Page 29 of Anywhere with You
She laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Half serious.” I grinned at the memories. Much better than frog dissection. “My parents had been going on and on for years about making sure that I had a plan after graduation. I always wanted to study music, but I didn’t want to get a teaching certification, and jobs in music outside of teaching are rare. I didn’t want to try for a record deal. I just…”
“You just wanted to enjoy music,” Cara said. “I just wanted to look for bugs in the dirt. It’s a shame that it’s so hard to find a place in the world when you don’t fit into the top one hundred careers.”
“Exactly.” I was a little startled that she’d understood so quickly. “So I tried a few different classes.”
“And you had a hot accounting professor.”
“And I had a hot accounting professor. And it was easy for me. I understand spreadsheets. And musical notation. It’s everything else in the world that’s difficult.”
“Did you like being an accountant?” she asked.
I laughed. “Of course not. But I hated it less than most things, and that makes me luckier than most people. Plus, it paid well enough that I could save up for the store, and if it turns out…If it turns out that I can’t keep the store open, it’s a good backup plan.”
Cara nodded slowly. “I hope you never need a backup plan.”
I looked at her, surprised again. She kept doing that. “Thank you,” I said. “What about you? Any secret aspirations for the future? Is there an opera singer or a bank executive or college professor hiddensomewhere in there?” I pretended to try to peer inside her ear without distracting her driving too much.
It made me sad when she seemed to deflate a little, her thoughtful expression turning sad. “I want a lot of things,” she said, “but none of them are career related.”
And as hard as I pestered, miles of road passing underneath us, she wouldn’t tell me a single one.
Chapter Thirteen
We reached Gila National Forest late that afternoon.
“Hee-la,” said Cara. “NotGee-la.”
“Picky, picky, Coral.”
“Nice try, Hiney, but I’m pretty sure I can win this game.”
“I surrender,” I said, laughing.
The drive through the forest was wonderful, especially after hours of desert with only the suggestion of mountains in the distance. Mature pine trees were dense walls on each side of the road. Neither Cara nor I spoke. We soaked in the deep green beauty. A wide river flowed through a break in the trees. I wanted to stop, but there was no shoulder to speak of, and anyway, we were almost to the visitors’ center.
When we finally parked, Cara got out of the car and stretched, moaning. “Cars suck.”
“If we’d flown, we would’ve been there two fucking days ago.”
“Nooo,” Cara said. “Don’t say that.”
“But,” I said placatingly, “we would’ve missed all those amazing alien facts.”
“We definitely should’ve flown.”
We took a couple bottles of water, reusable bottles that Cara refilled at the hotel because she’d said that people who didn’t care about the environment were basically shitting in their own living rooms. Not an image I’ll ever be able to get out of my head.
Cara changed into her fancy hiking shoes. I wore my sneakers.
It was only about a half mile from the parking lot to the cliff dwellings, through well-marked trails edged in wildflowers and boulders.
I was sore enough from being in the car that the walk felt niceuntil it started to take us straight uphill. Before long, I was just leaning forward and hoping my feet would continue to prevent me falling on my face.
Cara walked behind me, becoming winded as she tried to explain the history of the site.
“The Mogollon people settled here about seven hundred”—pause for breath—“years ago, but eventually moved on. No one knows”—gasping for air—“why.”
