Halfway to the Sky

  I shook his hand. “Dani Brown.”

  He said, “You're thru-hiking? It's a long way.”

  I glared at him.

  “Yeah, okay, sorry. At least you look like a hiker. Let me give you some advice, Hike-Your-Own-Hike Dani Brown. Don't do the first mile of the approach trail. It's a killer. Not worth it. Hitch a ride to the top of the falls and start from there. And don't bother making yourself breakfast this morning. Up by the falls they've got a lodge, and the breakfast buffet is an All-You-Can-Eat.” He grinned. “That's the first rule of thru-hiking: Never pass up an All-You-Can-Eat.”

  Unless the All-You-Can-Eat costs money, I thought. I'd saved all I could for this trip—birthday presents, Christmas presents, plus I'd baby-sat the neighbor's wretched six-year-old twice a week after school and every single day Christmas break—but I'd had to buy a lot of my equipment, too, and I only had about five hundred dollars to last the trip. The books said to count on six months for a thru-hike, so that worked out to twenty dollars a week for food, as long as none of my gear broke. Not many restaurant meals there. I shook my head. “I haven't tried hitchhiking yet and I'm not hungry.”

  At that exact moment my stomach growled like it was being torn in two. Beagle laughed. Even I smiled.

  “You know you'll end up hitching sometimes?” he said.

  I nodded. The books all said so, but I wasn't very happy about doing it. Never trust a stranger, and all that.

  “All right, Dani Brown,” William said. “Here's what. We'll hitch a ride up together, and I will treat you to your very first All-You-Can-Eat. I'll buy. Deal?”

  “You don't have to buy me breakfast.”

  “You can … I don't know what—make me cocoa later on. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I probably shouldn't have agreed, but I liked Beagle.

  “Did your mother teach you not to talk to strangers?” he asked while I packed my gear.

  “Yes,” I said. “What about hitching rides and eating breakfast with them?” he asked.

  “You're not a stranger,” I said.

  He didn't smile; in fact, he looked concerned. “I'm not,” he said. “And you can trust me; you can trust most people out here. But you ought to be careful, Dani Brown.”

  I hoisted my pack. “I am,” I said. “I always am.”

  We got a hitch from a man driving a pickup truck, who stopped and motioned us toward the truck bed. Beagle dropped the tailgate and gave me a hand up. The road was so steep it was scary, and I'd never been in the back of a truck before. But the air was crisp and the mountains were beautiful, and Beagle was laughing. I felt like I was starting a fabulous adventure.

  The falls were puny, disappointing. “You expected Niagara?” Beagle asked.

  “Something,” I said.

  He shook his head. “You haven't spent much time around here, have you?”

  “Sure I have.”

  “Hike much?”

  “Every day for two hours since December.”

  He nodded. “Thought so. You seem strong.”

  The lodge looked more like a Holiday Inn than anything I ever expected to see on the top of a mountain. But the breakfast was indeed All-You-Can-Eat. I winced when Beagle paid $6.95 for each of us.

  “Don't worry about it,” he said.

  “Are you rich?” I helped myself to sausages, six of them, and pancakes, and eggs. The smells from the buffet were wonderful. I was starving.

  “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But that's okay. Can't have you starting off hungry, can we?”

  “Are you in college?” I asked.

  We had found a table by the windows and sat down. The restaurant wasn't crowded, though there were a few other people who looked like potential thru-hikers to me.

  Beagle drank a full glass of orange juice straight down. “No,” he said, wiping his lips. “I graduated from high school in January. I took extra classes for the last two years so I could finish a semester early. I've always wanted to try a thru-hike, and my folks said I could if I did it this way. I start classes at Duke in September.”

  I didn't know what Duke was but decided not to ask. “That's cool,” I said. I bit into my pancakes.

  “What about you?” asked Beagle.

  Ouch. I should have known better than to ask him questions; it made him feel he could ask me questions in return. “I don't know,” I said.

  He squinted at me. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Your parents just said, whatever, take off from school, disappear for six months, you're on your own?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That sounds like child abuse.”

