Chapter 17 Ellis #2
Liv made a noise in the backseat that sounded like a shriek of panic before it cut off abruptly, likely realizing she was dead and this fun fact didn’t impact her in the slightest.
Dove, however, didn’t miss a beat.
“Thank you, Ellis, for that completely necessary and not at all horrifying fact. I feel much better.”
“Listen, if I had to know about it, so did you.” I scrolled farther down the list of potential dangers. “It’s like, at the top of this list of camping hazards in Texas.”
Dove’s rummaging hand in her sour worm bag paused for a moment. “You—you googled a list of camping dangers?”
“Wouldn’t you?” I asked, shocked at her lack of concern. “We’re going to be camping in the Texas wilderness, thanks to Liv—”
“Literally not the wilderness,” Liv cut in breezily. “It’s the Midpoint. It’s a human-controlled campground. We aren’t going to get leprosy. My God, it’s too early to be talking about armadillo diseases.”
Dove snorted loudly and went back to rummaging. “Tell that to our walking encyclopedia of doom over here.”
I rolled my eyes and returned to the list on my phone.
Tent—we could get a cheap pop-up tent and avoid the whole pitching fiasco.
Sleeping bags—two.
Extra blanket.
Two pillows.
Torch.
Toilet paper.
Food.
The warning bells of money started to ring in my ears.
Suddenly, Liv leaned forward between the seats, her chin perched on the edge of mine. “You know, I was going to be famous. Like, real famous. Red carpets. Hit songs. Articles ripping into my outfits for the Met Gala. I was going to have it all. I had my Grammy speech all planned out.”
Dove grinned. “What was the award for?”
“Best New Artist, obviously.” Liv rolled her eyes and sighed. “Probably Album of the Year too, let’s be honest. My aesthetic was going to be sparkly but damaged, you know? Like, think Kesha meets Lana Del Rey, but with more eyeliner.”
I found myself smiling. “I can totally see it.”
“I know,” Liv sighed dreamily. “My best friend, Bri, was going to be my manager. She said I had star power, and she had the smarts. That’s what we were moving to New York for. I was going to sing in bars, and Bri was going to manage my gigs and stuff. The rest would sort itself out.”
There was a soft pause. I turned my head slightly, watching Liv’s wistful face like she was stuck in a memory. Something about her looked different. Her face was softer than usual, absent of its typical cockiness and spark. It seemed more pensive… there was more ache in her eyes.
“Anyway, we would go camping every summer,” she continued with a smile.
“Her family had this old-as-the-hills RV with the world’s loudest generator, I swear.
I can still hear it. It sounded like it would explode any minute.
But I mean, that thing was around from when we were six to, like, sixteen.
Her family would take me on their trips every summer. ”
Dove bit down on a sour worm as she listened, one hand on the wheel.
“We’d stay up too late, lying on the roof of the RV in our sleeping bags, watching the stars and making all these crazy plans for our lives. Everything seems so possible when you’re staring at the stars, realizing how insignificant everything really is. We planned Route 66 since we were ten.”
She went quiet once more, and my stomach twisted at the ache in her voice—so raw and soft. So un-Liv.
“What happened to her?” Dove asked gently.
“No idea,” Liv murmured, sounding dazed as she stared out the front of the car, entranced by the horizon. “I don’t know what happened to any of them.”
I blinked. “Any of them?”
Was this our moment?
“Oh!” Liv squeaked suddenly, pointing. I followed her finger to the big Welcome to Amarillo sign.
“We’re here! Cadillac Ranch, here we come.
Woo!” She threw herself into the back seat and smacked the roof of the car.
“One day, this roof is going to come down, Ellis Langley, and you’ll love every goddamn minute of the wind in your hair. ”
The smell of sunscreen, rubber, and dust filled my nostrils as I browsed the camping aisle with a less-than-hopeful feeling in my stomach.
The shelves looked as if they’d been cleaned out, like there’d been some sort of apocalypse we hadn’t realized had occurred.
Either this place didn’t get very busy, so they never bothered ordering new stock, or we were about to come face-to-face with some zombies.
I spied a few pop-up tents in aggressively colored neon bags and some foam mats rolled so tightly you just knew they’d smack you in the face the second they popped open.
Plastic-wrapped pillows sat under a thin layer of dust, suggesting they’d been there a while.
I stood still as I took in the camping items, my fingers grazing the edge of a boxed torch.
