Kiss the Morning Star (19 page)

I worry the shaman’s words like a hangnail while I drive, pushing into the setting sun, fleeing from a boy with a perfect smile and the memory of Another Anna. No matter how fast I drive, how many times I twist and tumble the words, I can’t seem to move forward.

A shadow to comfort me. Be open. You know what love is.

I know nothing.

“Campground!” Katy points at a brown sign with a white silhouette of a tent.

At last. We’ve been driving forever, and I had just about resigned myself to sleeping in the car.

“It’s
free
, too!” Kat happily clutches her bag on her lap and slides her feet into her sandals.

“Well, I sure wouldn’t pay for it.” Even in the dark, I can see that the place is nothing more than a dusty field with a little circle drive and some carved-up picnic tables scattered around. Nasty words are spray-painted on the side of the outhouse. I stand with a hand on the trunk, watching the litter tumble across the ground.

“It’s windy,” says Kat, her arms full of the blankets Melvin gave us to replace our wrecked sleeping bags. “And it smells like rain.”

All of the sites are on a slope, so all night we fight to keep from sliding into each other. I wake up while it’s still gray dawn and chilly, blinking back feverish dreams of Seth and demon lions and a million kinds of betrayal. Suddenly a cold, wet drop of liquid hits me, right between the eyes. And then another. I sit up, the cold water driving the dreams out of my head. It’s fucking raining. In our tent.

“Oh, no
way
.” Every seam we gooped is leaking, while the bottom of the tent has proven waterproof enough to keep all the rainwater from running back out again, turning our tent into a lopsided kiddie pool. Kat and I are tangled in a damp jumble against the downhill wall of the tent, along with most of our stuff. “Hey, Katy? We’ve got a problem.”

“So I’ve discovered.” She sits up beside me, shivering. “My sketchbook,” she says, and I can tell it’s not good by her tone.

“Oh.” She holds up the ruined pages and tries for a smile, but it’s clear how miserable she is.

“Katy, I’m so sorry.”

“Check the book,” she says, and I pull
The Dharma Bums
out of the front pocket of my backpack. It’s completely waterlogged, as is my notebook.

“I’ll make coffee,” I whisper. She doesn’t respond. I lift the zipper on the soggy tent and step out into a muddy stream. The rain is letting up, but the damage is done. We’re cold, wet, and homeless.

A few hours ago I would have given anything to stop driving, but now the road is once again my sanctuary, and I pack up the dripping camp with a melancholy resignation.

“What do we do?” My voice is tiny and uncertain. Kat and I sip coffee and stare at the smoldering log we tried to light on fire to warm us. I’m supposed to be the one who knows the answer to questions like that, the one who takes charge. But it’s too much—our tent ruined, all our stuff soaking wet. We stand there, silent in our private miseries.

“Pack it up,” says Kat. Her voice is tired and flat. “Nothing to stick around here for.” She’s right, but where should we go? We climb back into the car, and I peel the pages of the sopping wet book back until I find the passage about Mount Baker and the Nooksack River. Kat drives, which sets me on edge. The atmosphere in the car is not happy conversation or comfortable silence but a strained, desperate kind of heaviness that is only made worse by the gray sky and drizzling rain. I lean back against the headrest, my mood turning—disintegrating from sad to sullen to surly.

“We’re going to need a new tent.” I scowl. I have no energy for civility. “And that means no more money for anything fun.”

“Well, you’re the one who just
had
to go find yourself in the wilderness.” Kat exits off the highway and pulls into the parking lot of a discount store.

“And
you’re
the one who dragged me away from the cooking area before I had a chance to store the packs properly.”

“You weren’t exactly hard to convince.” We glare at each other in the parked car.

Kat looks away first. “Are you coming in?” she says, her words clipped. It’s clear she expects me to, but I just shrug and turn toward the window. I spent three weeks picking out the perfect tent for this trip; I don’t want to go in there and pick out a cheap replacement.

Kat slams the driver’s door and stalks off across the lot.

Of course I should sprint after her, but I’m stuck here, pinned by the weight of everything I can’t say to her. I stab at the radio, trying to find a station that will come in clear, but all I can get is a trashy-loud morning show deejay yapping about some big reality radio show contest, and how the deadline is Friday the thirteenth.

