Now that she has a car, Sam can run errands. Best present ever, Courtney says. Sam can pick up groceries, and drive Noah to hockey, and transport herself anywhere she needs to go. Courtney even says, Sam you can go back to the gym—as though Sam quit because she didn’t want to take the bus. You can go anytime you want.
Courtney also says, You can drive out to the farm. You can see your dad, and maybe you can ride the horses. They are so beautiful. It’s true, Sam could drive out to the farm. Sometimes she almost thinks she will, but then she never does.
Her mom says, At least see Halle, and Sam thinks about it. She would like to drive up to Halle’s house and surprise her—but Halle does not come home for winter break. She and her whole family fly out to California. Everybody leaves. Jen and Steve take their girls to Disney, and Jack flies to a Caribbean island with his new girlfriend, Nicole. It is a package deal, all-inclusive. Courtney says, Good, but Noah doesn’t feel that way.
He is fighting, even at his new school, and Courtney talks to him and meets with teachers, and then he cries at home, because he hates his classes—but where else can he go?
Winter break is pretty bad. Noah does nothing. Sam works part-time at the Atomic Bean, and Courtney works more than full-time at Staples and the hair salon. On top of that, she has a cold.
Sunday morning, Courtney tells Noah to do the laundry, but he just plays on his computer, building walls and cities brick by brick. At lunchtime, Courtney says, “I told you, do the laundry. Did you hear me?” He says no, and she says, You had one job. He looks straight at Courtney and says no. Then instead of yelling at him, Courtney slams the bedroom door. She is not positive; she is exhausted. She needs to sleep, but she keeps coughing.
“Do it,” Sam tells him, but he doesn’t listen. “What is wrong with you?” she yells, even though yelling doesn’t work. Finally, she tells Noah, “Remember I said I’d take you hiking?” But he is not the kind of person you can bribe. Or if you can bribe him, it’s with stuff, not with an activity. Apart from hockey, he doesn’t like activities until he is already doing them. And he doesn’t like going anywhere until he is already there.
Sam sits at the table and Noah keeps playing his computer game and Sam wants to get out of the apartment, except she can’t leave Noah when their mom is sick in bed. “Let’s go,” she tells him again, and once again he ignores her—except she has a secret weapon. There is no food in the house, because nobody went shopping.
Around one o’clock he gets up and hunts in the refrigerator. He looks in the cabinet, but he ate all the cereal the day before. Sam says, “I’ll buy you lunch, but carry down the laundry.”
“We’re getting food,” she calls out to Courtney, but she tells Noah, Take your real coat. Wear boots.
“Where are we going?” Noah asks, after he carries down the laundry.
“Subway.”
“Yes.” He cheers softly.
“And then somewhere else.”
Sam buys him his favorite sub, smoked brisket. Her own sub is roast beef, and she is taking bites as she drives to Gloucester. They drive past town and the Fisherman’s Memorial They that go down to the sea in ships and Sam gets lost, but she keeps driving through the marshes to the trees, until she finds the parking lot for Red Rocks Conservation.
No other cars are parked there. The light is dim and cloudy and it’s cold, even for December.
“Remember I said I’d take you hiking?”
Noah looks at the thick trees and the whole place is deserted and mysterious and they are probably not allowed to be here, so he’s like, Yeah! Let’s go!
Sam gets out of her car and he zips up his coat and follows her.
Trees swallow up the trail. The only sounds are twigs and branches rustling. The only creatures they can see are chipmunks streaking across the path. They climb over roots and stumps. They scramble over a fallen birch tree and they are all alone—except people must come here, because there’s broken glass. “Careful!”
You can cut yourself, and you can trip, but Noah loves the slippery path, the thick wet leaves, the mud that sucks your shoes.
Sam pulls branches out of the way. “We’re searching.”
“For what?” Noah asks, and then he sees them. Boulders, gray and towering.
Noah wades through piles of dead leaves and Sam follows in his wake. Together they look up at the rocks looming over them. Sam touches the cold stone and feels moss and lichen, rough edges, and crazy geometric planes. “They’re metamorphic,” she tells Noah. “They were under a lot of pressure and that’s how they ended up like this.”
“What are these for?” Noah points to metal loops bolted to the rock.
“They’re for ropes,” Sam says. “For climbing.”
“Can you climb these rocks?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
Noah grabs one metal loop and pulls himself up a little bit, but he falls back. “I dare you.”
For a minute Sam gazes at the boulder with its metal loops. The granite is icy. It’s only four o’clock, but it’s almost too dark to see. Suddenly she remembers the walk back. “We’ve gotta find the car.”
They start hurrying to the place where they left the trail, but they can’t see white blazes on the trees.
They take out their phones to see if they can call someone. Noah says, “Look, Mom left a message,” but when he tries to listen, there is no service.
Sam stops walking. They can’t be far from the lot, but how will they get there? Should they listen for the sound of running water? Noah’s eyes are bright; he is awake in the cold air, and he is not afraid yet.
