I still smile every time I think about that drive. Every time I remember how all us crazy ramshackle kids packed into that rental SUV. Kason drove, I rode next to him, and Jaz, Brooklyn, and Adam crammed themselves into the backseat. All our luggage—with the telescope securely balanced on top—was shoved into the hatch.
I glanced at our dashboard clock as we drove. 10:42. I looked at Kason. “Is that local time?”
“Uh—” He glanced at his watch. “Yeah. I think so, anyway.”
My days and nights were so scrambled that my internal clock would probably never recover. “Okay. What time is the eclipse again?”
“One o’clock tomorrow afternoon.” He kept his eyes on the road. “We’ve got about fourteen hours. And we’ll need to get there early to find a place to watch it from, and at some point—we’ll need to sleep.”
I yawned. “Sleep. Yeah.” How much had happened in this day? Had it really only been that morning that I’d awakened in my father’s house?
Jaz leaned forward from the backseat. “My phone says we’re about an hour and a half from Big Sur. Why don’t we go ahead and find a place to stop? We can sleep for a little while and then finish in the morning.”
“Might be a good idea.” Kason’s voice was heavy with weariness. “Okay, guys, start watching for a motel with a vacancy sign.”
The place we stayed that night was nowhere fancy, but as tired as I was, I wouldn’t have cared if it had been a barn. The guys took one room and us girls took another, but it seemed as if I’d just collapsed on the double bed before Jaz was nudging me awake. “Hey, Jenna. Kason just knocked on our door. He thinks we should leave now to beat the crowds this afternoon.”
I’d slept in my clothes—we all had—so while Jaz and Brooklyn gathered the few things we’d brought inside with us, I headed on out to the rental car. The morning was still pearly gray, with the silver light that comes like a promise of dawn, and the air was cool enough to wake me up. Kason was already in the driver’s seat when I opened the door of the rental car. His #INEEDSPACE shirt was wrinkled and the shadow of stubble on his face was heavier, but his eyes were bright with the wonder they always held. “Hey, Jenna.” His grin flashed like an early sunrise. “Today we see the ocean.”
“Yes.” I returned his grin and slid into the passenger seat.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” He stretched his arms over his head, gazing at the road ahead. “All these miles, and today we’ll be there.”
“I know.” I couldn’t believe how far we’d come. In so many ways.
“So, tell me something.” He shoved a hand through his spiky hair and studied me.
“Yeah?”
“Are you glad you came on the trip?”
I looked at the glassy weight of the meteorite around my neck. The stone that had pulled me a thousand miles to find where I finally belonged. I looked at the road ahead, winding west toward the sky still dusky enough to hold every star. And finally I looked at him. This nerdy boy with the wrinkled shirt and the crooked glasses and the deep secrets of wonder in his eyes.
“Yes.” I hoped he could read more behind that simple word, could see the heart I was holding out again. “I’m very glad.”
“Well.” His grin spread wider. “That’s good.”
The others loaded in, breaking what more might have been said, but the joy of his smile stayed with me as we drove, off the interstate onto Highway 156. At first, the land rippled in soft green swells dotted with wind turbines. Then it gave way to the thick secrets of redwood forests. And then suddenly, just past Monterrey, the light glinted off something in front of us. Something that was bigger and realer and grander than I’d ever imagined.
“The Pacific!” Brooklyn leaned forward.
“Great Lakes!” Jaz whooped in a wild cheer. “It’s amazing!”
Kason swerved into a parking area by the side of the road—probably designed for ocean viewing—and turned off the car. “Come on, guys! We can’t miss this!”
As soon as I opened the car door, I could taste the salt tang in the air, like the flavor of something wild and far away. Damp sand squished between my toes as I followed the others onto the beach, down to the great unrolling expanse of ocean. The water was a shimmeringly vibrant blue, as if this were a place where joy was taken seriously. The breakers surged and spilled in an unceasing rhythm, and gulls bobbed shrieking overhead.
“Come on!” Jaz kicked off her tennis shoes and ran straight toward the waves.
“Wait, where are we going?”
Kason had already grabbed my hand and was tugging me into the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. “Into the ocean, of course.”
“Wait, what?” I was laughing, breathless, the wonder working its way through me.
“Well, of course! You think you can see the Pacific and not get wet?” He was laughing back, teasing me, the fizzing fun carbonating the air between us.
“How wet?” Adam was trying to sound indignant, but he was laughing too.
