Blake spent an hour on Wednesday night finding RV parks for every stop on our itinerary and calling ahead to make reservations. As a result, arriving in Springfield wasn’t a repeat of the St. Louis nightmare. This RV park was farther from the interstate, and the site was nicer too—a concrete pad, which made parking and leveling the RV easier than the soggy gravel from the night before.
The calmer environment meant I slept much better and didn’t awaken until the morning sun reached in through the rectangular window. When I blinked my eyes open, I rolled over in the narrow bunk, the corner of my nightly notebook jabbing me in the side. I yawned and was just starting to sit up when I saw Adam crouched on the floor over that box—the same one he’d had with him the whole trip.
I narrowed my eyes. The other two guys were still asleep, and judging from his tentative movements, he wanted them to stay that way. He lifted one of the flaps and peered cautiously into the box, poking something carefully inside. What was he doing?
I shifted, and his head snapped up. “Jenna!” He hissed my name and crammed the flaps of the box back down. “You scared me.”
And what exactly was making him so jumpy? I was about to ask, but something held me back. Whatever was in that box was apparently sacred to him. I understood that. I fingered my meteorite necklace. “Sorry.”
Our “liftoff”—as Jaz dramatically referred to our departures every morning—took place around 9:30, and we crossed the state line into Arkansas about two hours later. Blake was following I-49 south, winding through Fayetteville and Mountainburg to Fort Smith. Like Missouri, Arkansas was green—the sloping shoulders of the Ozarks, drenched in the juicy canopy of summer forest. All woods and water. I lost count of how many rivers we crossed.
At the Oklahoma border, the land began to level, the horizon compressing itself into a dishearteningly distant line. Even the stands of trees were spaced farther apart. In general, the scenery wasn’t nearly as impressive—although that didn’t seem to deter Jaz in the slightest. “‘O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-klahoma!’” she belted as we crossed the state line, in a pretty perfect imitation of the musical. “‘Where the winds come…something…down the plain.’”
“‘Sweeping,’ I think.” Across from us again, Kason smiled at me. “Jaz and I grew up on musicals.”
“Because our choir-director Mom was determined that at least one of us be as artsy as she was.” Jaz laughed. “But after a couple of years of hearing us butcher our piano practicing, I think she was actually relieved when we both drifted into science.”
Both? I peered at her curiously. “You’re into astronomy too?”
“Not seriously, although it’s super cool. Geology is more my style.” Jaz grinned. “My dad used to call me Rockhound.”
Kason’s lips curved into that sideways smile again. “He called me Starstruck, which is worse.”
“True. Dad’s the king of horrible nicknames.”
Kason was wearing the same shirt he’d worn on Tuesday and Wednesday—a black tee with white constellations marked above block lettering that said #INEEDSPACE. The New Complete Guide was sitting beside him, but today he hadn’t opened it. “Where did Blake say we were stopping again?”
“Spiro Mounds.” I didn’t know how I’d remembered the name; I’d never heard of the place before Blake had mentioned it that morning. “Do you know what that is?”
“I saw a documentary last year that mentioned it.” Jaz nodded. “It’s some kind of ancient Native site.”
“So the mounds are—”
Jaz shrugged. “Graves, I think.”
If she felt the same shrinking in her stomach that I did, her face didn’t show it. I swallowed. “Oh.”
It was off the beaten path, that much was for sure. Blake took a series of country roads that seemed far too narrow for the RV, and then we came to a flimsy wooden sign that promised SPIRO MOUNDS STATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, 4 MILES. World Renown was printed in flourishing cursive across the top. Next to it was a white sign for the Mt. Triumph Baptist Church—I seemed unable to escape Baptist churches—and a hand-lettered fluorescent square advertising YARD SALE, 3/4 MILE COFFEE ST. EVERYTHING AS IS.
The entrance itself wasn’t much more impressive—another Spiro Mounds sign, this one made of weathered stone and featuring a painted face, in front of a low concrete building. As we stepped inside, an angular man with peaky eyebrows and floppy white hair unfolded himself from behind an information desk. “Welcome to Spiro Mounds.”
