Where the Mountains Meet the Sea

by A. R. Breck

  It’s nothing like Wisconsin, where the air was a bit humid, smelling like a mix of cow manure, fresh air, and lake water. The thought makes my feet stop tapping to the beat of the music.

  I miss my parents. I wonder how they’re doing. Is my mom still gardening outside? Is my dad’s favorite spot still at the kitchen table, where he can get a clear view of the lake and my mom outside at the same time? Does he still like his coffee scorching hot and black?

  I shake my head.

  He’ll always like his coffee black and boiling.

  After they dropped me at the Greyhound station, I hopped on the bus heading to San Diego, where I’d then catch a flight to Maui.

  Sitting on the bus that smelled like dirty socks and sweat, my tearful face pressed against the window, half wanting to jump out and run home, hoping that Roman was still there so I could beg him to take me back. Beg for his forgiveness.

  The other part of me wanted the bus to move faster, to flee as far away from my past and create a new future as quickly as I could.

  Then I met Willie, Neil, Shauna, and Trish. All of us headed to different locations. A little lost, not really sure what we’re looking for. Just something new, something fresh to dip our toes into with hope we come out the other end okay.

  I showed them the flier, passed each of them the wrinkled, folded-too-many-times piece of white paper with my destination on it. I watched as four sets of eyes lit up, each of them thinking it was a great idea. They wanted to take this journey with me, hoping they could find what they were looking for on the beaches of Hawaii.

  But first, they wanted to make a pit stop in Arizona. The pit stop ended up being our home. My dream is still to make it to Hawaii, but right now, I’m enjoying the red desert of Arizona. The red mountains, the cool rivers, the ranches, and the cowboys.

  At times I get to see wild horses, their hair blowing in the wind as the ground shakes beneath their feet, their hooves pounding the sand as they run from place to place.

  Wild.

  Free.

  Nothing gives me greater happiness than watching them roam the world. That’s what I want. To be free, without heartbreak, without obligations or people assuming what I need. I’ve dealt with that. I’ve lived a life with pitiful eyes watching me, assuming what was best for me. I don’t want that life.

  I want to make my own path, build my own life.

  We hopped off the bus in Phoenix, not really a destination in mind. It was Neil’s destination, and he wanted to at least check it out before we continued on our journey. We all walked off the bus, our legs stiff and our backs sore. We were all in desperate need of a shower, maybe a bed too.

  But none of us had much money, so we wandered, hiked, found small jobs here and there. I’d find small stones on the ground, and with the days long and the nights even longer, I’d twine things together, until one day I made a dreamcatcher. Then I made two, three, until I had an entire stack of them.

  We’d head down to town, and the locals and tourists loved them, their hands anxiously going to their pockets to pull out any spare change they had. I took it greedily, in need of food and water. Anything, really.

  Neil and Willie found a small job with a rancher, cleaning up his fields and tending to his animals. In exchange, the old man gave us a half broken down Winnebago. We brought it to our spot by the river, making a small little home here.

  Most of them sleep in the van.

  I prefer the stars.

  I always have.

  It reminds me of lying on the sandy beach and watching the glistening stars both near and far. I feel like if I reach up, I'll be able to pluck one from the sky and put it in the satchel with my dreamcatchers. I'd keep the star, though. I'd hold onto it forever.

  Though, there’s something about the sky here. It’s different. The constellations are still there, in the same distinct pattern I’ve studied since I was a child, but a part of me feels like it’s not the same.

  It’s like I’m looking at a different sky. It makes me feel like a different person entirely, like who I was is not who I am now.

  The guys constructed me a makeshift bed outside, made of sticks and stones. I sleep out here most nights, unless the air gets too cool. But I like it out here, the night is silent with the occasional coyote howling in the distance, or the sounds of horse hooves pounding against the earth.

  But no traffic. No pollution. No people.

  Just us.

  Sometimes Willie sleeps outside with me.

  Willie.

