Connect the Stars (13 page)

“Basically, they all mean the same thing: I'm going around sad for no good reason,” said Kate. “They also mean I'm starting to get on everyone's nerves.”

“Well, what do you think you are?” I asked.

Kate lifted her chin. “Sad. My grandmother lived with us for a year and a half, and then she died.” Her chin started trembling, but she didn't start crying.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Right before you came here?”

Kate shook her head. “That's the problem. It was five months ago, and according to my parents, that's like four and a half months too long.”

“Aren't they sad too?” asked Aaron.

“No!” said Kate bitterly. “Not even my mom, and Granny was her mother!”

But I heard the lie, and right afterward, Kate scratched her elbow. A Poison Ivy Liar.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “My mom was sad, a little, at first. The thing is that my grandmother was kind of . . . difficult.”

Truth. And a hard one for Kate to tell.

“She'd had a rough life. I never knew my grandfather
because he left when my mom was a baby, so my grandmother raised her on her own. She worked in a chair factory and then, when the factory closed, she cleaned houses. And she never got to go to college, even though she was really smart, and I guess in a lot of ways, she wasn't a very nice mom. She wasn't abusive or anything, but she was tough and didn't talk much and had a bad temper. My mom said she was a cold fish. She said she was like a person who'd had all the love wrung out of her when she was a young woman, so she didn't have any left for her daughter.”

“What do you think?” I asked gently.

Kate faltered. “I think she was probably not the nicest mom.” Tears filled her eyes. “She felt bad about it, though, later. She told me that.”

“Did she tell your mom?” asked Louis.

“I don't think so. She had trouble saying stuff like that to most people.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, then moved them away. “But she said it to me. She loved
me
! And I loved her. I took care of her. I always tried to put myself in her place, think about what she'd like best. I read her books out loud and sat and watched TV with her, even though she loved really, really, really bad reality shows, and when she got super sick at the end, I helped her eat and massaged her hands and feet to distract her from the pain. She said I did a better job than the home health lady.
I loved her!
”

Truth, truth, truth, raw and painful, almost too much truth to bear. I scooted closer to Kate and put my arm around her small shoulders.

“I'm sorry, Kate,” said Aaron.

“Same here,” said Louis.

“But the worst thing is that no one ever talks about her,” said Kate. “After she'd been gone for a while, I would try to tell some of the stories she'd told me or just say how much I missed her and how it hurt to see her empty room, and my parents and my sisters just acted exasperated. They'd say I needed to get over it, but how am I supposed to get over being sad if no one lets me
be
sad?”

“Is that why they sent you here?” asked Louis. “To get over it?”

“Yes, but those, those . . . layers!” wailed Kate.

Layers? Louis and I looked at each other questioningly, but Aaron had the answer, as usual. The thing is, it wasn't his usual kind of answer at all.

“In the rock face, you mean,” he said.

“Yes!” said Kate.

“The way it makes human life feel infinitesimally small,” said Aaron.

I stared at him.

“Exactly,” said Kate, tears falling down her cheeks. “My
grandmother isn't even a hair-sized line. She's too tiny to leave any kind of mark on those rocks. And no one wants to even talk about her. She's been dead five months, and all anyone wants to do is forget her. Soon it will be like she was never here at all.”

A hush fell over us, and I wondered if Louis and Aaron were doing what I was doing: trying to think of a way to comfort Kate, to tell her she was wrong about her grandmother and time and the rocks, without lying to her.

“But Kate,” ventured Aaron at last, shyly, “does knowing about those rocks make you not, um, love her?”

“No! Of course not. I'd never not love her.”

“Right,” said Aaron, getting more and more embarrassed. “You came here and saw the rocks and realized how small your grandmother is compared to, you know, the history of the Earth or whatever, and you love her
anyway
. Which is maybe the whole point.”

We all just looked at Aaron, who looked down at his lap. I puzzled over what he'd just said: “the whole point.” The whole point of what?

“Oh!” I said. “I get it. You mean the anyway.”

Without looking up, Aaron nodded.

“The anyway is the whole point,” I said, and Aaron nodded again.

“I'm confused,” said Louis.

“The anyway is the whole point of—” I broke off, as embarrassed as Aaron.

“Love,” said Kate, amazed. “Even if no one cares, even if no one else remembers her, even if she could be not so nice, even if time lasts forever and those rocks tower over everything, and my grandmother isn't even a speck, I love her anyway.”

