Badlands National Park, South Dakota
~Bella~
"Look what I have."
Edward tossed a plain brown envelope on the tailgate of the truck, and grinned at me. The sun was monstrously hot—no shade for miles—and he was sunkissed, squinting at me.
I snatched up the envelope, gasping at him. "They said it would take six weeks, at least."
"I know a couple people. Called in some favors." He shrugged as he winked at me. "You're welcome."
The package came from D.C. Forwarded through one Rosalie Cullen, to Interior, South Dakota, and then to the ranger's station where we were filling up water and using our cell phones. The signals were rare out here at best, and water was even more fleeting.
We'd driven east from that sad little town I grew up in. The moment the truck hit the highway, I started to breathe again—my blood started to pump again, and my heart kick-started under the rumble of rubber to asphalt. I stuck my feet out the window and laid down flat on the seat with my head in Edward's lap, studying a map and plotting our path away from everything I'd ever hated. The straight-for-days highways, the tiny towns that dotted the roadsides, the billboards for Jesus, and then those for porn. Windmills so tall, I felt like I was hallucinating.
We stopped at a post office in Topeka for a scant two hours before continuing north. North, I said, because the thought of heading down, driving south, felt contradictory to all my struggles to break the surface.
It felt like diving when I was already out of air.
We'd been out here for a week, the earth more alien than I'd even imagined it to be, painted pastel bluffs and oil-slick skies at sunset. We had a mattress in the bed of the truck and a map of the twisted roads, and we ventured out every day into the heatwaves, searching for photos. Trails that circled the fossilized sea bed, canyons that hid cool water streams, a week in the dust and the heat. I curled in toward Edward every night, snuggled up in his faded blue blanket under the stars, and I slept sounder than I ever had before.
The South Dakota skies.
The oven-baked Badlands.
"You need sunscreen."
"You need to open that." He pointed at the envelope
There was a handwritten note in the envelope, addressed to Edward, and signed by someone who referred to him as Eddie. A 'hope you're well, think of you often, when are you taking pictures again' missive he'd snatched from me and read with a scowl on his face. The box of cameras was on the floor in the cab, and there was still a small little beat of hope lodged deep in the muscle of my heart that someday I'd get him to do just what that long-gone friend wanted.
Set a camera back to his face. Capture the love and lust and hate and gore that made the world such a sticky, delicious mess. I felt like that was still a long way off but not worth abandoning hope for.
The only other thing in the envelope was a little blue embossed holder, my photo inside, pages and pages there for stamps like footprints left in concrete.
"One of the park rangers told me about a guy in Cactus Flat. Buys ancient pieces of shit." Edward kicked the bumper, and the truck groaned. "Let's dump this rust bucket and get the fuck outta Dodge."
"Just take off? Just like that?"
"Why not?" He smiled at me again, loose and easy, dust in his hair and something edging toward joy on his face. Kid in a candy store. Bull in a china shop. Moth to a pretty new flame.
"And go where?"
He flung his arms out to the sides and spun in the dirt, kicking up a tiny dust devil around his heels. "Anywhere. Anywhere you want."
My heart pounded awkwardly to a halt, and I was gone. Thrown so far, I closed my eyes as my stomach and my brain lurched along. Standing ankle deep in water lapping at a pink sand beach. On a yellow-flowered mountain top. In a forest so old, its stories were lost a hundred miles beneath its roots.
"Anywhere," I exhaled, eyes still shut tight as Edward scooped me off the tailgate, passport falling to the ground.
"The world is your oyster, Babe."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Anywhere you are."
I rolled my eyes at him. "Isn't there something you want to see? Something you still want to do?"
"I've seen it all. The good and the really fucking bad. As for me right now, I'm content to follow you, wherever you go."
He set me back on my feet, grabbing the atlas we'd been studying at night, his stories about the people and the food and the epic landscapes that made his heart feel broken but beating too hard all at once. Edward flipped pages until he found the world map, everything spread out there before us in a mishmosh of color and possibilities.
"Close your eyes," he whispered, wrapping his arms around my waist.
I did as he said, feeling lightheaded and too hot. Maybe the desert. Maybe him. Maybe the looming leap of a sharp right curve in the long plodding highway I'd been on, miles and miles stretched out before me in an endless straight line.
"Try not to pick the middle of the ocean, ok? I don't like boats." He chuckled and slid his hand over mine, waving it in the air over the page, whispering in my ear. "Point and shoot, Babe."
I heaved a breath and made my choice, eyes shut tight, fingerprint to paper.
Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.
Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!
HB&PB