I think back to how different my summer would have turned out. I’d planned to be fighting wildfires, not going back to the small town in Bear Lake where I’d seeherall of the time.
“I get that, but it didn’t stop you from getting distracted all summer either.”
He’s talking about Teddy. I know he is. But I’m not about to hash out my feelings for my ex-girlfriend with him right now. And it pisses me off that he can never seem to notice or acknowledge any of the good things I do.
“You mean the summer I spent working doubles at your new restaurant?” I argue.
He glares at me. “I didn’t know guaranteeing you a paycheck was such a trial. I didn’t see your brothers complaining.”
I shake my head.Unbelievable.
“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Rex, the strait-laced, rule-abiding son with the aspiring law degree, or Ronny, the baby of the family who, despite wanting to spend a summer backpacking around Europe, can do no wrong.”
I want to addI’m not just your middle child but your middle finger. The one you want to flip the bird to the world for. To pretend I didn’t happen.But Ibite it back.
“Reed, I didn’t mean?—”
“No, I think it’s pretty obvious what you meant. Well, don’t worry. I won’t be the thorn in your side for much longer.” I start to walk away from him, then stop. “But just for the record, you’re making it sound like I sat around freeloading off you all summer, which is simply not true.”
I pick up my pace, passing a community restroom, several gift shops, and a Cinnabon before he stops me in front of an illuminated Starbucks sign with a sigh. A long, heavy, weighted one. Deep enough to drop the conversation.
“We have ten minutes,” he says. Another way of reminding me how ill-equipped I am at keeping track of time. He motions inside the coffee shop. “Do you want anything?”
What Iwantis to get to this job in my own way—without him in tow. But now we’ve got two booked flights, and we’re way past our usual banter.
I shake my head. “No thanks. I’ll just meet you at the gate.”
The fact that I’m turning down a pastry should be enough to show him my commitment to this. That I’m not screwing around with this opportunity the way I did my first semester at Idaho State.
I partied. Skipped classes whenever I was hungover. I didn’t understand why Teddy wouldn’t message me back after her car accident. I thought it was because I didn’t stay. I visited her in the hospital the night it happened, but my parents were worried I was getting in the way. I knew she was healing from a traumatic brain injury, but she didn’t wake up for seven days. It was the end of summer, and I had to make a decision for my future. I committed to going to Idaho State. Paid tuition with the hope that she’d eventually join me there. I didn’t know she’d need an entire year off the grid to recover, or that she wouldn’t even remember I existed.
The memory loss was not something I saw coming.
By the second semester, I got my act together and tried to move on. Drove forty miles one way to the Downey Volunteer Fire Department every Tuesday night for eight weeks. I took a two-hour wildland fire course there. Not to mention the hours I logged training: pull-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, trail runs, all for what’s on the other side of this flight.
Besides a raspberry milkshake from LaBeau’s this summer, eating as clean as possible was a choice I made a long time ago. A commitment to myself to be ready for this. I’m not about to blow that streak on a sugar-induced coma from a whipped cream–covered Frappuccino and a chocolate croissant.
He drops his gaze to the leather band fastened around his wrist and mine follows. The shorthand is clinging to six a.m., which means he’d better hurry.
“I’ll meet you at the gate in five minutes then,” he says, jogging over to the line that snakes outside the confines of the store. The one that screamsYou’re gonna be late.
I push forward, passing gates ten and eleven before double-checking my boarding pass.
Gate 16.
It’s another quarter-mile walk before I sink into the nearest empty chair and drop my head in my hands. The length of my trimmed hair between my fingertips feels foreign. The sandy brown ends no longer curl up over my ears after the haircut I got on a whim last night. It was necessary though. Where I’m going, there’ll be no barber of any kind for a while.
The terminal starts to quiet with my head dipped low. Here I was thinking I’d breathe a sigh of relief the first moment I had to myself. But now that it’s finally here, I’m in the middle of a crowded space as lines from a letter I wrote just forty-eight hours earlier replay inside my mind, suffocating me.
CHAPTER TWO
REED
12 years old
Two hours later, I’m waiting in the hallway outside of my dad’s office with a backpack sagging the shoulder it’s slung over. The zipper bulges in sections, and there’s a gaping hole that won’t close on one side. I made sure to slip the pocketknife in the one on the back.
Through my paned-glass-door view of my dad’s office, I watch him scuff his loafers in a jovial gate against the carpet. He circles his desk. Loud laughter seeps through the crack in the door.
