The Way Back to You (16 page)

After a while, sidewalks and commercial buildings start popping up on the side of the road. The shops are low, mostly one story tall, and they were clearly designed to blend in with the earthy color scheme of the city’s landscape. The rock formations tower over everything, a constant backdrop.

“I cannot believe you grew up here,” I say to Kyle, giddy as we pass the millionth storefront advertising some variation of the words
psychic
,
healing
, or
enlightenment
. “Be honest: were you birthed on a bed of quartz crystals?”

He laughs. “It’s trippy, I know.”

“Was your school on a commune? Did you learn how to read auras instead of, like, history?”

“Even Hogwarts teaches history, Cloudy,” he says, a playful smirk on his lips. “This is mostly tourist bait. Not that it’s all bullshit. Native Americans did believe Sedona was a sacred space; some of the locals have run with it.”

I tilt closer to my window, gaping at our surroundings. “It’s like a New Age theme park.”

We turn it into a game—a point for every mystical establishment one of us spots. But we’re laughing so much, we lose track before Kyle pulls off the highway and onto a more secluded drive. We stop for a quick bathroom break at the local McDonald’s, and even that is charming, with a pink facade and the famous golden arches turned a pastel blue. Once we’re on the road again, the shops and businesses fall away, and I go back to ogling the rocks.

“Wait until you see them at sunset,” Kyle tells me. We’re meeting Will at the parking lot that serves a few different hiking trails—including the Teacup Trail, which is how we plan to trek up a mountain called Sugarloaf Rock. It all sounds very Candy Land, but according to Kyle, it’ll be worth it once we reach the top.

“Sunsets are an
event
here. You have to see one on your first night. And the higher you go, the better the view.” He glances at me quickly, nodding down at my sandals. “Actually, you might want to put on pants and change your shoes. It’ll get a little colder up there.”

“Colder?”
My voice breaks as it rises. Four days out of Oregon
and I’ve already adapted to the warmth.

“It’s the desert.” And he says it so fondly, I don’t even care that I woke up a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean this morning.

As he swings into the small lot, Kyle inspects the five cars lined up side by side, then eases the Xterra into the closest available spot. The area is ringed with trees, so the space is mostly shade.

He shuts off the engine. “Looks like Will isn’t here yet.”

“Are you nervous?”

Kyle pauses, tapping the wheel. “No,” he says, and he sounds surprised but firm.

Through my window, I eyeball the other hikers getting ready to take on the trail. “In that case,” I say, “mind waiting outside while I layer up?”

Once he’s out, he also very deliberately keeps his back to the car, giving me some privacy. I shimmy into the fleece-lined leggings I wore the first day of our trip, then check my phone. Ignoring Zoë hasn’t discouraged her from sending numerous Sedona facts, including:
It’s named after a woman! Sedona Schnebly!
And although we chatted earlier, there’s an email from my mom; the subject reads “Shore do miss you” and there’s a picture of my parents grinning around the mouthpieces of their snorkel masks—I feel too guilty to make fun of it. There are messages from others, but disappointment settles thickly in my bones. I didn’t realize I was hoping for a call from Jade until I didn’t get one.

A horn blasts—two short honks, followed by a long, drawn-out shriek—and tires screech as a dusty Subaru SUV comes to a quick stop a few cars away. A guy catapults out of it.

“K.O.!” Will bellows, and he’s smiling as he lopes over to meet Kyle. Hearing Kyle’s baseball nickname makes me smile, too. Guess that’s a Sedona throwback.

They hug, slapping at each other’s backs loudly, as their boisterous reunion sounds bounce around the lot. Arm and I share a look—
boys
—and I finish changing as demurely as possible before going over to join them.

When he sees me approach, Will’s eyebrow pops up. I notice a slightly slanted tooth as he grins and clamps a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “Is this a new girlfriend?” He says it under his breath, and shakes Kyle playfully. Kyle doesn’t budge. “Not the one with the black hair who’s in all your profile pictures?”

