We choose to spend the day driving and hiking around the Badlands, then spend tonight in Deadwood, again because of the name. (Josh claims that it sounds like a “sexy Wild West town. You know, prostitutes were legal there up until the 1980s?” How he knew this charming fact, I have no idea. Nor do I want to.) After that, well, that’s as far as we got with our plan.
I can’t say I’ve ever been a nature girl, but this Badlands place is pretty sweet. It’s not all big trees covering my head, making me wonder what’s dangling above me. The Badlands basically call out, “Don’t bother. You’d never make it across alive,” making it perfectly acceptable to drive around on manmade roads and watch the nature from the safety and (albeit un-air-conditioned) comfort of our car. Periodically, we can park and walk on a gravelly path, well-marked by signage of just how far we can go to maintain contact with civilization.
It’s on one of these walks where, uninterrupted by the din of the open car windows or the curse of the cell phone reception, I get up the nerve to have the talk.
Josh sits down on a large tan rock, smoothed by thousands of butts before him. I scooch him over with my hip, and we sit, back to back supporting each other.
“Beautiful day, eh?” he asks. I look around at the striped hills, the way the colors change from the sandy brown bottom to a pinkish red layer, then top off with a gray cap. No cities to be seen. No suburban sprawl. No prepackaging.
“I guess,” I answer. It is beautiful—I know it is—but it’s hard for me to experience it as beauty instead of just anxiety at the thought of having to conquer it. Or maybe it’s not conquering “it” that worries me, but “him.”
Then I notice something. It’s an unnatural color, a red that’s a little too bright, too harsh, to be part of this world, just a little farther down the path. I un-lean myself from Josh and head toward the color, which stains the side of a rock about half my height and three times as wide. Graffiti. At first, I’m appalled that someone would deface nature, but rocks aren’t really nature, are they? I mean, they’re not alive, not unless they’re a donkey that magically got turned into a rock.
And who bothers to bring spray paint with them when they’re driving through a national park?
But when I read and discover what it says, I forget my disgust, my curiosity. Because this message was meant for me. A simple heart, with a cupid’s arrow piercing from bottom left to top right, surrounds the dripping, but legible letters, telling me, don’t stop now. A message. A mantra. For the road. For Josh. For the quest. I believe it.
The crunch of the earth behind me signals Josh’s approach. I turn to see him, hair tucked behind his ear, orange T-shirt off, hanging from the back of his loose shorts. Framed by the untouchable Badlands, he is nature. He is all that I want to see and experience right now.
I walk up to him and run my fingers over the brown stubble on his cheeks. My red hair looks foreign in the reflection of his sunglasses. “Hey,” I breathe.
“Hey.” I see his eyebrow cock in question. I lean forward and gently brush his lips with mine. “What…?” he begins to say, and I kiss him again, more pressure, more urgent. He kisses back. I’m surprised and elated and melting into him. His hand is on my shoulder, my back, and mine is on his, his bare skin, taut and sticky from the heat. We kiss, a kiss I’ve dreamed about for years, even while kissing other guys. While he was with other girls. A kiss worth waiting for. Then Josh pulls away.
“Wait…,” he says again.
“‘Don’t stop now,’” I quote the rock.
“I don’t know, Lil. I don’t think…”
“You don’t think what?” I ask, getting defensive, my big ol’ quest in danger of being crushed. By a rock, perhaps.
“I just don’t think we should.” He looks down and kicks his foot against my rock.
“Why not?” I sound like a kid.
“I just like you too much, I guess.” His answer is barely an answer.
“That’s stupid,” I say. You’re stupid, I think. I’m stupid, I know. “I get it. Forget it.”
“Lil, you know I love you. I have too much respect for you to change us.”
“Too much respect? Do people actually say that? Do you actually believe that?” I lean against my rock, letting it support me.
“If it’s true, they do.” He shrugs.
“Have you ever wanted to?” I don’t feel the need to elaborate. If he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, then he hasn’t wanted to.
“Well, yeah, I mean, I’m a guy.”
“That you are.” I say it like an insult.
