by Carrie Mac
“I bet you’re surprised to see me. Right? Right? Did you wonder where I’ve been? Did you write letters to me?”
I hadn’t, but now wondered if maybe I was supposed to.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “What matters is that you love me. I know it, letters or no letters.” She laughed. “But, but.” She laughed harder. “But! A letter would’ve been nice.”
“I didn’t know where you were,” I whispered.
“You could’ve written them and saved them for me for when I came back.”
“I didn’t know you were.”
“Coming back?”
I nodded.
“Maybe you just need something to write those letters to me in.” She grabbed her big purse and set it on her lap and dug deep for something she was having a hard time finding. “Let me fix that. I got this for you. It’s perfect. I know you’ll love it. I saw the cover and I thought of you right away, you know? How that happens sometimes?”
“Does Daddy know you’re here?”
“I walked right in, didn’t I?”
“Does Gigi know you’re here?”
“She’s got her movie on.” She pulled out a diary and handed it to me. “Perfect, right?”
I flipped it over to see the cover.
A unicorn, midleap over a shimmering full moon, the night sky behind it, each star a tiny sparkle.
“Do you love it so much?” She pulled me into a hug. “You do love it so much. I can tell. I remembered that you love unicorns.”
“That’s Pete. He loves unicorns, not me. I don’t love anything.”
She stiffened. Stood. Said nothing. Then she snatched the diary back and shoved it in her purse.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“I want to show you something.” She took my hand and pulled me so forcefully that I had to stumble along behind her as she led me outside. Why didn’t I call for my dad? Or Gigi? Simple. I did not want to go with her, but also, I absolutely did.
* * *
—
Which is how I found myself riding shotgun in my mother’s crappy old Toyota Echo, all dented down one side and with no rear bumper, heading west. She hadn’t said much since the bathroom.
She had the radio on a talk channel, a call-in show about personal finances. Her purse sat between us, on the hand brake. The diary stuck out the top, the little stars sparkling whenever we drove under a streetlight.
“If you’d written me, you could’ve told me you didn’t like unicorns anymore.”
“Pete does. I never did.”
“Well, good for Pete!”
“I like otters?”
She was driving fast, not slowing down for the curves, just cutting across them instead, and then all of a sudden there was the deer, standing in the middle of the highway, staring right at us as my mom headed straight for it.
“Mom!”
“It’ll move.”
“Stop!”
“It’ll move!”
But it didn’t, so she swerved to the left but hit it anyway, because it finally had moved, right into her path.
The car screeched to a stop. My mom gripped the steering wheel and stared out into the night, the pool of light from the headlights. The deer was behind us.
“Get out of the car.”
I looked at her, not sure if I should do it, even though she said so. It seemed impossible, to get out of a car in the middle of the road, at night, in the middle of nowhere, with a dead or injured deer the only company for miles around.
“Take this.” She handed me the diary. “And get out.”
I didn’t move.
She leaned across me and opened my door. Then she undid my seat belt and pushed me.
I got out, and before I could ask her what she wanted me to do, she drove off.
I was alone on the road.
There was no deer. It must’ve gotten up and run into the woods, but in that moment, I was sure it had vanished. Turned to particles of nothing and dispersed into the darkness. No way to be resurrected. And that I would vanish too, before anyone would find me.
I was only there a minute or two before my dad pulled up with Gigi and Pete. I got into the backseat with Pete, who was wearing his pajamas with his coat over top and nothing on his feet. Before he could see it and tell me how awesome it was, I dropped the diary to the floor and kicked it under the seat. Stupid unicorns. She couldn’t even get that right. Pete was unicorns. Not me. I wasn’t into anything in particular. Except rocks.
The smell of smoke is stronger when I wake up, alone, our orange tent glowing and hot under what I guess to be a midmorning sun, which I can see overhead because we don’t have the fly on. I smell smoke in the distance, hot dirt all around, and wildflowers, which I didn’t notice last night as we crashed into sleep so fast after such a crazy day.
Pete is outside, far enough away in the alpine meadow that he could be a log or a rock; if it weren’t for his rainbow unicorn trucker hat he has parked on his face to keep the sun off, I wouldn’t know it was him.
Between us? A carpet of lupine and paintbrush and elephanthead.
“Hey!”
He sits up, then leaps up and runs my way.
“Sleep much?” he says.
I shrug.
He squats in front of the tent, where he’s cleared the ground down to just dirt and set up the stove.
“Look!” He pulls a tiny flower from behind his back. “Purple saxifrage.”
According to the trail maintenance camp last summer, this is very, very rare.
He puts it in the palm of my hand. “I found a little patch by those big rocks.” He points. “Northeast, exactly. We’ll walk right by it. I’ll show you after coffee.”
“Only if you brought that gross vegan creamer,” I say as I stuff my sleeping bag into the sack. “Which is slightly better than no creamer at all. But not if it’s vanilla! I hate that even more.”
“Plain.”