I falter and skid for a second, my boots scraping across pebbles and blacktop. Kyle meets my eyes, which are fully open and dry. Clearly, Will hasn’t heard about Ashlyn’s accident. It’s the sonic boom that’s been reverberating in our everyday for months; that keeps echoing with memorials and vigils and bike safety seminars. Her death is how we live now, and it’s a shock that there are people who have no idea. There are places in the world where Ashlyn is still alive. All these people who don’t know.

How can people not know?

If I didn’t foresee how embarrassed Will is about to feel, I’d knock the rest of his teeth crooked.

“Uh, no,” Kyle stammers. “That was Ashlyn in my pictures.” I watch his face, his shoulders, his fingers, every part of him for a sign that he can’t say it—that I should. But he can. He is. “She died. Last year.”

And there goes Will, all the blood draining from his face.
The tiniest of smirks clings to his lips, probably holding on to some prayer that Kyle’s screwing with him. He waits a little longer, then: “Shit. Seriously?”

Kyle licks his lips. “Yeah.”

“Oh, shit.
Shit.
I’m sorry, man.” Will wipes at his face with both hands, groaning. “I’m such a dick.”

“It’s all right,” Kyle says.

“I didn’t realize; I swear it. I never saw anything about it online.”

Kyle shuffles his feet, sneakers grinding stone against cement. “I sort of gave up on social media for a while,” he says. “Ashlyn’s name or photo would appear out of nowhere sometimes. It got too hard.”

I want to grab his hand so he knows I’m here. Instead, I step up beside him. “Her parents had her page memorialized, so people go on there a lot to write messages. It’s kind of impossible to miss.”

And impossible to stomach. The notes have dropped off the past couple of months, but whenever one appears, I get queasy.

Will turns to me. His forehead is damp. “You’re still Cloudy, though. Right?”

“Still Cloudy,” I say. “But not Kyle’s girlfriend.”

Will exhales as if he’d like to restart the past five minutes.

Over his shoulder, I glimpse a map near the trail’s entrance. How did we get here? A fantasy world where Ashlyn never died and I could be Kyle’s girlfriend. Goddamn Candy Land.

SO FAR, ALL we’ve heard on the Teacup Trail are the sounds of our feet crunching over the rough dirt, and Will’s apologies.
He’s really,
really
ashamed of the Ashlyn confusion. It makes him easy to like.

Kyle finally got him to take a breath, and now they’re playing catch-up while my attention drifts in and out. The part of the path we’re on is narrow, so we walk single file. I’m up front with Arm—she’s back in her duffel, draped over my shoulder, since we decided it’s unfair for her to miss our first Sedona Event.

Navigating the stony terrain was tricky at first, but the trail smooths out in spots, and gives me the chance to gawk appropriately. Above us, the sky is still the same lively blue, streaked with wispy clouds, and the rock formations loom over us on every side. The ground is sprinkled with all kinds of plants to avoid touching: gorgeously fanned out—and impressively pointy—agave plants, and low-lying green bunches of cacti that are like the distant, mutated cousins of the tiny ones lined up along my windowsill. I wish I could bring some of this home with me, grow a little bit of Arizona in my backyard.

Once in a while, I spot something tall and spindly that might be a dead tree, but the thick spikes on its trunk tell me otherwise. And when I stumble on a patch of rotten cacti, it startles me. Everything here is so vivid, so vital and serene—the opposite of what I was expecting from the desert. The decay is out of place. Even the dirt is worth looking at. It’s a rusted brown, like someone crumbled up an endless number of Butterfingers and scattered them here.

Behind me, Will and Kyle are talking about a girl named Hannah. Their conversation has eased into a comfortable rhythm. I’m jealous that they’ve been able to walk this trail enough that its beauty doesn’t preoccupy them. But all the
same, it’s a privilege to be seeing this for the first time.

“So Hannah wants you at her birthday party tomorrow,” Will is saying. “And she told me it’s a ‘special request,’ which roughly translated means it’s mandatory.”

“Same Hannah,” Kyle murmurs.

“Oh, yeah. Except she’s kind of going through an
earthy
phase right now.”

I smile at Will’s phrasing. “What does that mean?”

“Is she, like, a vegan?” Kyle says, his voice curious.