Kason grinned. “Depends on the ocean!”
Adam laughed and looked around. The surf was already dampening the edge of his cargo shorts, but he didn’t seem to care. “Rob talked about being here.”
A wave crashed on the sand a few feet away. As the water foamed around my toes, I yelped. “It’s cold!”
“Not once you’re in it.” Kason was farther out than I was, the water swirling below his knees. “Come on deeper!”
I splashed toward him, trying not to flinch at the colder-than-comfortable water, trying to fight against the undertow that sucked at my feet as the waves raced back out. “Kason?”
“Yeah?” He took my hand, the sun splashing light across his face.
I leaned against his solid steadiness and felt a pull greater than any undertow. “This is amazing.”
“Yeah.” His laugh was pure wonder. “The end of the world. It’s like the end of the world.”
“Guys!” Jaz raised her voice over the crash of the breakers and grabbed my free hand. The wind was whipping her braids around her face, but her sunrise smile was undimmed. “We made it!”
We had. And I will never forget that moment, when I stood with those two at the edge of all that was so much bigger than us. Because we’d made it. Together.
But—
Jaz shaded her eyes and peered toward the beach. “Brooklyn? You coming?”
I glanced back to see Brooklyn hesitating at the edge of the water, arms folded fearfully over her middle. “I—I don’t think so.”
Jaz tilted her head. “Why?”
Brooklyn’s forehead furrowed in apprehension. “I—I’m scared of sharks.”
Adam smirked. “Well, it’s probably safe. None of us has lost a leg yet.”
Instead of laughing, Brooklyn took a step back. And I knew how she felt. Because not so long ago, that had been me. Standing there on the edge of all I wanted, torn in half between hope and fear. I let go of Jaz and Kason and splashed back toward the shore. “Come on, Brook.” I held out my hand. Crazy, how now I was the one leading others into deeper water. “You have to feel the water.”
“I’ve read a lot of shark stories.”
I smiled. Shrugged. “Some things are worth the risk.”
Some of the tightness in her face eased. “Hmm. I guess so.”
Her grip on my hand tightened as we stepped into the water. “Whoa! It’s cold!”
“It is at first.” I laughed and squinted toward the horizon line, toward all the unknown adventures that lay ahead here at the end of my old world. “But once you’re out deep, you get used to it.”
#
All too soon, we left the ocean behind, back on the road toward our destination. Big Sur was a sweeping land that unrolled like something out of Lord of the Rings. The road hugged the curves of the continent as we drove between the patient faces of mountains on one side and the wind-whipping ocean on the other. We’d gone farther west than I’d ever dreamed, beyond the borders of a landscape I couldn’t have begun to imagine. Right here, next to the limitless ocean, that sense of the mysterious we’d chased across America was fairly crackling around us. As if even the air knew that in less than five hours, the sun would go dark and the answers would emerge.
On the practical side, though, the eclipse did present a challenge none of us had thought to anticipate: all hotels were full. Even now, early in the morning, the beaches were already filling as serious-looking people with telescopes even bigger than Kason’s staked off their territories. Finally, after phone calls to just about every listing on TripAdvisor, we ended up at the Last Land Motel, a shabby little place that squatted almost apologetically between a stand of redwoods and an inlet of the beach. But it did have two vacant rooms, which was really all that mattered by that point. And Jaz, of course, immediately set to work finding as many bright sides as a crystal had facets.
“No dust in the corners. Always a good sign. And our own kitchen.” She gestured to a clunky stacking microwave/fridge setup. “And the quilts are cool.”
Both double beds had comforters with geometric patterns wild and colorful enough to give a whole new meaning to the term crazy quilt. I swallowed a smile.
Brooklyn raised her eyebrows in mock seriousness. “Not nearly as cool as the pink flamingo wall art, though.”
Jaz laughed. “Oh, definitely. I love how they clash so well with the orange tile in the bathroom, too.”
I peeked into the bathroom. Jaz wasn’t lying. Who had thought puke orange was the right color for a bathroom floor?
“But—” Jaz bounced onto one of the Picasso-esque quilts and pointed toward a pair of rattan doors. “This is actually really cool. We have a balcony thing off our room.”
“Really?” Brooklyn peered out one of the windows. “Oh, yeah. Wow, the ocean view is great from here.”
Before I could see what she was talking about, my phone began buzzing insistently in my pocket. I slipped it out to see an unknown number with a location stamp.
