ACCORDING TO GOOGLE MAPS, IT WAS JUST OVER A hundred and twenty miles from the parking lot of the El Camino Diner to Big Sur. Adam said his car’s charge typically lasted up to a hundred and twenty-five miles, so we were cutting it really close. But he assured me that there’d be charging stations along the way if we needed one, and we’d charge up again in Big Sur before heading back.
Heading back. I couldn’t think that far ahead. I could only think of getting there.
No one knew where we were going. Adam didn’t tell his parents, and I didn’t tell Aunt Elise, either. I just texted her to say I’d be with Adam for a few more hours, and she shouldn’t worry.
I didn’t tell Juno, either. There wasn’t an explicit reason for me to hold anything back. I knew she’d want to know about the progress I was making, and maybe I even owed it to her to tell her; after all, I wouldn’t have gotten to California without her. But I hadn’t responded to her Audrey-emergency texts yet. Besides, Adam felt like my partner now. If you woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me who my best friend was, like a reflex, I would’ve said Juno. But in this moment, it wasn’t true. Adam was the only friend who mattered.
I pulled Google up on my phone, and even though Adam already knew a good amount about Big Sur, I read aloud: “Big Sur is not a town; it’s a region that stretches along eighty-five miles of undeveloped coastline, where the Saint Lucia mountains rise dramatically above the Pacific Ocean. Known for its scenic views, Big Sur is the longest undeveloped coastline in the contiguous United States, and some say it’s the most beautiful in the world.”
“It’s definitely the most beautiful place I’ve ever been,” Adam said. “Though when you’re a kid, you’re not really impressed by beauty like that. I was impressed by the jade, though—but only because I thought I could make a lot of money.”
I’d read about the jade online—Big Sur had an underwater concentration of jade, and sometimes the stones washed up on the shore.
“We had a whole business plan,” Adam went on. “Which basically consisted of finding as much jade as we could, selling it, and becoming super rich.”
“Who had the plan? You and your friends from school?”
“Yep,” he said.
“How’d that work out for you?”
“We found a few pebbles on one trip,” Adam said. “My mom bought them off me for five bucks. So I’m not retiring just yet.”
“You don’t even have a job to retire from,” I reminded him.
“Maybe today will be my lucky day. We’ll hit the jade jackpot and I’ll never have to have one.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you have any idea where in Big Sur you want to go?” he asked.
“The only clue I have to go by is what was on Talley’s list—a large gentleman’s sunset.”
“I know,” Adam said. “I just meant—did anything online pop out at you as the place we should go?”
The online pictures of Big Sur were as stunning as anything I’d ever seen—deep-blue water, vibrant green trees, and sunsets in every color of the rainbow. They’d all popped out at me, but I couldn’t tell if there was any spot in particular that Talley had had in mind.
“I think we just need to go there,” I said. “And we’ll see what we see.”
It took us three and a half hours, including a pit stop to charge the car, to reach the northernmost point of Big Sur. At some point along the way I lost my cell phone signal, but I’d expected that. A couple of the online articles had mentioned that the cell service in Big Sur was exceptionally spotty. The signal bars on my phone had been going down as we got closer, and now there was the X of no service. I couldn’t write to Juno even if I wanted to.
The highway we were on was at the top of a cliff, and below it was the ocean—the friggin’ Pacific Ocean! It was so blue, like a mirror of the sky. Long ago, Talley had told me the reason the sky was blue: the sun looks white, but it actually contains many colors, and all the different colors collide with particles of air as the light from the sun travels to earth. Each color has a different wavelength, so it collides in different amounts. Blue has the shortest wavelength, so it scatters the most.
When the road twisted left, Adam and I headed toward the mountains. He pointed out various places we could turn off the road, park, and explore. “You tell me where,” he said.
“Here,” I said, the fourth time he pointed out a turnoff. Four had been Talley’s lucky number. I didn’t know why; I’d never asked her. I hadn’t even remembered till Adam started pointing to turnoffs, and I decided to count to four.
Adam parked in a lot by the Big Sur Lodge, and we walked into Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. I knew from the internet that the park was named for a man who’d lived in a cabin on the property in the 1800s. His parents were among the first settlers in the area, and there were a number of Big Sur features named for other members of his family.
“This way?” I asked Adam, pointing to a sign that marked a path toward Pfeiffer Falls.
“I’m following you,” he said.
“This way,” I said.
The path was paved for a little bit, but then the pavement gave way to dirt, and soon we were walking through a grove of redwoods. These were the redwoods Adam had told me about—older than the one on University Avenue by a thousand years or so. They stretched up hundreds of feet. How tall did something have to be to qualify as a skyscraper? I bet they made the standard.
There were a few other people on the pathway, but not many. Adam and I barely spoke. I had a feeling he was being quiet because I was being quiet, and it was another way he was following my lead. The redwoods smelled deep and earthy, and there wasn’t a whiff of anything man-made to interrupt that smell. Sunlight was streaming in through the branches. The bark of the redwoods had a deep-orange glow, and the beams of light looked like something coming down from another dimension. I moved to stand directly under one of the beams.
Talley. Talley. Talley, I thought. Where are you? Are you here? Can you see me?
My face warmed, and it was not unlike the feeling of being loved by my sister. Sometimes I’d find her looking at me with a mix of love and amazement, like I was the center of the universe, which was exactly how I felt about her.
Adam and I crossed over a wooden footbridge for the view of Pfeiffer Falls, a waterfall cascading down about sixty feet of rock and moss. The breeze had picked up and I shivered a little. I hadn’t dressed for this kind of adventure, and back at the booth at the El Camino Diner, it hadn’t occurred to me that we should each stop back at our respective homes and change into jeans and sweatshirts. Adam put his hands on my shoulders. I crossed my arms and put my hands on his hands. He held me closer, warming me. Warming us both.
“You okay, Weber?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. The water made the redwoods smell even earthier, the way seasoning food can bring out the hidden flavors. With my eyes closed, I could practically hear the water bubbling over each individual rock, and I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in years: When Juno and I first became good friends, Talley asked her if her other senses were heightened. She’d read that when you cut off one sense, your other senses got better and picked up some of the slack. My face flushed when Talley asked Juno about it. I worried that Talley was reminding Juno of a disability that she might have momentarily forgotten she had.
Now I thought maybe Juno didn’t ever forget. I certainly never forgot how much I was missing Talley. I opened my eyes and watched the water going down, down, down. “There are bigger, more impressive waterfalls in Big Sur,” Adam told me. “If you want to check them out.”
I shook my head. “The sunset is the thing on Talley’s list. I think we should find a place to watch it over the ocean.”
“We used to go to Sand Dollar Beach to watch the sunset,” Adam said. “It’s a bit of a drive, but if we hike back to the car now, we’ll definitely get there in time.”