I jump up from the grass and head toward the hoop before Lincoln can push further. I remember what I told Emery—“It’s okay to be not okay.”
But as the words echo in my mind, I think maybe I was wrong.
• • •
After everyone has left and the kids have gone to sleep, I head to the kitchen for a glass of water. Someone is already in there—Dad’s alone and talking tensely on the phone. I watch him pace from the doorway. He’s saying something about “Wasn’t in the plans,” and “Someone will have to deal with this,” and then “Fine, fine” before hanging up.
He does not look happy.
“Uh, Dad?” I ask. “Everything okay in here?”
His startles, then sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s strange to see him stressed. When I was really young Dad was constantly frazzled by the single parent thing, but he’s been a pillar for years now. “Everything will be okay,” he says, “but my guys screwed up big time on that three-story oceanside project, and I’ve got to fly home to fix it.”
My mind spins. Back home. Back to Santa Cruz. Back to surfing, back to Tess, back to…Eric. Eric, who seems so far away, it’s as if he’s in not another state but another plane of time. I can’t even remember the last conversation I had with him. Distance has chipped away at our communication. I glance out the kitchen window at where I was sitting with Lincoln earlier this evening. His image is so much clearer than the one of the guy I left at home. Home is fading—has faded enough my constant want for home suddenly turns into a painful need.
“Anise,” Dad says.
“What?”
“You can’t come with me. You know that, right? Jacks just got home, and she can’t walk. I hate to leave you like this, but I have to. We can’t afford to lose this job. I’ll call one of Jacks’s friends to ask for help while I’m gone.”
My stomach drops. “Why can’t one of her friends come and take care of everything? I need a break. I need—” I struggle to keep my voice steady. “I need to see my friends. I’ll come back. I mean, you’re going home. I should get to go too. It’s only fair, right?”
“Anise, I’m sorry, but no,” Dad says, his voice quiet. “Even ignoring flight costs, Jackie’s friends have jobs. I’m not going to ask them to take off work when you’re here and capable. And think about her feelings. You don’t want to make her feel like an obligation, a burden.”
I’m not going home yet. The thought hits hard and something cracks.
“But she is a burden. And she knows it.” The words are harsh. I wince as they come out.
Dad looks angry, but he takes a quick breath, and his words come out gentle. “No, she’s not. She’s family, not a burden. Family isn’t a burden. It’s a gift.”
He’s right. I look down. “I’m sorry. I know.”
“I wouldn’t be going back to Santa Cruz unless I absolutely had to. Aunt Jackie needs all the support she can get, and that includes emotional support, and I’m depending on you for that. Not to mention, if you haven’t noticed, the kids are attached to you. Don’t you want to be here for them? Wouldn’t you want them to be there for us if we needed them?”
I want to say I care about surfing and my friends and reclaiming home before it’s no longer mine to claim. But then I think about how upset Emery has been, about when Nash fell into the pool. These kids do need me, and I’m not going to be like my mom. I’m not going to be the fuck-up who leaves town when someone needs her because what I want matters more.
“Okay,” I finally say. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Again.”
Dad sighs, puts a hand on my shoulder, and meets my eyes. “I know this is not the summer you had in mind for yourself. But it’s the right thing to do, and you’ll be glad you did it. I promise.”
“I know, you’re right,” I say. But inside my stomach twists because not only have I been torn away from home this summer, but now home is tearing Dad away from me too.
Eleven
“You know, sweetheart,” Aunt Jackie says, “You don’t have to keep checking on me every five minutes.”
“It’s not every five minutes,” I mumble.
Aunt Jackie sits propped against, like, eighty pillows, a book in one hand and her phone in the other. “True. Much closer to every seven.”
What else am I supposed to do? Dad left me here alone with an aunt on the rebound from a near-fatal accident. Well, not technically alone, but Emery’s still hiding out in her room, Nash can’t do anything without accidently breaking something, and Parker just discovered a three thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of Mount Rushmore hiding in the garage, so unless you’re looking for the three-pronged piece of Abe Lincoln’s nose, he’s not interested.