“A hippie,” Will blurts. “Or she’s trying to be. The parts of the lifestyle that appeal to her, anyway. She’s having us all drive out to Bedrock City.”

Kyle chokes on a laugh. “No way.”

“Bedrock City?” I ask, pushing my sleeves up to my elbows. The air is still comfortably cool, but all the walking has warmed my skin.

“It’s sort of like an amusement park without the rides,” Will informs me. “A rides-less Flintstones amusement park.”

I should have guessed.

“Hmm,” Kyle hums. “You up for it, Cloudy?”

“Depends,” I say without turning. “What exactly goes on at a hippie birthday party?”

Kyle thinks about it before answering. “We’d be fighting the Establishment. I assume while eating cake.”

“Definitely,” Will agrees. “Damning the Man, till the break of dawn.”

Idiots
.
Kyle and Will are so in sync, it makes me giggle. How did they ever lose touch?

Soon, the incline gets steeper, and the larger rocks have
arranged themselves into rough steps. The sun is dipping lower, its light reflecting on everything around us. My heart springs around in my chest at the sight of it. If this is a sneak peek, I don’t want to miss a thing.

We trudge and climb, our breathing slightly heavier than before. And then the ground levels out and we’re there, at the top of Sugarloaf. It’s only just past six p.m., still a few minutes until sunset, and the wind carries a chill. I pull down my sleeves as I walk straight to the center of the summit and spin a lazy circle. Being the only ones up here makes it feel like we’re the only ones
anywhere
.

We’re still surrounded by the rock formations, but now, up higher, they seem closer. Kyle ducks his head to my height, pointing some out while he tells me their names: Chimney Rock, Coffee Pot Rock, Thunder Mountain, and the Fin, which actually does look like the fin on a giant fish. Silently, I hand him Arm’s bag before peeking over Sugarloaf’s edge. My eyes widen. Far below sit groupings of small houses—so we’re not really the only ones here. There are people coming home from work, cooking dinner, and walking their dogs. They live normal lives in the middle of this.

Kyle hoists the duffel up on his shoulder, giving Arm a better vantage point. “So,” he calls to Will, “is your mom okay with us leaving Arm at the house while we’re out?”

“Definitely. She loves cats,” Will answers. He’s already holding the flashlight we’ll need after the sun sets. “What else do you guys have planned? Aside from the mandatory hippie shindig.”

Glancing at me, Kyle shrugs. “Nothing, really. We were thinking of heading to Oatman on our way out, though.”

Will stiffens the tiniest bit. Kyle doesn’t notice—he’s turned sideways to show Arm a hawk perched high in a tree—but I do.

“Oatman?” he says quickly, sharply, and his eyes dart from Kyle to me. “What for?”

I step away from the mountain’s ledge. “I promised a very small, very pushy person that we’d see the burros.”

“Oh. Nice.” Will nods. His abrupt weirdness disappears. “My parents used to take me there all the time when I was a kid.”

This gets Will and Kyle talking about other places around town, stores that have closed since Kyle moved and new ones that have opened. But not too long after, the discussion ends, because sunset is beginning.

We stand in a line, our shadows growing longer. The sun blazes its brightest right as it sinks slowly behind a massive rock, and the sky around it radiates yellow and orange and pink. At our feet, the dirt begins to glow a deep, smoldering red—like I noticed on the way, but here, it’s dialed up so many degrees. It sweeps across the canyon, coating the earth so it looks like magma, like it’s absorbing heat and hot to the touch. We’re suddenly on another planet, on Mars or Mercury—or someplace better that no one on Earth knows about. Where I’m not left behind or alone or completely absent, because those things don’t exist here.

Kyle grins down at me, satisfaction on his face—my expression must be as dopey as I feel. He lifts his phone up, ready to take photos. “I told you so.”

“I cannot believe you grew up here,” I say to him again, but differently this time. And I grin back at him, while the last rays of sunlight spark along his face.

B
y the time Cloudy and I are filling up on the strawberry-and-Nutella-stuffed French toast Vivian, Will’s mom, cooked for us, it’s almost eleven a.m. It sucks that we have only five hours before we have to meet up with everyone for Hannah’s birthday thing, but I have to say, sleeping in was beyond necessary for me after the long day we had yesterday.

