Vulture Mine was a legitimate ghost town. There were dozens of structures still standing, some brick, some stone. All of the buildings were neglected, but they looked like someone had picked up and left, leaving things behind. There was mining equipment left on the side of the road, rusted and brittle from exposure. There were clusters of buildings built along a slight slope, with cacti growing in between each of them. The gas station was primitive, and clearly from another era. There were still tires resting against the building, and a bunch of random objects scattered around the building itself. It was spooky, seeing that whoever had left hadn’t bothered bringing these things with them.
There was barbed wire up over some of the buildings, preventing us from doing a lot of exploring. And as the sign we’d seen on the way in had informed us, we’d missed the mine tour. Instead, we walked along the property in silence, the only sound came from the natural sounds of the desert around us and our shoes crunching into rock and branches.
We passed an outhouse that was falling apart. It was a walk through the past.
“It’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” I asked Everett.
He nodded, looking around at all the abandoned buildings. “It is. Let’s get out of here.”
I followed him to the car. Instead of feeling intrigued, I felt like an intruder. It was uncomfortable, seeing the ruins of lives all around us. We climbed into the car and Everett backed out.
“Sorry,” he said as we drove off.
“I didn’t think I’d feel that way seeing it all.”
“Me neither.” He frowned. “I’m ready to get off the road, are you?”
“Yes.”
I was still trying to shake off the discomfort I felt at seeing Vulture Mine when we checked into the hotel room. Both of us were in weird moods. We didn’t speak as we settled in, eating our drive-thru dinner we’d picked up on the way in.
When I slid into the sheets, I turned on my side to face Everett. He was wearing glasses and writing in his notebook, careful to keep what he was writing from my view. His lips were pursed, his eyebrows drawn together.
“What are you writing?” I asked, while yawning.
“Words.”
I sighed and rolled onto my back. “You’re really good at telling the truth through evasion.”
“I thank you for the compliment.”
“It wasn’t one.” I pulled the sheet up higher, to my neck. “For someone who is so forthcoming, so brutally honest, I’m surprised you keep little things to yourself.”
“Who said what I’m writing is a little thing?”
“Is it the next Pulitzer?”
“Probably not.”
“So why can’t you tell me then?”
“Tell me why you stopped fighting.”
It was really hard to not roll my eyes. “Is that going to be your requirement for every question I ask you to answer? For me to open up and tell you the things I don’t even know the answer to?”
Everett closed his notebook and set it down on his nightstand. “Some things are personal. What I’m writing is personal. And we’re not there yet. We’re not at that level.” He slid down into the sheet and turned to face me, propping up his head. “Let’s try something. You ask me any question. I ask you any question. And we decide how much we’re willing to reveal with our answers.”
I thought about it for a minute. “Keeping the earlier questions off the table, I’m assuming?”
“Yes. I won’t ask you why you aren’t fighting and you won’t ask me why I’m choosing to not treat this cancer. Or my notebook.”
“I want you to ask first.”
“Okay,” he answered. He fluffed up his pillow and considered. “Tell me about Mira.”
“What do you want to know?”
“She’s the only person in your life. I think learning about her will enable me to learn about you.”
I thought for a minute and then stared at the ceiling as I spoke. “I remember her voice. It was warm and smooth, like red wine. It was the sound that woke me up. When I’d managed to open my right eye, I saw her. She had this fire engine red hair and eyes caked in black liner. My first thought was that she was a hooker.” I almost laughed, saying that aloud. Instead, the side of my lips tipped up just slightly. It was a compromise. “She smelled like smoke and coffee and she kept clapping her hands in front of my face, to keep me awake. Her voice was impatient, as if finding me on the side of the road in the middle of the night was a massive inconvenience for her. I blacked out then and didn’t see her again until I signed myself out of the hospital early that morning. She didn’t baby me. I remember being grateful for that. She didn’t hold me or console me. Instead, she had me move in with her for a little bit. It was an odd pairing.
“She trained with me, every day, for months. She’s a firefighter and on the side she teaches self-defense, so she’d be gone at random hours of the day. I spent a lot of time alone then. And the time I spent with her didn’t involve any boy talk or hair braiding or chick-flick watching. She helped me a lot.”
“Do you still stay in touch?”