I wish I could have gone in Dad’s place. Handle the construction complaints and see my friends. I know he’s right. I need to be here for my family. I want to be here for my family, but that doesn’t ease the growing pain of seeing picture after picture of my friends. It’s like I’m disappearing from their lives, like if I scroll down their feeds far enough, I’ll have even vanished from the pictures I know I’m in.
Plus, it wasn’t until after Dad left for the airport that I realized I still hadn’t told him about the postcard. He has no clue my mom might show up at the house. Not that she normally sends warning anyway. But I left that note on the bathroom mirror… What if he sees it and knows I’ve been hiding this secret from him all summer? I hate being dishonest with him. Even in her absence, the power of my mom’s destructive forces are immense.
Aunt Jackie says, “If I need anything, I can always call.” Then she waves her phone at me. “Or call.”
“I know, I know. I just like checking in.” Aunt Jackie is markedly happier since her party, but she’s still anxious from being cooped up for so long. Literally. I sit down on the bed and run my hand over the comforter, so much smoother than the tattered edges of Tess’s quilt. If I’d had more time to pack, I would’ve put it in my suitcase so I could curl up with it at night while reading a Detective Dana novel. “Can I get you anything?”
“Healed legs.” She cocks a half grin. “Kidding. I do miss running, though. Your mom turned me on to running—did you know that? It was her favorite sport. She turned your dad on to it too.”
The irony doesn’t escape me that my mom’s favorite sport is running.
“One time,” Aunt Jackie continues, “I think it was my spring break freshman year, I went to visit your parents in Santa Cruz. They’d been dating for a while then, about nine months. It was a miracle. It was the longest she’d stayed in one place since leaving home. Actually, I think she was already pregnant with you at the time, but she didn’t know it yet. Anyway, we all went for a run on the beach. It was one of those perfect nights, cool and still, just the lightest breeze coming off the water. So we started running, and we’re all a bit competitive, family trait, so no one wanted to be the first to stop. So we kept going and going. Every now and then someone would slow to a jog so sluggish it was basically a walk, but then we’d pick up the pace again. We ran for miles and miles down the beach.
“It wasn’t until the sun had long set that we all gave up and collapsed in the sand. I can’t remember ever being so exhausted in my life. It knocked me out more than those painkillers do. Well, next thing I knew, I was waking up to the sun rising and the tide washing over us. We watched the sunrise together and then walked home along that perfect blurred line, you know, where the water meets the sand.
“Took us about six hours to walk back, and the only food in the house was a loaf of bread and those orange cheese slices, the Kraft ones, so we ate grilled cheese sandwiches and then promptly fell asleep. When I woke up later that day, I found your mom in the living room blasting Stevie Nicks on the stereo and dancing. It’s like she was born with this extra cosmic energy. Maybe she—”
Aunt Jackie stops speaking midsentence and reaches forward, brushing m
y cheek with her hand, and I realize I’m crying. Not crying crying, but a few tears drip down my face. Chances are I’ll never get to run down the beach at night with my mom, and I know plenty of people in the world have it a lot worse than that, but the truth is, deep down, I think it’d be nice to wake up to the sunrise and eat grilled cheese sandwiches and dance to Stevie Nicks with her.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Aunt Jackie says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I tilt my head down and scrub my face. “It’s fine.” I clear my throat. “You didn’t. I’m just tired.”
“Of course you are. And you miss home and your friends. Those painkillers have me rambling again. Your mom puts us through hard times, but I want you to know about some of the good ones too.”
She says this as if a moment of my mom’s presence can counteract years of her absence.
As if a grain of good can negate a field of bad.
“Look,” Aunt Jackie says, “why don’t you leave the kids here and take some time for yourself? It’s a beautiful day out. Call that new friend of yours. Lincoln, right? He’s not so bad looking, you know.”
