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I felt a thrill, deep in my bones, that he’d been thinking just the same thing I had. “I mean, it was right there on the sign. We should have believed them.” I looked around, struck by the quietness of the street. “It’s weird to see it like this, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just—these buildings are probably the original ones! From, like, a hundred years ago, right? In the middle of whatever boom created this town?”
“Gold?” Russell asked, then frowned. “Wait—was gold just California?”
“I… don’t remember. My fourth-grade teacher would not be happy.”
“Did you do the Gold Rush in fourth grade? I’m pretty sure that’s when we did the Spanish Missions.”
“We did that in sixth. I remember it well, because I did a whole presentation in the style of a heist movie, and I called it Missions: Impossible.” Russell laughed, throwing his head back, and I smiled, feeling something warm spread through my chest. “My sixth-grade teacher was not a fan. She called my dad and everything.”
“That sounds amazing. I want to see it.”
“I threw it out. Like, so long ago.”
“Well, that’s just wrong. It should have been preserved for pun posterity. Did you use the Lalo Schifrin music?”
“Uh—maybe? Is that who did the theme song?” Russell nodded. “Then yes. That’s very impressive.”
“What is?”
“That you know the guy who did the music.”
“I heard a lot about him growing up, believe me. It was…” He stopped, and pointed to the side of the street. There was a storefront—dark, of course, advertising something called Silver State Adventures. From the illustrated sign, it looked like it booked mine tours and trips to a nearby hot spring. “So it must be silver, right?”
“This is the problem with having a dead phone. I can’t Wikipedia Jesse, Nevada.” I took a step closer to the store and looked in the window. “But it seems like this town must have popped up in a silver boom? They’re advertising mine tours of something, after all.”
“And I don’t think there were gold mines, were there? Wasn’t it just… people finding gold in creeks? What’s it called—panning?”
We stared at each other, our shared lack of California mineral knowledge becoming clear to both of us. “But… the term gold mine has to come from somewhere, right?” I asked.
“You make an excellent point.”
“And Nevada had to be the Silver State for a reason, right? And that’s why California is the Golden State?”
“I thought—I thought we were the Golden State because of… like, sunshine?” He stared at me, his eyes wide. “Have I gotten this wrong my whole life? I feel like I need to rethink everything.” I laughed at that, and Russell smiled, like he was joining in.
We kept walking down the quiet street, and I tried to imagine what it would have been like 150 years ago, before the (closed) vape store existed, when things would have been at their peak. I tried to picture a town so bustling it couldn’t even have imagined an afternoon this deserted. “It’s funny.”
“What is?”
“Just being here. It’s… like a place out of time, you know?” I was finding my thoughts even as I was speaking them. “I’m just thinking about all the people who would have come here. The ones who showed up from other places, ready to begin again… find a fortune and start over. Become someone else, someone nobody back home could recognize.”
Russell nodded slowly as he looked around—it seemed like he was turning my words over in his head, which I liked. Like he wasn’t just jumping in because it was his turn to talk.
“But that being said, I don’t think we’re going to find an iPhone charger here.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find a telegraph charger here.” I laughed at that, and Russell grinned at me. “Ready for another fun fact?”
“Am I!” I said, making my voice comically enthused. The second after I said it, I worried that Russell wouldn’t get that I was kidding, like my ex, Alex, never seemed to. But he just smiled wider.
“It’s not exactly related to telegraphs—but it’s in the wheelhouse of old-fashioned phones.”
“I’ll allow it.”
“So in the 1940s, people used to call the phone the Ameche.”