My phone vibrated once in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Mom’s reply to my latest update sat on the screen.
Mom [12:06 PM]
Camping? I love it. I don’t know if you remember, but the last time we tried that, you ended up in the hospital. You’d been excited for it for weeks. You were sleeping on your floor in your sleeping bag for practice.
Mom [12:07 PM]
Maybe this time you’ll actually get to set a marshmallow on fire.
Mom [12:09 PM]
I’m excited for you, Ellis. Let your inner child live a little. She deserves a night under the stars—and so do you.
I stared down at her words, my fingers tightening around the phone as I read.
I remembered exactly what she was talking about.
We had been supposed to drive out to a national park.
It was just for one night, nothing fancy.
Thomas needed to do something for school, and Mom had decided on an overnight trip to her favorite national park with us.
I could still picture the sleeping bag I had picked.
It was light pink, covered in purple butterflies, and I even had a tiny headlamp.
But then my fever had spiked in the driveway.
Thomas had a meltdown and demanded Grandma and Grandpa pick him up.
I spent the night in the hospital.
I hadn’t thought about it in years, but I remembered it as clearly as yesterday.
I remembered lying in that hospital bed, staring out the window and watching as the sky slowly darkened, trying to imagine myself around a campfire with my family instead of lying in cold sheets with a drip in my arm, my parents talking to doctors outside more than they were with me.
I swallowed thickly and pocketed my phone, my eyes finding Dove and Liv huddled together farther down the aisle, heads bent over a table of clearance items. They seemed to be debating something, and I glanced around, making sure no one was nearby.
The last thing people needed to see was Dove arguing with herself.
Dove held up what looked to be a collapsible kettle. Liv’s nose wrinkled.
Ushering the old memory from my mind, and feeling a smile form on my lips, I walked over just as their conversation met my ears.
“...Why do you think you need it?” Liv asked with a frown. “I have never seen you make tea or coffee in a motel room.”
“Because there’s always a diner nearby!” Dove argued. “I don’t know what this campsite is going to be like. We could be super far away from places. Plus, it’s on sale.”
“We’re camping for one night,” I chimed in, raising a brow as they both turned to face me. “Do we really need a kettle?”
“What if we want to camp on the way home?” Dove countered, lifting a brow of her own. “We still have the entire drive back, remember?”
She had a point.
Half an hour later, we made our way out of the camping store with one collapsible kettle, two half-decent pillows, a sleeping bag each, a cheap pop-up tent, and some firelighters.
Dove was adamant she knew how to build and maintain a fire, so I was leaving that in her domain, along with use of the collapsible kettle.
“We’ll need to stop by a market to get some food—nonperishables,” Dove said as we walked out to the car with our items, Liv dancing ahead of us. “And water. Toilet paper. Maybe wet wipes?”
“This is starting to add up,” I murmured nervously.
“We’ll be fine,” Dove assured me, her voice breezy and confident, immediately lulling me into her sense of certainty.
“Well, you have to make s’mores,” Liv called back to us. “It’s a rite of passage into camping. It’s Ellis’s first time.”
I frowned, my steps almost faltering. “How do you know that?”
Liv shrugged, beating us to the car. “Just do. Load up, lesbians. We need to hit the Cadillac Ranch.”
We somehow managed to make the new additions to our luggage fit, after immense reshuffling. It almost felt like a game of Jenga, with Liv heckling us from the sidelines, providing her usual unhelpful commentary while Dove and I struggled to make everything fit.
“Can I just say,” Liv began as Dove slammed the trunk shut, “you two are totally nailing the whole lesbian road trip aesthetic. Chef’s kiss.”
It wasn’t even that funny, but I snorted a laugh and looked to Dove, who glanced between the two of us in amazement before shaking her head and spinning the keys around her fingers. A weird feeling bubbled in my stomach, fizzing into my chest, and I was surprised.
It wasn’t dread.
It wasn’t fear.
I was… excited.
I was excited to sleep in a cheap tent in a cheap sleeping bag, likely die of insect bites, eat terrible camping food, and try to use Dove’s collapsible kettle.
My eyes stung as I watched Dove head to the driver’s side and Liv throw herself dramatically through the window. I tried to get a hold on my emotions.
But damn… excitement.
That was new.
Dove tossed the can of spray paint like an expert, catching it with one hand while adjusting her sunglasses on her nose. Our shoes crunched in the gravel as we walked toward the row of upended Cadillacs.
The smell hit me first.