  “No—they just … ”I looked out the window. The view was incredible. I couldn't talk about Springer, not in this restaurant. “They met on the Trail,” I said. “The very first night.”

  Beagle looked at me in a funny way all through the rest of the meal, but he didn't ask me anything else. I was glad.

  The trail above the falls was not as steep as the trail below them, but it was steep enough. Beagle strode ahead of me, quickly disappearing from sight. He walked bouncily, like he had springs on his feet. I had hiked every afternoon on the streets around our neighborhood to get ready for this, but I didn't walk the way Beagle did. My pack dug into my shoulders. I trudged.

  The trail was a beaten path through the naked woods, but it was neither smooth nor straight. I found myself watching my feet, both to be sure I didn't trip and because my pack tended to tip my head forward. I tripped anyway. Several times.

  “So, Dani, what did you see on your historic walk?”

  “Mostly the tops of my boots.”

  “What did you think about while you were walking?”

  “Nothing. The less I thought, the better.”

  I walked carefully, quietly, slowly, I supposed, but steadily. My heart pounded. I didn't see Beagle for what I figured was at least a mile. I didn't see anybody, even though I knew there were other thru-hikers around—at the lodge I'd caught a glimpse of one arranging her pack in the lobby. I didn't see squirrels, birds, anything. The wind blew. The air was cold, but I was wearing my hat and my fleece and my thermal underwear, and I was warmer than I wanted to be.

  Step, step, step. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Step, step. Georgia to Maine. I tried to imagine what it was like for the people who quit right here, who walked the trail I was walking and decided it was too much—they preferred to go home.

  In the first place, they probably had a home to go to.

  Me, I felt like I could walk forever.

  I went around a turn and saw Beagle sitting on a log beside the trail eating a handful of something. He saw me and smiled. He'd taken his hat off and hung it from his pack on a cord. “Gorp?” he asked. I shook my head. “Gotta keep eating, sis,” he said.

  “I've got plenty,” I said. I did, too, it was just all in my pack, which I didn't feel like taking off. “Later,” I said.

  He shrugged. “See you,” he said. “Two miles down now. Six to go.” He walked off, pulling ahead of me like the pack on his back weighed nothing, like he'd been walking forever and meant to do it about that much more. I felt slow compared to him, but I didn't feel bothered.

  Hike your own hike. My hike did not include needing to be supervised or given handouts of gorp. I was out here to be alone. I began to regret accepting breakfast from him, except that the sausages had been so awfully tasty.

  I saw Beagle again a few miles on, and again a bit after that. “I don't need a baby-sitter,” I told him. “I am a baby-sitter. I'm a hiker, too. I'm fine.”

  “Hey, sis,” he said genially, “if you were my sister, I'd be wanting someone to check in with you now and then.”

  “I'm not your sister.” I surprised myself by how angry I sounded.

  Beagle didn't flinch. “Did you or did you not tell me I looked like a beagle?” he said.

  “Well,” I said.

  “And are you or aren't you calling me Beagle in your head right now?”

/>   “Well.”

  I looked away. “Look.” Beagle smiled again. “Dani, I've got a little sister. She's awesome. I meant it nice. Okay? No offense.”

  “I'm not anybody's sister.” Tears welled up in my eyes. Beagle ignored them.

  “Okay, little brother,” he said. “Eat this gorp like a good boy, then let's head up. We're close to the top now.”

  Here is the thing about missing Springer. It comes to me all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like a gust of wind that nearly knocks me down. I'm in the grocery store, say, or I'm standing in the middle of the busy school cafeteria, holding a tray of my favorite tuna and noodles, looking for a seat next to some friends, and I'm happy, I'm actually happy, not thinking about anything, and then boom! I miss Springer. I feel it hard in the pit of my stomach; I can't eat my lunch anymore. Or I eat my lunch and my friend Jane's lunch and then I pick leftovers off Tanner's plate and Caitlin's and Sarah's, because if I could just fill myself up I wouldn't miss Springer anymore.

  And then I'm fine until the next time.