“We do, though not in a traditional sense. Mira has, or had, a boyfriend. He was a scary-looking dude, but nice enough. He didn’t exactly approve of her taking me on, but he didn’t make me feel like a burden. Mira wouldn’t have it. Mira and Six have always been on and off, but he’s the center of her world. She doesn’t like to admit that, but he is.” My mind flashed to memories of him sitting in Mira’s living room, watching her train me. “She’s it for him too, but they haven’t been able to get their shit together and make it work. I don’t know a lot about him, because of how private Mira is, but I know he is often gone.” When I was done speaking, I turned my head to look at Everett. He was watching me, thoroughly invested in what I was saying. I hadn’t meant to say as much as I did, but telling Everett about Mira didn’t bother me. He had been correct when he’d said she was the only person in my life. She was.
“My turn?” I asked. Everett nodded solemnly. I had wanted to ask this question for days, so it was out of my mouth a second later. “Tell me what it was like, fighting cancer as a teenager.”
Everett frowned, but sighed, and seemed committed to answering my question. “When I was first diagnosed, no one thought it would be a years-long ordeal. But it was. I eventually missed enough school that my mom started home schooling me from my bed, at home or in the hospital. I watched my mom suffer through a lot of grief, and my dad lost his job from so many absences. My sister is a couple years older than I am, but she was still in high school when things were the worst for me, health-wise. My parents’ marriage crumbled and my sister was largely ignored and I laid in a hospital bed, unable to do anything useful or productive. No one blamed me, of course, but I still felt responsible. I still do. When surgery was a viable option, we proceeded with it. It was successful, obviously, but I wasn’t prepared for the side effects.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I awoke from surgery, my parents were divorced and my sister was pregnant by a guy ten years her senior. She hadn’t yet graduated high school. And the guy was married.”
I rolled on my side to face him. “Your parents got divorced during your surgery?”
“No,” he shook his head. His hand moved to his head, and he pushed his hair back. “This,” he said, indicating his scar, “took my cancer. But it also took my memory. Or, at least six months of my memory.” He dropped his hand. “I came out of surgery another person. I was angry. I still have a short fuse, as you might remember with my blowup over the seatbelt, but then it was worse. I was angry with my parents, for not fighting harder for each other. I was angry with my sister for wrecking a marriage while our own parents had let go of theirs so easily. Before the surgery, I was happy. I did sports every season, I had a handful of really close friends and dozens of other friends I spent time with regularly. After surgery, I pushed those friends away with my temper. I got headaches all the time and by the time I could legally purchase alcohol I was already a functioning alcoholic.”
I tried to wrap my brain around it. I understood memory loss to some extent, though I’d only lost minutes, not months. I finally understood why Everett had first made me feel sadness. There was sadness tinged in his smiles. The grief I initially read on his face went deeper than his skin.
“I got my GED and went away to college. My parents aren’t the same people they were before. My mom used to be social, she used to have book club and she organized activities for the youth members of her church. Now she works a job that makes her miserable, but she can’t afford to not work, not as a single woman living on her own. My father is mostly absent from my life. He’s still in love with my mom, and he can’t move on from her. My sister is raising my nephew on her own, working odd shifts. They say tragedy brings families together, but all it did was split mine apart. None of us are the same. We smile when we’re together, but we don’t mean it, not really. Being together for holidays is only a reminder of how good we used to be. It’s painful, Parker. To continually know, year after year, that it will never be as good as it was. That by the next year, we’ll have grown further apart.”
I understood then, why he wasn’t fighting the cancer. I didn’t agree with it, but I did understand why. It made me uncomfortable, to hear of Everett’s tragedies. Which was confusing itself, as I usually lived for that kind of entertainment. It was all I lived for really: people watching. But with the visit to the ghost town and hearing of Everett’s life with and after cancer, I felt like I’d more than just observed someone else’s life.
“Nothing to say to that? Have I depressed you?”
My eyes turned back to Everett. I didn’t know what to say, so instead I leaned in and gave him a kiss. It was tentative, as I was unsure if it was the right reaction to what he said. Just when I was about to pull away, he cupped a hand behind my head and pulled me closer.
His hand fisted in my hair as we kissed. Despite the grip on my hair, he kissed me leisurely. As one might savor a rare treat. But I was hungry, desperate. A fire had been smoldering all day long, sparking with each look he gave me. I didn’t have the patience to savor. I wanted to devour.
I climbed on top of him and whipped my shirt off, tossing it off the bed. Everett’s hands went to my hips, squeezing, before moving up my torso to my chest, tugging on the center of my bra. “Get this off.” He all but growled it.
I leaned forward, capturing his mouth with a kiss. I tasted impatience and heady desire on his lips. I was drunk with it.