“Thank you.” Jaz answered for the group with one of her sunrise smiles.
I was busy studying the place, which looked like a cross between a museum and an art gallery. Glass cases lined the walls, filled with a variety of artifacts—everything from stone carvings to chipped pottery dishes to what looked like shell decorations. A narrow carved canoe swung gently from the ceiling in one corner, and on the opposite wall was a big mural in orange and yellow tones—a group of people with more jewelry than clothing, hunting some big creature that looked like a leopard. A leopard, here?
“Do you have any questions?” The man’s eyebrows gave him a sort of permanently hopeful expression.
“Yeah.” Adam poked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “What is this place?”
“What was it, you mean.” The man slipped on a pair of glasses, licked his thumb, and fanned a stack of brochures on the counter. “For a thousand years, this was the central capital of the Mississippian Confederation.”
Brooklyn was surveying the displays with increasing unease. I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t coming any closer. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Most haven’t.” The man shook his head. “It’s amazing to me how quickly the stories die after an empire falls.”
“Empire?” Adam still looked suspicious. “Here?”
“Oh, absolutely.” The man tapped the United States map hanging on the wall behind him. “The confederation controlled all the land from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and then from Florida all the way to the Rockies. That’s a matter of anywhere from three to six million people.”
Six million people? I looked around the room again, at the handful of scattered artifacts. How many never-to-be-told stories did they vibrate with?
“Would you like to see the mounds?” The man stepped toward the door. “There’s a half-mile walking trail through the site itself. I’ll be happy to guide you.”
Brooklyn took a step back but jumped when she saw how close she was to an eyeless mask pinned to the wall. “Uh, I’m not really sure we have time.”
Jaz glanced at her watch. “We have half an hour still, right, Blake?” She didn’t wait for an answer before falling into step behind the man. “We’d love to see the mounds.”
The outside was no more impressive than the entrance had been. We found ourselves standing in what was basically an overgrown field, squinting into the late-afternoon sun. A narrow dirt trail threaded through the meadow, snaking along the trees that bordered the edges of the land.
The man—who must have not had too many visitors lately—kept up a steady stream of tour-guide trivia as we plodded along the path. “And so of course, the success of the confederation was largely due to their control of the waterways. Spiro sits at the confluence of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, so ownership of this patch of land enabled the tribes to control the continental trade routes as well as manage communication. An admirable strategy, really.”
“And you said this was the capital?” Jaz was drinking in all the information. Next to her, Kason looked just as interested, and oddly enough, Adam was starting to as well. Blake had smoothed a polite expression over obvious boredom, and Brooklyn, trailing last of the group, was checking something on her phone.
“Yes, the center of government and religion for the entire empire.” The trail led us into a stand of trees heavy with the rhythmic stroking of cicadas. “This became a permanent settlement for the elites around 850 AD. The ruling class lived here, you see. In fact—” He stepped out of the trees and pointed across another lonely section of meadow. “There you see the Craig Mound. A burial mound for the rulers.”
The mound wasn’t that exciting now—a towering heap of earth, sure, but haphazardly eroded by now, with shaggy meadow grasses crawling up the sides. Yet it had been the resting place of the leaders of a great empire.
The man kept talking as the trail continued, curving us around the base of the mound. This close, the sides were steeper than I’d realized. “And usually at a leader’s funeral, his wife and servants were also ritually sacrificed.”
“Ugh.” Brooklyn shuddered.
Adam grinned at her devilishly. “That’s what I’m gonna do when I die. Make sure I have company.”
Jaz leveled a severe glance at him. “That’s assuming you’ll die as a leader, Adam. I don’t think we can jump to that conclusion yet.”
