He had never quite been able to figure it out, the science of why some strangers made him uncomfortable and some didn’t. If he made a pie chart out of it, the Bens and Rubys of the world would be a tiny sliver, while the Tumbleweeds and the Farajs would make up most of the whole.
Ben let out a low whistle. Alexei looked up.
“How many sutures?”
“Sixteen.”
Ben was examining a jagged white scar, far up on the old man’s thigh. Tumbleweed let the thin fabric of his black shorts fall down again.
“And that was when I had to say good-bye to the Continental Divide. But the PCT keeps drawing me back somehow.”
Ben was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, rapt, and—
Oh God.
Alexei shoved his trash into his pack.
He was totally jealous of Tumbleweed.
Alexei was acting delusional and ridiculous.
He needed to get back to hiking alone, like, stat.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Albuquerque,” Ben was saying now, just like he’d said he was excited to see the Pacific Northwest, and okay, Alexei was spiraling. He yanked his journal out of his pack and tucked his head down. He’d learned it helped sometimes, when he started dissociating, to let himself focus on something that made him feel calm. Like lists.
He had notes to catch up on from yesterday anyway; it had been a big day, and talking to Ben at the end of it had wiped him out. He’d barely been able to stay awake for his nightly prayers once he’d collapsed into his tent. He scratched down the data he’d been trying to document each day.
Miles hiked. Elevation gained/lost. Weather. Trail conditions.
Below each set of data points, he always left room for other notes, usually listed by bullet point. There were a lot of bullet points to fill in for yesterday.
Ruby; yerba santa
Fuller Ridge
Lex
Lots of chickadees
Came out again
He paused here before he added, in a dash underneath:
—Went better this time
Because Ben had treated him exactly the same all morning as he ever had. Like nothing had changed. It had felt…Alexei tapped his pen against the journal. Maybe he didn’t have to summarize it in words. Even if he was possibly being delusional about Ben in general, he knew how that had felt.
Before he forgot the other thing he wanted to note, he flipped to the back of the journal. The list on the first back page was titled “Alexei 2.0.”
Not many people got a chance to truly start over. But after Alexei had lost the foundation of his world—no parents, no church—he’d realized, eventually, that he should take advantage of this clean slate.
He wanted to be different, this time around. Braver. Happier.
Alexei added a new bullet point:
Make an Instagram
And after some thought:
