It was a disconcerting way to be left. For a few minutes, Alma, Shirin, and Hugo stood and peered up and down the road as if the bus might return immediately.
“Well, at least we got a ride here,” Alma said finally.
“And maybe one back,” Shirin added.
“The chances of that bus returning—” Hugo began.
“I know, I know,” Shirin cut him off. “But we thought we’d have to walk home anyway.”
“That will take us a very long time though,” Hugo said. “Longer than I realized. We need to hurry.”
There was no bus stop stand at the place they had disembarked. There were no signs and no pull-off. There was only an empty road, heading down in both directions, and the mountain rising steeply above them on one side. On the other side, the earth dropped away. Peering over the edge, Alma could see the lights of Four Points and the shape of the Fifth Point, a black silhouette against the night sky.
“This definitely isn’t the bus stop at the base of the mountain,” she said. “We’re really high up. But where do we go now?”
“Even higher?” Shirin suggested with a grin.
They walked up and down the edge of the road, pointing their flashlights at the foliage, searching for the path that Hugo vaguely remembered hiking with Marcus. Finally, Alma found it—an overgrown, steeply rising trail.
“Eureka!” Hugo cried, and pole and funnel in hand, he hurried intently ahead.
Shirin went next, and Alma followed. The hike was steadily uphill with no flat spaces or breaks, and the rocks were slick with moss and mud in some places. At first, Shirin slipped every few minutes, and Alma had to stay focused enough to steady her friend. But after hiking for an hour or so, Shirin seemed to have found her footing.
As she climbed, now less afraid of being knocked off the mountain, Alma took deep gulps of the bracing wind. She watched the backs of her friends, rising higher and higher. She listened to Celcy’s cackled words playing in her mind—keep searching, keep searching.
And when she reached the summit, when she stepped out of the shelter of the trees and stood side by side with Shirin and Hugo, with Four Points unfurled beneath them like a star-spangled banner, like a field of glowing flowers, Alma felt the tiniest of sparks reigniting inside her. Maybe she wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. But maybe this was still where she was supposed to be.