Adam grabbed his chest in mock hurt as we continued down the path, but another glance from Jaz, and he dropped the horseplay. We saw the Temple Mound—it was no more impressive than the Craig Mound, but had apparently been the center of government and religion. Then the man led us around a bend in the trail, still talking, seemingly unwearied by the halfhearted responses he was receiving from most of us. “These are the house mounds.” The trail opened up to reveal a collection of small disturbances in the earth—even less dramatic than the two mounds we’d seen previously. “About five hundred of the most important members of society lived here. Each time a leader died, his house was razed, buried beneath a layer of earth, and then a new house was constructed on top of the site. Thus, as you can see, the rulers’ houses slowly grew higher over time.”
“And you say five hundred people lived here?” Kason adjusted his glasses.
“In Spiro, yes. However, this inner circle was surrounded by a massive city. It was about five square miles and had ten thousand residents. The purpose of the city was to support Spiro.”
I stared at the little mounds in front of us. People had lived there—generations of them, from what the guide said. They’d stood where I did now. Had they ever guessed that in a couple short centuries, their stories would be reduced to piles of dirt?
“There’s also an interesting astronomical element to the layout here.” The guide stroked his chin.
“Like a solar calendar?” Kason’s eyes sparked sudden interest.
The guide looked surprised. Probably Kason was the first tourist who’d ever known the term. “Exactly. As seen from the Temple Mound, the sun lines up on the winter solstice directly over House Mound 6. On both equinoxes, it appears directly above House Mound 2. And on the summer solstice—here in just about a week—” He squinted at the horizon, where the sun was expanding into slow flame. “An observer standing at the Temple Mound will see the sun strike directly above House Mound 3.”
“That’s amazing.” Kason’s expression was galvanized with an alert intensity, as if he were watching his thoughts assemble themselves against the background of the landscape. “An attempt to harness the power of the stars—”
“Possibly.” The man shrugged. “Although the reasons remain unknown.”
“This is creepy.” From behind me, Brooklyn muttered the words under her breath to someone—probably Blake.
Creepy wasn’t the word I would have used, but it did make me feel—well, sort of weird. The whole place seemed to be holding its breath—the sun suspended over the field, the grass motionless in the still afternoon haze, the all-seeing sky and the dirt trail and the shadows sliding away from the mounds that had watched a thousand years’ worth of summer afternoons and could no longer be surprised by anything. The land had a listening feel. Like it was soaked with all the stories, and still collecting more. I tried to imagine the empire there, people and houses and roads and, apparently, leopards instead of grass and trees and a tumbling-down fence. Where did all those people go? How did an empire disappear and leave nothing behind except some piles of dirt?
“What happened to the people who lived here?” Jaz seemed to have read my mind.
The guide’s peaked eyebrows grew pointier. “That’s the mystery. The site declined around 1450 and was totally abandoned within a hundred and fifty years of that. And then, of course, the empire fell. Most of the people were likely assimilated into other tribes and cultures.”
“But how does an empire like that fall?”
“Some say climate disturbances were to blame. The weather patterns shifted in the century before, which could have made the people’s way of life more difficult. Perhaps they couldn’t adapt. Or perhaps it was internal friction. The empire included sixty different tribes—thirty distinct language groups. Maintaining unity had to have been difficult.” He tilted his head in a who-knows? expression. “It’s a mystery. We may never know for sure.”
Never know for sure. The words were like a stone dropped into all that stillness, rippling across the land that held all the stories swallowed by time. Never know for sure.
We were much quieter as we drove away, as if the seriousness had soaked into us all. I glanced out the window as we drove back down the narrow road. Just lonely fields. Blank spaces where the stories had been torn away and replaced.
The little green yard sale placard was still squatting obnoxiously under the Spiro sign.
“Doesn’t fit, does it?” Kason’s voice was quiet across the table.
“What?”
“The yard sale sign.”
He’d noticed me looking? “No.”
Jaz’s face too was uncharacteristically serious. “A lot happened there. And so many mysteries.”
