Meet Me at the Summit

by Mandi Lynn

  “I approve. I mean, I wish you had a better response to him taking his shirt off, but I’ll let that slide,” she says, letting out a little giggle. “You really should be thanking me. If I hadn’t given him your motel info, he’d still be back in Colorado.”

  As Lori talks, I can see Dylan a few campsites away, walking back, dirty clothes and towel balled up in his hands.

  “Thank you,” I say quickly. “He’s coming back now. I have to go.”

  “All right, keep me in the loop,” she says, her voice pleased as she hangs up.

  I feel slightly calmer as Dylan closes the distance between us and steps over to get his backpack out of the bus.

  “That was a quick shower,” he says, eyeing the phone I’m holding, suspicious.

  “I prewashed in the lake,” I say, trying to shrug it off. I run through the last couple of minutes and wonder if he overheard me talking to Lori.

  “What are you hiding?” he asks, walking up, laughing at me. “You’re all jumpy.” I can smell his shampoo when he gets close, and for an instant, I catch myself leaning closer to him. God, what is wrong with me?

  “I was just calling Lori,” I say, holding up my phone.

  He shakes his head and walks toward the bus, hanging his wet clothes on the side so they’ll dry off in the sun tomorrow. “I was thinking we could head to North Carolina tomorrow,” he says, going through the cabinets in the bus for food. He opens my little mini-fridge as well, pulling out some ground meat, lettuce, tomato, and shredded cheese.

  “Really?” I ask.

  He pulls out the portable stove-top and the large skillet from one of the cabinets and brings them to the picnic table.

  “Yeah, we can spend a day or two enjoying the beach. By the time we get to New Hampshire, we’ll be ready for our hike.”

  My first instinct is to turn the idea down and try to cut the trip shorter, but today was a good day. And if the night could be good, then maybe I can keep doing this. I just need one good night, and I can keep going.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Dylan glances over, his excitement evident.

  We eat dinner, and Dylan volunteers to get the bus ready for bed. I walk to the bathroom building, and I’m on my way back when an email comes in on my phone from Shutterstock about a bank deposit. I open my email app, assuming it’s a scam, but everything looks official. I ignore the link in the email and open a browser to log into my account, only to find I have $278 pending to be deposited into my account for this month.

  I almost drop my phone in surprise. Surely the number’s wrong. I explore my dashboard, trying to find exactly where the money is coming from. Almost all my photos have at least one download, but four of them have picked up more than the others, resulting in almost a hundred downloads. The most popular photo is the one I had taken at Gran’s house when I caught the sunrise over the lake. I smile, sitting in a small sense of pride.

  In that moment, I allow myself to imagine a different life. One where photography isn’t just a hobby, but a job. If I let myself, I could imagine getting in the bus and driving to all these places for no other reason than to take photos and sell them. I tuck my phone away, making a mental note to myself to upload more photos later.

  By the time I get back, Dylan is already in the bus with the lights turned off. When I pull the door open, he’s lying on his side of the bed. I can’t tell if he’s asleep or not, but when I crawl under the covers, I feel his hand reach out for me again.

  “Wake me up if you need to,” he says in a low voice.

  I respond with a tired smile and whisper, “I will.”

  §

  I was having the sort of dream where you’re trying to go somewhere, but no matter how hard you try, you’re still anchored in place. I was in my college dorm room with Lori, and we were cleaning it up, making sure everything was in its place because my parents were coming. I wanted them to see how perfect everything was. I wanted them to know I was happy, and that college was where I belonged, even if part of me didn’t feel that way. I needed them to know I was okay.

  Instead of greeting my parents in the dorm’s lobby, I got a phone call from the local hospital saying that my parents had been in a car accident, and I needed to come immediately.

  I didn’t have a car on campus, so I was running down the hall, knocking on every door, seeing if someone could drive me to the hospital, but no one answered. The halls that had once been bursting with people were now a ghost town. I ran out of the dorm room and went from building to building, searching for anyone I could find. Even Lori was gone.

  I started running to the hospital, but it felt like I was sinking, and all I could hear was the woman on the phone saying that I needed to come immediately, her words getting more frantic the longer she spoke.

  My parents were dying. My parents are dead.

  §

  When I wake up, I’m sweating. I’m lying down, but the room is spinning around me, and try as I might, I can’t move, and the only sound is my breathing.

  I take a deep, slow breath and focus on crawling out of bed, fighting to maintain balance. Finding my flip-flops on the floor, I slip out the door of the bus, closing it as quietly as I can. I count five steps before I break down. I’m gasping for air, clutching my rib cage as the sobs erupts. I keep trying to take a step forward, but my balance is thrown, and it takes everything in me to stand upright.

  When I feel someone touch me, I want to scream, but instead, the sobs rip harder through my chest.

  “Marly,” the voice says.

  Someone wraps their arms around me, and I push them away.

  “Marly,” the voice says again. “It’s me. Take a deep breath.”

  I relax and Dylan keeps his arms wrapped around me. I can feel him against my back, but I can’t stop crying. My body is shaking, and I can’t do anything to stop it. Dylan holds me, whispering, but the words feel too far away to hear.