  What is Willie? I don’t know. A boyfriend? Absolutely not. A friend? Something in between? Probably.

  He makes my heart hurt a little less and hurt a little more at the same time. He’ll never be him, and I knew that the moment I met Willie. But his long blond hair and cheeky smile make him so boyish, no girl would be blind to his charms.

  My fingers subconsciously go to my necklace, the chain hot in the sun. I want to take it off, once and for all, but I know even telling myself that is a lie, because it’s just as much a part of me as the rest of my body is. I can’t separate from my soul, as much as I beg myself to at night underneath the stars, crying into the night because all I want is to be free of him. Be free of this love and pain that I feel day and night. But that freedom never comes. My love is too strong, too sure.

  The pain and love mingle together and run through my blood, hot as fire. Nothing will stop it.

  Nothing.

  I shake my head, clearing these thoughts as I finish the dreamcatcher.

  Pressing my toes against a slippery rock in the creek, I push myself back until I'm flat on my back.

  "What do you think?" I ask, showing the dreamcatcher to Neil and Willie behind me.

  Willie checks out my stomach, his eyes grazing from my rib cage all the way to the waistline of my skirt. My nipples protrude, poking through my white shirt that I've shredded to crop right below my breasts. Out here in the desert, less clothes are better. He settles his guitar on the ground, crawling over to me in his shorts, no shirt. His blond hair fans around his face as an evil smile crosses his face.

  He bends over, kissing me upside down. His hand slips beneath the collar of my shirt, tweaking my peaked nipple in his fingers. I roll away from him, a sharp bush poking me in my naked side. "Ouch."

  "You shouldn't have rolled away from me, then," he chuckles.

  I roll my eyes, sitting up and sliding the dreamcatcher into my satchel with the pile of other ones I have. We'll probably drive down to Globe tomorrow, the Wild West town with the mines and all the cowboys. It's a smallish town, reminds me of home a bit. The locals and tourists love my dreamcatchers.

  I need to sell them because we're running low on our canned foods. We cook outside, around our makeshift firepit in front of the Winnebago.

  My skin still can't tan, not even in the hot sun of Arizona. I turn red with a burn that hurts for days, even the slightest touch causes pain, then once the burn subsides, I'm back to my palish hue—the milky-white skin of someone who doesn't ever see the light of day.

  We sleep by the stream, because most of the other canals in the area are dried up, only filling after a heavy rain. We have to boil the water, cleaning out any contaminants, but it's better than packing our things up and driving into the closest town for water.

  We live off the land.

  A part of me loves it, this feeling of living completely different from everyone else. Being able to sleep, eat, and bathe in the wild. We live in a place that isn't full of pollutants, chemicals, metals, and everything else wrong with the world. I've learned a lot about the good and bad of the world on my travels. We've been to Flagstaff, Phoenix, Globe, and my favorite, the Apache Trail. It's all so much different, but one thing remains the same.

  Every place I go, the moment I leave, I still feel a little lost. That part of me that I search for remains missing. That piece that I desperately search for between the dried bushes and on top of the red mountains, it’s not there. Whatever I’m look
ing for, it just isn’t here.

  I’m worried that in the bottom of my heart, I know what it is I’m looking for. Or rather, who I’m looking for. I don’t want to be tied to him; I don’t want to need him as much as my soul aches for him.

  I don’t want to want him, even if I know he’s the only one I need.

  Crossing the border, I only felt a loneliness that dragged my heart across the state lines, leaving fractured pieces along the way. I can't lie about that, and my friends all know I left something behind that was soul-crushing, so hard that I've never been able to speak about it.

  Unfortunately for me, I've come to realize that what I had with Roman was love, and I don't think I'll ever experience it with anyone else. Not with anyone else.

  I don't know where Roman is. I don't know if he's still singing. I stay away from the newspapers and televisions and radios whenever they're around. I'd prefer not to speak of it. And the rare times I'm able to call my parents to check up on them, they know not to bring him up.