So many mysteries. Even more than were buried in that barren field. My own story, for example. What made me think I would ever find it again? In Albuquerque or anywhere else? If an empire could dissolve into the unknown, how much more easily could time overgrow some random story of a girl and a guy and a kid neither of them had looked back for?
“It wouldn’t take long for us too, you know.”
Kason’s words broke randomly into my thoughts. I blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“For our civilization to vanish.” His smile held a sad note. “Three hundred years, they say. If all the people disappeared, in three hundred years, no one would know we’d been here.”
Jaz leaned forward. “You mean everything would be gone? Like interstates and skyscrapers and airports—”
“And shopping malls and apartment buildings and subways.” Kason nodded. “Three hundred years. That’s the farthest we ever are from oblivion.”
We may never know for sure.
Would someone say that about our world someday? For some reason, my throat tightened. “All the stories. They’d be forgotten.” I don’t know why that was the first thing that came to mind.
“No.” Kason’s voice was quiet, but it held a bedrock conviction. “Never forgotten.”
I stared at him. “You heard what the guide said. We don’t know what happened at Spiro, and—” I was sounding more unhinged the longer I talked. I bit my lip.
But instead of looking confused, Kason nodded. As if he knew exactly what I meant. “That doesn’t mean it’s gone. The stories never leave. Didn’t you see what the people did at Spiro? Aligning everything with the stars?”
“Yeah—so—”
“So, they knew that.” He glanced out the window for just a moment, the trees and sky and road reflecting across his glasses. Then he looked back at me. “They knew that reality was bigger than their empire, than this world, than all of it. And in that reality, every story is remembered. For good and for bad.”
Kason’s words gave me that kind of shivery feeling I’d had walking among the mounds, that sense that my own story was threading into some invisible force that was unarguably more powerful than me. I didn’t know how to answer him, didn’t know how close to that overarching power I was willing to walk. But he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he flipped open his New Complete Guide to Astronomy and was a light year away from the RV in about five seconds.
We were back on the highway now. I stared out the window, watching the hypnotizing unrolling of the yellow lines, and thought about Kason’s words. Somewhere, he believed, the stories of Spiro were still being kept. I didn’t know if I could believe that. But for the sake of my own lost story, I could try.
#
Gradually, the somber shadow cast by Spiro started to lift. An hour from the mounds, Kason was still buried in his book, but Adam and Blake were talking about basketball, Jaz was wearing earbuds and swaying slightly to music with her eyes shut, and Brooklyn was FaceTiming one of her umpteen million friends.
When we hit Tulsa—our planned stop for the night—Jaz removed her earbuds and stretched her arms over her head, curving her back like a cat until she yawned, blinked, and looked around at us with a sudden revitalized alertness. “We need to find a grocery store before we get to the RV park.”
“A grocery store?” When he talked to Jaz, Blake’s tone was usually equal parts irritation and confusion. This time was no exception. “What are we out of already?”
“Real food.” Jaz’s tone brooked no argument. “I’m not feeling like eating any more of this fast-food crud.”
Adam slouched on the couch. “Aww, that’s what people eat when they’re camping.”
Jaz speared a finger at him. “And if that’s so, then why do we have this nice kitchen back here? Seems to me like it’s for more than just rattling around while we drive.”
Brooklyn twisted in the passenger seat to give Jaz an uncertain glance. “Can you actually cook in this thing?”
“Course I can, and I’m going to. I’m making us chili tonight. It’s really easy, and I just need a few ingredients.” She glanced at me. “Jenna, you wanna help?”
Given that my experience with cooking was watching Gran do it, I didn’t think I’d be much help, but Brooklyn’s obvious look of doubt rubbed me the wrong way. “Uh—yeah. Sure.”
“All right, then.” Jaz pulled out her phone and swiped through something on her screen, then looked up. “Okay, looks like there’s a Whole Foods right off the interstate up here. We can stop there and grab a few things. It will just take a minute.”
