Chapter 5 Hope
HOPE
“WELCOME,” HOPE SAYS.
Their faces are devilish in the firelight, the shadows bringing out the angles, the lines of their cheekbones. She holds up a skewered marshmallow to salute the others. “Ready to disappear?”
Ash sits down on the low-slung Adirondack chair next to her.
They’ve gathered at the firepit nearest Hope’s Airstream.
Despite the fact that it’s June, the desert air has a bite at night.
Over their T-shirts, they’re all wearing bright orange hoodies emblazoned with the Sonnet logo that Hope insisted on buying for each of them.
Their legs are still mostly bare, shorts and Tevas.
If Hope squints hard enough, they could be ten years younger, ten years of life undone and unlived.
“Let’s do it.” Ash reaches for one of the s’mores kits that they picked up at the resort’s general store.
Caro is already squishing a perfectly golden-brown marshmallow between two graham crackers.
It’s camping food, but it’s artisan camping food, befitting the atmosphere of the resort—puffy, nearly square homemade marshmallows, graham crackers with an almost-shortbread heft to them, chocolate squares so thick and rich that Hope doesn’t even have to lift them very close to her face to smell their decadence.
“Okay,” Hope says. “Let’s go over the rules. Everyone turned off their location when they left home today, right?”
“Right,” Caro says, and Ash nods. Her head is tucked down as she focuses on her skewer in the fire.
“Great.” Hope reaches behind her chair. “And now, we really go dark.” She brings out a metal lockbox and sets her phone inside before handing the box to Caro.
Caro puts her phone inside, too, and passes the box to Ash.
They’ve agreed to this—they won’t be using their phones for the duration of the trip, even after they get out of the Underground.
Hope’s going to lock them away so no one’s tempted.
But Ash hesitates for a second before she places hers inside.
“I’ll put the box in my Airstream and lock it up,” Hope says. “Is that still cool with everyone?”
“It feels scary, to be honest,” Caro says, threading another marshmallow onto her skewer.
“But I know I need this. I’ve been tethered to phones and pagers since medical school.
” A shower of sparks spits up from the fire.
“But what about pictures? I do want to be able to take some photos of all of this. Of us.”
“I’ve got you.” Hope reaches into the duffel bag at her feet and pulls out three disposable cameras. “We can put these in our dry bags when we go through the water.”
Ash grins. “Oh my gosh, this takes me back. I think we had those cameras at my wedding.”
“For the guests to take their own pictures, right?” Caro asks. “Dan and I did that, too. Were most of the photos totally unusable?”
“Yes,” Ash says, cracking up. “Wade’s little cousin got hold of one and she was short so we ended up with a whole roll of shots of people’s crotches.”
“That’s fantastic,” Hope says. “Did you sit around identifying who was who?”
“We threw them out,” Ash says. “It was too much information.” She tucks the camera into her hoodie pocket. “And I brought my fancy camera for any super-high-quality photos that we might want.”
“Perfect,” Caro says. “Dan’s hoping we’ll get some great shots. He loves this hike, but we haven’t done it in years.”
“Do you really think you can go without talking to Dan during this trip?” Ash asks.
“Yeah,” Caro says, but she has that starry-eyed look in her eyes that often happens when she mentions her husband.
Hope thinks it’s sweet. Dan is an emergency room nurse, and he’s tall and lanky, like Caro, with wavy brown hair.
They seem perfectly matched, always taking Howie on walks or kayaking or hiking or working on remodeling their cute old house in Salt Lake City piece by piece.
“Okay.” Ash puts the phone in the lockbox and hands it to Hope, who closes the lid and turns the key before Ash can change her mind.
“There we go,” Hope says. “I don’t know any of your passcodes. And I promise not to open this again until we’re ready to go home.”
“Did you get the burner phone?” Ash asks.
Hope nods, pulling it from her pocket.
“This is so hardcore.” Ash looks thrilled.
“It’s a good thing we trust you, Hope,” Caro says drily.