“And that's the whole point,” said Aaron. Then he groaned and fell backward, hitting the ground with a bump. “Sheesh. Thinking is a lot harder than knowing. Why didn't anyone warn me?”

We all laughed, especially Kate. Louis, the person who didn't touch people, lifted his hand and hesitated only a second before he slapped Aaron on the shoulder.

“Good job, man,” he said.

Lying in my tent at night, dividing my days into hells and heavens, I could see how nothing was tidy, how the hells had some pretty sweet parts, how the heavens were a mixed bag too, which is maybe how it goes in the desert. Or maybe it's how it goes anywhere, although back home, good and bad sure seemed a lot easier to tell apart.

I also saw that I was coming dangerously close to forgetting my resolution to not have friends. Some outside observer might even have said that when it came to sticking
to that resolution, I was failing dismally. But I didn't panic. I knew it was all temporary. We would go home and never see each other again. If these people ended up lying and betraying me like Janie had, well, I wouldn't know them for long, anyway.

And come on, those rocks? Those trees? That sunset? The Milky Way trailing down the sky every night like spilled glitter? It was all so beautiful, but it also felt unreal, otherworldly. And if this wasn't the real world, nothing that happened in it was real, was it? No matter how real it felt.

El Viaje a la Confianza

ONE MORNING WHILE ENOD'S TEAM was scraping the last of the oatmeal off the breakfast dishes with handfuls of dried creosote leaves, which got the dishes clean but made all our food taste like railroad crossties, Jare took a seat on a rock in the shade of an abandoned ranch house beside the trail, got a funny look on his face, felt around on top of his head, and pointed to three columns of stone looming like watchmen in the faraway desert. He said, “Your second el Viaje character-building challenge is to bring me my hat. I left it on one of those hoodoos.” Then he ducked into his tent. “Let's hope you do better than you did capturing that flag.”

“What are hoodoos?” asked Kevin Larkspur.

“Those,” said Jare, ducking back out to point at the stones, “are hoodoos.” He disappeared into his tent again,
and we could hear him throwing his things around.

“Those stupid rock fingers that stick up in the desert,” said Daphne, rolling her eyes.

“Thanks, that clears things up,” said Audrey.

“Actually, a hoodoo, tent rock, or fairy chimney is a spire of stone that protrudes from the bottom of an arid basin. Ranging from the height of a human being to the height of a skyscraper, hoodoos consist of soft rock capped by harder, less easily eroded stone that protects each column from the elements,” I supplied. After all, I'd spent a whole afternoon studying geology to get ready for Quiz Masters season.

Jare stuck his head through the tent flap again. “Could you just,” he asked from between gritted teeth, “go?”

“I don't want to,” Daphne announced.

“Yes,” said Jare, climbing impatiently back out. “You do.”

“No,” said Daphne, “I don't.”

“Yes,” hissed Jare, “you do!” He raised one eyebrow.

Daphne thought his assertion over for a second, and then, to our surprise, she shrugged and said, “Okay. You win, Jare. I
do
want to. By the way, does this field trip have a catchy name, like the other one?”

“I've got more important things to think about right now, Daphne,” muttered Jare, jabbing his thumb toward his tent. “And it's a challenge, not a field trip.”

“Are there clues to help us get there?” asked Edie.

“Good question, E-death,” said Daphne, clapping silently. “Very good question.” She turned to Jare. “Jare, are there clues?”

“Yeah. Here's your clue. Look over there. See the hoodoos? That's where the hoodoos are. Now get going.”

“This one seems kind of thrown together, Jare,” observed Daphne. He glared at her.

“Um,” said Louis, “before we go, could you tell us the purpose of this challenge? I mean, what is it supposed to teach us?” He must've figured if he knew what Jare was trying to do to us, he might be able to guess what shocks to expect. “Are we team building?”

“Or problem solving?” tossed in Enod.

“Or improving our cross-country navigational skills?” asked Kevin.

“Yes!” said Jare, glancing impatiently at the rising sun. “You are doing all of that! Now get going!”

“How much do we need to pack?” asked Kate.

“Everything!” cried Jare. “Plus . . . an extra gallon of water. Be prepared! And you better not forget your railroad spike, Little Miss Sunshine! Now vamoose!”

“What's the prize?” asked Kate.