Right off the interstate was a bit of a stretch, since the Whole Foods required us to muddle through one exit, two stoplights, and three side streets—none of which Blake looked happy about. When he finally pulled into the lot, Jaz bounced up. “Okay, Jenna. I’ve got a list on my phone. If you come help me find stuff, we can make this quick.”
I knew about the chain of health-food stores—we had two in Columbus—but I’d never been in one. For Gran, shopping only in Save A Lot seemed as much a part of her belief system as church attendance. Jaz, however, zipped up and down the aisles with an evident familiarity, snatching up seemingly unrelated items—a yellow onion, a package of ground beef, spices. She ended with a litany of canned goods—stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, kidney beans—and then towed me toward the dessert aisle. “Here.” She grabbed a box of double chocolate cookies and tossed them in the cart. “Cookies make everything better.”
I glanced skeptically at the random ingredients. “Can you actually cook?”
“Absolutely!” She gave the cart a big push and hopped onto the back like a little kid, riding for a few seconds before hopping off again and taking up the conversation as if it had never been interrupted. “Kason cooks too. You should taste his pasta primavera. Maybe I’ll have him make that in a few days.”
“That’s impressive.” Gran had never taught me to cook. But then again, she’d only served the heavy, traditional food from her childhood—casseroles and meatloafs and dumplings, the kind of meals that usually had green beans or rolls hiding around some corner. Nothing I’d ever wanted to learn how to make. Nothing that sounded as exciting as Jaz’s chili and Kason’s—whatever Jaz had called it.
As soon as we arrived in Tulsa, everyone except Jaz and me dispersed. Brooklyn closed herself into the bathroom for a shower, Kason slipped outside, and Blake and Adam slouched on the couch to play some game on their phones and razz each other the way guys do. Jaz, however, led me straight to the kitchen. “All right, Jenna.” She grinned at me as if we were coconspirators instead of two girls with still-unproven cooking ability. “You want to wash the frying pan for me?”
“Yes.” That at least I could do. I took the cheap frying pan Jaz had bought at the grocery store out of the plastic bag and dunked it in the sink.
Next to me, Jaz began peeling an onion. “So, Jenna, you enjoying the trip?”
I hadn’t really considered the question. Sure, there had been some fun moments, like at Silver Dollar City, but the trip itself was a means to an end for me. Not that I could explain that to Jaz. “Uh, yeah.”
“Good.” The onion skin flaked away as if Jaz were turning book pages, as if she were looking for the story at the heart. “I think the others are too.”
“They seem to be having a good time.” I rinsed the suds from the pan and began drying it with a wad of paper towels.
“Yes. Hey, mind if I get there at the sink for a moment?” She laid the shiny onion on the counter and pulled a formidable-looking chopping knife from one of the grocery bags, dousing it in the soapy water. “Last thing we need to wash is the saucepan. You can do that for me if you don’t mind, and when you get done, we’ll start sautéing the meat. Anyway, yeah, the others are having a good time. I just hope they find what they’re looking for, you know?”
I didn’t know, any more than I knew what sautéing meat involved. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, well, everyone had a reason for coming on this trip. Something besides just having a good time. The lines connect too perfectly for there to not be something bigger at stake.”
What lines? I wanted to ask, but I was still hung up on what she’d said first. “A reason?”
“Sure.” She was chopping the onion now. Smooth, rhythmic strokes. “Kason is here to see the eclipse, and even that is because—well, I should let him tell it, but he has a reason. He always has a reason.”
Most of what Kason had done so far seemed especially unreasonable. But I nodded.
“Brooklyn is here because she needs confidence.” Jaz swept the onion into the frying pan.
Confidence? The saucepan slipped in my hands. I choked out a laugh. “I think she has plenty of confidence.”
Jaz ripped into the package of ground beef, dumped it into the frying pan, and adjusted the mixture on the glowing burner before she answered me. “Sometimes people need things even they haven’t figured out.”
I shrugged. This was a nonsense game, but I could play along. “So what about the others?”
“Adam needs escape.” Jaz glanced over at the couch, keeping her voice low.
