In Case of Emergency (18 page)

“Oh. I got tired of feeling helpless, I guess. I went through a rough patch, had a bad breakup, that kind of thing, and I just wanted to feel like I was doing something.”

Along the steep wall of the canyon, one tree is growing sideways, its trunk curving up toward the sunlight. Ayla takes the water bottle I hand her without looking at me; she seems preoccupied.

“Bad breakup how?”

“I got lied to a lot.”

“How long were you and she together?”

“Four years,” I say, not bothering to correct her.

“Well, she sounds like a little whore.”

I laugh. She crouches down to put the water bottle back in the bag. “How does it feel to save a life?”

“Exactly as good as you’d think it would.” I dig the toe of my hiking boot into the ground, bringing the smell of pine and saltwater earth. “Ayla?” I stomp on the raised dirt, flatten it. “What did you see?”

She stays balanced in a low squatted position, hovering. “Well, when a body’s been blown up there’s not really any blood left. Just… I don’t know, burned stumps of
parts
of humans. Sometimes all you see is a femur or two in a pile of ashes. And then the flies, everywhere, tons of them—for years I’d shut my eyes and see flies covering everything. Explosives in the carcass of a goat, the face of my buddy right before he got killed. He was there one minute, and then he was gone. There and gone. There and gone. You know. The usual shit.”

She stands up but still won’t look at me; her eyes have an unfocused look. Slinging the backpack over her shoulders, she says, “A friend of mine got raped by a guy in her unit, and when she tried to report it to her
commanding officer, he didn’t believe her. One day she walked into the mess hall, walked right up to him, and pointed a gun at his head.”

“The commanding officer?”

“No, the rapist.”

“Why didn’t the commanding officer believe her?”

“He probably did, but if the rapist was a good soldier…”

“Did she kill him?”

“No, me and a few others took her down before she could fire. Later she told me—she said for weeks after the rape, she just kept trying to get through it. That’s how she put it. She’d wake up every day, go out on assignments, try to avoid the guy, try to do her job, day after day she kept pushing through, and then one day she woke up more clear-headed than she’d been in months. That was the day she walked into the mess hall with every intention of killing him.”

She looks at me with an air of resignation. “When I got back I kept trying to be normal. I’d drink with my friends, with my family. I’d have one beer and be thinking about that stuff, and then I’d
keep
drinking to try to stop thinking about that stuff. And meanwhile, no one wants to hear it. People ask the dumbest—just the dumbest questions. You’re sitting there, watching a football game.” She draws a circle in the air in front of her forehead. “
Trying
not to think about all the horrible shit in your fucked-up little head, and they’re saying things like ‘So how hot is it in Iraq? I hear it’s pretty hot?’ Or ‘Did you kill any bad guys?’ And you want to—you just want to strangle them.” She pauses. “I mean, not really.”

“But kind of.”

“Yeah.”

The air gets cooler as we descend. I listen for the sound of the ocean. Occasionally there’s a bird call, but other than that it’s quiet. My stomach whines for food. The trail looks less and less like a trail; it gets increasingly cluttered with shrubs, branches block the way, and sometimes I lose the
thread in a pile of rocks before finding it again. I scramble over a fallen baby redwood that even sideways is taller than I am, and once I’m on the other side, I struggle to find anything resembling a path leading away from it. “Maybe we should check—” I start to say, but Ayla’s gone.

People like to think that if you get hurt or lost, an EMT is the perfect person to be with. If Ayla were hurt somewhere, if she broke a bone or passed out or got attacked by a mountain lion, and assuming I was even able to find her, I’d be useless. I don’t have anything on my person, no phone or flashlight, much less a jump bag or any meds. I guess I could make a tourniquet out of my shirt and a thick branch if I had to.

After some futile searching, after calling Ayla’s name a few times, I go back to the fallen tree and lie down. My back against the striations of the trunk, I look up at the redwood canopy. All the trees seem to lean in toward the radius of my vision. I remember hearing once that you’re supposed to stay in one place when you get lost, so you’re easier to find.

She should have let me look at the map. She should have listened when I told her the hike seemed dangerous. At some point I will have to tell her that I have also dated guys, and it’s entirely possible she will do what Diane did: assume I am actually a closeted lesbian, or a straight girl experimenting, and dump my ass immediately.

Behold the praying mantis, bright green head balanced on her body like a teacup on a pin, leaf-wings like coattails, devouring her mate after sex and starting with his head. Falling in love is so dumb. I’d rather be home in my bed eating a ham sandwich. She’s lost. We’re lost. What does it matter? I was sunk before our first date. Why can’t I be like Marla and find someone who’s safe and practical? I remember Tom standing in our kitchen and the answer comes to me immediately: because Marla’s dating someone who probably looks apologetic when he orgasms.

I wanted to come to Monterey because coming here is the last happy family memory I have, but now Ayla and I are separated, and lost, and the sun is going to set soon, and I’m starving and cranky and cold and tired, and even if I found mushrooms or something to eat they would probably be poisonous, and for all I know Ayla fell to the bottom of a ravine.

“Piper?”

I sit up so fast my ass slides against the grooved bark. “Damn it.”

“Having fun?”

“Where did you get off to?”

She looks sheepish. “Took a minute to realize I’d lost you and then when I tried to backtrack—”

“There was no trail.”

“Right.” The map the inn gave us is in her hand. She shoves it into her pocket, climbs over the tree I’m sitting on, and walks back in the direction we came from, moving so fast I practically have to run to catch up with her.

“Hey, I think I should lead the way back to the car.”

“Not finished yet, more hiking to do.”

“What? That’s ridiculous! We’ve already gotten lost once.”

“Don’t be a quitter. You call that getting lost? The ocean is just this way.” When she finds the fork in the trail again she veers down the steep slope.