Calling Lincoln not so bad looking is like calling the Pacific Ocean damp.
“I don’t know… Are you sure?” I’m kind of uneasy leaving Aunt Jackie alone, but I guess the kids are here if she needs something. And the next door neighbors are home too, and like she said, she can always use her phone. Not to mention, she just got released from being monitored by doctors 24/7, so besides her legs, she probably couldn’t be any healthier if she tried.
Aunt Jackie reaches over the comforter and squeezes my hand. “I’m sure.”
Half an hour later, Lincoln picks me up in a Jeep Wrangler with a bit of rust and nicked paint. When I texted him using the number he’d put into my phone and asked if he maybe wanted to hang out and skate or grab lunch or something, he responded saying it must be fate because his shift at work just got canceled. Then he asked if I could be gone for approximately nine and a half hours.
In true Lincoln style, he refused to tell me anything more, and though I felt uneasy about being away that long, I said yes.
“Bring us back presents!” Nash shouts as I head out the front door.
I turn toward him. He’s in the living room, sitting on the floor and playing video games, next to Parker who is still piecing together the giant puzzle. “How do you know there’ll be presents where I’m going?”
Parker looks up and furrows his brow. “There are presents everywhere if you look hard enough.”
“Okay there, Confucius. I’ll see you later.”
As I head out to the car, I glance at the house and the closed curtain of Emery’s room. If there are presents to be found, one for her is at the top of the list.
• • •
I learn three things driving in the car with Lincoln:
1. He owns all eighteen Bruce Springsteen albums and refuses to listen to anything else until I’ve listened to all eighteen Bruce Springsteen albums.
2. He uses something called a spinner knob, this little black device attached to his steering wheel, to help him make turns one-handed. On straightaways, he grips the wheel with four fingers and idly touches the knob with his pinky.
3. He cannot drive farther than ten miles without providing at least one “fun fact” about a plant we pass.
We’re shooting down the highway, about two hours into our apparently three-hour drive, “State Trooper” blasting from the speakers, muffled by the heavy wind thrashing through the open-top jeep, when Lincoln swerves to make the upcoming exit.
I yelp and grab onto the metal frame of the car for support. “You know a family member of mine was recently in a near-fatal car crash?” I ask. “What are you doing?”
“Food!”
As he says the word, my stomach grumbles. I hope he’s planning on pulling into a fast food drive-thru because it’s been many hours since my four eggs, two bowls of cereal, and Pop-Tart. But he doesn’t pull into a drive-thru, he pulls into an almost-empty parking lot of an almost-empty grocery store that looks like it’s half a century old. The sign reads “Grocery” in chipped, faded green paint, and exactly one cart sits outside on the curb.
“Okay,” Lincoln says. He turns off the ignition and climbs out of the car. “We’re going to play a little game.”
“What game is that?” I ask, getting out of the car.
He slips two ten-dollar bills from his wallet. He passes one to me and stuffs the other into his pocket. His eyes light up as he explains the game. “We both have ten dollars and five minutes to find the best food we can, check out, and meet back at the car. Please keep in mind that there will be zero cooking facilities at our final destination, unless you have a permit to build a campfire on government property.”
“Unless I what?”
“Go!”
Instead of answering me, Lincoln shoots off into the grocery store, and since I don’t like losing—ever—I shove my questions aside and rush off after him.
I burst through the not automatic double doors and into an employee wearing a red apron, who stares at me like the devil herself just came in for some light grocery shopping. “Sorry, sorry!” I call out, rushing past him.
I pace in front of the tops of the aisles and scan. Lincoln is down one of them. He presses his basket into the shelf with his hips, while quickly throwing in items. I don’t have time for pacing. Too bad Spinner isn’t here. He’s got a nose for awesome food. But I’m on my own, so I pick an aisle at random, speed down the worn linoleum floor, and happen upon the perfect thing.