  My face is covered in tears, and I reach up to grip Dylan’s arms. My eyes are open wide, staring off into the woods without seeing anything.

  “You’re okay,” Dylan says. He shifts to put a hand to my face, brushing his thumb over my cheek. “Take a deep breath.”

  I try to let my body relax and focus on steadying myself.

  “I need to lay down,” I say after it feels like my body can’t keep up straight anymore.

  “Sure,” he says. He guides me back to the bus, keeping a hand on my back.

  I’m exhausted as we make the short walk back. In bed, I start crying again like someone just cracked me open. I’m not sure when it happens, but the sobs quiet until they turn into hiccups.

  Dylan lies next to me, but I’m facing the cabinets, hiding myself from view. He rubs my back as I cry, and for an endless moment, we both lie like that. I close my eyes, waiting for exhaustion to overtake me.

  Instead my crying gets louder again. I can hear Dylan shift until his chest is against my back, and he can reach forward and hold me. Dylan doesn’t say anything as I cry. He just holds me, keeping me together, and eventually, I fall asleep.

  §

  I don’t feel rested when I wake up. My head is pounding, and the memory is still all too vivid. All I can think of is the dream and how I ran out of the bus after waking up, and it plays in my mind on a loop, haunting me.

  I turn over, and Dylan is fast asleep next to me, his hand still reaching out for me, but his body relaxed in a way that makes me envious.

  I stare at the walls of the bus for a long time, waiting for the emotions to come crashing down. For now, at least, I’m safe in my numbness.

  At some point, Dylan shifts and sees me awake. “Good morning,” he whispers.

  He’s still half asleep, his hair a mess against the pillow. I want to reach out and touch his hair or his body and find some sort of comfort in that touch, but I keep myself at a dist
ance.

  “I want to go home,” I say. I expected the words to feel like a weight had been lifted, but there’s no sense of relief.

  Dylan blinks a couple of times before he says anything. “Why?”

  I don’t know why I need to be home, but here is not where I want to be. I want to be in a bed that isn’t also a couch. In a room I can cry in without anyone noticing. In a place that doesn’t feel like home but is the only place I have left that fits even the loosest definition.

  “I don’t want to be here,” I say, my voice firm.

  “What about North Carolina?” Dylan asks.

  I try to imagine those sunny beaches that I’ve never seen. How the sand would feel against my shoes and the salty air would wind its way through my hair. It feels like a dream, a dream that was never meant for me.

  I shake my head and Dylan frowns, sitting up. “I’ll pack up the bus,” he says, getting out of bed.

  I can hear him working outside to unhook everything, and I cry. I cry because as much as I want to go home, I want to cling to Dylan even more, but I also know I can’t have him. He was never mine, and at the end of all this, he’s going back home to Colorado, and I’m going to go back to the apartment with Lori and start searching for a job I don’t like or apply for colleges that I don’t want to attend.

  Most of all, I’m angry. I want to go to North Carolina, but not if it means going through this every single night, no matter how good the days are. I’m angry because it feels like no matter how hard I try to be happy, I can’t.

  I put the bed away, folding the sheets up and making the bench seat so I can snap the table into place. When I look out the window, Dylan is gone. It’s a long time before he gets back. I get changed quickly while I wait, assuming he stopped by the front office to let them know we’re leaving.

  I see him walking back to the campsite a few minutes later, but from the wrong direction. I brush it off and get in the front seat.

  “You ready to go?” he asks, opening the driver’s side door.

  “Yes,” I say, sinking into the seat. I can feel Dylan’s gaze on me for a long time before he puts the gear into drive. A question floats between us, but he never asks it.

  Chapter 25

  It’s our longest day of driving so far. We are five hours into the trip when I stop paying attention and eventually fall asleep. I doze in and out, waking up to the audiobook Dylan had turned on for the drive. When I finally sit up again, the bus is stopped.

  “I’ll be right back,” Dylan tells me. He shuts the bus door, walking into a building.

  We’re at a campground for the night, by the looks of it, and I wonder exactly where we are. We’d never discussed exactly where we’d stop overnight, so I assumed we’d just drive as far as possible before finding some place to sleep like a Walmart parking lot.

  Dylan gets back in the bus and puts a tag on the rearview mirror like we always have to for campgrounds. He puts the bus back into drive and follows the road to our campsite.

  “How far did we get?” I ask.

  “We’ve been driving for about eight hours, I think.”

  When we turn a corner, I sit up in my seat and an ocean opens up in front of me. Rows of RVs and trailers are parked on the edges of the sand. I choke, sure I’m fooling myself and I’m still half-asleep. I open the window, and the salty sea air flows into the bus, waking me up.

  All at once, I feel a shiver of anger. “Where are we?” I’m staring out the window, looking for some sort of sign.

  “Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.”

  The words sit there between us, and I fight to keep myself from saying anything. I let Dylan pull the bus into the campsite, parking it so we’re aimed at the ocean. It isn’t until I hear the click of his seatbelt being undone that I choose to say anything.

