Page 28 of Secret Nights and Northern Lights
“Well”—my eyes track up the dirt-covered incline—“I suppose that’s what these hiking boots are for.”
Halfway up the hill (if I’m being extremely generous) I’mconvinced I’m dying. My calves have never burned like this in my entire life and my lungs are in danger of rupturing inside my chest. My brand-new, not-broken-in hiking boots are squeezing the life out of my swollen feet, and a trickle of sweat rolls down my lower back (inIceland!).
“Ben,” I gasp, coming to a stop. “This is literally the end of my life.”
Not out of breath in the slightest, Ben has the audacity—and oxygenation—to chuckle at my declaration of doom. “Not much of a hiker, huh?”
“I think…” Leaning forward, I rest my hands on my knees for support. “…that’s glaringly apparent right now.”
Hands on his hips, Ben glances back up the hill (mountain), then back at me. “We’re not even halfway there yet.”
“Yeah, I’m aware, Ben. Thanks.”
Taking hold of my elbow, he guides me to the side of the muddy trail, out of the way of the other hikers. “Why don’t you wait for me here?”
“No, I don’t want to wait here,” I protest. “I have to write a detailed article on this trip. How am I supposed to do that if I can’t complete the first slightly difficult hike?”
My gaze shifts over Ben’s shoulder to a group of teenage youths laughing and roughhousing on their way up the incline from hell. Not a single one looks slightly bothered. One especially smug kid even walks backward so he can face the group while he tells a story I’m certain must be downright riveting. Fucking youths. Is it awful of me to hope he trips on a rock?
Ben follows my line of sight, then steps in front of me to block my view. I know what he’s doing, and it makes me feel even morepathetic. “Listen, this hike wasn’t on the itinerary. This is just me wanting to get a better view of the fields for my photos. You shouldn’t feel like you have to do this.”
“My dad and brothers would be oh so proud,” I sarcastically mutter under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“We still have a lot on today’s agenda. We can’t have you dying already.” Ben says it with humor, an attempt to lighten the mood while letting me off the hook.
I’d keep arguing with him if I had the breath. But he’s right about one thing, we do have a lot left to see today, and though he’s too polite to say it, we don’t have time for me to slow us down. I sink to the muddy earth in a heap, not caring that I’m dirtying my new hiking pants. “Yeah. I’ll just wait here then.”
Ben nods and continues on his way.
I sit at the side of the trail, crisscross style, watching countless others pass me by, knowing full well they look at me with pity and probably whisper to their companions about the poor girl who couldn’t make it up the hill.
My first full day of excursions in Iceland and I’m failing miserably.
* * *
Continuing our tour around the Golden Circle, we make the drive to Kerið Crater, which is exactly what it sounds like, only much, much larger and deeper than I could have fathomed. Ben and I tread over ground-up rock as we walk the rim first, my fearof heights and shoddy depth perception keeping me an overly safe distance from the edge. Then we trek down a ridiculously long set of wooden steps to the floor of the massive crater, where a stunning aquamarine lake is encircled by the rusty red canyon. There’s a bench at the edge of the still water, and we sit for a while, somehow managing to be the only two people on earth at this particular spot at this precise moment in time. Neither of us speaks, and it’s the most therapeutic silence I’ve experienced in years.
But the problem with silence is that it allows the mind to wander, and I find myself again ruminating on the vivid memory of my mother that I recalled at Hallgrímskirkja. I have no explanation for why this specific memory is suddenly invading my psyche and leaving me unsettled after all these years. Maybe it’s this trip. The culmination of childhood dreams and years of hard work causing me to reexamine everything that got me to this point. Maybe it’s the man beside me. The one person I can’t look at without thinking of the past.
I turn in his direction now. Ben stares out over the lake, eyes clouded over as if he’s as lost in thought as I am. Perhaps it’s the rippling blue water reminding him of a different lake, a different continent, a different point in time. Same two people.
“Hey, Ben.” I speak softly, hesitant to disturb nature. “Do you remember when we started kindergarten?”
“That came out of nowhere,” he replies in the same quiet, respectful cadence.
“I know. I was just thinking about my mom yesterday, and I had the strongest memory of the night she told me I’d be starting kindergarten with Marcus and Mason.” I fidget with the zipperon my jacket. High above us, a gull soars through the overcast sky. “I don’t know why I’m thinking about it now. Or why I remember it at all. Is it normal to have memories from four years old?”
“Probably if they’re significant enough. I have a few memories from back then, most of them I’d rather forget though.” I look his way again, but Ben keeps his gaze over the water. “Why are you bringing this up, Ems? I thought you didn’t want to talk to me about anything related to the past.”
I have made that perfectly clear, haven’t I?
“This isn’t really aboutourpast, per se,” I justify. “It’s just that, you know, it wasn’t really fair to me, having to start school that young so she could get all three of us out of the house at once. I was four. Four!” The words pour out of me now as if this bench in Iceland is a couch in my therapist’s office. I don’t have a therapist, clearly a huge oversight on my part.
“But it was always, ‘Mona, you’re so smart!’ and ‘Mona, you’ll do great!’, but really it was an excuse to not have to take care of me for another year. Even if that meant I spent the rest of my years in school trying to keep up with my peers. Sure, I may have been smart enough academically, but socially, I was so far behind. I spent elementary school terrified to raise my hand or get called on in class, even when I knew the answers. Middle school feeling like nothing more than someone’s baby sister who snuck into the school dances. I was the very last person I knew to learn how to drive or to wear makeup or to kiss a boy—”