We check out separately, and Lincoln insists we keep our bounties hidden in their brown paper bags until we get to our final destination. My growling stomach disagrees with this, so he tells me to open the glove compartment. Inside I find a few granola bars in different flavors, little bags of Skittles that look suspiciously Halloween-themed, and an apple with more squish than any apple should ever have. I chuck the apple out the window and smile because this messy glove compartment proves that Lincoln has at least one flaw and is therefore human.
“Almost there,” he announces, two granola bars and a bag of hardened Skittles later. In the last three hours Nebraska has turned from suburbs to commercial highways to this flat expanse of road and empty land and little else, exactly what I always imagined Nebraska to look like.
“And where exactly is here?” I ask as we pull into a small lot filled with a few cars, mostly SUVs and trucks.
“Definitely the coolest place in Nebraska.” He shuts off the ignition and adjusts his black-framed glasses. “And I would know since I’ve made it my life’s calling to find the coolest place in each and every state I’ve ever lived in.”
“Cooler than the river?”
He gives me a pitying look. “Compared to what I’m about to show you, that river is a speck on the galactic spectrum of super cool shit.”
Despite Lincoln’s assertion, I’m doubtful. There’s nothing here but baked dirt and grass, and a short walk from the car, two structures—one that looks like a giant airplane hangar and the small, squat building in front of it.
“Come on.” Lincoln hops out of the car. I start to grab my purse and the bags of food, but he glances at me and says, “Leave the food for now. You’ll want to see this first.”
• • •
The smaller building has wood siding and a sign that reads Ashfall State Historical Park Visitor Orientation Center.
“A historical park.” I turn to Lincoln as we walk toward the glass doors. “For our grand adventure, you’re taking me on a school field trip?”
“Have faith, surfer girl.”
The inside of the building is freezing. My skin prickles. I tell Lincoln I’ll wait for him outside while he buys our tickets. I grab for my wallet to offer him some money, but I must have left my tote bag with my phone and w
allet in the car. I consider going back to grab my phone, but maybe it’ll be nice to spend a couple hours without it, without my fingers unconsciously pulling up another slew of pictures of my friends.
Lincoln comes back outside a few minutes later and guides us toward the airplane hangar-like building. We pass a few people on the concrete path that connects the two buildings. Everyone looks like they live on the road—sunglasses, fanny packs, worn-out shirts featuring American flags and bald eagles. They take their time walking the short path, pointing out hills and sparse trees in the distance like they’re noteworthy sites.
As we near the hanger, I read a sign. Hubbard Rhino Barn. A barn? Did Lincoln take me all the way out here for just some glorified petting zoo?
Before I have a chance to ask, he pulls open the tall door and says, “After you.”
I step inside.
“Oh shit,” I say.
“Whoa,” I say.
“What?” I say.
It takes a while to comprehend what’s in front of me. Light pours in from large, rectangular windows, sun-flooding the enormous room. A short, fenced-in walkway keeps everyone on an elevated path above a giant, dusty pit that takes up the majority of the space. Inside the pit are life-sized animal molds. No, not animal molds—animal bones. Hundreds and hundreds of animal bones poke out of the ground like they tucked in for an afternoon nap and woke up eras later.
A few people with badges crouch inside of the pit, brushing dust away from the bones with cautious, gloved hands.
I turn to Lincoln and find him already looking at me. “What is this place?”
“Didn’t you read the sign?” He grins. “Ashfall Fossil Beds.”
My hairs rise at the sight in front of me and the story Lincoln tells.
Twelve million years ago a volcano erupted in Idaho.
The eruption spread ash and powdered glass, far and wide—all the way to a watering hole in northeastern Nebraska. The animals grazed on the ash-infused grasses and drank the ash-infused water and breathed the ash-infused air and died an ash-infused death. The ash continued to blow, covering their bodies and preserving them in a twelve million-year-old ecological bubble. This site was founded decades ago when someone discovered the skull of a juvenile rhinoceros peeking out of a cornfield.
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