BLAKELY, NEVADA.
My stomach pulled tight. It couldn’t be who I thought. But who else could it be? I gripped the phone in my suddenly sweaty palm and glanced at the others. “I’m gonna take this call real quick.”
“Sure.” Jaz tilted her head. “Everything okay?”
The best I could manage was a nod before I escaped through the rattan doors onto the balcony Brooklyn had talked about. The ocean view really was as great as she’d said, but I couldn’t admire it. I cleared my throat and swiped on the call. “Hello?”
“Jenna? Is this your number?”
My stomach was churning like the Pacific waves beneath me. “Yes.” I didn’t try to hide the curtness in my voice.
“Okay.” My father’s words were unsure, as if each one were a step on shaky ground. “Your grandmother gave it to me.”
Curiosity warred with wariness. “You—you talked to her?”
“Last night, at great length.” His sigh sounded more like the weary guy who’d admitted to questions instead of the slick TV preacher who’d denied me in front of his church. “She, um, she encouraged me to try to reach out to you.”
Gran had told my father to contact me? “She did?”
“Yes. She told me quite a bit, actually. She was—not shy about letting me know a few things.”
Now that did sound like Gran.
He cleared his throat. “She’s obviously quite devoted to you. And a remarkable woman. Very remarkable.”
I took a deep breath of the salty coastal air. Gran’s horizons had been narrow, but she’d tried to open mine in ways I hadn’t appreciated at the time. “Yes.” I was surprised by the truth of the words. “She is.”
“Well, and so—um—are you still in town, or—”
“No. I’m back with my friends.” That word felt so good. “We’re in Big Sur for the eclipse.”
“The eclipse. Yes.” He was quiet for a moment. “I—I didn’t realize what a big deal it was. I hate that I’m going to miss it. I’ve—well, I’ve missed a lot.”
I didn’t know what to do with his words, so I didn’t say anything.
“I guess I’ll just start by saying that—” He coughed slightly. “Jenna, I’m sorry.”
I blinked. I couldn’t imagine the smooth-tongued preacher uttering that sentence.
“You don’t have to say anything.” The words came quicker now, as though the apology itself had crumbled a dam. “But I really am so sorry. I didn’t know about you when Eva was pregnant. I swear I didn’t. But, later—well, I had suspicions. I should have followed up. I should have taken responsibility for you when she died, and I should have tried to make contact before now, and I shouldn’t have asked you to lie about who you were, and—” He blew out a long breath that groaned beneath the weight of all those should’s. “I’ve blown it in every way. And I’m very sorry.”
I had to respond, but I didn’t know how. So finally I said just that. “I don’t know what to say. I—I’ve wondered about you for so long, and all these years, I had no answers, and then—”
“I know. I know. And that’s completely my fault.” The guilt in his voice couldn’t have been contrived. “It was just my stupid pride. I had just taken over here at the church, and I didn’t want the elder board to know that—” His laugh was sad. “That I’m human, I guess. I suppose I hoped they would forget that. Or maybe that I would.”
I hesitated. Mount Victory Jenna would have said something neutral and passive. Something like It’s okayor I understand. But Road Trip Jenna had learned that belonging was harder than that. So I took a deep breath. “I’m still mad at you. I mean, I’m glad you called me, and thank you, but—this doesn’t fix things.”
“That’s okay. You should be mad.” He hesitated. “I’m actually taking a sabbatical from the pulpit for a while. I talked to the elder board this morning. My priorities are—they haven’t been right. At all. I need some time to sort through things.”
For the first time, the slightest crack burrowed through the bedrock of my anger. If my father was willing to give up the place that meant the most to him…
“I always wanted to be a good preacher.” He sighed. “I guess I forgot to be a good man first. A good husband. A good—a good father.”
It wasn’t much, but it was more than what we’d had a moment ago. I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “That’s good. I mean, that’s really good.”
“I’m glad you think so.” His tone lightened slightly. “Sophie was asking about you.”
I smiled. I’d never think Harry Styles was cute, but Sophie wasn’t so bad. “You can give her my number.”
“I was going to ask that. I’ll give it to her. And, uh, I did some research today. The University of Nevada has a campus close to here. And they have a fantastic astronomy program.”
He was trying, for the first time. And the way his effort ached through his words made me want to try too. “Really?”