“Cloudy,” Vivian says from the kitchen, “did you do all right in the Doll Room?”

“Any nightmares from having dozens and dozens of eyes on you while you were sleeping?” I ask.

Last night, I was on the living room Hide-a-Bed with Arm, but Cloudy was down the hall in the room Will calls “the creepiest place on Earth.” It was a guest bedroom before Will’s parents divorced about three years ago. Now, Vivian uses it to store collectibles and dolls to sell for her online business. She has boxes stacked to the ceiling, but she cleared a space big enough for Cloudy and an air mattress.

“I did fine,” Cloudy says. “If the dolls came to life during the night, they had the decency to not murder me.”

Vivian laughs. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her and Will until I was with them again. My dad was around as much as he was able to be while I was growing up, but for a lot of those years, it was Vivian who took care of me when he couldn’t. She drove Will and me to and from baseball practice and fed us snacks afterward. This table is where I did my homework three days a week.

Cloudy, having dug out every bite from her halved grapefruit, sets her spoon inside the bowl. “I had an email from Coach Voss at seven. Not my favorite wake-up alarm.”

“Uh-oh. Was it a big lecture?”

“Could have been worse. She could have cc’d my parents. But I think she’s trying not to dwell on what I’ve done and focus instead on fixing what I
haven’t
done.
Which is send snapshots of my best cheer memories and the answers to those preliminary questions for the
Cheer Insider
interview. Oh, and she also let me know the team’s photo shoot is scheduled for next Friday, so there’s that to look forward to.”

It’s odd how she treats this whole magazine thing like it’s no big deal—like it’s annoying, even. “If you need to get your interview stuff done, we can stay at the house today.”

Cloudy shakes her head so hard her dangly earrings smack both sides of her jaw. “Be serious. I didn’t come all the way to Sedona to
not
see it! I’ll go through the questions once we get to Las Vegas tomorrow afternoon.”

“Or I can drive and let you work on the questions then? That way, you’ll have everything done before Sonia’s wedding.”

“Sure. And today, you can take me places. The places you’ve
been missing the most since you moved.”

Vivian pokes her head into the dining room and grins at me behind Cloudy’s back. I want to roll my eyes so Vivian might get the hint that she should cut it out. Instead I just tell Cloudy, “Works for me.”

After our hike with Will last night, Vivian was waiting up with grasshopper pie. (It’s the dessert she used to make on my birthday, with a crushed-Oreo crust and minty whipped cream filling.) Us four humans stayed up late eating and talking while Arm did cute stuff like hitting her face against Cloudy’s chest, licking my hands, and batting at Vivian’s hair. Cloudy then bowed out for bed at midnight, followed by Will, since he has school today.

While Vivian was helping me make up the Hide-a-Bed, she cleared her throat. “Will called me on his way home and told me about your girlfriend passing away last year. I’m so sorry. How are you?”

“I haven’t been great. But I might be a little bit better since leaving town,” I said, half surprised that it was the truth.

Knowing Vivian, there was a lot she wanted to say, but she kept it brief. “A change of scenery can make a big difference. I’m glad you’re here.” She gave me a long hug. “And that you brought Cloudy along. She’s great. Sassy and smart and
so
pretty. You make a cute couple.”

Embarrassed that these bigger feelings I’m having for Cloudy seem obvious to everyone else (three people mistook her for my girlfriend in one day), I told Vivian we aren’t together. Her response was, “That might not always be the case.”

Finished with our late breakfast, Cloudy and I take our dishes to the kitchen and then find Vivian in the living room with her laptop. Beside her on the couch, Arm stretches across the cushion.

“I’m going to show Cloudy around,” I say. “You’re sure it’s okay if Arm stays with you?”

“Of course.” Vivian smiles up at us with her red-framed reading glasses on the end of her nose. “I’ll even give her food, water, and lots of petting. I’m
very
curious as to whose brilliant idea it was to bring a kitten on a road trip, though.”

