Golden (21 page)

“Oh, come on,” Trevor says. “The bottom is so far down there, I'm sure they're all long gone now.”

“Okay, that's enough.” Kat turns to me. “Why did we need to come here again?”

“I just wanted to see if . . . if there's anything else here to find out. Or . . . I don't know.” I look across the glass surface of the water, blue-green around the edges and in the places the sunlight has reached. The rest of the water is a nameless color so dark it gives nothing away. It just reflects all my questions back, sharp and impassive, like a mirror. The stillness of it is unnerving. Like it's holding its breath, waiting for us to do something.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's walk. I think there's a memorial near those trees.” I point to a cluster of aspens at the lake's edge and we cross the parking lot.

There's a narrow trail that follows the wavy edge of the lake, dotted with forest service signs detailing the history and geology of it. They're the types of signs only tourists and old people usually stop to read, but while Kat and Trevor walk on, I linger at the first one. It's a series of pictures showing how the surrounding mountains burst out of the ground as a result of fiery volcanoes, and then the canyons and gorges
between them were carved out and scoured over thousands of years by slow-moving glaciers. Its title is “Fire and Ice.” Like the Frost poem, and a line from Julianna's journal about the night she and Orion went to the hot springs and kissed under a blanket of stars. I make a mental note to look the actual poem up when we get back to the car. It seems fitting that there's a reference here. Her world, the one that she knew, with Shane as her constant, ended with fire—the desire for Orion. And then it ended again, here, in the ice of the river and lake. Or maybe it didn't.

I jog a few steps to catch up to where Kat and Trevor have stopped. I was right about the memorial. Raised up from the ground on a cement platform is one of those oversize, bronze plaques. It has a permanent vase at the top, filled with snowy white flowers, which I'm sure are kept up by the Cruz family, who probably also installed the memorial. The inscription below the vase reads:

In loving memory of

Shane Cruz

and

Julianna Farnetti,

Two stars

Whose light was gone too soon.

I read it over two more times, focusing on the words and wondering if Josh has ever come out here and what he must've thought when he looked at those words. I can't imagine what it must've been like for him in the beginning,
not to be able to show the depth of his grief for her or what it meant. Not to be acknowledged as someone who lost her. If I were him, I don't think I would've ever come out here. I would've stayed away, and then, if I wanted to go somewhere to feel near to her, I'd go to McCloud, which even I thought of now as their special, secret place.

“So what do you think, Frost?” Trevor says. “Is she here? Or are we going to find her?”

“We're gonna find her,” Kat says. “I know we are.”

I glance down at the plaque, then out over the lake, trying to feel what I really believe. “I don't know,” I say softly. And it's the truth. I really can't say.

“Well then,” Trevor replies, “let's get on the road and go find out.”

Kat squeezes her arms tighter to her chest and nods. “Yeah. Let's get going. This is pretty and meaningful and all that crap, but I've had enough of this place.”

“You guys go ahead. I'll be there in a minute,” I say.

“You all right?” Kat asks.

“Yeah, yeah, I just want to stay another minute. I'll meet you at the car.”

“Whatever you say.”

She and Trevor turn and head back down the trail in the direction we came from. I watch for a moment, half-curious if I'll see a glance pass between them or her hand on his arm—something that might explain why she invited him to come along, but there's nothing. I look back over the still surface of the lake like maybe I'll hear something if I listen close enough. But the only sound comes from the other side
where the river meets it in a constant hush. An indistinguishable whisper.

Don't be here, under the water,
I say to her in my mind.
Don't be a lost love for Orion. Be a miracle. Be alive, and living a beautiful life somewhere new, however impossible it seems. Let me find you because I'm supposed to, and because you're supposed to be with him. Not just a distant memory. Let me find you so that this means something.

Kat's voice echoes off the granite mountains, interrupting my prayer/plea. “Parker! Come on! We're losing road time!”

“Coming!” I shout back.

I take one last look at the lake and decide that we'll find her. That it's meant to be. And then I turn and run for Trevor's car where he, Kat, and fate are waiting for me.

“Peril of Hope”

—1961

Three hours down the empty two-lane highway, I'm happy that it's leading us to the coast at least, because after passing through the familiar string of one-blink towns named after various types of pine trees, we are traveling down a stretch of road so barren and plain it's hard to feel like we're making any progress at all.

“We should've brought snacks,” Kat says from the back. “It's ridiculous to be on a road trip without snacks. I could use some candy right now. And a Diet Coke. And maybe some chips. Those spicy red ones that make your face sweat.” She leans forward, resting her elbows on mine and Trevor's seats. “When's the next place to stop?”

Trevor points at a sign as we pass. “Casa Junction, in another sixty-two miles.”

“Well, could you give it a little gas, then? I'm starving.”

I turn around. “How can you be hungry? You ate two breakfasts.”

Trevor glances down at the speedometer. “I'm already doing eighty.”