I followed her gaze. Adam was sprawled across the couch, the electronic bleeps and zings from the game punctuating his conversation with Blake. He looked fine to me.
“He’s running from something hard. Something that hurts him.”
Hmm. “And Blake?”
Some door behind Jaz’s eyes closed, the way I’d seen before when Blake was mentioned. “Blake is driving too fast.”
“Too fast?” From what I could tell, he stuck to the speed limits pretty closely.
“Not on the roads. In life.” Her voice was still hushed. She glanced back at the guys, then met my eyes with an expression more serious than I’d ever seen from her. “Adam still has choices. Blake is running out of them.”
That made no sense, but I could see what was going on. Jaz was probably still irritated with Blake because of the telescope incident in Mount Victory. Was she going to hold that against him forever? Protectiveness bristled inside me. “He’s a nice guy.”
She hesitated, the weight of caution still in her eyes. “I know you think so, Jenna.”
The weight she put on the you told me that she knew. She knew what I felt for him. Heat crawled up my neck to my face even as I backed behind a denial. “Well, no, I—I didn’t mean—”
“And you—” she pointed a spoon at me thoughtfully—“need belonging.”
Belonging.
She’d tied up my greatest ache into one word. The wind sucked right out of me. How had she known any of this?
“Am I wrong?” She raised her eyebrows.
My denial had died. And—did that mean she was right about the others too?
“I’m not wrong.” She gave a smug smile, her expression returning to her usual mischievous glint, and swept the chopped onion into the frying pan. “Ask Kason. I’m never wrong.”
“Well—uh—” I busied myself opening the can of kidney beans—hard to do with the primitive manual can opener Jaz had bought. “What about you?” I could throw this back in her lap. “What’s your reason?”
Her hands stilled for a moment above the pan. Then she cleared her throat and dialed up the heat on the burner. “I told you. I’m checking on internships.”
“Internships for—”
“Geology.” She reached for the kidney beans—I’d finally managed to saw my way into them—and shook them into a larger pan. “I’m hoping to work in a national or state park starting next fall and take some college classes at the same time.”
She’d mentioned geology the other day, but I hadn’t realized she was making a career path out of it. “That’s cool.” I struggled around the rim of the second can—tomato paste.
“Yeah. Here, let me help.” She took the can from me, swinging the opener around the rim until the lid popped off with ease. Why did everything open so easily for her?
“So—” Somehow I had the sense she hadn’t really answered my question. “That’s why you came on the trip? To look for a job?”
She ran her teeth over her tongue stud as she finished opening the third can. “Yes. Part of it.” Suddenly her words were in a hurry to get away. “Anyway, here’s the body of the chili, okay?”
“Uh—okay.” The contents of the three cans had formed some goop the color and texture of dog food. Trust the process.
“As soon as the meat is browned, which should be—” she glanced at the frying pan, which was sizzling softly—“only a couple more minutes, we’ll add them together and start the—”
“Oh, dang!” Adam’s yelp jerked from the couch. In the instant it took for me to realize something more serious than video-game banter was involved, something clattered. I turned just in time to see the box he’d been so protective of lying on the floor—and just as he dove for it, something shot out. Some shadowed blur that torpedoed across the floor, up the side of the cabinets, and onto the kitchen counter.
Now, I wish I could say I handled this situation calmly and methodically. That I took it in stride. That I wasn’t the main cause of the disaster that came next.
Instead, I defaulted to a very natural human reaction.
I screamed.
Loudly.
“What in the five Great Lakes!” Even Jaz sounded closer to hysteria than I’d ever imagined her.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Adam shoved between us, lunging for the counter. “Sacramento, come here! Sacramento!”
The blur of motion froze into some kind of giant—lizard? I didn’t have time to notice more than scaly orange skin and splayed feet and golden reptilian eyes before the thing shot off again, around the sink—straight toward the glowing burners.
