Chapter 20
Arax
Danny and I had a number of long talks over the course of the next three months.
Nothing was set in stone, but we agreed that I would gradually scale back my involvement with the school, giving him more control over the operations.
It granted him the freedom he needed to decide what he wanted to do with it and allowed me to prioritize my own life. It was time.
For so long, I had let what had happened in my past dictate my future.
Danny’s words had been coarse, but they wouldn’t have stung the way they had if they didn’t have the caustic ring of truth to them.
I wouldn’t be upending my life right away, especially since I didn’t quite know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do.
Anything was possible. I could work for a record label or get a job as a talent scout.
I had experience, and my knowledge of music and running a business could take me places far away from Spruce Grove.
For the first time in my life, the road in front of me was open, and the potential for adventure brought back some of the vivacity I had lost over the years.
Of course, nothing was to be put into motion until I came back from my annual trip.
The predictions foretold less inclement weather than usual for the spring, so I elected to go out there earlier, wanting to get it out of the way while I could.
It had always been a place for me to recharge, a time to reset, but unlike the other years, I wasn’t looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm.
Something about it had changed, or maybe it was me who’d changed.
I was in my room putting together everything I needed the evening before I left.
My camping equipment had since been replaced, and on top of the stuff I had lost, I’d bought a decent-sized hunting knife that could be attached to my person.
The memory of the wolves cornering me on the edge of the cliff still made me tremble, and I was not ready for part two of that experience.
Not that I was delusional to the point where I thought I could kill one of those things with my bare hands—more of a quick slash-and-dash if it came to it—but knowing I had a means of defending myself made me a little less fearful.
I shook my head in remembrance of his words, so sure and self-important. You weren’t in any real danger.
Fuck you, Fabio, I thought, laughing at the silly nickname. Oh, to have been able to call him that to his face. What an opportunity lost.
I grabbed my backpack, the same one that had accompanied me on my trip down the mountain and stuffed it with my necessities.
I stopped when I got to the camera. Turning it this way and that in my hands, I debated bringing it with me.
It may have been just another object to him, the cost of it chump change, considering his wealth, but to me it was a symbol of the sort of kindness I’d never thought I’d receive.
I couldn’t bring myself to use it, so the reel had since sat empty.
Ridiculing myself and my misdirected reverence for the inanimate, I set it aside.
In its place, I packed a journal I’d been using to track my dreams. The entries were all similar, reinterpretations of the same gory scene.
As of yet, they had no meaning, no relevance to me whatsoever, but evicting them from my head and onto the page did seem to help calm my overactive mind.
I opened the journal to the inside back cover, where I’d pressed the last surviving flower from the jasmine I’d brought home.
I ran my fingers along the papery petals, dried and yellow and lined with bruises.
The blossoms had lost their outward beauty, but their fragrance lingered. I closed it with a snap.
Fuck you, Fabio, I thought again.
I turned up the song to drown out the noise from the camera and accursed journal and continued packing.
I did not know what the world had in store for me, but I would forever have my music.
I’d focused on it so much that I didn’t hear Danny letting himself into my apartment, and I damn near had a heart attack when I saw him leaning in the doorway of my room, watching me for however long.
“Just when I thought I knew everything about you,” he mused aloud, lowering the volume. “She dances to pop music.”
“How much to buy your silence?” I asked, ready to whip out my checkbook to keep my reputation as a strict lover of classic rock intact.
He grinned. “Nothing. It’s nice to see a smile on your face again, Rox.”
“It’s nice to have a reason to smile again,” I said, throwing my arms around him. Despite my antics over the past year, our friendship had never been stronger. Danny had forgiven me for my asshole behavior and encouraged me to extend some forgiveness and grace to myself.
“Just FYI, no sum of money will ever buy back your secret from me,” he whispered mockingly in my ear. “It will remain in my back pocket to be used at a later time.”
“You suck,” I replied, smacking his arm.
“Only if it’s at least eight inches,” he replied. “And I know you’re with me on that.”
I laughed while he took a look around my room. “Are you good to go for tomorrow? Glad to get away for a while?”
“I guess so,” I answered, sitting on the bed. “Maybe not as much as before.”
“How come?”
“I’m not sure,” I said with a little shrug and glanced at him. “If I’m being honest, Danny, I think this might be it, my farewell to these trips.”
Danny sat next to me. “I know what they have meant to you, Rox. You really are trying, aren’t you?”
“You were right, as always,” I admitted. “I’ve been stuck for a really long time, and my routines haven’t made it any easier. I think if I’m really serious about it, I’ll have to move on from everything that’s held me back.”
I felt Danny’s arm slip around me, and a kiss was placed on my temple. I looked up at him, and he placed another one on my lips. “You switching teams, Danny Boy?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Not a chance, Rox,” he said, squeezing me tightly. “Though if I did, it’d be only for you.” He paused before speaking again. “I was just thinking how proud I am of you—and how much I’m going to miss you when the time comes.”
I nodded. The feeling was mutual, a combination of sadness and excitement, but also… hope.
“Come on.” Danny stood, pulling me with him. “Let’s go drink our dinner and pour one out for the future.”
“Can we make out some more?” I asked, grabbing my coat.
“No, honey. As pretty as you are, those dry desert lips need lip balm,” he replied and pushed me out the door.
We stayed out for hours, and no matter how hard I tried to get Danny drunk enough to tell me what was going on with him, I couldn’t.
His mouth was a steel trap. I pouted, whined, bargained, begged, cursed him out in four languages, and passed him shots of the strongest alcohol available, but he was resolute.
We hardly ever kept anything from each other, so I was kind of upset he wouldn’t share, especially because he knew almost everything that was going on with me, yet the little smile on his face every time I brought it up told me this gigantic secret of his was a positive thing in his life.
He was happy, and I loved seeing Danny as he always was, ornery and upbeat.
He spent the night, too tipsy to drive home, so I made a last-ditch effort to get it out of him the next morning before I left, aiming to catch him off guard and hungover, but it didn’t work.
He told me he hoped I would get eaten by bears, then kicked me out of my own apartment, thanking the Native spirits under his breath for the poor cell service in the mountains.
I texted Danny the whole way there, not giving up until my reception was lost among the rivers and valleys.
After strapping the knife to my thigh as soon as I arrived, I found a place to unload my gear, taking deep breaths of the mountain air as I set up my tent.
It was snowing lightly, and the temperature had retained just the right amount of winter bite, so the snowflakes didn’t melt as soon as they landed in my hair.
They fluttered onto my black strands like old friends, waving at me with a bashful hello, welcoming me back home.
I let out a long sigh. I may have slowly been outgrowing my reasons for going there, but these mountains would never lose their importance.
I had been using them as both a means of escape and, paradoxically, as a way to stay rooted in the past. Today, though, I strived to view them differently, to change my association with them. It was harder than I’d thought.
On my hike, I kept thinking about my mother.
In the ten-plus years since my father had passed and the almost six since we’d lost Andy, I hadn’t done close to what I should have to make her life better.
Yes, I provided. She’d had a place to sleep, food to eat, and clothes on her back, but it had taken her death to see my expectations had been for the wrong person.
I had been idling, squandering precious years as I waited on her to come around when it should have been me who did.
Danny saw it, and after she’d died, he saw me have the gall to try to wrestle that guilt away from myself and cast it onto him.
He had never been afraid to tell it like it was, and I’d come to appreciate his willingness to let me have it.
These were hard pills of self-reflection to swallow. I wished I had a way of knowing if at any time during the lonely years my mom had spent with me that she had been proud of her daughter, even a little, before she’d taken to her grave.