Friday the thirteenth. Might as well be today, for all our luck. How could it get any worse? A wry laugh slips out.
Friday the thirteenth
. The thirteenth of July. My eighteenth birthday.

It’s too much. The stupid tears take hold of me, pressing all the space out of my throat until I’m forced to gasp, and with that gasp comes a shudder, and I let it go, rocking back and forth in the seat, crying until I’m spent.

There’s a rapid knock on the driver’s side door, and I look up, startled. It’s Kat, holding a big cardboard box and a smaller plastic bag. I reach over and open the door for her.

“Anna, seriously, it’s not the end of the world.” Kat frowns at me. “You’re making a scene.”

I shake my head. “It’s my birthday. It’s almost my eighteenth birthday, and look at me! I’m pathetic. I’m…” My voice catches. I don’t say the rest of it, of course—
I’m a horrible person who betrayed your trust and messed around with Seth. My dad thinks I’m misguided and thinks you’re a bad influence.
“I miss my mom,” I say instead.

Kat sighs. “Anna babe, of course you do. I miss her, too, if you really want to know. Now come on. Pull yourself together. We’ll totally do something fun for your birthday.” Her voice is still on the chilly side, but I allow her words to comfort me.

“Can we go to the ocean?” I sniffle.

She nods. “That’s pretty much where we’re headed.”

“I’d like that.” I wipe my eyes with a napkin I find in the glove compartment. “God, I’m sorry I’m such a mess, Katy.” I pause, empty of excuses but feeling the need to explain anyway. “It just feels like one thing after another, you know?”

I’m about to ask about the new tent, about whether she found a new sketch pad, but my phone beeps. A text message. My father? The thought makes my stomach plummet, and I wonder what happened to my joy about his recovery. It seems to have been replaced with the realization of his disappointment in me. I rummage around in my backpack until I find my phone. “It’s from Seth.” I read the text, and it’s so sweet it kind of makes me ache inside.

“Well? What does it say?” Kat raises her eyebrows.

I read the text again. It’s no big deal, really. He says hi, and he says he’s thinking about me, that he hopes everything will work out the way that will make me most happy. It’s that part, though, that makes me shove the phone into my pocket. Whatever will make me happy. As if I know what that is.

“Um, he just says hi and hopes we’re doing okay.” It’s not a lie, but I still feel a twinge of guilt and another twinge of annoyance at Kat for being nosy. I shouldn’t have to share every detail of my life with her. Or feel bad if I don’t. As soon as this thought occurs to me, I see how stupid I’m being, how irrational, but I can’t shake the feeling even so.

I reach out for Kat’s hand; it feels so far away and unfamiliar, like I have no right to reach for it. “Look, Katy, thanks for taking care of getting us a new tent. I’m sorry I kind of panicked. I feel so out of control, and…” I have no excuse.

“I know, I’m the same,” says Kat, but she isn’t. Then she smiles brightly. “Well, I got this tent for half price, and I bought you a new notebook, too. We’ll find a campground somewhere in this Mount Baker area, set up some clotheslines, and hope our blankets will be dry by night.” She shakes her head. “And if they’re not, well, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

My smile is weak. “I don’t know, either. But Katy?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I drive?”

“Oh my god, thank you, yes.” She pushes the keys into my hands.

I settle into the driver’s seat and watch Katy climb into the passenger seat, the bump of her orange satchel against her legs. Who would have thought, a year ago, that this is where I would be, a week shy of my eighteenth birthday? A girl with a dead mom. A disappointment to my father. A thousand miles from home. Recovering from an acid trip. In love with a girl? And no longer able to put into words my reason for being here, in this car—on this journey.

About six hours later, we pull into the Mount Baker National Forest and find a little woodsy campsite hidden in the deep, mossy forest. Even in the midst of my gloomy mood, I’m entranced by the beauty of the place—the strong snowy dome of Mount Baker rising up in picturesque splendor, the trees standing ancient and wise in their thick, hanging coats of Spanish moss, the birds shrieking like insane toddlers. We string the clothesline that Kat bought around the trees and hang all our wet gear to dry. Kat moves with a sense of purpose around the camp, gathering wood for a fire, but I feel paralyzed. I sit at the picnic table with my damaged notebook and trace over the places where the ink smeared.

