An announcer on the radio interrupts a foot cream commercial to give a monsoon warning. He says we’re beginning the wet season for the southwestern United States. Which, at the moment, is us.
We passed through El Paso about half an hour ago, and there are still four more hours until Tucson, but Eddie and Ellie are giving each other worried looks. The rain is coming down so hard that the highest setting on the windshield wipers can hardly keep up with it.
The water is haunting. Hypnotizing. Magic, even. I sit with my nose inches from the window, looking at the world through a sheet of rain thicker than the glass.
The trees and leaves, though sparse, are whipping and flapping like those inflatable tube people in front of car dealerships. There are fewer and fewer cars on the road ahead of us, which has turned into a black lake.
“I don’t know,” Ellie says below me. “I’m getting nervous.”
“Yeah, me too. How close is the next town?” Eddie asks.
I peer over the edge, watching them upside down. Ellie pulls out the atlas. She runs her finger along the thick black line she sharpied in before we left.
“Las Cruces,” she says. She opens the map app on her phone to double-check. “Twelve miles. Can we make it that far?”
For the next ten miles, it feels as if the motor home itself is holding its breath. I climb down to the couch and watch the rain through the side window and trade anxious glances with Ellie. Eddie seems intently focused and, thankfully, calm, although I have a feeling it’s a very willful calm that will only last until we’re safely parked and he can stop driving. Ruth has her earbuds in and is watching the rain too, but she doesn’t exactly seem scared. She’s watching the storm like it annoys her.
A tree branch flies across the road in front of us, missing our windshield by just a couple feet. Ellie gasps so loud it’s almost a scream.
“How much longer?” says Eddie. His teeth are clenched now.
The wipers are hardly keeping up with the deluge at all anymore, and we’re down to under twenty-five miles an hour. The radio announcer keeps making his monsoon announcement, telling everyone on the road to be careful, and telling everyone else to stay inside. Towns are beginning to lose power. We pass a line of cop cars and a rolled minivan on our left.
We finally see the Las Cruces exit. Eddie pulls off the freeway and the street goes down through a ravine so filled with water I have doubts about whether the RV can cross it, but we do, and then Eddie points us uphill. I see a flock of crows diving into the swaying branches of a desert willow.
“Where should we stop?” Ellie asks.
“I don’t know,” says Eddie. Both of their voices are just a bit loud, as if the storm is inside the RV, and they have to shout to hear each other.
We pass a gas station and a four-story stucco Holiday Inn. We pass several auto shops. Everything is so flat and treeless, except for a tall and jagged range of mountains to our right. And now it is all filling with water like a swimming pool.
There’s a Walmart up ahead with a huge parking lot. “Let’s stop there,” Ellie says. “We need to get off the road.”
Eddie nods. Just a few more yards. We turn into the Walmart parking lot and Eddie stops the RV. As he shifts into park and shuts off the engine, the pounding and swishing sound of the rain gets louder. For a full minute we all wait in silence, listening to the raging outside.
There are tumbleweeds flinging themselves all across the parking lot. Tumbleweeds are the strangest thing to me, like nature wanted to create herself a toy. Every time a bush lands on the ground, a splash of rain follows it on its bounce.
Now that we’re off the freeway, we can all breathe a little easier, and maybe even enjoy the crackling storm.
After a moment Ellie looks back at me. “I’m not sure we’re going to make that snake bridge tonight, Olivia. I’m sorry. We’ll see if we can make it tomorrow.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
And it really is okay, because I’ve realized something. We’ve landed in Las Cruces, the first place where we stopped on our original cross-country trip, the place where Ruth and I did our Something New Treasure Hunt and found those murals. So maybe this is a sign. Maybe this town and this storm are leading me to another Something Magic, even if it’s not the bridge. I look through the sheet of rain washing across the window and wonder if maybe our Something Magic, this time, will be a stormy pirate battle between Anne Bonny and Mary Read and the infamous Davy Jones himself.
“You guys okay?” Ellie asks. “Anybody hungry?”
“Did we get batteries for those flashlights?” asks Eddie.
While they’re talking, I’ve climbed back up into my loft, and lean over the edge in time to see them glance at each other.
Ellie looks outside at the ground between us and the store.
“We need food and batteries,” she says.
The two of them stand and move toward the door. “Okay,” says Eddie. “We’re going to make a run for it. We’ll be back in a bit.”
As soon as they open the door, the rain and the crashing sound of wind sprays into the RV. They hurry out but have a hard time shutting the door. Finally they get it shut and we watch them splash their way into the store. The setting sun is obscured by swirling black clouds. The sky really does look like it’s sparking with magic.
A flare of lightning illuminates the mountains, now straight ahead of us. They look more jagged every time I see them, jagged enough to make me think of sharks’ teeth. That’s what they should be called, the Shark Tooth Mountains. I’ll have to look up their real name sometime.
I turn over onto my stomach, my chin resting in my palms, feet kicking like a metronome. It’s such a perfect storm.
“Hey, Ruth,” I say. “Know any ghost stories?”
“Nope,” she says.
Back to her earbuds and paper.
“Ooh, do you think I should text Ellie about water? We should get water bottles. Running out of water would be bad.”
Ruth mumbles something.
“What?”
“Go outside, open your mouth, and look up.”