“Too Draconian?” Hope asks. “I’m sorry. I really wanted to have an excuse to buy a burner phone.”
“No, it’s great,” Caro says. “It makes sense.” They’ve talked about all of this already, trying to figure out the best way to get away for a few days without being totally unreachable.
“I’ve added the emergency contacts you each gave me.” Hope holds out the burner phone to Caro. “I’ve already texted them to let them know the number. This is what I said.”
Caro sets down her skewer for a moment and wipes the stickiness from the marshmallow on her shorts before taking the phone to read what Hope sent.
Got here safe! Heading off the grid now. Back in contact on Sunday. Text this number if there’s an emergency. Thanks for letting us disappear for a few days. xx
“We’ll check it once a day to see if anything comes in,” Hope says as Caro passes the burner phone to Ash so she can double-check her contact’s number. “Except for when we’re on the hike. There’s no coverage in the Underground, so I’ll leave the burner in the lockbox while we’re there.”
“This feels so weird.” Ash is jiggling her leg up and down. “My girls still can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“It’s probably good for them,” Hope says with mock severity. “Let them miss you.”
“Can I say,” Ash says, glancing down at the burner phone and then back up at Hope, “that it’s a privilege to be on a vacation where someone else is taking care of all the details? I feel so parented. So pampered. Thank you.”
Hope feels pleased. She has put a lot of thought and work into this. “Of course.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Caro says. “I can’t wait to get you guys out there into the Underground. You’re going to love it.”
“I’m worried that I haven’t trained enough for this,” Ash says. “I don’t want to be the weak link.”
“Please,” Hope says. “You’re in great shape. You’re always outside working. You’re going to be fine.”
“My dad always says that the best way to train for hiking the Underground is to get two bowling balls and then bang them on either side of your ankles,” Caro says, laughing.
“Because so much of the hike is in the river and the rocks and cobble are always clunking against your ankles. You both brought your hiking boots, right?”
They nod.
“Great,” Hope says. “Okay. We’ve taken care of the phones. Everyone has their gear for the Underground. That brings us to the next item of business. Ash?”
“Right.” Ash reaches into the small crossbody bag slung over the back of her chair and pulls out three tiny notebooks and a package of pens. “We’re each going to write down what we’re disappearing from on a piece of paper. And then we’re going to burn them.”
Hope smiles to herself. This ceremony was Ash’s idea, and it feels very true to her nature.
Ash is the one who remembers everyone’s birthdays, who made the group spreadsheet for the trip, whose floral arrangements are famous for being wild and singular but also have a well-considered, nearly invisible structure to them.
Hope takes a paper and pen and looks down.
Should she be honest? She should. She reminds herself, No one’s going to read this.
It’s still hard to write.
Hope scrawls a single word on the paper and folds it up.
She catches Caro’s dark, pooled eyes across the fire.
Hope smiles at Caro, and Caro smiles back.
Here they are at last, no miles or screens or physical distance between them.
Another shower of sparks rises upward, and Hope looks at Ash.
Her brow is furrowed, as if she can’t think of a single thing she’d get rid of from her perfect, messy life.
But Hope knows better.
Everyone has something.
“I’ll go first.” Hope lowers her voice, and they both lean in to hear her. She holds her paper over the fire but doesn’t drop it. “So, there’s something I haven’t told you guys.”
“Uh-oh,” Caro says. “Spill.”
Ash looks uneasy. Hope understands. How well do they know her, after all? And yet they were willing to hand over their phones to her. Their lives, to some extent, if she’s being dramatic.
“I told you all that my movie got canceled.” Hope hears a rare hesitant note in her own voice. Although in many ways she’s sort of the default head of the group, she’s also the youngest. Right now, she feels it. “But that wasn’t actually the truth.”
A log on the fire cracks and settles. No one flinches. Ash and Caro are intent on Hope, on what she’s saying. Somewhere in the distance, an animal—a dog? a coyote?—howls.
“They actually fired me,” Hope says. “They decided to recast the role after the first day of filming.”