I read a story once about some aboriginal people in Australia who wished themselves dead. Like, they lay down on the rocks or the sand or whatever and just said, “Okay, that’s enough.” And their hearts stopped. For months after the fire, I tried to die like that, but it wouldn’t work. My heart is stubborn, I guess. Or, more likely, my will is weak.

I mean, I know that sounds melodramatic. It’s not that I wanted to die because my mom died. At least, it’s not that simple. Everyone’s mom dies eventually; I know that, while it sucks, it’s not an insurmountable loss. It was everything else that was too much. I had to go to school, and I had to find a way to make all the sounds coming at me all day form themselves into words that I could copy down into notebooks and memorize. I had to put food into my body and dig out my winter boots when it got cold. And I could have managed, if that were all. But on top of that, people expected me to talk to them; they wanted to know what was next for me, what my plans were. Thinking about my nonexistent plans was what made me will my heart to stop beating.

This dark feeling looms over me again, and for the moment I try to push away the realization that despite the distraction of our stupid little road trip, I still have no plans, no path into the future. I take out my phone, tap out a message to my father.

What do I do next?
I type, and I wonder if he has gone back to the church. I think about what Kat said, about how she misses my mother, too, and it occurs to me that the church was grieving the same as us—they lost not only my mother but their spiritual leader as well. They offered us so much. Cards, money, open arms. Dozens of heavy glass casserole pans full of “hot dish.” They waited for us, gave us time to come back.

Will he go to them now? Will he persuade them to pray for me, for his lost sheep? The phone jumps in my hand, the soft beep that says I have an incoming text.

Come home, Anna, like I said on the phone. We can move forward together.

Kat stops on her way to the fire ring with a bundle of wood from the car, and raises an eyebrow. “Texting Seth?”

I tilt the phone toward me. “Oh. No. I will, though, you know. To reply to that message he sent earlier.” I slide my finger across the screen while I continue to explain. “I’ll tell him we’re at Mount Baker. Keep in touch. You know.”

Kat smiles, but her eyes are less than happy. “Hey,” she says softly.

“Hey.”

“Is this birthday thing a serious deal? Are you going to be okay?”

I shrug. “I mean, it’s hard to think about my dad all alone, worried about me, asking me to come back home…”

“He wants you to come back home? You didn’t tell me that.”

“I know.” I clear my throat. “He thinks we’re making a mistake. He says…that sometimes this kind of thing happens, that people get confused and think…” I can’t finish. I can’t stand here, with Katy, and tell her this is meaningless.

“I
love
you, Anna.” Kat’s voice is soft but confident, no room for doubt. “I’m not a stupid phase, okay?”

I know; I know it’s true. The words. They’re right there in my mouth, but I can’t say them. I want to tell her; I want to tell her everything that’s inside me, but I can still hear my father’s voice, the voice of my childhood, asking me to come home.

Kat sends me to the campground host for two more bundles of wood, and when I return, she’s cleaning her gun. “You don’t have to watch, but if I don’t wipe it down now, it will rust.” She doesn’t look up.

Headlines chase across my brain:
Girl Shot While Cleaning Gun, Fatal Firearms Accident in Local Campground
. “I don’t like it,” I say.

“That isn’t news to me.” She holds the gun up in front of her and polishes it with a little gray rag.

I walk all the way around to the opposite side of the iron fire ring and drop the bundles of wood on the ground. “I don’t even like the
idea
of it.”

Kat sighs and looks up at me, through the dancing flames. “Look, Anna, I have this gun to defend myself. I shouldn’t have to sit here and defend myself from
you.
” She stuffs the rag into a small zipper bag and flips open the little spinny thing on the side of the gun—the place where you put the bullets. “Just come here and I’ll show you.”

“No way.” I’m not getting any closer. “I told you, I don’t
like
it.” I take another step back. “I really wish you’d get rid of it, Katy. When I look at that thing, all I can see is a tragedy.” All I can think about is losing her.