Troy shakes his head.
“No. To before all of this. I went years without knowing anything about the planet’s temperature. I was oblivious. There’s this day I can remember, before the cyclone and everything else, where I took Turbo to the dog park on a Saturday. It was the one he likes with the little dog pirate ship to play on. And I ran around with him for hours, chucking tennis balls with the launcher until he was so worn out, he slept on the floor in the car on the way home. Then I got fast food, fed him some french fries, and watchedShark Weekin my room until midnight. And that was maybe it.”
“Maybe what?” you ask.
But you already know what he’s going to say, so you wait patiently while he stares into the fire, then looks up with a sad smile and says:
“The last good day.”
NINETEEN
Those words haunt you when it’s time to sleep. Not because of climate change—which, you’ll admit, is a much bigger problem than yours—but because when Troy said them, you immediately thought of your own last good day. The funny thing is, though, that, looking back, it maybe wasn’t the best day overall. But it started off good. The lastgood-ishday? And it was the last time you remember feeling happy with your brother.
It was after Sean’s spiritual awakening. After he’d imprisoned himself in the house for weeks, reading self-help books and dipping his toes into the world’s major religions. It was after he had unknowingly destroyed your friendship with Diana. You’d been wondering if he was maybe going to join a monastery when one morning he woke up and came into your room fresh from the shower.
“Get dressed, Case!” he said. “I have planned anouting.”
He said the last word in an accent of some kind, and you immediately thought of something New Agey. So you were surprised when he told you to grab the cobweb-covered cooler from under the basement stairs. You went down and excavated it, and when you brought it up, he started loading it with sandwiches and sodas from the fridge.
He didn’t tell you where you were going, or that Diana was coming. And when he picked her up, he didn’t tell her anythingeither. He only said that it would be memorable. You got on the highway going north, and for maybe an hour or two, you lost track of time. You were in charge of changing the radio station when the song went bad, and you surfed the frequencies with precision, turning the knob whenever something felt like a mood killer. This job helped keep your mind off Diana, who sat quietly in the back seat, hiding behind an enormous pair of old-lady sunglasses she’d borrowed from her baba.
It had been two weeks since she asked you to go to Perkins and you turned her down. Two weeks since you’d had a normal conversation when you ran into each other in the kitchen, or outside Sean’s room in the morning. Sean had started taking her out again, so they were gone more often. But now the three of you were back in the Corolla, pretending that everything was normal.
And for the drive, at least, it almost was. Sean told a story about the time a guy at the ice cream shop spilled a whole milkshake on himself right before a job interview, and his impression of the guy’s face had Diana giggling in the back seat, in spite of herself. And then he reminded you of this game you used to play when you were young called “escape artist,” where one of you would tie the other one up using anything you could find: toy handcuffs, scarves, ropes, a blindfold. Then the captured person would have to escape in a room with all the lights off.
You remembered this game as being genuinely scary, but the worst thing in the world was if you had to admit defeat and scream for your captor to come set you free. On the other hand, if you managed to escape, there was no better feeling. When you saw the light of the hallway and your brother’s disappointed face, the victory filled your entire body.
“So, basically, you guys were into bondage,” said Diana.
“Har har,” said Sean, reaching over and slapping a palm on your neck. “Nice try, but you’ll never understand our bro-lationship.”
And for the first time in a while, the contact didn’t feel weird.
Sean drove straight through to his destination, only stopping when he got to the parking lot of what appeared to be a nature preserve. There were lots of hiking trails and signs for different numbered quarries, which you didn’t totally understand. He looked at them carefully and then chose number two. He walked ahead of you and Diana with the cooler. Once he was on the right path, a childlike excitement seemed to enter him. He turned back and smiled.
“C’mon,” he said, and started to jog.
You and Diana quickened your pace, but it was hard to keep up with him, and because the sun was high and it was getting hot, neither of you wanted to run. So that left you alone, side by side. You hadn’t spoken a direct word to each other all day. You felt the urge to apologize to her, but for what exactly? For turning down an offer to go to Perkins? Just for being weird? It seemed like if you got started on a proper apology, you would have to explain yourself, and to explain yourself would be to do the unthinkable. Still, you had trouble even looking at her, so you stared straight ahead when you spoke.
“Do you know what this place is?”
Diana looked surprised to hear your voice, and you thought, for a moment, that she wasn’t going to respond. But then she sighed and said:
“Not really. Some kind of old mining place?”
Around you were rows of aspens, their thin white trunksslicing the blue sky into narrow rectangles. The light filtering through the leaves made long shadows on the trail that moved up and over your body when you walked through them. It was so quiet you could hear the sound of the gravel crunching beneath the soles of your shoes. Your familiar anxious urge to fill the silence came back to you quickly.
“Did you know the Japanese have a word for light scattered through the trees?”
She looked at you, mildly curious.
“Komorebi,” you said. “There isn’t really a direct English translation. But it’s basically… you know… this.”
You waved your arms toward the light and stole a quick glance at your brother, who was even farther away now. He also appeared to be taking his shirt off, which was odd, but not entirely out of character. You looked back to Diana.
“Do they have a word for an awkward attempt at conversation?” she asked.
You couldn’t see her eyes through her sunglasses, so it was hard to tell what her expression was.