  What we had was cataclysmic, and we destructed.

  While we've been traveling across Arizona, this is by far our favorite place to be. We've been talking about heading to California soon, though. We still have talks of heading out toward Hawaii, and I think I'll make it there eventually. But I like not having a plan, no schedule, nothing to tell me what to do or when to do it. I live for me, and me alone.

  Shauna and Trish walk up the stream, their shirts clutched in their hands and their naked breasts on display in the bright sun. It's extra hot today, the red mountains and dry air always making breathing a little heavy. Nothing like the sticky, wet humidity in Wisconsin. The air is dry here, making my skin chip and crack more than it ever has before.

  Shauna stumbles on a rock, nearly going down into the water. Trish grabs her around the arm, helping her back up.

  "What the hell are you guys doing?" Neil laughs.

  "It's hot today. I wish we could go swimming somewhere," Trish whines.

  "Sun will be goin' down soon. Best stick near camp for the rest of the night. Coyotes will be comin' out," Willie says, walking over to the Winnebago and grabbing two cans from our stash.

  We're five people, none of us knowing the next person, who met under unusual circumstances and found a bond.

  I don't know where any of us will end up, but I do know that somehow, my life will never be the same after this journey.

  I'm on the cliff. A cliff I can almost count as home with the number of times I've been here. It's sunny out, the first cloudless and clear day I’ve seen in a while. I look into the distance, seeing nothing but endless blue waters as calm as the night. Not a ripple in the water, not a wave cresting against the shore. It's almost eerie. I don't hear a sound. It's like I've lost my sense of hearing, except when I take a step forward, I can hear the rocks roll underneath my bare feet.

  I stand on the edge, my toes curling around its sharpness. A gust of wind comes, no sand this time. Only a clear breeze that blows my long hair from the back of my neck, waving into the wind.

  I inhale, tasting the saltiness of the sea on my tongue.

  Bang, bang.

  The sound comes out of nowhere, snapping my body into shock. I curl over, my body wiggling forward. My arms windmill around me, trying to keep my balance on the cliff, but it's no use. I tumble over the edge, a silent scream making it to the back of my throat.

  And I fall.

  I shoot up on my wooden bed, the night sky still and silent.

  "What's the matter?" Willie asks, his arm curling around my naked waist. I look up at the stars, feeling the need to tell him, tell anyone about the dream that has plagued me for years. Roman and my parents are the only ones that know about it. I feel a little lost, a little alone at the moment.

  Bang, bang.

  Willie shoots up, snapping his body out of the bed in a flash.

  "Gunshots!" he whisper-shouts.

  My heart rate runs a mile a minute. For once, it wasn't a dream. The bang I heard wasn't fake, it was real.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

  Continuous shots fire off in the distance, and what sounds like a scream.

  Not a coyote scream, but a human scream.

  "Did someone just get shot?" I cry out.

  Trish, Neil, and Shauna all clamber out of the Winnebago.

  The gunshots cease, but the echo still lingers in the air. I can smell the gunfire, the powder making my nose wrinkle. They were too close. So close I don't hear any animals around. No coyotes in the distance, no snakes hissing in the night. The usual wildlife is the loudest in the dark, always lurking, looking for food or anything to stay alive.

  "I want to leave," I whisper, tears flowing down my face. "Please, let's go."

  "Everyone, into the van," Neil orders. We all scramble inside, and Neil shuts the door, locking it behind us. "We'll be safe in here."

  "Are you sure about that?” Shauna asks, her voice shaky. Worried.

  I walk around Trish, grabbing a large shirt that's sitting on the fold-up table and slide it on. I'm unsure of whose it is, but I'm suddenly freezing, my naked body trembling. Due to fear or the desert night chill, I'm not sure.

  "Let's just get over on the bed. Be quiet, don't make a noise," Neil orders.

  We do as he asks, huddling on the small, full bed. None of us will be able to sleep tonight, that's for sure. Our skin touches, our arms clinging to each other as we listen for a noise, a cracking branch, a footstep, a gunshot, anything.

