget that cloud’s there—in fact, I expect it.

  But now the cloud isn’t just there; it’s suffocating me. I want to sit and enjoy the sunset, but it’s like I can’t remember how to breathe. I focus on the ins and outs of my breath, but it only makes me dizzier.

  I can feel myself trembling, so I get up from my seat on the watchtower and walk to the stairs, trying to take them slowly. I’m hyperaware of my breathing now. It feels like I’m too loud, but at the same time, I’m not getting enough oxygen. I take the steps down the tower slowly, feeling unbalanced and my eyesight unfocused. I just want to get back to the bus, but it feels so far away.

  I kneel when I get off the last step of the fire tower. I put one hand to the dirt, holding myself up, but also trying to focus on the texture of the dirt in a sad attempt to distract myself from the panic attack.