“Prize? Prize?” burst out Jare, coming back from wherever his thoughts had taken him. “I don't know. What do
you clowns
want
for a prize?”

“The air mattress,” said Kate.

“Are you still fixated on that stupid air mattress? Fine. The prize is a nice, comfy, brand-new air mattress, 'cause nobody managed to win it the first time. Now get lost!”

Which didn't seem like such a great way for Jare to put it, given how much time he'd spent rounding up lost and injured people during the capture-the-flag challenge, but even I knew better than to point this out.

We grabbed our packs and started toward the hoodoos. There wasn't really a trail, so after we'd wound through the agave, lechuguilla, candelilla, cholla, and ocotillo for five minutes, the groups had scattered far and wide.

“We have to hurry,” said Kate. “Or Daphne and Randolph will beat us again.”

“Hold on,” I said. “First, let's hike up to a high spot to have a look around. I know Jare must have some kind of surprise waiting between here and the hoodoos.”

But when we got to the top of the nearest hill, the surprise was—there was no surprise. The desert floor stretched out plain and flat all the way to the hoodoos. And all the other groups were way ahead of us.

“What the heck!” cried Kate. “He tricked us. Because he didn't trick us!”

“Just when you think you've got Jare figured out,”
muttered Audrey, skittering down the hillside, “you don't have Jare figured out. Come on. Let's go!”

“What's he doing?” murmured Louis, pausing to stare back at camp.

“Who?” I asked.

“Jare,” said Louis.

I looked, and thought, possibly, with my regular old eyes, I could make out Jare wandering among our tents. “I can't tell,” I said. “What
is
he doing?”

“Leaving camp in the other direction,” said Louis. “With his pack.”

“Hey!” Audrey called to us. “Get moving up there!”

“We've got a contest to win!” added Kate.

So Louis and I slid down the hill after them.

We hiked as hard as we could. I could tell we were in better shape than ever, because even though we were nearly running among the cacti, we still had enough breath to talk. As Kate and Louis walked side by side in the lead, we dropped into a gully and the hoodoos disappeared from sight. Louis glanced up and said, “Where the heck's that doggone hoodoo?”

Kate said, “
You
know just as well as I do.”

Louis said, “Who do?”

Kate said, “You do.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

“Hoodoo?”

“You do, I do, we do, they do.”

They fell down laughing. But I noticed that they checked for cactus first. We were getting the hang of this place.

And then, as soon as Kate and Louis had yanked each other back to their feet and we started hiking again, we topped a small ridgeline and realized that actually, the desert
did
have a surprise in store for us. The hoodoos stood right there, along with all the other campers. It had hardly taken an hour to get to them. Their distance from camp had been an optical illusion, because they weren't nearly as big as we'd thought. The tallest one, which was wearing Jare's hat, turned out to be twelve feet high. From far away, I guess we'd thought it was a hundred. Still, even with only a twelve-foot hoodoo, there was no way to get the hat down. The other teams had all dropped their packs and were dragging out their belongings, looking for something that might help scale the hoodoo.

Cyrus and Edie tried to tie their group's sleeping bags together to form a rope, but from what I could tell, that's the kind of plan that works mainly in the movies.

Enod had a pair of underwear in one hand and was collecting sticks with the other. “Stretchy,” he said, tugging on the waistband. “Should make a good slingshot.”

“Why not?” I replied.

“Looks like Jare just walked over here and tossed his hat on top,” observed Kevin Larkspur, pointing up at the hoodoo.

“The whole thing feels really impromptu,” added Enod.

“Impromptu,” snickered Randolph, as if he thought it was a naughty word. Which he probably did. Randolph had his pack scattered all over, looking for something to throw at the hoodoo, I guessed, but instead, he'd found a bunch of pistachios at the bottom and gotten distracted by cracking them in his teeth.

Kate rummaged around inside her pack and came up with her railroad spike.

“What are you gonna do with that?” sneered Randolph. “Comb your hair?”

“Just shut up, Randolph, okay?” requested Daphne.

And then Randolph wasn't on a roll anymore. He dropped to the ground and sullenly began destroying the burrow of a field mouse with a stick.

Kate circled the hoodoo a couple of times, examining its sides. She seemed to spot something, because she stopped, motioned to Louis, and said, “Louis? Can you give me a leg up?”

