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(Peak Wilderness, Day Twenty)

I dream of London, of Tavik, of Isaac standing on a stage, waiting for me. I dream of Mom standing on a ridge of crystal-lined granite. She’s in my hiking boots, but they’re covered in red glitter, and she’s wearing one of her draped velvet dresses, which is whipping in the wind. She has a walking stick raised toward the heavens like she’s some kind of unhinged Gandalf telling me I shall not pass. I rage at her from below, but she can’t hear me. I have to climb the damned rock and somehow get past her, and on the other side is a stage door, and in it is a theater and I’m due there any second. My cue is coming. But I don’t even know, have somehow forgotten, what the play is.

Tavik is still sound asleep when I wake. I extricate myself carefully, pull my sleeping bag around my shoulders for warmth, and go to sit on a rock by the river.

The birds are awake, and the sky is a thick, glimmering, ever-lightening silver.

The river rushes forth, filling every space it needs, stopping for nothing.

Like life, like love, like despair, like time.

Not like fear, though. Fear, I realize, can be pressed smaller, pushed out of the way, lived with most of the time without it taking over everything. On the one hand, you can live with it. On the other, it’s hard to banish. It lurks. But fear can be battled with love, with strength, with hope. Can be overcome, overruled, by truth sometimes, I tell myself.

One more day and I will be home.

On our final day of canoeing, Day Twenty, the sky opens up and it pours.

Of course it does.

By now, as a group, we are practically the definition of stoic, but still, it’s a wretched day. It’s cold and wet. Paddling is hell. We eat lunch with our canoes on our heads, and stay onshore like that for another frightening hour when there’s lightning and thunder in the sky.

Getting back on the river just in time for another rapids, still in the rain, sucks and is scary as hell even without lightning. Past the rapids, the paddling is hard going, the water choppy as we head back out onto the lake in order to cross to our final campsite.

Jin throws up over the side. Ally, though she has developed into a kick-ass canoe girl, is sweating, and her arms are shaking, and I feel like garbage too. Alongside us, the other teams are struggling just as much. Even Tavik looks done in.

Without thinking about it, I start to sing. I start with some Gilbert and Sullivan from The Pirates of Penzance because it’s rousing and has a good rhythm. Immediately the paddling feels easier, and people chime in with hoots and echoes. I follow up with some Mozart, then some Wagner. This is my music. Mom’s music—well, not the G&S, so much, but the rest of it. I fill the lake and sky with it. I sing the “Anvil Chorus” from Verdi’s Trovatore, then “Libiamo” from Traviata, then circle back to more Gilbert and Sullivan, this time from The Gondoliers. I sing first to help, and then for fun, and then because, there in the middle of the rainy lake, even freezing cold and tired and miserable, it gives me joy. I sing all the way into the campsite, and finish to cheers and claps on the shoulder, and hugs from Jin and Ally and Seth.

Miraculously it’s not dark yet—in fact, as we’re pulling the canoes up the beach, the sun comes bursting through, giving us a final two hours of light and much-needed warmth. We set about gathering firewood and lean-to materials as fast as we can, and before long we’re sitting around the admittedly anemic fire, having our last dinner together.

“Not gonna miss the rice and beans,” Jin says, and everyone nods and/or groans.

“What’s the first thing you’re going to eat when you get home?” Henry asks her.

“A cheeseburger,” she says, grinning. “And then some brownies—the two-bite kind.”

“I’m going for sushi!” Seth says. “And then cinnamon buns.”

“Indian food,” Ally says, her bright, un-made-up eyes alight and full of so much confidence. “And then a chocolate sundae. Or maybe an all-day breakfast—sausages, eggs, pancakes . . .”

“Steak and eggs,” Harvey says, and Henry nods vigorously. “What about you, Tavik?”

“Nachos, or maybe a giant burrito, some beer, apple pie with vanilla ice cream,” Tavik responds without hesitation. “You know, we talked like this in jail. That was my meal then, too.”

“Did you have it?” I ask.

“You bet your ass I did.”

“There’s an Italian restaurant down the street from my house,” Melissa says. “They make everything fresh. I’d have their pumpkin agnolotti with cream sauce, the bruschetta, followed by tiramisu and tartuffo—the kind with the dark chocolate and raspberry at the center.”

“Mmm,” I say, bowled over with delirious anticipation.

“And you?” Melissa says.

“I’d come to your meal,” I said. “But I’ll take a pizza.”