Cloudy giggles and points at me.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, I’m backing out of the driveway when Cloudy asks, “Is your old house far away?”

I swing around the corner and park in front of a tall terra-cotta house that almost blends into the massive red-rock formations right behind it. “Not far at all.”

“This is the place?”

“This is the place.”

I hadn’t expected to make an event out of it, but Cloudy jumps out, so I kill the engine and join her on the sidewalk.

“It’s like a Spanish mini-fortress,” she says. “I know I keep saying this, but I really can’t believe you used to live here.”

In a weird way, it’s almost as unbelievable to me as it is to her.

I wouldn’t say I took Sedona for granted when I was growing up, but I truly didn’t
see
it most of the time. When I’d visit my family in Oregon during the summers, I’d come home and Sedona would seem so much more vivid and interesting than it
had been before I’d left. But it would be only a day or so before I stopped taking it in and everything here became the norm again.

Now, after nearly two years away, the haze has lifted. The house my dad had custom built probably isn’t as impressive as Cloudy makes it sound, but there’s nothing in Bend with Moroccan-style touches like the rounded brick archways over the windows and doors, and the stained glass window that makes the main stairway inside glow pink, orange, and yellow.

My chest kind of aches; the house I lived in since before I was old enough to have other memories is so unfamiliar in some ways.

“Do you think anyone’s home?” Cloudy’s smile is mischievous. “Or do we have to sneak around like ninjas?”

“My dad still owns it and rents it out as a vacation house. I heard him saying the next tenants won’t be here until March, so we should be all right.”

“Okay, good. Being ninjas would have been more fun, though.”

I crouch low and creep up the driveway. When I glance back, she’s smiling big and doing the same. I pause until she catches up, and then we tiptoe under the shadow of pine trees.

The back of the house is made up of huge windows and glass doors. All the curtains are open, revealing most of the rooms on the ground floor, including my old bedroom. Cloudy peers inside and makes her way slowly down the length of the house. “It’s so different from where you live now. Has it always been this fancy?”

It takes a second to remember when and why she’s been
inside my house in Bend. (Last winter a couple of times. To watch movies with Ashlyn, Matty, and me.) “It’s always been exactly like this. This is our stuff. All of it.”

Nothing has changed. None of the people who stayed here have repositioned one single thing. (Or if they did, the housekeeper changed it back.) When Dad and I moved out, we left behind the artwork, the electronics, every piece of furniture, even the dishes and silverware. Pretty much the only things we took were our clothes and a few boxes of keepsakes and books.

“In Bend you have such a
guy
house,” Cloudy says. “Next to the river. In the woods. But it fits. Your dad seems like”—she puts on a Southern accent—“a fishin’, skiin’, boatin’ kinda guy.”

I imitate her fake accent. “An’ he turns inta a Texan when he’s doin’ them thangs?”

She laughs. “I’m just saying
this
house doesn’t fit either of you. It’s like—”

“A yoga studio?” I suggest.

“A temple. I’d never have pictured you two with candles and tapestries and”—she leans closer to the glass door by the living room—“statues! There are actual
statues
inside.”

“There’s a meditation room, too.”

“Shut
up
!” she says, grinning.

“It’s true. Now, don’t get your hopes up, but I might be able to show it to you.”

“Oooh. Breaking and entering?”

“Just entering.”

I motion for her to follow me down a trail away from the house. For the last ten feet, it’s all tangled brush on one side and
knee-high cacti on the other, so we walk single file. When we reach the stone wall and archway at the edge of the property, Cloudy bends to peek inside the outdoor fireplace. “Don’t tell me this igloo thing has an underground passage to the meditation room.”

“Not that I know of.” I go around to the other side of the wall and run my fingers inside cracks between two of the rocks. “A spare house key might still be hidden here somewhere. I’ll feel around for it.”

Cloudy talks to me from the other side of the wall where I can’t see her. “Matty once told me about some natural water-slides in Sedona. Are they close to here?”

“That’s Slide Rock. It’s, like, ten miles away.”

“And we’re going today, right?”

“If you want to, sure. The water’s too cold for sliding right now, though.”