They stumble into muddy bogs they cannot see. They trip over tree roots. Noah says, “Could we dig a burrow?” He is thinking what to do if they have to spend the night.
But they can’t. It’s too cold. Their boots are wet. They have no food. They don’t have anything. Sam closes her eyes and tries to feel which way her feet are drawing her. “Let’s go.”
Close together, she and Noah push forward through the trees, looking for the trail in the mud, some sign, any sign that they are back on the path.
“What if we’re walking in the wrong direction?” Noah asks.
Sam doesn’t answer, because she doesn’t know. Maybe she did pick wrong—but she had to pick something. They can’t stand still. Without the sun, it’s just too cold. “I’m so stupid,” she whispers to herself. “How dumb can I be?”
“You’re not dumb,” says Noah, even though his teeth are chattering.
“I am if we’re stuck here all night.”
He says, “We can just keep walking.” It’s scary how much he trusts her. She touches his shoulder. “Do you think I know what I’m doing?”
Noah trips. “This is where you said careful.”
“It was?”
He feels down at his feet.
“Here’s the fallen tree.”
“There’s lots of fallen trees,” she tells him, but together they climb over the fallen birch tree with its long branches trailing the ground. “Listen!” Noah says, and Sam hears traffic. They creep back through the mud, and the path starts broadening and they can hear the highway, louder and louder. They race to the parking lot and to Sam’s car.
They sit together and Noah is shivering while Sam runs the engine. “Just a few minutes,” she says, as they wait for the heat to warm up.
Noah holds his fingers over the vents. “That was so fun.”
“Sh.” Sam’s phone is full of messages. “She’s gonna kill us. Get ready,” she tells Noah as she returns Courtney’s last call.
“Sam?”
Immediately, Sam says, I’m sorry, Mom. We’re fine. We’re okay, but Courtney is crying. “Mom, stop,” Sam says. “We got lost in Gloucester. It was my fault, but we’re good.”
Now her mom is going to say, What the hell did you think you were doing? What were you doing taking your brother to Gloucester without telling me? But she doesn’t. Sam puts the phone on speaker as she starts driving.
“We were just looking at rocks,” Noah explains.
Courtney sobs, “Sam.”
“What’s wrong?”
Her mom says, “Just come home.”
In silence, Sam and Noah drive back to Beverly. They don’t even listen to the radio. They don’t try to guess; they are afraid to know.
Covered in mud, they step inside the door to their apartment and Courtney doesn’t even say take off your shoes. She is standing there to meet them.
“Sam,” Courtney says, and sensing danger, Noah hovers behind Sam in the open doorway. “Sam,” Courtney tries again, but she can’t even get the words out.
It’s Mitchell. Of course it is. Sam knows immediately what happened, and at the same time, she does not believe it.
Courtney holds out her arms, but Sam does not come to her. “He’s gone.”
“He’s dead,” Sam says.
“He really tried.”
A cold anger fills Sam’s heart, because really tried? How does that help anything? Try harder!
“He loved you,” her mom says. “Your dad loved you more than anything. He wanted to get better, but he couldn’t.” She keeps talking, but Sam turns around and pushes past Noah into the hall. She doesn’t even know where she is going, just down the stairs and out. It’s freezing, but Sam heads back to the garage underneath the building.
Her mom is calling for her. She rushes after Sam and she keeps saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. She is probably afraid Sam will do something like crash her car.
They are standing there in the garage, and Courtney keeps trying to talk, but she can’t stop crying.
Sam doesn’t cry at all. Her mom cries enough for everyone. It’s strange how sad her mom is, even though she split up with Mitchell so many years ago. Could she still love him a little bit? No. That’s not why she is upset. She is afraid Sam is blaming herself and feeling guilty, and she is right. Sam does blame herself.
“Come inside,” her mom pleads.
“Leave me alone,” Sam tells her. Courtney doesn’t want to leave, but Sam says, “I just want to sit in my car. I’m not going anywhere.”
As soon as her mom leaves, she drives to the beach. She parks on Washington Street and takes the stairs down to the water’s edge, where the wind whips sand around. Her teeth are chattering as she dips her hand into the freezing ocean. The wind is so harsh that if you were crying, it would dry your tears.
It’s too cold to stay, so she climbs back to the street and sits in her car with the engine running. She is parked right near the dream houses, but she doesn’t look at them. She just sits and stares out at the night.
She should have called him, but she did not. She should have talked to him, invited him, forgiven him, but she did not. She treated him like he was dead—but she did not understand what dead meant. She knows now because it is too late. That’s what dead means. Too late for everything.
Her dad is dead, and all his ideas are dead too. All the plans they had when she was little—now they’re over. He is gone, and so his view of her is gone as well. She was smart with him. She was a climber. She was famous in his eyes—but in real life, she will not be famous, any more than he was. He is nothing now, and she is nothing. No one will remember her.