His hands scaled my spine until the met the clasp of bra and a second later, he was ripping it off of me. His fingers moved around to my breasts and squeezed before he flicked my nipples with his thumbs. My back arched in response and Everett took the opportunity to flip me onto my back, so he was on top of me. His lips met mine again and again while he took care of the rest of our clothing. My nails grazed down his chest when he was over me again. His hair was hanging over his face, his lips were swollen and he was breathing heavily.
“Are you okay?” I asked, seeing a trickle of sweat on his brow.
“I will be. Now, no more talking.”
He slid a waiting condom on and was inside of me before I could say anything.
When we were both spent, Everett collapsed on top of me. I felt his arms wrap around my back and then I was pulled, so I was laying on top of him. He was asleep in seconds.
I, however, was wide awake. Sex with Everett was energizing, both in body and in mind. I slipped out of his arms and cleaned up in the bathroom. When I came out, he was still asleep, completely naked on the bed. I admired him for a minute, my eyes traveling over his entire body. It was my first chance to really see him without just a few glimpses in between driving me crazy.
I climbed back onto the bed, sitting up right next to him. My eyes slid over the tattoo on his ribcage, about the sweet moment. My eyes stayed there a beat before moving on. Below that tattoo, near his hip, was a tree. It started at his pelvic bone and moved up, with gnarled branches gliding around the front of his body and his back. The tree had no leaves, just twisted branches and straight roots. It was something I wanted to ask him about.
Along the right side of his ribs were a group of four, colored swallows, all flying in different directions. Along his upper right arm were three straight lines wrapping his bicep. I wondered about them. They weren’t just art; there was something more significant about them.
I heard my phone vibrate from inside my purse and slid off the bed to check it.
Mira: Hey, mouse. How are you?
I looked at the time. It was only ten, so I threw Everett’s tee on over my head and ducked outside of the hotel room onto the small balcony.
Me: Fine. Everything okay?
Mira: Can I call you?
Instantly, I knew something was wrong. Mira didn’t like to talk, not ever. She actively avoided answering her phone unless it was Six or someone else.
So I dialed her. It rang once before she answered.
“Mouse.” I heard relief in her voice.
“Mira. What’s wrong?”
There was a pause on the end of the line. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but I need your help.”
Now I was really worried. Mira didn’t ask me for help. She was the one who helped me.
“Of course. What do you need?”
“Can you come to Colorado?”
We weren’t far from Colorado now and I figured I could convince Everett to make another stop. “Yes,” I answered. “I’m in Arizona right now. I can probably be there tomorrow.”
“Arizona?” Mira knew I never traveled. I avoided leaving my bedroom. Leaving the state was something I’d never done.
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure how to explain. I couldn’t lie, not if she’d meet Everett the following day. “Wait, why are you in Colorado?”
“Why are you in Arizona?”
“I’m on a road trip.”
There was a long pause. “Really? You, on a road trip?”
“Yeah. I’ll explain when I get there. What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to be a decoy. You’re a fast runner, you’re good at hiding. It’ll only be for one night, and then you can continue on your…road trip.”
I could tell she would be grilling me the moment I saw her, but I was more focused on the decoy part of her statement.
“Decoy?”
“I’ll explain when you get here. And so will you.”
“Okay. Text me where we need to go.”
“We? Who are you with?”
“His name is Everett.”
“Everett? What’s his last name?”
I racked my brain. I didn’t even know. How could that be? I was on a road trip with him, and I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t know how to answer.
“Uh…” I started. And then I was on the defensive. “No. You’re not going to look him up.” Another pause. I was getting annoyed. I never got annoyed with Mira. “You’ll meet him tomorrow.”
“Okay. Drive fast.”
And then the line was dead. Mira didn’t bother with goodbye, not with me at least.
I sighed and looked out at the desert around us. There were weird noises in the desert, different than the city I was used to. The air smelled different, the heat felt different. I felt different. I turned back to the sliding glass door and slid back into the room. The only light in the room was the lamp on Everett’s side of the bed, the light he’d left on.
Everett hadn’t moved from the spot he’d fallen asleep in. I climbed in beside him and laid on my side, watching him. In sleep, his face was relaxed, free from the lines that furrowed his brow when he was annoyed with me, free from the lines around his eyes when he was flirting with me. He looked so peaceful, and a part of me, a small part, felt a tinge of sadness. He was dying. Soon, he’d always have this look on his face.
Despite it being against my self-imposed rules, I curled up close to Everett, laying my head on his bicep. I wasn’t sure if it was instinctual or not, but his arm curled around me, wrapping me closer to him. I hoped it was instinctual. And I hoped it wasn’t.