“Lil, don’t be like that.” He moves to put his hand on my shoulder, and I dodge it. “Let’s keep on going. Our mission. For Penny.”
“It’s a quest,” I scold him. “My quest. I’m just using you for your car.” I try to hurt him. He’s not buying or else he doesn’t care, and he gives a sly smile. I want to press it. If you love me, then how can you not want to love me more? If we kissed, why can’t we just keep kissing? Not stopping ever? But it hurts to be stopped mid-kiss, love or no love.
“Well, then, you want a ride?” I swear I see a light glint off his teeth, and I can’t stay mad. Embarrassed, maybe. Disappointed. Definitely. But I’m not entirely convinced this moment is over.
I take a phone picture of the marked rock before we leave, to remember the personal message it left me.
“Don’t stop now.”
I vow not to.
We’re going away for spring break. I can’t believe it. We’re going to Disney World. It looks happy in pictures. I need a new bathing suit, my mom said. She wanted to order one on QVC, but I said what if it doesn’t fit and they don’t let us return it. She said I was right, and she took me to Kohl’s because she got a 30-percent-off coupon in the mail. Me and Annabelle got two new bathing suits each. One of mine is even a bikini. I don’t even look that bad in mine. Annabelle even said so. One week away in warmth and sun and bikinis. One week away where I have to tell Gavin how much I’m going to miss him. Even if I’m not so sure it’s true.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Badlands Rock Experience replays over and over in my head as Elvis can’t help falling in love (again) on the stereo. Why can’t Josh help falling in love with me? Being together is so easy. We love to talk, but we don’t have to talk, and we’re perfectly aligned in height. Isn’t that how things are supposed to be? But if it was really love, wouldn’t we be planning some sort of future together instead of the vagueness of me going to school one state over and him going wherever his rock star fantasy believes him to be going? I don’t like to think about it. Us apart.
I scooch my way across the bench seat to the slim middle seat only fitting for half a human and click on the lap belt. Josh takes his right arm from the steering wheel and drapes it over my shoulder. I lean into him, resting my head on his nicely padded shoulder. We’ve sat like this a million times. Is it different now that we’ve kissed? In my mind maybe, but in his…I don’t get it.
Trying to appeal to his guyly ego, I say, “Tell me about the band,” and Josh lights up. His favorite subject: The Band. Josh has been in various incarnations of said band since I’ve known him, but rarely are they anything more than a few random guys getting together in Josh’s basement to jam, playing other bands’ songs and breaking up over “creative differences.” A precious few have stayed together long enough to actually play a show, usually just a local gig at youth centers or (insert town name here) Day’s festivals. Always covers.
Josh talks about the new band he plans to form. He’ll advertise on Craigslist: Bassist Needed. Post flyers downtown. Auditions, of course there will be auditions. I can come if I want, if I’m in town. He’s always respected my opinion musically, which, admittedly, is somewhat of a burden. Because, and I would never tell Josh this, I don’t actually love his music. At first, when I was just a freshman, it was so cool to sit in his basement while he and a bunch of guys would jam or practice. Sometimes there’d be a whole group of us, g
irlfriends of the musicians, plus me, girl friend. The other girls would attempt to get up and dance, to show their guys how into the music they were, which would ultimately just piss off Josh. “It’s not that kind of music!” he’d yell, and the girls would sulk back to the couches and talk crap about Josh for the rest of the session. No one took the music as seriously as Josh did, which is why he never found the right mix of musicians to form a true band. Plus, his sound isn’t exactly radio friendly. Maybe college radio friendly, but nothing close to mainstream. One of Josh’s favorite activities was to have me come over and watch him experiment with his, as he put it, “musical flavors.” And for a while, yeah, it was interesting. The way he could just push a button on his computer and it would add a melodic beep or speed up the song or take a sneeze and turn it into a rhythm section. He could pick up any instrument and play it decently; some he mastered. As we became closer and I didn’t feel as desperate for him to like me (partly because I could tell he already really liked me, but also because I could tell that he really didn’t like me like that. Yet), I started bringing my homework or a Buffy comic, just to give me something to do so I didn’t go completely insane listening to his abstract creations (which he barely noticed because he was so into his music making). We work well together even when we’re not working together.
