Chapter Four
FOUR
“So…,” she says now, outside the truck stop.
She’s scuffing the bottom of a hiking boot against some pea gravel.
“So,” you say.
And it seems like this might be it: the underwhelming extent of your reunion.
Until she looks at you quizzically, one dark eyebrow arched.
You can’t tell if she’s surprised you’re on this trip, or that you have nothing to say for yourself.
Time has suddenly gone geological, and you have approximately an eon to ponder some things.
Like the fact that it’s been since the funeral that you saw her.
And that you barely recognized her there because she had cut her hair and dyed it blond.
Now it’s growing back and she’s done nothing to disguise the roots, so her dark curls are flecked with gold at the ends.
Neither of you is saying anything, but since you are a born anxious silence-filler, you eventually point to the bus and say the first thing that pops into your head, which is:
“What are the odds?”
What you mean is: What are the odds we’re both here?
Or maybe what you mean is: What are the odds that any of this should have happened at all?
Actually, you’re not sure if even you really know what you mean, so you don’t blame her for not responding right away.
It’s hard to read her expression. Frustration or confusion. Maybe anger.
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”
Then her voice kind of dies. There’s no high note at the end like usual. And there’s none of the familiarity or intimacy it once held. She just turns around and heads toward the truck stop.
“See you on the trail, Case,” she says.
She has the same swaggering stride—even grief hasn’t touched that—but when she gets to the glass doors of the building, she stops for a moment to look at her reflection and carefully moves a hair behind her ear.
It looks almost like she’s scared to go inside, to cross the threshold of a public place—which you can definitely identify with.
Finally, though, she opens the door and steps through, and you watch the glass swing shut behind her, and then your brain just kind of shuts down entirely.
This has been happening off and on in the past half year, this freefall of “disassociation,” as your therapist called it.
Basically, when things get too overwhelming for your nervous system, time seems to disappear and you feel outside yourself until suddenly you are you again and the fugue just drifts away as quickly as it descended.
“Why are we just sitting here?!” you ask to no one in particular.
Somehow, you are back on the bus. Fran, who has re-disappeared into her hoodie, points a long grim reaper–like finger toward the window behind you.
And when you look out into the copse of towering pines beyond the parking lot, you see the kid in the white tracksuit marching back to the bus with Silas behind him.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was at gunpoint.
“Sporty made a run for it,” says Troy.
The first thing you notice is that the once-pristine white tracksuit is no longer pristine or white. It is an abstract-expressionist canvas of mud spatters and grass stains. Troy lowers his window, and the guy’s voice comes through clear as can be as he stomps closer to the bus.
“I keep telling you, I’m not supposed to be here!” he says. “This isn’t for people like me. It’s for … those people!”
His cheeks are pink, either from the emotion or a recent sprint or both.
“I hear you, Will,” says Silas. “I’m listening. And I’m sorry that’s how you feel. But I can’t leave you at the smoked-fish place. I just can’t. The train has left the station, brother. There’s nowhere else to take you.”
At this, Will puts his head in his hands for a moment, like he needs to hold it in place.
He runs both hands through his shiny black hair.
Then the whole bus watches as he trudges onboard.
His eyes are wet, and you try not to meet them.
Instead, you risk a look at Diana sitting at the front of the bus, and you find her looking back at you.
And that’s the moment when the reality finally sets in:
She’s going to be on this whole trip.
Another thought comes quickly on the heels of that one, and it’s surprising how clear it is. You should have made a run for it like Will.
This was supposed to be an escape from your life, but your life, it seems, has followed you here.
And as the bus pulls away from the last public place any of you will see for some time, you know it’s too late to get away.
You are all a version of Will right now.
Sitting in a ruined tracksuit. Trapped in your seat.
Scared and powerless to change whatever is coming next.
Which is unfortunate because things are already feeling strange.
And the next strange thing happens only hours later at the lodge.