“I have a fast metabolism,” Kat says. “Apparently faster than Trevor Collins here is willing to drive.”

He laughs at this and I feel the car accelerate.

“Eighty's fast enough,” I say. “The last thing we need is a ticket.”

“Fine.” Kat sits back in her seat, all huffy. I rummage through my purse for something to give her, because I know all too well what happens when she goes too long without eating. “Here,” I tell her. “Here's a piece of gum. Will that last you sixty-two miles?”

“Maybe,” she says, taking it. “But you've been warned. I'm bitchy when I'm hungry.”

“As opposed to other times?” Trevor asks, with a side glance and a quick smile at me.

Kat kicks the back of his seat and laughs. “Shut up. The only reason I'm nice to you is because of my friend up there in the front seat.”

My cheeks flare up and I turn to look far away, out the window. I'm ridiculously relieved by Kat's comment, and once again feel like a bad friend for being so paranoid about her and Trevor.

“What's that supposed to mean?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say quickly. I reach for the volume knob and turn up the radio, which is tuned to some XM station I've never heard of, and none of us say anything for a long moment. Then Trevor speaks up.

“So. Parker. You thought about how you're gonna approach this? Like, if we walk into an art gallery, and Julianna Farnetti is standing there in all her perfect, golden glory, do you know what you're gonna say to her? Because it's probably safe to assume that if she's stayed hidden this long, she's not gonna be happy about being found, you know?”

Kat sits up all of a sudden. “Or—oh my God, what if Shane's there too? What if they staged the whole thing and ran off together and have been living a secret life ever since?”

“Why would they have done that?” I ask. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“And your theory about just Julianna surviving does?”

“More than both of them still being alive,” Trevor says. “He didn't have any reason to run away. She kind of did.” He's right. If she did, and has stayed away all these years, why on earth would she ever want to be found?

Panic zips through me. I hadn't thought of that at all. Actually, I haven't thought about anything past the idea of finding her, which, as much as I hope to, still seems unlikely. But if I really do, and I tell her about Orion, who's to say she'd actually come back? And if she did, who's to say he'd want her to? Who's to say they'd actually end up together? Or that they should? What if, by doing this, I'm disrupting the way things were
actually
meant to be, as sad as they are?

It's hard to make the distinction between believing I'll find her and using the search for her as an excuse to finally set out and do something different. The prospect of having to actually say something to her, and where to begin coming up with the right thing to say, is almost enough to make me want to turn around and go home. Sit in my room and obediently write my speech, and go on with my uneventful and safe, predictable, planned-out life. I shake my head. “I have no idea what I'll do or say if we find her. None.”

“Hm.” Trevor nods, but doesn't add anything.

Silence settles over the three of us, filled in only by the background music and the barren desert scenery zipping by outside the window. I try to picture actually walking into the gallery and finding Julianna there. I see her standing to the side of a painting, maybe talking to a potential buyer who has fallen in love with one of her pieces. She doesn't notice me at first, which gives me a chance to watch and observe just how much she's changed, and how much is still the same. I don't remember ever hearing her voice, but I haven't ever forgotten her face—the high, delicate cheekbones, the olive skin and green eyes, the cascade of wavy golden hair. I picture it all still the same, only more beautiful in real life than it is in the photographs and on the billboard. And that's as far as I get. What comes next? How do you approach someone who's pretended to be dead for ten years? What do you open with?

“Okay,” Kat says, interrupting the thought. “I think if we find her, you just walk in and hand her the journal,” Kat says, as if she can read my mind. “That way she can't pretend not
to be who she is. The shock alone would give her away.”

“And then what?” I turn to Kat.

“And then . . . let her do the talking. See what she says. That's all you
can
do because you can't guess how she's gonna react to being found.”

Kat's probably right, but I don't do wait-and-see very well. I like to have a plan to follow. “Okay, so what if she gets mad and tells me to leave?”

“Don't.”

“What if she pretends she has no idea what it is?”

“Then bring up Orion. Tell her that he went back to town and has been there, pining for her ever since. Read to her from the journal. Anything. You're only gonna get one chance with this, so you better make it count.”

“What if she's not there at all?” I ask. “What if I'm wrong, and she really is in Summit Lake, down in the bottom of the hourglass?”

“Then you took a chance on something for once. You did something you wouldn't normally do, and that's what matters. Right, Collins?”

Trevor's been quiet this whole time, maybe thinking of different scenarios on his own, but now he nods. “It's true.” He glances at me again. “Taking a chance can be worth a lot more than you know.” He puts his eyes back on the road—the one in front of us that's unknown and wide open. The road less traveled. And somehow I think he's not just talking about this trip. There's something in his voice that goes straight to my stomach and sends a warm tingly feeling right through the rest of me.

“I hope so,” I answer. And now I'm not just talking about the trip either. There are a few other things I've decided to take a chance on in these two days of my one wild and precious life.

“Accidentally on Purpose”

—1960