“I love you, Pete.”
* * *
—
As we cross the alpine meadow and head back into the woods—moving ever northeast—the wildfires are definitely behind us. The sky is clear blue ahead, and just a thin haze back to the west.
Pine forest.
Mountain ash and alpine meadow.
Forest.
Alpine meadow.
Then back into more dense forest, where it’s cooler, which is a relief. If it was midmorning when I woke up, it’s probably midafternoon now. We never check the time unless we have a very good reason for it. The more you check the time, the slower it moves. And the faster your phone battery drains. Not that the phone would be good for actual phone stuff way up here, but it still makes a good backup compass, and, more importantly, Pete’s has the topographical maps.
Trees, rocks, flowers, sky.
Trees, rocks, flowers, sky.
I say this over and over as I walk, because it is so nice not to be thinking of anything else.
By the time we stop to eat—call it lunch? Dinner? I don’t know—we’ve started a list of the wildlife we’ve seen. Squirrels, marmots, chipmunks, groundhogs. A couple of black bears up a steep slope. And a stag. Which at first I was sure I was imagining, as if it were the protector of the deer we hit last night. But then it kept staring at me.
“Pete?”
“I see it.”
I stir my bag of freeze-dried beef lasagna.
“Why isn’t it moving, Pete?” I whisper.
“I do not know, Annie,” he whispers.
It stares at us until there is a sudden loud crack from somewhere east of us. The stag bolts across the rocky meadow and disappears into the forest on the other side.
“What was that?”
“Maybe a tree falling.
”
“That was not a tree falling.”
“Definitely not.” Pete stands up.
“Wait!” I grab his arm and pull him down. We’re both crouching, our foil bags of reconstituted food abandoned in the dirt. “You don’t know what they’re shooting at!” I whisper.
“They’re not shooting at us,” Pete says, not whispering. “They can’t even see us.”
“And how much bright orange are you wearing?”
None. Brown shorts, green T-shirt.
“You look like a tree, Pete.”
“Well, no one wants to shoot at a tree.”
“Whatever!” I flap my hands. “The tent.” I start pulling it out, but there’s Pete, stepping into the clearing and hollering.
“Hey! Don’t shoot!” he shouts.
“Wait for the tent!” It’s pooled at my feet, and I’m just about to unfurl it and wave it and be way more safety conscious than I normally am when we hear voices.
A woman hollers back at us from roughly where the shot went off.
“All clear!” she says, and then I see her. She looks like a tree too, khaki capri pants and a bright green tank top. She’s waving at us. “Are you coming this way?”
I glance at Pete. “Want to?”
“Sure.” He shrugs. “Might be the only people we see.”
“Okay.” I pick up our lunch garbage. “Only because I want to know what the hell they were shooting at.”
* * *
—
The woman in the tank top meets us in the clearing and leads us into a forest of fat pines, marching up the steep slope. She says her name is Paola, and she’s from Seattle. We see a quad just above us, but no real track that it could’ve come in on.
“Ty can get that thing into pretty much anywhere,” the woman says when she catches me looking at the filthy, bashed-up quad. “Do you know about this place?”
“This place?” Pete says.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“What were you shooting at?”
“Our dog brought a bear our way,” Paola says. “Scared it off.”
“That dog is just a snack to a bear. A tasty morsel.” I raise an eyebrow at Paola’s polished nails—not very long, though—her makeup, the two ponytails of shiny black hair, and the push-up bra that is absolutely lifting up to the name. “It takes a special dog to know how to be a backcountry dog.” Like the one we had until two years ago. Marble, who was such a good hunting dog that my dad didn’t want to be disappointed by one that couldn’t live up to Marble. But this was not a piece of small talk that I wanted to offer.
“Agreed. Spencer is not that special kind of dog,” Paola says, which irritates me more than if she had argued with me. “He always comes back, though. So far. We know someday he might be a bear’s amuse-bouche. That’s a—”
“Tasty morsel,” I say. “We know.”
“Her dad cooks a lot,” Pete says.
Spencer lets out a string of high-pitched little-scrappy-dog barks. He is tied to a folding chair and barely as big as a shoe box.
Never mind just bears. One time Pete and I saw a falcon catch a rabbit. We were watching the rabbit from the edge of a meadow. We hadn’t even noticed the falcon until it swooped down, grabbed the rabbit in its talons, and swooped back up above the trees. We watched the rabbit dangling and twisting, until we couldn’t see them anymore. That rabbit was bigger than this dumb dog.
* * *
—
“Baby?” Paola shouts. “They’re here! Just a couple of kids, backpacking.”
Ty pops up from behind the base of one of the bigger pines on the slope.
“I don’t do the digging,” Paola says. “I don’t like that much dirt. But they’re fine with digging in it until they’re covered in it. You have to go under the trees. That freaks me out, but Ty doesn’t get claustrophobic. They’d be good to go to rescue a toddler who fell down a little well.”