Now as we drive, my head on his shoulder, he blathers on about The Band tentatively titled Carpet Tongue, or Pretello, or Fromage (French for “cheese”). The names change daily, sometimes hourly. Josh isn’t one to commit. To bands or to girls, I guess. Maybe that’s what makes him so attractive? But not attracted?
I’m surprised (but not all that much) to find that I’ve fallen asleep when Josh wakes me with a tickle to my scalp. “We’re here,” he whispers. Here is Deadwood, a town immortalized by a TV show and remembered as a debaucherous Wild West town, the place where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back while playing cards. I know this because I have always had a fascination with historical celebrity deaths. For instance, it was said that the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng (who helped change the common lingo from “conjoined” to “Siamese” by their heritage), died with Chang the first to go and Eng sitting there, dead twin attached, knowing, waiting, for his time to come, while at the same time mourning his brother’s death and possibly savoring the only moment of his life when he was truly alone. Hickok’s death was a good story because he was a suspicious man who always refused to sit with his back to a door. A compulsive gambler, he couldn’t resist a poker game, even if it meant taking the last remaining spot at the table one fateful day (and, thus, facing the room and not the door). He even tried to switch seats with the other players at the table, but no luck. In the end—his end—he was shot in the back by a guy named Jack McCall, probably over some petty Wild West issue, like a five-dollar debt. The cards Hickok held in his hand are today still known as the Dead Man’s Hand. Or so the story goes.
I’ve got tons of stories like that stuffed into my memory. And don’t get me started on killers like Lizzie Borden. Or Typhoid Mary. I can’t remember the Pythagorean theorem to save my life, but give me a good serial killer or gruesome death, and I’d ace that exam. Those are the kind of stories I’d like to write or movies I’d like to make someday. I’m hoping college professors will be more open to gore than high school English teachers. Not that I’ve ever shared the really gory stuff with them or with Josh. I haven’t exactly shared any of my stories with Josh, since the one time I tried he was so distracted by his new wah-wah pedal he could barely get through the first page without fiddling with his guitar. And if he did actually manage to finish, what if he felt the same way about my stories as I do about his experimental music? Better I keep them to myself until I know he’s listening. If we could get just thatmuchcloser, I bet I could get him to listen.
Deadwood’s main street holds a layer of tack underneath its Western exterior. Casinos make up the majority of the storefronts, so we stop into one with signs blaring, OWNED BY ACADEMY AWARD–WINNING ACTOR KEVIN COSTNER. Kev’s movie posters hang everywhere, and signed photos line the bar. The security guard stationed by the door, to ensure we don’t slip even one quarter prematurely into a slot machine, tells us that there is no gambling for anyone under twenty-one. Josh, quarter in hand, says, “I don’t know how Kevin Costner would feel about this.” The guard gives us the “out” thumb, and we leave, but not before Josh calls back, “Kevin Costner’s a douche!”
Mt. Moriah Cemetery bus tours are offered at little wooden stands on every downtown street corner, so Josh buys us a couple tickets and we climb aboard a minibus that takes us on the short trip to the local famous cemetery. The bus is full, which surprises me a little since it feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, large families and senior citizens like to be nowhere, too.
Above the bus driver’s seat is a photo of the driver with—surprise!—Kevin Costner. Other Deadwood-related photos and browned newspaper clippings line the bus ceiling. The driver, who calls himself Gentle Jim, regales us with Deadwood tales of yore over his crackly headset mic while the bus creeps up steep, winding streets toward the cemetery that looms above the town. My favorite story is about a man named Potato Creek Johnny, who found the largest gold nugget in them thar Black Hills. Just because I like the name Potato Creek Johnny. The most horrific story is of the hill just below the actual cemetery. Unmarked, it’s filled with the bodies of what were once Deadwood’s large Chinese population. Wild West, indeed.