“We’ll see about
that
.” Cloudy’s smiling face pokes through a hole in the wall. “I’m still confused. Did your dad go through a major personality change when he moved back to Bend or what?”

“Nah. This was never him. He had this house built for my mother. She was one of those people who came to Sedona for New Agey reasons.”

“They met in Sedona, then?”

I nod.

“Was that before or after he’d moved here?”

“Before,” I say. “It’s a convoluted story. You don’t want to hear it.”

More, I’m not sure I want to tell it. My entire family pretends I never had a mother, and I like to do the same. It’s easier than trying to understand how a woman who, at times, made me feel very wanted and cared for could also walk away so callously.

“Now you’re taunting me with this mystery.” Cloudy skips around to my side of the wall. “Convoluted stories are the best kind. Come on. Spill it.”

“All right. So, almost eighteen years ago, my dad was thirty-four.” I continue feeling for the key. “He’d finished dental school and had a practice with his brother in Bend, but he was depressed. A patient told him the vortexes in Sedona changed her life—”

“Oh, yes. The energy vortexes. Zoë demanded that I have you tell me
all
about them.”

“Of course she did. So vortexes one oh one. What do you want to know?”

“Not now. Go on about your dad.”

“
Fine
. So after talking to his patient, he came here on vacation. First thing, he meets this waitress named Shannon, who offers to bring him to her favorite spot for spiritual clarity. He thinks she’s probably too young for him, but she’s pretty with long red hair, so he takes her up on it, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Cloudy is smiling like it’s all so romantic. Maybe I’d feel the same way if I didn’t know my parents’ last words to each other were “Grow up, Shannon” and “Fuck off, Ryan.”

I continue. “As it happened, the vortex didn’t have much
effect on him. But Shannon did. They figured out the first day that they had the same birthday and were exactly twelve years apart, which meant they had the same astrological sign
and
the same sign in Chinese astrology.”

“That’s a huge coincidence.”

“Oh, not to Shannon it wasn’t. She believed in everything there is to believe in
except
for coincidences. Not long after his trip was over, she told him she was pregnant with me. He moved to Arizona and married her. Just like that. Wife. Baby. He set up a solo dental practice and started a whole new life. And that’s the story of how my kind of boring, nonspiritual dad ended up living in a house in the desert with a statue and a meditation room.”

Cloudy bites her lip as if she’s now remembering there isn’t a happy ending.

“Ashlyn told you about Shannon leaving, right?” I ask.

“She said your parents got a divorce. That’s all I know.”

I’m not surprised Ashlyn didn’t say more. She’d already been my girlfriend for a couple of months before I was willing to answer questions about why Shannon wasn’t around. I’d worried that if she knew my own mother didn’t think I was worth calling or visiting (much less sticking around for), she’d view me differently—as something less than before. Instead, Ashlyn had fiercely taken the same stance as my family: my absent mother wasn’t worth talking about.

What I wasn’t able to explain to Ashlyn (or to anyone) is that when Shannon lived with us, life was better. She laughed all the time, she didn’t care what people thought of her, and she made everything an adventure. Maybe Dad would disagree, but
I always felt that when we had her, we were the best versions of ourselves. Without her, we’re always going to be something less.

“Shannon’s been gone since I was ten,” I say to Cloudy. “She could be dead for all I know.”

Her eyes go wide.

“I mean, I don’t
think
she’s dead. I’m just saying, she might be. I have no idea. And no way to ever find out.” I focus on my search instead of Cloudy’s concerned gaze. “Shannon disappeared a lot. It’s what she does. She ran away from home when she was fifteen and never went back. Never contacted her family again. I don’t even know who they are. When she was twenty-two, she married my dad, but she still kept running. She couldn’t stop. Or she didn’t want to. She left him the first time when I was a year old. Then she came back, like, six months later and said she wanted to work things out. So he bought the land and had this house built. She stayed with us until I was five, and then she was gone again. She’d visit maybe twice a year. For their birthday and mine, usually. When I was nine, she was ready to come home. For good this time, she said. But ‘for good’ turned out to be a few months. We haven’t seen or heard from her since the day she walked out seven years ago.”