“Reb.” I gasped as her boa constrictor grip squeezed tighter. “My arm. Losing circulation.”
“Oh, sorry.” She released me. “Only two hundred people can be on the trail, you know. And all the trail passes have been sold out for the season. What do you think? It’d be an adventure.”
Adventure. I could practically hear Quattro’s echoing challenge: I thought photographers leaned into adventure. I sighed. “I really can’t. Midterms. I can’t even stand the thought of studying for them twice.”
Nearing Quattro’s hotel, I stole a surreptitious look at myself in the side mirror. Miraculously, my lip gloss was still in place.
“Okay, I know this is going to sound like whining,” Reb said, glancing at me with an anxious expression, “but the trip’s going to be rough. Grandma Stesha is really worried about some of the people who’re going on it.”
Who wouldn’t be? Her grandmother’s tours attracted a certain type of clientele, the kind who believed in fairies and water sprites, crystals and auras. Reb had told me once that Stesha was a rock star in spirituality circles, with some clients signing up for a new Dreamwalks trip every single year. So I guessed, “Repeat customers demanding to see impossible star alignments or something?”
“No. A couple of grievers.”
Grieving. Now, that I understood. Time might heal all wounds, but here it was, mid-March. Seven months and three days after Dom broke up with me, I was still waiting.
Once upon an almost-sixteenth birthday, my brother Max was going to miss my big day because he was moving to San Francisco for a new job at a PR agency and wouldn’t have the time or money to come home in seven weeks to celebrate. This, after being gone for two quarters in London already. So he promised we’d spend his last day in town together, only him and me, starting with a shot of espresso (so adult!) at a coffee shop near the university where he had just finished his MBA. I should have known better when he suggested I bring my computer “just in case.” After we ordered our drinks, Max gave me the first of my presents: a shapeless UW sweatshirt. I hadn’t even taken a sip of my espresso when he had to take an “important call.”
“I’ll pick you up in an hour,” Max promised before he darted out of the coffee shop for a last-minute meeting with the professor who’d connected him to his job. “An hour and a half tops.”
Three hours later, Max hadn’t returned, and my coffee was long finished. Chilled from the overeager air-conditioning, I slipped on the sweatshirt. Still cold, I walked out into the hot July sun, lost in a fog of color, texture, and imagery from whittling a few weeks of photo safaris down to a single photo essay. Was the fall fashion trend in two months really going to be about long gloves, beanie hats, and boy trousers? Maybe it was going to be plaid paired with—
“You think you know everything!” a guy vented in the parking lot, his tone contemptuous. “You’re always the teacher!”
My eyes jerked from the blue sky to a heavyset guy as babyfaced as the petite blonde in front of him. The Yeller’s face was a bombastic red as he jabbed his index finger toward her. “You just can’t stop!”
“I was just—” she started to speak, shaking her head.
“Just! It’s always ‘just’ with you!”
Her lips clamped together. She wasn’t allowed a single sentence, except for “Yes, you’re right” and “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“That’s all you ever are. Sorry after the fact.” The Yeller’s next lacerating words were lost on me because I was staring at the wide-eyed girl who was caught in the hailstorm of her boyfriend’s you-you-you rage. About a year ago, the Booksters had read Reb’s pick, a novel about a girl who escaped an abusive relationship, each attack softened with a Judas kiss.
Then a black BMW screamed into the parking lot and jerked to an abrupt stop. A tall guy who filled out a black Gore-Tex jacket embroidered with UW CREW jumped from the car. He didn’t bother to shut the door but ran straight to the Yeller.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you if you ever so much as look at my sister again?” His voice was lethal and quiet. “Do you?”
“Come on, Dom. It’s not what you think,” the girl protested.
Without a thought to my own safety, I crossed the parking lot to place my hand on the girl’s bony arm. She looked through me as if she were blind. How long had this gone on?
“Let me buy you a coffee,” I said. When she didn’t answer, I stared deep into those hurt-clouded eyes. “You need a mocha fix. Come on.”
“Go,” said Dom, his eyes focused on the Yeller. “Mona, go.”
As the door closed behind Mona and me, Dom met my eyes through the window as though we were a couple who acted in wordless synchronicity. I shivered then, not from the air-conditioning but with knowledge. I had been twice gifted on my birthday: the college sweatshirt that camouflaged the high school junior I’d be this fall and the college boy who made me feel seen.