“Yes. It looks pretty impressive. I just thought—maybe you would be interested. You could—you could live here. At home.”
Nothing about his house felt like home, not yet, but for the first time I could see a future when it might. “I—I have to think about it.”
“Of course. Of course. Well—” He sounded uncertain, as if he wanted to cling to the conversation but didn’t know how. “I’ll let you get back to your friends. And to the eclipse. I wish I weren’t going to miss it. I wish—well, I wish a lot of things.”
So did I. And if I chose, I could hold onto all those ungranted wishes. I could hug my hurt to my chest and hang up the phone without anyone blaming me.
And then I thought about Brooklyn. The coin I’d given her last night.
I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the sun. Even with eyes closed, I could see the patterns of light on the insides of my eyelids. “The path of the eclipse doesn’t go far from you, actually.” Could he see I was holding out that coin? Giving him one last wish that might be enough for both of us? “About an hour south of Reno. It’s not the path of totality, but it will still be at seventy, maybe eighty percent. Still really cool.”
“But—isn’t it—too late?”
“No. The eclipse isn’t till one o’clock.”
“Really?” The hope in his voice made my throat ache.
“Really.” I opened my eyes again and looked out across the ocean, the endless waves coming from a place that always had more to give. “You still have time. It’s not too late…Dad.”
#
I’d barely ended the call with my dad when the door to the balcony scraped open. Kason walked up beside me, still in the #INEEDSPACE shirt. “Hey. Jaz said I’d find you out here.”
“Yeah.” I pocketed my phone and peered down at the strip of beach below us. It was so thick with people I couldn’t see the sand, and bristling with telescopes even bigger than Kason’s. “How much longer until the eclipse?”
“Less than an hour before the partial begins.”
I’d expected he’d want to watch from the beach with the other nerdy types, but he showed no signs of leaving. I gestured to the crowd. “Weren’t you going to take your telescope down there?”
He smiled, shook his head. “I’ll let the others get the telescope view. I—” His eyes held me in an achingly gentle gaze. “I’ve already seen what I need to see.”
The warmth of the words tingled through me, and I looked down quickly, not ready to let myself hope for what he could be saying to me. “I—I had a phone call. From my father.”
Kason darted me a keen glance. “Really?”
“Yes.” I rubbed the meteorite around my neck. Somehow, it didn’t feel as heavy anymore. “He wanted to see the eclipse.”
“What did you tell him?”
I squinted up at the still-bright sky. At a sun not ready to surrender yet. “That he wasn’t too late.”
Kason’s smile held all the rightness I felt. “Good.”
Good. The word kept me in its palm even as the others joined us, as I stood there with the friends who’d crossed America with me, wrapped up in the waves and the winds and the wild western wonder of the sea. Waiting for the sun to shift.
“So, these glasses—” Jaz was fiddling with a pair of the cardboard eclipse glasses we’d picked up in the hotel lobby. “We keep them on the whole time?”
“Until totality.” Of course Kason knew all the details. “Use them to watch the sun. Once you can’t see anything with them on, take them off. You’ll be able to see the sun’s corona shining around the moon, and you’ll also see Baily’s Beads.”
Adam leaned forward. “Which are—”
“The sunlight that still shows through the craters of the moon.” Kason’s eyes and voice were sparking with that electric excitement again. How long had he spent researching all this? “Oh, and watch for shadow bands. So, right before totality, these shadows will kind of ripple along the ground. Keep an eye out for that. And colors will change saturation—that’s called the Purkinje effect—”
Brooklyn shook her head. “I am not going to remember all this.”
Jaz laughed. “None of us are.”
Kason grinned sheepishly. “Okay. Well, the most important thing—” He glanced up, the sun splashing against his face. “Just watch it all unfold.”
“Agreed.” Jaz slipped on her glasses and looked up, scanning until she suddenly stiffened. “Whoa! There it is! It must be starting!”
The flimsy cardboard glasses didn’t want to balance over my ears, but when I finally managed it and looked up, I immediately saw that Jaz was right. Through the velvet black of the glasses, the sun was a perfect circle of desert orange. And on the lower righthand side, like a bite out of the circle, was a little disc of dark.
“That’s the moon already coming across.” Kason’s words were hurrying over each other, the way they did when he was really excited.
I took off my glasses and studied the landscape. Still a bright beach day, just like any other. “Nothing looks different.”
“Keep watching. It will soon.”
And sure enough, it did.
