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“I don’t want you anywhere near this shit.”
“That’s sweet, but too bad.”
That earns me a criminal’s glare. “You don’t belong in Silt.”
“I guess I’m about to find that out for myself.”
“I guess you are.”
He reaches for the stereo again. This time, I let him turn it on.
I think about how we’re driving toward the Pacific Ocean, which I’ve never seen.
I think about West and what I want from him. Why I’m here.
I don’t have any answers. I’m not kidding myself, though. Inside a makeup pouch at the bottom of my suitcase, there’s a leather bracelet with his name on it.
I shouldn’t be here, but I am.
I’m not leaving until I know there’s no chance I’ll ever wear that bracelet again.
The road drops away from the pavement on West’s side of the truck.
The guardrail doesn’t look like it would be much help if he yanked the wheel to the left and sent us sailing out over the edge.
Not that he’d do that.
I don’t think.
We climb up and up through a corridor of trees, winding around broad curves to the sound of rushing water. The light fades.
I can’t get over the green. It’s green in Iowa in August, too, but there the color hugs the ground in long rows and flat lawns. Here, it’s all trees. More trees than I’ve ever seen in one place, crowding the road and pulling my gaze up to the sky.
After a while, we descend, sweeping in slow, easy curves downhill as though we’re skiing on an extravagant scale. This heaved-up wo
rld is our field of moguls, the tires rocking us back and forth like freshly waxed skis on perfect powder.
I’ve been to the mountains, skiing in Telluride and Aspen with my family, but Oregon is different. The road’s so narrow, the forest so dense. It feels primeval, unfinished.
We swoop and curve. The silence stretches out and grows stale.
This drive is interminable.
West reaches past my knees to open the glove box. Careful not to touch me, he extracts a pack of cigarettes.
“You’re smoking now?”
“Hand me the lighter, would you?”
I can see it—cheap bright pink plastic—but it’s too deep for him to reach. I leave it where it is.
“Smoking is disgusting.”
We hit a straight section. He leans over me as far as he has to in order to retrieve the lighter, which is far enough to press his shoulder into my knee.
The lighter snicks and sparks when he sits up, the smell of the catching tobacco acrid, then sugary. The ripples from our brief moment of contact move through my body, lapping against my skin for a long time.
West blows smoke in a stream out the window to dissipate in the dark.