“Fuck that!” I yell after her.

She turns around, startled, her arms stretching out to the sides to catch her balance. “Excuse me?”

“You haven’t let me see the map even
once
, it’s going to get dark soon, and I was
worried
about you, Ayla, I thought you were sick or in trouble somewhere, and all you’ve been thinking about is this stupid hike?”

She stares at me. Her expression is thoughtful. “Do you really want to do this?”

My hands are throbbing. My head hurts. “Do what?”

Ayla makes a looping gesture with her finger that ends pointing at the
sky. “This.” Climbing back up to where I’m standing, she digs the map out of her pocket. “Here you go.” The folded paper in her offering hand is a creased, once-glossy brochure.

I take it from her, mumbling thanks.

She’s very close, her face scrutinizing mine. “What’s going on?” Wrapping her hands around my wrists, she shakes my arms, causing my elbows to flop in their joints. “What do you need right now? Hungry? I’ve got something in my bag, I think. Here.” She fishes out a bag of trail mix, obviously old, the raisins a pale version of themselves, the inside of the bag plastered with the dust of peanut skins. “Well, I’m sorry, that’s not too appealing—” But I take a handful and shove it into my mouth and it’s delicious, crunchy and stale and sticking in my throat. I can’t look at her. The inside of the brochure reveals a green oval with crisscrossing trail lines but no landmarks. The back is an advertisement for perfume.

“It says there are spectacular views,” Ayla says. “I thought it would be nice to see something spectacular.”

“You don’t care about the views,” I say slowly.

“Not really. What I want is to finish this hike, because now the whole thing is pissing me off, but if you don’t want to we don’t have to.”

“There’s something I should tell you. Should’ve told you. I’m actually bi.”

She considers this. “Meaning you’ve fooled around with guys or meaning you’ve been serious with a guy before?”

“Both. I mean, I’ve known pretty much my whole life. Had a crush on Billy Mendel in first grade, Sara Janssen in fourth.”

“What’s your stance on monogamy? If you’re dating a girl, do you feel like you also need—”

“Very. Very monogamous.”

“Good.” She shifts the backpack on her shoulder. “This relationship you’ve been talking about—”

“It was actually with a guy.”

“—did you and he talk much?”

It takes me a minute to register the question. I nibble on peanuts. “I don’t know. We did a lot together. Threw parties, went out a lot, saw different bands. He taught me how to—No. We barely ever talked.”

“And he cheated on you?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“We broke up two years ago. I haven’t really dated anyone since.” I’m surprised when she looks at me with a friendly expression.

“Want to hear something funny?”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t used to be into girls at all.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Before I hit my head, I liked guys. In that first year after the TBI, when I’d made most of my recovery, I started looking at women completely differently. At some point I realized I’d turned gay.”

My shock is impossible to mask. “But that’s
incredible
.”

Ayla nods. “I know.”

A breeze comes through the trees carrying the smell of seaweed. Ayla gestures up the hill, toward where my car is parked. “No,” I say. “Let’s finish it.”

Still stunned, I follow behind her down the trail. At some point I notice her shoulders are shaking. The backpack bounces more than it should with each step.

“You asshole!” I scream, catching up to her and almost knocking her down. “I can’t believe I be
lieved
you.”

She’s almost convulsive from laughter, her eyes are tearing up, and she’s radiating pure joy. “You should have seen your face,” she says.

* * *

It takes another thirty minutes to reach the ocean, and when we do, we trudge toward it, exhausted, holding hands. We find a seat in the flattest part of the landscape, on a pile of smoothed-over blue stones, and stare out at the half-moon shape of the shoreline, the craggy rocks, the swirling breakwater. Feeling calmer than I have in weeks, I ask Ayla the question I’ve long been wanting to. She’s quiet at first. She finds a thin branch among the stones and breaks it in half repeatedly. When there’s nothing left to halve, she sprinkles the fragments. “The day I got hurt,” she says, “we were running security on a supply convoy. Going down a road that always had IEDs.”

Her face looks hollowed, her dark green eyes almost blue. I watch her hands, the restlessness in them.

“By my second tour it was truly hell. I was there for the fall of Baghdad, but it didn’t take long for things to get really messy. Kids, ex-soldiers—hell, it seemed like everyone but us—knew the location of hidden ammunition dumps buried throughout Iraq. After a while it was impossible to tell who hated Americans and who didn’t mind them, so you just expected everyone wanted to kill you. Hajis used rocket-propelled grenades, mortar attacks, IEDs, land mines. They packed vehicles with explosives and detonated them next to a target. And of course there’s the suicide bombers.”

She finds a new branch amid the rocks and inspects it, begins plucking at it, removing small pieces from one end. “Everyone’s nerves were shot. I mean, it felt like a matter of time. You’d hear things—people getting blown up every day, losing limbs, eyesight, hearing, whatever. You’d listen to the stories and feel in your gut that you were next. I’d been hit by a few already, but nothing serious.”

“Hit by what?”

“IEDs. Improvised explosive devices.”

“How many times?”

“I don’t know—probably two or three times? But we just kept going. No one was badly hurt.”

Ayla tells me that on the day she got hurt, the IED that detonated was much stronger than any her unit had encountered before. Probably the device had been assembled from several projectile explosives, and linked together by a daisy chain of single charges. She found out later that the bomb had completely destroyed the vehicle in front of her, killing everyone in it, as well as flipping over several other vehicles in the convoy, including hers.

She doesn’t remember any of this. When the vehicle in front of her blew up, and blast waves, sand, and shrapnel hit her Humvee, lifting the two-ton vehicle off the ground and throwing it onto its side, what she remembers are overlapping cries of “IED!” “
IED!,
” the air filling with a frantic “
aiee
.”