  We hear nothing. Nothing. Sleep doesn't hit any of us, and we sit and stare at each other, holding our terrified breaths in the depths of our chests, remaining in complete silence until morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ROMAN

  Dark hair flashes in front of my face, and my gaze shoots up. Seeing one of the VIP members with long, dark hair, so familiar that I want to wrap my hands in it and see if it feels the same as hers does. I want to turn her around and see if her eyes are as gray as I wish they were.

  They aren't.

  I know they won’t be.

  They'll be a dull brown that looks like melted chocolate poured straight into the pits of her eye sockets. She's a beautiful girl, maybe a little loose, but she keeps my bed warm when I need her to.

  I lean down, slicing the blade down between the piles of coke in front of me, cutting out a thick line. My foot bobs against the footrest—erratic, hectic, chaotic.

  I need a bump.

  "Brandy, come over here." I open up my arm toward her. She turns around, her muddy brown eyes locking with mine as she tosses her hand on her waist. She walks over, strutting her hips heavily and sliding into my lap with ease. I wrap my hand around her waist, sliding my fingers over her jean skirt and squeezing the side of her ass. Bending down, I place my thumb over my nostril, inhaling the thick powder with the other. It burns, sending a shock through my brain that has me tilting my head back and closing my eyes.

  Brandy is there in the next moment, dipping her tongue into my mouth as if she can taste the cocaine on my tongue.

  Once the head rush clears, Brandy separates, bending over to cut out her own line. She takes it with ease, her hair creating a sheet around her face as she leans down. She wipes the residue from below her nose with her pointer finger and sucks the dust off with her tongue. Her eyes grow wild, the fire burning through her veins as the hit flows through her.

  "Rome, on in five!" one of the set stage crew says before walking back out.

  "Want to have a quickie before you go on stage?" she asks, whipping her dark hair over her shoulder. She turns around, straddling me in my chair. Her skirt inches up, and I can see the tiny pair of panties between her thighs.

  I sigh, her persistence and eagerness a turn-off more than anything else. She brings her hand up, ready to dig her long nails into my hair. I tilt away from her. My stage look has already been perfected—my face is powdered, and I'm in blue jeans and an AC/DC shirt, with my leather jacket covering it. I don’t want
to fuck around with her when I’m about to go on stage, and she knows that.

  Lonnie, Clyde, and Flynn are probably somewhere around here. I glance up, looking over at the couches and chairs in our back VIP section, seeing them empty. We're so used to shows nowadays that we just do what we want until we need to go on.

  We've been doing this for three years now. Our fame has only grown. So substantially, our shows are almost always sold out. We even went on a short tour with my dad last year, but he's getting older now, and tours aren't really in the cards for him anymore.

  He stays home with my mom, since my sister doesn't live there anymore. She’s living in Milwaukee in a small apartment of her own, almost finished with getting her bachelor’s degree in some art shit. She tries to go home a lot, visiting with our parents, but she says it's not the same.

  She tells me there’s something about our town. The air is different. It doesn’t feel good like it used to, she says.

  Nothing is the same anymore.

  I try not to go back there, although I do it for my mom. It's painful to be in Shallow Lake. The waves don't crash against the shore in the same way. The sun isn't as bright as it used to be as it sets over the trees. The air doesn’t feel as good when it brushes my skin.

  I can't even look at her house, haven't spoken to any of her family since the day I walked out of there. My parents still keep in touch with them, as far as I know they're still best friends. Their faces still visit me in my dreams. It's scarred me, to be honest. Their crying eyes as they stared at me with such a heavy sadness. The day my heart was literally torn from my chest.

  I don't know where she is.

  My sister doesn't talk about her. At first, I pried, asked for every little detail about Luna's life. Where she was, who she was with, what she's been doing. When I found out she went to Arizona with a group of people she'd never met, I knew.