  “Why are we in North Carolina?”

  “You wanted to go to North Carolina,” he says, but his voice is so quiet, we both know that’s not the full truth.

  “I said I wanted to go home,” I say, anger prickling my words.

  “But you just changed your mind this morning, and I thought once you got here—”

  “What?” I ask, cutting him off. “You thought once I’m here that I’ll just magically feel better? I’ve been playing this game, Dylan. I’ve been traveling and doing this trip just like everyone wants me to, but it’s not helping me.” My voice gets louder as I talk, and I can feel tears coming again, even though the last thing I want to do right now is cry.

  “It is helping you,” Dylan says, his voice calm.

  “No, it’s not. I can’t sleep anymore. At least at home I could turn the TV on and forget about things for a while. But when I try to sleep here, I just dream about my parents and how I didn’t get to say goodbye.” By the time I finish the sentence, I’m borderline sobbing, and the words start to blur together.

  “What?” Dylan asks, concern etched on his face. I start crying and I bury my face in my hands, letting myself collapse. “What dream?”

  “They’re gone. And I don’t get to the hospital in time.”

  “It was just a dream,” Dylan says, putting his hand on my shoulder and rubbing it in a slow, circular motion.

  “No, it wasn’t.” The words ache when I say it, and I try to push the memory away.

  Dylan tries to wrap his arm around me, but I lean away, uncurling myself so I can open the door.

  “Marly, I’m sorry.”

  I step out of the bus and give myself a moment to catch my breath.

  “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back later,” I say. I don’t dare glance back, walking until I’m sure the bus is out of sight. I head for the ocean, kicking my shoes off when I hit the sand. It’s warm beneath my feet, and I try to focus on that while I walk.

  I’m not sure how long I walk for, but when I find a quiet spot of the beach, I sit down, letting myself focus before calling Lori. She doesn’t pick up at first, and I’m sure I’m about to get her voicemail when I finally hear her voice.

  “Hello?” she says, her tone soft like she’s talking to a stranger on the other end of the line.

  “Lori, it’s Marly, I, um,” I say, realizing I don’t know how to start this conversation. I swallow, trying to choke back a cry. “I need to get home. I asked Dylan to take me home, but he brought me to North Carolina instead.”

  There’s a hesitance on the other line, and Lori speaks slowly as she responds. “I know. He texted me about it. He wanted advice on what to do.”

  I pause, replaying the words in my head, sure that I heard her incorrectly.

  “What?” I say, waiting to hear something other than that. I was expecting for Lori to go into full boy protection mode and tell me how important it was to get home ASAP, or something—anything but what she actually said.

  “Well, he texted me saying you wanted to go home, and he wasn’t sure what to do because he thought you going home was maybe what you wanted, but that the other day you were so happy. He thought bringing you to North Carolina would be good for you, and I agreed,” she says, picking her words one by one.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, my voice rising again.

  “Marly, this is the happiest I’ve seen you since your parents died. I mean, the last time we talked on the phone, you seemed like the old you. Happy, going on adventures. That’s what you do.”

  I swallow and take a deep breath. “I can’t sleep, Lori. I’m up all night because my mind can’t stop obsessing over every little sound. And when I imagine coming home, I don’t even know where my home is anymore.”

  “But Marly,” she says.

  I stop her before she can continue. “No, Lori. It’s not your job to make decisions like this. You don’t get to decide what I do. I want to go home. I want to go into my room and cry about my dead parents. I don’t want to be scared and alone anymore.”


  “You’re scared and alone here too,” Lori says, her voice gentle, but the words feel like a slap in the face. “I love you, Marly. You know I do. But we’re roommates, and we both know you haven’t been yourself since your parents have died, and I just want you to be happy again.”

  “They died, Lori. They’re not just gone for a long time. They’re dead, and you expect me to just pick up my things and move on? I’m not a self-help project. I can’t just follow some steps you read in a book and feel better. There’s a hole in my chest. It feels like when my parents died, that part of me went with them, and I wake up every day afraid it will always feel that way and the hole will never heal.”

  “Maybe if you started doing photography again,” Lori says, but her voice wavers, unconfident.

  “I did!” I say quickly. “I am. I take photos every day. I’ve uploaded them to stupid stock photo websites because I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make money with photography while I travel. You and the rest of my family want me to go on this trip and expect me to fall in love with traveling when I literally can’t stand it because when I’m alone, I can’t stop thinking about everything I’ve lost.”

  There’s a long pause, and I sit there feeling like I’ve thrown myself to the ground.

  “I didn’t know you were selling stock photos.” Her voice cracks, and I think she might be crying.

  I stop to take a breath, blinking away tears. I’m watching the horizon on the beach, but it feels like everything is shifting on an axis around me.

  “I wanted to figure things out on my own, Lori. I’m trying, okay? I even printed one of my photos to sell it in a cafe. If a customer wants to buy it, they’ll call me to let me know.”

  “That’s great,” Lori says, her voice cheerful, but I can hear that it’s just surface level, and she’s trying to hide tears.