Chapter Seven
Mo was struggling to juggle all the stimuli she was currently experiencing.
Her own brain was ringing the alarm bells to flee, Bud was pestering her from over three hundred miles away, and an adorable stranger was trying to help her with her problems. It was far too much for her depressed brain to process.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t avoid it all, so she did her best to assess and then manage.
Aspen was thankfully still arguing aloud with her own thoughts, so she instead focused on Bud’s words appearing on her phone’s screen.
What does she look like?
Are you sure she is real? You ain’t gotta create some fake gal to make me happy, you know?
Mo?
You there?
Are you in danger?!!;!
Frustration began to grow exponentially inside of Mo, bubbling up from deep inside her stomach and overflowing down her arms and into her thumbs.
Bud, stop! You are suffocating me.
I will call you later.
Mo growled in frustration, tossing her phone into the corner of the shade tent. “Why is he the way he is?”
“Overbearing friend?” Aspen asked, her voice lilting sweetly. It melted a bit of Mo’s frustration. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes closed reflexively at that, and she turned to look at Aspen fully. Her soft features and sympathetic gaze tinged guiltily at Mo’s heart. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“Why is that?”
“I’ve not heard a word you’ve said,” Mo admitted. She expected Aspen’s reaction to be annoyance or even discontent, but she only smiled goofily from ear to ear. Mo tilted her head in confusion, wondering if Aspen had actually understood what she said. “Did you hear me correctly, or…”
“I did, silly.” Aspen winked. “It’s okay. I was mostly working through the logistics out loud.”
“The wind phone.” Mo nodded, reflexively leaning in toward her. “Can you explain that again?”
Aspen bit her lip before lifting up her phone to show Mo the Wikipedia page for it.
“It’s a disconnected phone that was first installed in a garden in Japan by a man named Itaru Sasaki.
As far as I can tell, he created it as a way for him to deal with the death of his cousin.
But after the earthquake and tsunami in 2010, it was opened to the public so people could make a journey to it and speak with their dead loved ones.
Many other places have kind of co-opted the idea, including a park in Olympia, Washington.
Which, through the backpacking circles I run in, is how I heard about it. ”
Mo studied the picture in the article, her eyes scanning over a white-and-green phone booth placed neatly in a landscaped garden. She looked to Aspen, who was patiently studying her features. “Are we going to drag a phone booth into the woods?”
“No, silly.” Aspen giggled, leaning in closer to Mo. “I have a way better idea, just give me a bit to set it all up and I’ll reach out. Sound good?”
Mo didn’t know what was good. If she went with her knee-jerk reaction, it would be to tell Aspen to kick rocks.
But another part of her, the one that still had hope, wanted to embrace the woman with open arms. And that was frightening.
So Mo leaned back and gave a half-hearted nod before turning her attention to the sea yet again.
* * *
“This is a fucking nightmare!”
Mo’s hands slid back and forth through her hair as she surveyed the gigantic mess she had made of the cabin the past few hours.
The gear covered every inch of her bed and the floor around it.
If the excursion with Aspen did anything productive, it was to push her to actually inventory what backpacking items Annie had kept stored in their guest room closet all these years.
She reached forward and grabbed a dark-blue bundle, which was obviously Annie’s sleeping bag, and squeezed it to her chest. It was the only object that she was familiar with, otherwise everything else would take hours of Googling to fully understand.
Mo felt torn between winging the whole thing, death be damned, or getting a hold of Aspen and actually going through with her wind phone idea.
But asking Aspen for help seemed oppositional to her urge to be alone.
Besides, Mo was nowhere near understanding what her next step would look like.
It was absolutely infuriating.
Mo growled in frustration, pulling her phone from her pocket and calling Opal without much forethought.
“Hey stranger,” Opal answered lovingly.
“What’s the twenty on Annie’s sleeping bag mean?” Mo asked grumpily, her mood getting the best of her manners.
“Temperature rating for the bag. It will keep you warm in thirty- to thirty-five-degree weather.”
“But it says twenty?” Mo tossed the bag against the wall before moving to sit grumpily in front of the piles. “Why say twenty if it’s thirty?”
Opal chuckled with endearment. “It’s just the way it is.”
“How did Annie even stay warm in that? She was constantly trying to steal body heat from me in our bed at home. And we kept the house in the seventies year-round.” Mo kicked a heavy green tarp bag under the bed for emphasis. “Ow, fuck!”
“Are you okay?”
“No! I just kicked God knows what, which hurt my fucking foot, and I’m wholly in the dark about what half this shit is.
Like what is this?” Mo grabbed the next closest item to her, reading the label to Opal.
