Chapter 7
Outside, cicadas scream from the trees, their relentless buzz amplifying the anxiety knotted in my chest since reading about Xander’s disappearance.
My earbuds sit in my ears, silent. They died an hour ago, but I haven’t charged them. I’m too stunned to do anything, too overwhelmed to think.
Across the parking lot, Whitley’s voice cuts through the noise. “Are you still driving me home for lunch?”
Yes. I need to get off this government campus. Out of town. And out of state. Her words spark an idea, one that just might be a solution to everything weird that’s happened these past few days.
“Yeah, but what if it wasn’t just for lunch?” I ask.
She tilts her head, smirking. “What do you have in mind?”
“Let’s leave for our road trip now.”
She rolls her eyes and stomps ahead of me.
I skip after her. “I mean, why wait? You know? We can leave just like your dad. Screw him. Screw Murray.” Screw Xander and the Ardor Tree. “Let’s leave everything behind.”
She spins around on her heels so fast I nearly run into her.
“First of all, don’t ever say let’s be like my dad again.” Her voice is sharp. “Second, we have a job that’s going to make us a couple thousand dollars this summer. I’m not skipping out on that kind of money.”
“But we’ve lived on less before.”
“And we’ve lived in Penango for eighteen years. What’s two more months?”
I huff. “You really don’t want to?”
She crosses her arms. “Unless you have five grand in that pool inspection kit you’re holding, then no.”
I sigh.
“Plus, you know Bennie doesn’t do well with sudden change, so I’m offended you would suggest that.”
We reach Whitley’s double-wide mobile home after about fifteen minutes, and her elder chocolate labrador, Bennie, stands behind a gate on the front porch, tail wagging like he’s waited all day for her.
“Hey, Bennie!” Whitley yells from the passenger side window. She scrunches her nose. Bennie’s tongue hangs from the side of his mouth, which is lined with gray fur, a reminder that he’s been in her life longer than anyone.
“Good luck on your inspection,” she says as she opens the truck door.
“Enjoy your lunch, or whatever it is you’re about to do.” I glance at Bennie. “Why don’t you start getting him ready for the trip? He might want to leave early too. You never know.”
She laughs and pats her thigh, beckoning Bennie to follow. “You’re the mountain to my field,” she says to me.
Her backyard stretches flat for a few yards before it quickly slopes upward into a steep mountainside. From Whitley’s bedroom window, it looks like an ocean wave of trees surging skyward, towering over the house.
That’s how most of Penango is—flat fields that eventually collide with rolling mountains. It’s where our saying comes from: the mountain to my field. No matter how low we fall or how lost we get, there’s always a mountain backing us up.
Whitley and Murray were my mountain range. But now I’m down a peak. Murray’s mountain was a hidden volcano that erupted and slowly melted away everything in its path. The lava leaked into my field, turned my green to ash, and cut off my view of everything beyond Penango’s grasslands.
Whitley is my highest peak. My strongest ridge. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her, including staying in Penango for two more months, even as its ghosts rise around me.