“Oh, Hope.” Ash reaches over and puts her hand on Hope’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I blame the World War I lighting.” Hope manages a laugh. “I think they got me into full makeup on the set and decided I looked haggard and terrifying and ancient instead of young and beautiful and sympathetic.”
“You are young and beautiful,” Ash says fiercely.
“And sympathetic,” Caro adds.
“But not young and beautiful and sympathetic enough,” Hope says. “Anyway. I was feeling really shitty, and I figured that with all my newfound spare time I could make sure I read the book for book club this month, that at least I could manage that and not let you guys down—”
“You never let us down,” Ash interjects, and Caro nods.
“—and then I remembered how we all met at that Agatha Christie book club, and how Agatha was actually alive in World War I, and she was, like, this awesome volunteer during the war, and how before her husband became a piece of garbage he was a fancy military pilot and she was head over heels for him, and I felt for her all over again.”
Hope laughs, a ragged breath, holding her folded-up square of paper over the fire.
“So. I’m leaving behind work. I know, I know.
Not the most earth-shattering thing I could choose.
But I really am. All the expectations. All the things I haven’t done.
All the wanting to eat something at a party and not having a single bite because a potential director might be watching, and you don’t want them to think you might get too big.
All the chemical peels and preventative Botox and hoping it’s enough and not too much.
All the roles I didn’t get and the ones I still want.
It’s all going up in flames.” She drops her paper into the fire, and it catches fast, the edges blackening to the middle, the whole thing turning into ash.
There is a brief, crackling silence.
“I’m burning work, too.” Caro tosses her paper into the fire. “I’m not copying you, Hope. I’d written that down before you said anything.”
“But your job actually matters.” Hope knows she can’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “You’re a doctor.” Caro doesn’t seem to know how to answer that, but thankfully Ash throws her paper into the fire as well.
“Let’s make it a hat trick,” Ash says. “Because I wrote down work, too.” She ducks her head. “And… I also wrote down my family. I know that sounds terrible. It’s only for the next few days.”
“It doesn’t sound terrible,” Hope says. Ash has been a mom for sixteen years, and she runs a small business that keeps taking off in unexpected ways. Of course she needs a break.
“Sorry,” Ash says. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“Cry all you want,” Hope says. “That’s what this trip is for.”
“And screaming,” Caro says, and they look at her, surprised.
“Yes,” Hope says. “Absolutely for screaming.” She prods the tiny ashes that are left from her paper with her skewer, the fire blackening the last of the marshmallow clinging to the stick.
What would it be like to actually scream?
she wonders. Not as a character, but as myself? What if I screamed right now?
“I made you both something.” Ash digs into her pockets and pulls out three beaded bracelets. They catch and glint in the firelight and at first, as she and Caro each take one, Hope can’t tell what colors the beads are. She can tell what the beads with letters on them spell out, however: EDEN.
“Ash, they’re beautiful,” Caro says. “Thank you.”
“The beads are each of our favorite colors,” Ash says. “And I thought, I’ll make us all another one for every place we go together. So: Eden to start.” She’s eager now, as if she’s willing these future trips, this continued friendship, into being.
Hope’s heart twists almost painfully. Who says we’re going to go anywhere else together?
Nothing lasts. Things fall apart. Everything is a risk.
Pushing away her own thoughts, she pulls the bracelet onto her wrist. “Perfect,” she says.
“Let’s make a deal. We don’t take them off for the rest of the trip. ”
“Sounds good.” Ash’s voice is flooded with what sounds like relief, and Hope feels it wash over her, too.
“Deal,” Caro says.
“Okay,” Hope says. “We made it. We’re all here.” She looks up at the stars. Even with the light from the campfire, they are profound, numberless. She lifts her skewer into the air. “To us.”
“To us,” Caro and Ash echo in perfect unison. They follow suit, skewers hoisted high, bracelets glinting.
And as Hope catches their eyes across the fire, she thinks, It’s happening.
We’re really going to do this.