  It happened on the summit of Springer Mountain. I expected that there'd be some kind of fanfare at the top, some elaborate marker like the pretty stone archway at the bottom of the approach trail. Maybe I wanted music and flowers just for me—maybe I was being unrealistic, since the summit was way in the middle of nowhere—but I expected more than I got, which was a big gray rock squatting beside the trail. I could see that it really did mark the summit—the trail went down from it in both directions—plus it had a metal sign stuck to it to mark the start of the Appalachian Trail, but it was just a rock like all the thousands of other rocks I'd already walked past.

  “That's it?” I said aloud, even though no one was around, not even Beagle. He'd gotten ahead again. “That's the top of Springer?” It seemed stupid. For a second I felt cheated. But then I turned around.

  Brown tree branches framed the longest, most beautiful view I'd ever seen. A few fluffy clouds floated high in a crystal blue sky, and far away on the ground a gleam of silver showed a river or a lake. On the mountaintop I felt suspended between clouds and water. The hills rolled on and on in front of me, green at their bottoms from evergreen trees and in some places showing the faintest pale green hint of spring.

  Boom! I stood on top of Springer Mountain, and I longed for Springer. I stood with my mouth open, breathing in and out in hard, short breaths, and then I did something else I can't stop doing. I opened my pack and dug down the side, and pulled out an old T-shirt that belonged to him. I found it in my laundry basket a week after he died, and it smelled like him. It still does, the littlest tiny bit, even though I've kept it under my pillow all this time. So I stood on the mountaintop covering my face with an old unwashed T-shirt, and cried and cried and cried.

  After a bit I heard man-made noises and jumped like a startled deer. It wasn't Beagle. It was a woman hiker, the one from the lodge, and she looked winded and sweaty and awful. Like the hike wasn't what she expected. Like she might turn around and go home. She walked up to the rock, glared at it, and said, “That's it?” and she sat down right on it with a thump and some creaks from her gear. Then she looked at me and said, “Oh, no! Are you hurt? What happened?”

  I had quit crying, but I couldn't talk without hiccuping. I shook my head and tried to smile, and failed. “Nobody has to hike this thing,” the woman said. “If it seems like a bad idea, hey, you know, they say a bunch of people quit right off the bat. Maybe that's fine, maybe you can learn as much on the approach trail as you need to know. Hey. How old are you anyway?”

  I said, “Twenty-one.”

  She said, “My great-aunt Fanny. Don't tell me lies.”

  I said, “Twelve.”

  She sighed. “Well, you got the numerals right the first time, I guess. What are you doing this for? Please tell me you're day-hiking. You're not by yourself, are you?”

  She was an older woman, like someone's grandma. Not mine, though. My grandparents were dead.

  “Mmmm,” I said. Just then Beagle showed up, walking back along the trail that led away from the rock.

  “Hey, sis, I got water, need some?” he said. I shook my head. “Get a chance to sign the register yet?” he asked. I shook my head again. “Well, get a move on, supper's waiting.”

  “Where's the register?” I asked, and the woman said, “Oh, geez, I'm sitting on it,” and we all laughed, and she signed it and I signed it, and she forgot I hadn't answered her question. Plus Beagle had made it seem like we were together, which was okay.

  Beagle and I hiked the last part of the day together. We skipped the shelter just past Springer and went on to Stover Creek, so that by the end of the day I'd walked two and a half miles of the actual Appalachian Trail.

  I ate dinner as fast as possible, ignored the other hikers as much as possible, and climbed into my sleeping bag as soon as I could. It was not even seven o'clock but I was exhausted, and I fell asleep before daylight had entirely left the shelter.

  March 3

  Stover Creek Shelter (Georgia)

  Miles hiked today: 0 (so far)

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 2.5

  Weather: cold and windy

  I woke to a blinding glare of light full in my face. A flash-light. I squinched my eyes and threw up my arm to block the light.

  “Hello, Dani,” my mother said very quietly.

  I was trapped, caught, a girl in the headlights, unable to move in the face of oncoming disaster. I'd run away for what I thought would be six months but had escaped for less than two days.

  “What do you have to say for yourself ?” she said, again very quietly. Despite the flashlight, most of the other hikers slept on. I heard the rustle of a sleeping bag behind me that might have been Beagle, but no one spoke.