We gladly exit the bus beside the cemetery for a quick look around. The bus hoard gravitates toward Wild Bill’s grave, marked with a bust of his head, but I walk to the edge to peer over at the small town of Deadwood below.
“Can you imagine”—Josh saunters up next to me to marvel at the town that once was—“the streets of Deadwood? No law. A six-shooter on your belt and a prostitute on your arm?” Josh looks whimsical, as if he’s reliving his past life’s glory days.
“And syphilis in your pants,” I add.
“That, too!” He continues to look jokily dreamy.
Josh takes my hand, and we stroll among the old gravestones, some of young children. Cemeteries, especially old ones, are filled with stories. Just a name, a beginning and an expiration date, maybe some spare, kind words, could inspire an entire novel. “Roy Grimshaw. Born August 6, 1879. Died November 13, 1889.” So long ago. Just ten years old. What was his story? “Seth Bullock. Pioneer. Martha His Wife.” Was “pioneer” Seth’s job? Seth doesn’t seem like a very old-timey name. And all Martha was qualified for was “wife”? I take a few pictures of headstones, saving them for the day I might need inspiration for a book.
Gentle Jim herds the crowd back into the bus, and we make our way down in an equally bumpy, albeit not as lively (cemeteries will do that to you), manner. Once returned to even ground, Josh and I decide to chow at an all-you-can-eat buffet at a family-friendly casino. Josh piles seafood onto his plate, as it is Surf and Turf Night, while I opt for some soup and salad, and then design my own one-of-everything dessert platter. It is during our third round of dessert debauchery that my cell phone rings. I jump a bit, having forgotten the possibility of reception in an actual town. A new, unfamiliar area code and number appear.
“Maybe I shouldn’t get it,” I say tentatively, feeling less vulnerable as the distance between me and home expands.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Josh agrees through a spray of cake crumbs.
“But maybe I should,” I waffle.
“Maybe you should,” he says, spitting more crumbs.
“Thanks for your sage advice.” I pause, then involuntarily answer. “Hello?”
“Lil?” A quiet, nervous voice asks, and I know in an instant who it is.
“Penny!” I’m more relieved than I expected, unearthing the slight fear I had of the possibility that she had, just maybe, really been kidnapped.
“Yeah, it’s me. How are you?” Penny asks, as though she just called to chat. Queen of denial.
“Never mind how I am, dear, how are you?” My tone is adult and scoldy.
“Pretty good,” is all she answers. Her breathy obliviousness is grating.
“Yeeeaaahh. So, have you talked to anyone lately?” I want to know if the FBI chase is over, if her parents and the cops and the FBI already know where she is. I want to know if I’m in the clear. I want to know if she gets that this is a big deal.
“Nope. Have you?” She’s so lackadaisical, I could kick her ass through the phone. I stab a tiny pink cake with my fork.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to a bunch of people. Your dad, your mom, the police. Oh, and the FBI called me the other day.” I ooze sarcasm.
“What about Gavin?” she asks, completely missing the shock value of the list.
“Are you kidding me? Who gives a floating turd about Gavin? The FBI called me.”
“Did you tell them anything?” she asks, sounding less nervous than she should. Almost intrigued, even.
“No. Did you want me to tell them something?” I’m so confused.
“No.” Penny sounds confused, too. Hesitant. Like maybe she does want them to know. Like maybe she told me in the first place because she thought I would tell. She really hasn’t had any good friendships, has she?
“You know, you could tell them,” I push. Then I hear a guy’s voice in the background of Penny’s phone. “Who’s that?” I ask.
“That’s Ethan.”
“Ethan from Disney World? From Portland?”
“Yeah,” is all she says. So glad we can have this long chat, what with no phone charger and all.
“Are you at his house now?” I prod.
“Yeah. He’s been great.” She has a smile in her voice. “I kind of have to go now.”
Why the hell did she call me? “Is there something you wanted, Penny? You know, seeing as you called and all?” I’m so annoyed that I’m at her whim. Without any acknowledgment of what I’ve done or been through for her. Without even a thank-you.