Something like that storm outside shivers down my back. This close to the windshield, it’s almost like being on a pirate ship in the middle of a tempest. Easy enough to pretend anyway, or get the feeling. And I’m with a version of the Ruth who talked with me last night and told me important things, and then let me help her write a song this morning. Kind of. I’m going to get that Ruth back. I have to, now, in this storm.
“That thunder is crazy, huh?” I say, flipping my legs over the edge of my loft.
Ruth is hunched into her earbuds.
Just look up at me, won’t you? I think.
No. This isn’t going to happen. My sister is going to be here with me, enjoying where we are, enjoying it with me, us together in the middle of this pirate ship storm.
“Ruth,” I say.
In that gesture she’s perfected, that motion I’ve started seeing in my sleep, she pulls out an earbud and rolls her eyes. “What now, Olivia?”
“Wouldn’t it be freaking awesome if there was a storm like this above us when we were diving?”
“You know that’s not how it works.”
“But it would still be awesome,” I say.
She rolls her eyes again.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
She raises an eyebrow like I’ve asked the stupidest question in the world. Like I’ve asked Benjamin Franklin if his kite experiment was a little shocking.
“Maybe I don’t even want to dive pirate ships. Just go back to flipping out about rain to yourself, okay?”
It’s like Ruth’s taken a magazine of all our games, our Anne Bonny and Mary Read, our couch-cushion planks and bedsheet sails and all our Treasure Hunts, and slapped me across the face with it.
“Not dive pirate ships?” I say.
“Honestly, sometimes it’s like trying to sleep with a flashlight shining in your eyes.”
“Not dive pirate ships?”
“It’s like living with canaries that won’t shut up.”
The storm whips and rages behind me. Instead of shriveling me up, her words steam under my skin, but I focus on the crucial point.
“What about our box?”
Now she looks up at me, and though her voice is quiet, her eyes stab. “That’s the other thing,” she says. “I’ve been playing along, but how can you be so freaking naive? You think that stupid box is still there? Look outside, Olivia. Look at the real world for a change. You think that box would survive this? And this is one day, let alone years and years. Are you kidding me? Right now, that dumb cave is completely submerged, and that stupid box has been swept away and lost—”
My arms push me off the ledge before I think about it. It’s a fairly long drop from the loft to the floor, and my knees vibrate with the force of landing. But I don’t fall. I will not let my plan fail, and that thought propels me forward like a wave. I step toward my sister. Her eyes widen enough for me to know my leap surprised her.
“I want you to tell me we’re going to find that box,” I say. “And then I want you to come outside with me and take pictures in the rain.”
She gathers herself and picks up her iPod, slides it into her pocket and starts lifting the earbuds to her ears. “Can I be left with some semblance of normalcy and privacy for two seconds, please?” she says.
It’s like the wind and crashing thunder have started storming inside my skull, and I yank the earbuds from her hands, ready to tug them away, but Ruth snatches them back.
“What the—”
“Why? Why?” I ask, backhanding the air.
“Calm d—”
“We’re in the middle of a monsoon in the desert. With people who are taking us to pirate ships and probably buying us chocolate right now. Look at that storm. Can’t you see it’s magic? Magic? That box … we put that box there, all those things. I mean, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the Treasure Hunts? We’ll go to the cave again, together, and it has to be there, it … or something. Something is there. Don’t you understand? How can you not get how … how important that is?”
Ruth’s mouth opens, but I barrel on like a tsunami with miles of wind building up behind it. My whole being is laser focused and I understand in this moment how storms have eyes, how those eyes see nothing but what they’re pointed toward.
“And not once, not once have you let me be excited. About the treasure box, about the ships. One time. And you know what? You think I don’t get it. You think I don’t get that things are hard for you. I mean, you say that often enough. I’m some stupid, idiot puppy to you. Well, you know what? It’s not all peaches and roses over here. You have no idea because it’s all about you; you don’t care about anyone else’s problems. You don’t listen. Can you really not think about someone else for two seconds?”
Ruth’s eyes are wide, wide, wide, and there’s an ocean inside them, and she stares at me while our currents whirlpool and our tides clash.
“Ever thought about having a sister who won’t talk to you? Who treats you like she wishes you weren’t there? Ever thought about that? Know how many phone calls with Mom on this trip have ended with talking about how I’m doing? Zero. Like, zero. It’s how’s Ruth. Always. Think about how many times she goes to bed without worrying. None. You do realize that, don’t you? And it’s sure as heck not because of me.”
I can’t shut up.
“Do you have any idea what I’ve been trying to do this trip? For you? Every time I’ve tried to … but when someone else talks to you, if I said it, then it wouldn’t … why can’t you do just this one thing for me? Just once? Why do you not see … why doesn’t this storm matter to you, or the ships? Why doesn’t our box? Our Treasure Hunts? All our Treasure Hunts?”
It’s like I’m speaking past the years and years caught in my throat. We haven’t stepped into the rain, but my face is wet.
“Why don’t I matter?”
And there it is.
All of it. Everything I’ve been holding in, bursting from me as raucous and tumultuous as the rain bursting from the clouds.
The air hangs between us like a minor chord. Like a camera shutter left open.
I let my words and my hurt bore into Ruth. I will not look away.
But her gaze isn’t fighting me back. Her eyes are unfocused. Her forehead looks clammy and there’s a strand of hair sweat-stuck to her left temple.
Her throat clutches.
And then her pupils flip back under her eyelids.
And she slips, slips, slips down to the edge of her pillow.