We parked in the large dirt parking lot and got out of the car. I squinted from the bright, hot sun. Had the sun been this bright in Kansas? I didn’t think so.

I looked around. I’d never seen so much brown before—not a patch of grass anywhere. Did grass even exist in Arizona? Again, I didn’t think so.

We walked over the compacted dirt toward the entrance, which wasn’t closed up, even though the park wasn’t open yet—I guess they weren’t too worried about people sneaking in. A lizard skittered across the dirt in front of me, and I jumped back.

The dirt. Never. Ended. There were no sidewalks or grass or paved anything at Stagecoach Pass—just dirt and old wooden buildings with old wooden steps and old wooden porches that looked like they might collapse at any time.

“Good morning!” a cheerful, gray-mustached man greeted us from one of these porches. He wore a cowboy hat and held a mug of something steamy. Coffee? In this heat?

“Good morning,” Mom and Dad said at the same time.

“Nice to see you again, Gary,” said Mom. I looked at her. “He’s the one who interviewed us,” she whispered to me. “He’s the accountant for the park.”

Gary walked down the steps. “And this must be Aven.”

“Our one and only,” Dad said, squeezing his arm around me.

I gave Gary a polite smile. He seemed nice enough, even though his gray mustache was awfully pointy.

“Well,” Gary said, tossing his coffee on the dirt, where it dried in about two seconds, “I bet you’re tired after your long trip. I’ll take you up to the apartment.”

As we trudged toward our new living quarters, which were apparently located right over the steakhouse, Dad asked, “So when do we get to meet Joe Cavanaugh?”

“Oh, no one ever meets Joe,” said Gary. “Not around here much.”

“That’s strange,” said Mom. “A business owner who doesn’t visit his own business?”

Gary smiled and tilted his hat at her. “That’s why Joe needs good managers, ma’am.”

Mom and Dad had described the apartment as a cozy but humble little place. They weren’t kidding about the cozy. Or the humble. Or the little.

Gary and a few other men from the park (all dressed like cowboys), carried our stuff up from the car. After Mom and I finished putting away my suitcase of bare necessities, she said to me, “Why don’t you go out and explore, honey?”

“What’s there to explore?”

“Tons of stuff,” she said. “There’s a gold mine, and a gift shop, and a museum, and a soda shop. You could get yourself an ice cream.” She looked at her watch. “It won’t be open for a half hour, though.”

So I went out and explored. For about five minutes. The heat got more and more intense with every second until I was forced into the air-conditioned museum.

The museum was actually more like a room—just one room with picture-covered walls and a few “artifacts” in glass cases. These artifacts included a collection of stone arrowheads, some broken Navajo pottery pieces, a pistol from the 1800s, a pair of old spurs, and a genuine dead tarantula with an information board that shared facts like, tarantulas have no teeth, so they use their venom to liquefy their prey and suck up the liquid nastiness directly into their stomachs. How awesome is that?

I scanned the framed photographs on the walls, the old wooden floorboards creaking under my feet. Most of the pictures were black and white, taken a long time ago when Stagecoach Pass first opened. It looked like it was quite the place back then—crowds and rodeos and even parades on Main Street. Then I came to an empty space on the wall, where it seemed a picture had been removed. The nameplate beneath the empty space had been left up and said The Cavanaughs, Stagecoach Pass, 2004.

I looked around at the rest of the photos and each of their nameplates, but I couldn’t find any more of the Cavanaughs. I thought about what Gary had said: No one ever meets Joe. And I wondered why.

“There you are,” Dad said from behind me. “I’ve been looking for you.”

I turned around. “Just getting some cool air.”

“Don’t worry.” Dad wiped the sweat from his forehead. “It will cool down soon. Guess what?”

“What?”

“The rodeo arena is all closed down, so I thought we could set up a soccer goal out there and practice.”

“That sounds great.”

“You want to go kick the ball around now?”

“Isn’t it too hot?”

“Never. Plus, we can keep cool with ice cream.”

“What if I get a sunburn?”

“They have sunblock in the gift shop.”

I smiled. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

Dad put an arm around me and led me into the gift shop. “Of course. Didn’t you know that dads know everything?”

I snorted as he picked out a small tube of sunblock from a rack. “I’d like to be there when you tell Mom that.”