ONE
I walk to the Jeep in the middle of a cold, dark desert night. Dad is already stuffing our supplies into the back, the tailpipe blowing steam tinted red by taillights. We need an early start; it’s going to take a while to reach the place where no one can find us.
Dad lifts a hand and pats my rumpled hair. “Tired?” he asks.
I nod.
He pushes my backpack toward me. “Why don’t you double-check it?” I open my bag as Dad digs through his own and mumbles, “It feels like I’m missing something.”
His words hit me right in the chest. We are missing something. We’ll always be missing something.
Shivering, I zip up my pink hoodie, which I got at Sunset Crater. It says Get Out There, but this is the first time we’ll be “getting out there” since our family went from three to two.
Pushing those thoughts away, I sort through the supplies Dad put in my pack: water bottles, sunblock, helmet, almonds, protein bars, and my favorite flavor of electrolyte powder, watermelon. He remembers.
I smile up at him, but he’s now ripping everything out of his pack. “I know I’m forgetting something,” he says, his voice rising. He pulls out rope for rappelling, cams for climbing, carabiners for carrying, gloves for gripping, and harnesses to hold us.
Touching his arm, I say, “I think we have everything,” though it feels like a lie. He continues emptying his pack until he pulls out one last item: gun.
I stumble backward, choking on my own breath.
Dad looks back at me and immediately sets it down. He takes me into his arms, much thinner than they used to be. “I’m sorry, Nora,” he whispers. “It’s just a flare gun.”
My heart pounds so hard I’m sure Dad can feel it.
“I doubt we’d ever need to use it,” Dad says, patting my back. “Hey, it’s gonna be a good day.”
I take in a deep breath. “I know.”
Dad looks up. “Almost no moon,” he says. “Did you hear about those bones they found on the moon?”
My head snaps back. “What?”
He grins. “I guess the cow didn’t make it.”
I groan. “Oh my gosh, Dad.”
He gives my long hair a gentle tug, then stuffs everything back in his pack and slams the hatch shut. He limps around to the driver’s side and gets in. He seems more like himself today than in a very long time. It really might be a good day.
TWO
We drive the empty desert highway for a couple of hours until Dad turns onto a rough dirt road that follows the power lines. I slide my hand across the foggy window and peer through the wet streaks. Nothing but desert surrounds us as we drive—no homes, no people, no cars except ours. Nothing but ocotillos, saguaros, mesquites, palo verdes, and wolf spiders with eyes that shine like diamonds in our headlights. Dad points them out to me.
“You see that one?”
I scan the lit area. “Yep.”
“There’s another one.”
“I see it.”
Dad thinks wolf spiders are amazing.
“You should have invited Danielle,” he says suddenly.
I swallow, thinking about the last time we were all together, when we went camping and fishing at Bartlett Lake. How I had to hook all her worms because Danielle didn’t want to touch them. How she’d squealed in excitement at catching the smallest bluegill ever. How Mom had snapped a picture of it. How I threw it back in the water and Danielle had jumped in after it, yelling that she’d wanted to keep it as a pet. How I jumped in after her, and we spent the rest of the day swimming and splashing and scaring away the fish.
“Sorry,” Dad says. “I just… miss her. That’s all.”
I miss her, too, though I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.
THREE
It’s dawn by the time Dad stops, startling me awake. It was a quick nap, and I try to hold on to the dream, but it’s already gone.
If it had been the nightmare, I would still feel it. I wouldn’t be able to forget.
Dad turns off the Jeep and the lights blink out. I step into the cold morning and stretch, run my fingers through my long hair, and pull it back in a ponytail. The sun is rising behind the dark line of mountains, their tops jagged like the edge of a serrated knife. I reach back into the car and pull out my notebook and pencil and quickly jot down:
The sapphire sky
breathes in
the desert morning
and breathes out
pink flame to burn up
the wisps of silver clouds.
I stuff the notepad and pencil in my backpack. When Mary, my therapist, found out I liked writing, she told me I should use it as a tool—that I could rewrite my nightmare. But I don’t want to do that. Rewriting it means I have to think about it. What I want is to crumple it up and throw it in the garbage, burn it, delete it forever. But Mary wasn’t totally wrong. Writing makes me feel closer to Mom, like I can somehow make up for all the things she’ll never write with my poems, though I don’t think I could ever write as well as she did.
“Maybe you could read me what you’re writing later,” Dad says.
“Maybe.”
“It would be nice to share it with someone, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just for me.”
Shrugging, Dad slips his backpack on and buckles it around his chest and waist. He runs a hand through his graying hair, overgrown and curling over his ears, then locks the Jeep. We set out away from the road, our hiking boots crunching over the hard desert dirt.
I’m still sleepy, and I stumble over a couple of larger rocks.
“Watch your step,” Dad says, but he should be paying attention to his own steps—he’s stumbling more than I am.
I watch him limp, knowing every step hurts. Every night, he rubs his leg with special lotion. Every month, he visits the doctor. Every day, he swallows pills. Three surgeries and a metal rod. Nice words like I’m okay and I feel fine, but I know he’s still in pain. It will never go away.
A bullet can do that.
A bullet is tiny. It can weigh a fraction of an ounce and be a fraction of an inch long. And yet, something that small can rip flesh and shatter bone and puncture organs and stop hearts. Something that small can tear a hole in your life so large it will never close, so ragged it will never be sewn, so ugly no one will ever look at you the same again, so painful you’ll feel it every second for the rest of your life.
Even when that tiny bullet never touched you at all.
FOUR
We stop after a few minutes, and Dad checks his map and compass. I gaze at the mountains to the west now that the sky has brightened, but the sun hasn’t yet reached them—it’s still really dark over there.
“Well,” Dad says, and I turn to him. “We go this way.” He folds up the map and points to the east.
It’s quiet except for the skittering of small lizards and the ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah of a cactus wren—the sound like an engine that won’t turn over. Surrounded by nothing but the cold waking desert, I feel the rising sun heat my face. I’m both cool and warm, worried yet hopeful, loving and hating, at peace and at war. We hike to the top of a small hill, and I get my first glimpse of the canyon.