“Traditions UL Trowel, made in Taiwan. Why did she carry a tiny trowel? Did you two garden in the woods?”
Opal laughed even louder now as Mo dropped the trowel, splaying out on her back.
“What did I say?”
“Sorry,” Opal said, though she continued to wheeze in amusement. “That’s not for gardening, Imogen. That’s for pooping in the woods.”
“Goddammit!”
“I’m glad you called,” Opal replied sweetly, amusement still lingering.
“Yeah, I need help. I’m supposed to be an expert and I am nowhere near an expert,” Mo blabbed, grimacing when she thought about what she just said. “I mean, I’d like to be one so I can go on a little hike, well, a long hike, ya know? I have a plan for this whole trip now.”
“A plan?” Opal hummed inquisitively, letting Mo know she was on to her. “Hold on, Bud is here.”
Mo almost yelled no out loud, instead pulling the phone away from her head as the video call ringtone informed her of Opal’s intent.
She didn’t want to talk to Bud, but she also didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so she answered the call.
Opal’s shy but comforting smile and Bud’s all-encompassing existence filled the frame.
“Howdy, Imogen!” Bud yelled happily, waving erratically at the screen. “I just got off work.”
“Hey,” Mo replied, rolling over onto her stomach to prop the phone against the leg of the bed. “Uh, sorry about…you know.”
“No biggie,” Bud replied easily, leaning his gigantic head in to fill the top right corner of the screen.
Mo watched as Opal’s small hand slinked through the gap in Bud’s elbow, wrapping around his forearm. Like magic, Bud responded to her touch, leaning back and allowing for Mo to see both of them seated on one of the Hecate Tattoo couches, Opal’s intricate artwork displayed proudly above their heads.
“What’s going on? Are you coming back soon?” Bud asked, using his free hand to unbutton the top two buttons of his work shirt.
“No, I was just asking Opal for some backpacking gear advice.”
“Good choice. She’s the fuckin’ best at that stuff.”
“Yeah,” Mo agreed, resting her chin on her hands.
“Mo has a plan,” Opal added quietly, her relaxed energy infectious.
“What’s that? You gonna do the PCT?” Bud asked.
“No, that’s not even near here. I just thought I could do something…” Mo trailed off, her frustrated brain having difficulty keeping up.
“So you’ve been there for around a week and just tonight you’ve got a plan to want to backpack?” Bud’s head tilted in thought.
“Well, yeah.”
“Did she backpack with y’all?” Bud turned to Opal.
“No.”
“Do you even know how to do that?” Bud asked Mo, his voice filled with concerned doubt.
“Fuck,” Mo said under her breath, closing her eyes. “I get the concept.”
“Yeah, I got the concept too, but Opal still hiked circles around my dumb ass.”
“You said you are supposed to be an expert?” Opal asked. “What does that mean?”
“Uh—uh,” Mo stuttered.
“Wait, is this about that gal you were apologizing about?” Bud asked, his voice raising in volume as he leaned closer to the camera to study Mo’s reaction. “Hot diggity dog, you rascal! She is real. I knew it. Opal, baby, Mo has met someone.”
“If you mean ‘met’ like I met a woman at a bar who has spent the past week forcing me to hang out with her, then sure,” Mo said, hoping Bud wouldn’t press any more than he already had.
“What’s her name? Is she hot? Does she have a job?”
“Bud,” Opal warned calmly. “Let her speak.”
“Aspen,” Mo said as evenly as she could, downplaying her affection to not get Bud’s hopes up.
“Yes, she’s hot. And yes, she was the one who recommended the backpacking trip.
But honestly, I kinda wanna do this alone.
Even though she has a knack for appearing at every place I go, so I’ll probably have to sneak into the woods just to get away from her. ”
“It doesn’t sound like you want to get away from her,” Bud teased.
“Is she a backpacker?” Opal added thoughtfully, doing her normal, easy defense of Bud’s more tactless conversation style.
“Yeah, I think? Well, she’s actually a bartender, but she seems knowledgeable.
I told her about Annie and the redwoods at the beach the other day, and she just came up with a whole plan, grand gesture and all.
She seemed to know quite a lot about the trails and some of the local park rangers.
” Mo smiled slightly, thinking about how excited Aspen was explaining it all.
“You two were at the beach?” Bud waggled his eyebrows. “Bikinis?”
“It’s May on the California coast,” Mo murmured with annoyance. “Clothing was worn.”
“Never too cold for bikinis.”
“Aspen always goes to the beach on her day off,” Mo returned, ignoring Bud’s addition.
“So you know her routine?” Opal asked, her voice taking on a knowing lilt.