“With what on it?” Ally asks, almost lustfully.

“Sun-dried tomatoes, green olives, prosciutto . . . and then ice cream, something creamy with caramel . . . But before that, a shower followed by a long, hot bath. In fact, if I could have the food in the bath, that would be perfection. That’s it—I’m going to spend, like, four days in the bath, gorging myself. I just need someone to keep bringing the food so I don’t have to get out of the water.”

“I volunteer for that job,” Tavik says. “Especially if you sing in the bath.”

We all go on like that—about food and showers and other things we’ve missed. And then the talk shifts to what we’ll miss about Peak Wilderness, which turns out to be rather a lot, considering.

Pat and Bonnie join us, and as we have so many nights, we move naturally into circle time.

We go around to each person again, like we did the first night, and everyone gets a chance to reflect on where they’re at with the goals they set, what their challenges were, what they’re taking away from it all. Unlike on that first night, I’m not freaked out by these people, not under the impression that I’m separate from them, stuck here by accident. I’m here for just as good a reason as anyone else.

I’ve seen each and every person here hit their own walls. I’ve seen them fight, I’ve seen them give up, I’ve seen them persevere even after they said they were giving up. For some it’s been dramatic, for others more subtle. But the rigors of the trip, the interpersonal as well as the physical challenges, and nature itself, have all helped heal us, change us, make us stronger. Even some of the Peak Wilderness psychological garbage might have helped a couple of people. Might.

After a long, soulful, hilarious, tearful talk and the exchanging of contact info, we add more wood to the fire and sing and talk late into the night.

Bonnie pulls me aside to ask whether I’m planning to have Peace charged with assault, and I sigh.

“I’d like to just forget about him altogether.”

“I know,” she says. “A lot of people make that same choice. And the truth is, it wouldn’t be an easy process. You’d have to go through it all again, emotionally, and it would take time and energy, and the court system . . .”

“Isn’t set up to be kind or even necessarily fair to girls and women who come forward about this kind of thing,” I finish for her.

She nods. Waits.

“And yet, if I don’t, he gets away with it. And does it again, or something worse, to someone else. Which means I have . . . a responsibility,” I say, the weight of this settling on me.

“There’s that,” Bonnie says.

“So . . . no big deal, but I have to choose between my own personal happiness and, like, the good of humankind.”

“You wouldn’t be alone,” she says. “You have witnesses, and Peak Wilderness would support you. Pat and I would support you.”

I nod, she gives me some details about who to talk to at the Peak Wilderness head office if I decide to go ahead, and then we both head back to the fire.

Tavik makes his way to my side, then, and stays connected to me by hand or thigh or shoulder until the group finally breaks up and it’s time for bed. He and I are the last people still sitting at the fire.

“Come sleep over,” he says quietly.

I look at him, smiling, eyes narrowed.

“I’ll be good,” he says.

“No, you won’t.”

“No, I won’t. But come on—it’s the last chance. And I made my lean-to nice and big.”

“Why do I suddenly feel like you’re the big bad wolf?”

He grins, exactly like the big bad wolf.

“Anyway, it’s not the last chance,” I protest. “You have my number in the city.”

“I don’t live in the city.”

“Yeah, but we could . . .”

He gazes at me, shakes his head. “Let’s not be full of shit,” he says, eyes a little sad, but honest.

I wasn’t, but he’s right. This is something, but it isn’t love. Not that kind of love. It doesn’t mean it’s shallow or purely physical, but it’s hard to imagine how it would ever work, outside this very specific time and place. It’s a “stays in Vegas” situation.

“Okay,” I say. “I need a few minutes to myself, but I’ll see you in a bit.”

He goes off to his lean-to. I extinguish the dying fire, then walk down to the shore, take off my shoes and socks, and stand with my feet in the icy water.

Dear Mom . . . I compose, in my head, and then stop.

I know why she sent me. She did it so I would see hardship and experience it. She sent me here to have my strength tested, knowing it would fail. She sent me to be knocked down and get back up again, so that I would know I could. She sent me to learn about survival and be forced to own my choices and be ready to fight for them. She sent me to grieve what’s past, and for a special tough-love variety of healing. She sent me to help me get clear—clear of her. It makes a certain, bizarre sense.

Still, there’s more I need to resolve before I go to London. There will always be more.

But there’s time for that tomorrow.

Instead I stand under the giant sky, counting stars, feeling scared and raw, but at the same time full, fierce, open.

And then I go to Vegas.