  I said nothing.

  “Dani?” she asked.

  I could hardly see her behind the glare of light. I couldn't read her expression. I couldn't put a name to what I felt, either— mostly just another sense of loss. “What time is it?” I asked.

  She flicked her sleeve back from her wrist. “Three-twenty-seven A.M. Scooch over. I'm freezing.”

  I scooched my bag closer against the shelter wall. “Not that way,” she said. “Scooch over inside the bag.” When I didn't move, she said crossly, “I've got to sleep somewhere, it's too cold without a bag. And somehow I forgot to bring one. I didn't expect to climb a mountain tonight.”

  I scooched. She burrowed into the bag with me. Her hands and face felt like ice.

  “You climbed the approach trail in the dark?” I asked. I couldn't imagine it, not with all those rocks.

  “Shhh,” she said.

  “But—”

  “We'll talk in the morning. Go to sleep.”

  “I'm not quitting.”

  “Morning. Now sleep.”

  In my narrow sleeping bag she had to cup her whole body against mine, a mandatory full-length hug. Then she made it feel like a real hug, because she put her arm around me and let her face brush my hair. It seemed like years since the last time she'd hugged me. Since the day of Springer's funeral, the day Dad left, the day the world fell to pieces.

  For a moment I thought about staying awake, sneaking out of the shelter once Mom was asleep, hoisting my pack, and taking off down the Trail. It wouldn't work, though. Impractical, for one, since I'd have to leave my sleeping bag behind. Impossible, for another. I hadn't even been sure my mother would look for me, but she'd found me right away. Running again would be useless.

  Mom was sound asleep and her arm felt heavy against my ribs. Her breath was moist in my hair. Part of me felt little-girl safe in her embrace, but another part—a larger one—felt trapped like a bear in a cage.

  We woke up angry.

  “What were you thinking?” she asked. She ran her hands through her hair until it stood up on the sides. It was early. Some of the other hikers were still sleeping. Others had moved on. Those few awake near the shelter went about their business quietly, igno
ring us, or pretending to. Beagle made coffee very slowly and didn't look at me. I hoped he wouldn't leave.

  “Dani? Were you thinking at all? Did you realize what it would do to me, to come home and find you gone?” Her voice was quiet, her words furious.

  “You can't make me leave,” I said. Ridiculous, because of course she could. I knew that. I pulled my boots on.

  Mom was sitting up in my sleeping bag. The morning air was ice cold. She wasn't dressed for hiking. She had a coat but no hat, blue jeans, a sweatshirt. All cotton, the worst fabric to wear. For a moment we stared at each other. I noticed that her hands were shaking. So were mine.

  “Pick a question,” she said. “Any question. And answer it.”

  “What questions?” I said.

  “The ones I just asked you.”

  She had a hard, sharp face, my mother. She'd never gotten soft and round like other people's moms. She ran her three miles every morning in twenty minutes, every single morning, rain or sleet, always in the dark because she got up so early.

  “I told you I was with Dad,” I said. “I thought you'd believe me. I didn't think you'd worry.”

  “Not at first, you mean,” she said. “Not until you were too far gone to find. That's what you were thinking, right?”

  I didn't answer. It was what I'd been thinking. Right.

  She huffed. Her breath made a white cloud in the air between us. “I knew you weren't with your dad, Dani,” she said. Something in her tone made my stomach hurt even more. “He's in Jamaica.”

  “Jamaica?” My dad was a wilderness kind of guy. He never, but never, went to the beach.

  “He's getting married there,” Mom said. “Our divorce was final last week, you knew that.”

  I couldn't talk. I couldn't breathe.

  “I told you,” she said. “I told you last week it was final.”

  I looked around the shelter. Everyone who couldn't seem to leave me alone the night before had moved away now. Even Beagle was out of earshot. “I didn't believe you,” I whispered.

  “Oh, Dani.” She sounded exasperated. “Why not?”

  They weren't supposed to get divorced. They were just upset about Springer. I knew they'd get back together eventually, when everything settled down. Married? My father?