It started with the day simply—dimming. The sunlight dwindled weak and watery, and the sky deepened to a more serious blue. Even the ocean waves took on a steely cast. It was something like the darkness before a storm, but deeper, broader, than that. The air was cooling too, a chill hovering along the edge of the breeze.
And there was something else. Some weightlessness in the air, some nerve-tingling shift I couldn’t quite identify. It was enough to race goosebumps along my arms, to give me the shivery feeling of balancing on another point of no return. My biggest one yet.
“Here it comes!” Kason pointed to the southwest.
And there, filtering toward us through the gateway of sea and sky, I could see the eclipse coming. Not as a shadow, but just as a darkness. A deep navy stain soaking along the horizon and sweeping our way.
“There! Look down!” Jaz grabbed my arm, and then I saw them, these rippling ghosts of light and dark flickering above the balcony floor.
“The shadow wave things!” Adam’s voice was pitched high enough to nearly crack. “Is this it?”
“Not quite!” Kason’s words were catching on his excitement. “Keep watching! Use your glasses until you can’t see anything!”
Through my glasses, the sun slivered to a burnt-orange crescent, fragile as melting ice. And then a single last ember, and then—darkness.
I took my glasses off.
And this is where it all gets hard to describe. Trying to tell what happened is like trying to fit the Pacific in a bathtub. But what I can say is that the horizons all around us flared in a sudden circular sunset, and then the dark dropped itself like an upside-down bowl over the earth. The air shifted to the sudden expanding stillness of a held breath.
And the sun—the sun was a shock. Firstly because it was gone, leaving just a hollow hole in the sky. But secondly because it was radiantly, exquisitely, unexpectedly beautiful. The pink shimmer of the corona drew the ring in the sky, and all along it glittered the fierce jewels Kason had told us to look for. The diamond ring. Like God’s vow to His bride.
The people on the beach roared in a cheer, and Jaz was squealing and Kason was shouting and I think I was too, but I don’t even know because my whole body was quivering like a blown-out candle flame, and I was breathless, the wonder whirling me faster than I could keep up. This holy heaviness was on me, and I was standing in a daytime dark under the shadow of the moon, watching the planets dance.
Kason’s hand slipped into my mine, as always during the big moments, and even in the unnatural twilight I could tell he was crying, and it wasn’t until then that I realized tears were wet on my own cheeks.
And at that moment, just as he had promised me all along, the biggest answer came for me.
What was it? Well, that’s even harder to explain, because I can’t tell you, exactly. Maybe because answers are different for everybody, because they only fit the hearts they’re made for. But all I can say is that I felt the planets pulling, that I suddenly realized with a sacred smallness how big the hands are that hold all the universe together and me together with it. And I knew, all at once, that this was how I wanted to spend the single breath of my one life. For all my days, all I wanted was to live beneath this wonder that lay over me like the shadow of the moon. And I knew, I knew, that I could trust those lines of light.
It was a moment of—of more. That’s all I can say. Wait till you stand beneath the eye of God and watch the sun surrender to the moon. You’ll see what I mean.
And then the dark was moving, and the light was coming, and in less time than I can tell it, the day was rushing back in. That shadowy something was disappearing to the northeast, the hem of God’s robe brushing past us.
“That was—” Kason wasn’t trying to hide the tears running down his cheeks.
“Amazing.” The word was so much too weak, but it was the best I could do.
“Yes.” He swiped the back of his hand across his face. “Amazing.”
I glanced at the others, and I knew they’d felt it too. Brooklyn was crying even harder than I’d been, in that mascara-running kind of way. But the way her hand rested on her stomach was already the gesture of a mother. Adam’s expression was burning with something I’d never seen in his eyes. Some kind of eager resolve, as if finally he were ready to meet the days with wide-open eyes. And Jaz—Jaz rubbed a finger over her crystal tattoo, and then she laughed, a sudden surprise, the joy bounding from her voice. “God’s even bigger than I thought.”
And I knew what she meant. Because I’d seen hands that could hold everything from a planet to a street taco. Feet that walked church aisles in Mount Victory and back alleys in Blakely and star-studded corridors of sky. Eyes that watched the sweep of the sun and the mystery of the moon and the story of every falling star. Lines that stretched between souls and stars, between east and west, between heaven and earth.
Bigger. I stared out at the ocean, at the cheerful daylight that could no longer fool me with its ordinary disguise. “Everything is.”