And then the whole situation began unrolling faster than interstate traffic. Jaz was hollering and Adam was pouncing, and I screamed again and jumped back and somehow—I still don’t know how—I caught the saucepan with my elbow. The whole thing just flipped off the counter, fell for an agonizingly inevitable second, and then clanged on the floor like cymbals announcing my mistake.
And three cans’ worth of gloopy sauce and canned vegetables exploded all over the kitchen. And us.
“Here!” Without missing a beat, Jaz pushed me back, snatched the saucepan, and snapped it like a dome over the lizard. “There.” She swiped a sauce-spattered arm across her forehead and let out a breath. “Okay—so—”
“Adam!” Blake’s face was nearly as red as I knew mine had to be. “You brought a freaking lizard with us?”
“Not a lizard.” Adam drew up defensively. The pasty mixture was sprayed all over his navy T-shirt. “He’s a bearded dragon.”
Jaz leaned forward. “A what?”
“Okay, whatever!” Blake’s voice was gaining ten decibels every second. “How did you expect to—”
A shrill siren suddenly cut off the rest of his words. I clapped my sauce-sticky hands over my ears just as I noticed smoke curling from the frying pan.
“The meat!” Jaz flung herself at the pan, yanking it off the heat. The stench of charred food stung my nose.
Adam was covering his ears too. “Smoke alarm!” I could barely make out his words. “How do we turn it off?”
“We can’t!” Blake yanked open the door. The noise was a physical barrage, vibrating in our cores. “Get out!”
I rushed out behind Adam, Jaz on my heels—still clinging to the culprit frying pan. The siren screeched for about thirty more seconds inside the RV.
And then everything got quiet.
From inside, the lizard was making little scrabbling noises under the saucepan. Jaz was looking at Adam. Adam was looking at me. Blake was glaring at all of us. When I dropped my head, I noticed the pan explosion had somehow managed to splatter his white shoes.
Adam cleared his throat. “His name is Sacramento.”
The silence swelled like a fragile bubble for two more heartbeats, and then Jaz’s laughter suddenly burst into the evening. “Wow!” She glanced at the frying pan, and another round of mirth shook her. “Look at us! Just look at us!”
I glanced around, and suddenly I could see us from the outside—four kids covered in what looked like the explosion of a Mexican restaurant, standing in front of an RV, holding a pan of blackened meat. And just like that, the humor caught me off guard too.
You know how you start laughing and it keeps tickling itself inside you until you don’t want it to end, even when your sides start burning? How you start laughing with a group of people who see the same kind of funny, and pretty soon you’re laughing just because no one can remember how to stop? That’s how we laughed that night, how the craziness spun into the darkening sky, and I held that moment in my hand like the meteorite.
I still haven’t let it go.
It was Adam who regained his voice first. “Sorry, guys.” The words were still a gasp. More laughter sputtered out, and he wiped at his eyes. “He really is a good pet.”
Blake’s expression had only hardened, and I suddenly realized he hadn’t laughed with us. “He can’t get out again.”
“No, I know.” Adam ducked, a little shamefaced. “I’ll keep a better eye on him, I promise.”
“Guys, what on earth is going on out here?”
I recognized Brooklyn’s pouty voice before I turned back to the RV to see her leaning out the doorway, wet hair dripping onto a T-shirt and shorts that looked much more haphazardly donned than usual. “I was in the shower, and then I heard this alarm, and I thought the RV was on fire! And I yelled and no one answered. What happened?”
“Nothing.” Jaz brandished the frying pan and grinned ruefully at the scorched meat. “We were just making dinner.”
“But, I mean—” Brooklyn shrank back from our grimy selves as we trooped back into the RV. “Why is there a saucepan on the counter?”
Jaz planted her hands on her hips and surveyed the mess. “I wouldn’t touch it if I were you. There’s a lizard under it.” Ignoring Brooklyn’s horrified shriek, she turned to me. “Jenna, will you give me a hand with this mess? And then—well, dang it. I guess we’ll be eating fast food for at least one more night.”