Pete catches my eye—we’re going with “they” pronouns for Ty, following Paola’s lead. I nod.
Ty is big, with upper arms as thick as my thighs, so it’s not likely that they could fit down a little well. Skin as dark as the loamy forest floor. They drop a pickax, grab a kid’s beach bucket, and clamber up the slope with more grace than I would expect of someone who looks like they spend most of their time in the gym.
“Hey,” Ty says. They reach out a hand. “Ty.”
We all shake hands. Ty’s is so dirty that Pete and I both have filthy hands when they let go.
“Wanna see?” Ty lifts the bucket, but when we both lean in to look, Ty pulls back for a sec. “But first we have to swear you to secrecy.”
Pete and I glance at each other. “Sure,” I say for both of us.
Ty lets us look in.
Hundreds of perfectly formed crystals. Only a few look like what you’d see for sale in a rock and gem store, but those are so clear and pointed that I can easily imagine them with a silver cap on a thin leather cord around my neck.
“You did not get those from right here,” Pete says, clearly as awed as I am. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
“We sell them,” Paola says. “As far as we know, no one else knows about this spot.”
“So now you have to kill us after all?” I say, only half joking.
“Don’t need to,” Ty says. “You’ll never find this spot again.”
“We have our ways,” I say.
“Sure.” Ty shrugs. “But are you going to hike back anytime soon? Even if you do”—Ty does a royal flourish with their hand—“I grant thee rights to all the crystals you may find, in exchange for scaring you, and for getting here on your own two feet.”
“Really?” I grab Pete’s hand. “Let’s stay and dig!”
“That is the best idea ever.” Pete unstraps his pack and lets it drop, startling Spencer, who starts barking.
Paola grabs a stack of colorful buckets. She gives me the top one, then hands one to Pete. It has a unicorn jumping over a rainbow on it.
“Because of your shirt,” she says. “And your hat. And your pack. And the pins.”
“It’s a thing,” Pete says.
“Clearly.”
* * *
—
Ty leads us down the slope, to a tree they tell us would be good to dig under. Before our trowels hit the dirt, we see that the ground is peppered with tiny crystal points pushing through. The sunshine that leaks through the trees catches each one, making it look like the forest floor is dappled in tiny, twinkling fairy lights.
After a couple of hours of digging, we’ve come up with a small pile of crystals, dirty and beautiful.
“Can you believe these come out of the planet like this?” I have five in my hand. Pete has another bunch in his hand. Our buckets have even more, just not quite as beautiful as these.
“Unreal,” Pete says.
“Says the unicorn,” Ty says.
“Not an insult,” Pete says.
“Not intended to be,” Ty says. “Hey, do you know what a unicorn is?”
“I do know how to use the internet.” Pete blushes.
“Good to hear.”
“I’ve got a girlfriend.”
“Fair enough.”
I look from Ty to Pete and back. I think I’m missing something, but I’m not sure that I want to look stupid.
“We should get going.” I grab Pete’s arm. “Thank you so much. This has been so amazing.”
“Like being on another planet,” Pete says.
“You know what I learned from Pete?” I say as I gather my things. “Unicorns were first mentioned by a Greek doctor in the fourth century BCE. He was wandering in the woods and came across a single-horned ass.”
“A single-horned ass!” Ty laughs.
“Correct,” I continue. “But really, most people think of unicorns as a biblical animal. Holy.”
I stop babbling so that we can say goodbye and get on our way.
I sigh when we are well out of earshot.
“Biblical?” Pete asks.
“You told me that!”
“I don’t think most people think of unicorns as biblical.”
“So, what do they think?”
“Like, what they meant?” Pete says. “Back there?”
I nod. Repeatedly.
“It’s stupid.”
“You only say ‘It’s stupid’ when it’s totally not.”
“Okay, fine. A unicorn is a third in a couple. There.”
“Like a plural wife joining a marriage.”
“No, not like that.”
And then I get it. And I get why this is so awkward and I should’ve left it alone. Pete and Preet, sexual partners. Add Annie, sexual partner to them both. Annie the unicorn.
“Which none of us are thinking about, so shut the fuck up.” I buckle up my straps and walk fast in what I hope is the right direction.
“Nope!”
I angle more to the left.
“Nope!”
I spin around. “Then get your shit together and show me the way!”
* * *
—
We decide to camp just above the slope, right where they parked the quad. We’re tired from hiking and digging, so as soon as we put up the tent, we decide it looks so comfy and get in it. We talk about Ty’s pronoun preference as we take the cards out to play a game of Uno, which we don’t even finish, because we fall asleep with seven cards still held in our hands, which works for me, because I do not want to discuss unicorns anymore. Not for a long time. And definitely not in relation to couples and the treasured, elusive unicorn, which is not me. I am not a unicorn.
* * *
—
I wake up in the middle of the night. Pete’s awake too, his arms behind his head.
“Tons of shooting stars,” he says. “So bright I can see them through the netting.”