Louis lumbered over, took a breath, dropped to his knees, and made a stirrup from his hands for Kate to step
into. As soon as she did, he stood up. And lifted her feet all the way to his chest. From there, in one quick motion, Kate stepped onto his shoulders. She slipped her railroad spike out of her pocket, stuck it into a crack about eight feet off the ground, and used it like the rung of a ladder. With a sweep of her hand, she swiped the hat off the hoodoo, stepped back onto Louis's shoulders, pulled her railroad spike out of the crack, and dropped to the ground.

“Impressive,” said Enod.

Kevin began to clap, and everybody but Daphne and Randolph joined in. Kate took a bow.

Daphne didn't waste a second. She marched up and put her face in Kate's. “And now, Little Miss Sunshine,” she said, grabbing Kate by the elbow, “give me the hat.”

Kate laughed scornfully and yanked her elbow away.

“Or,” said Daphne, “if you want, I can just take it.”

“Go ahead,” said Kate, glaring at her eyeball to eyeball, which meant basically staring straight up.

“Randolph?” said Daphne. “I think we have a problem.”

“Leave her alone, Daphne,” I pleaded. “We won fair and square.”

“Yeah. Lay off, Daphne,” chimed in Enod.

“Shut up, spud,” warned Randolph.

Sheepishly, Enod fell silent and stared at the ground.

“Seriously, Daphne,” I said. “Enough.”

Daphne turned to me. “I'm starting to wonder,” she said, “if Memory Boy is really the right name for you. Because it seems like you
forgot
what happened the last time you messed with Randolph. I heard you ended up on your butt, counting stars.” She turned back to Kate. “You should go ahead and give us the hat. I want to get back to camp to have a nap. On my new air mattress.”

“If you want the hat,” whispered Kate, “then come and get it.”

“Fine.” Daphne smiled. She turned to Randolph. “Randolph?”

Randolph snickered softly.

“Don't just stand there giggling,” said Daphne impatiently. “Take the hat!”

“Uh,” said Randolph. He studied the ground, where he spotted a little blue rock he suddenly needed to kick into the bushes.

“Randolph?” said Daphne.

“Well,” said Randolph, waving a hand in Kate's direction. “I mean, she . . . I . . . you—”

Everybody had gathered to watch.

“Get the hat, Randolph,” ordered Daphne. “I want it!”

“I had to deal with her last time,” Randolph whined. “It's
your
turn.”

“Oh, for the love of—” began Daphne.

Kate dangled the hat in front of Daphne. “Do you want it or not?” she asked.

Daphne thought this over. But it was pretty clear that she didn't want the hat badly enough to tangle with Kate. “Oh, who cares about Jare's stupid dandruffy hat!” Daphne burst out. “Just keep it. Loser.”

“All right, I will,” said Kate agreeably, unzipping her pack. First she dropped in the railroad spike. Then the hat. “Come on, guys. Let's go claim our prize.”

“Hold on a second,” I said. “I've got to put everything back in my pack.” I'd dug all my stuff out too, just like everybody else.

While we all repacked, a breeze picked up and wafted among the hoodoos. They loomed silently over us. I began to think they knew something we didn't, and I wondered what it was. Something made me want to tell everybody how I felt, and whatever that something was, it was so strong I couldn't stop myself. “Hoodoos form from sedimentary rock and volcanic stone in desert landscapes across the globe,” I said. “They often exhibit a variable thickness, which contributes to the totem-pole shape of their bodies. Minerals deposited within different rock types cause varied colors throughout their height—”

This didn't feel like what I wanted to say.

Above us, the sun moved just enough to cast downward
shadows over the tallest hoodoo's head, and as I watched, I saw his eyes, nose, and chin emerge. I heard myself tell everybody, “Look at his face.”

“Who?” scoffed Randolph. By now he'd gotten distracted by half a PowerBar he'd found in the bottom of his pack and was gnawing on it.

“Him,” I said, because the hoodoo that had been wearing Jare's hat, in this light, looked like an old man, a nice old man, a nice old man who was frowning a little because he was deep in thought.

“What's he looking at?” Louis asked, seeing the old man too.

I scanned the hills, mountain, rocks, arroyos, river bottoms, cliffs, valleys, trails, roads, caves, abandoned farms, frozen windmills, rusting rails, reds, yellows, oranges, and blues stretched out in front of us. “All of it,” I said.

“Who
is
he?” wondered Audrey, gazing at his expression.

And all the facts I knew about hoodoos started rearranging themselves. I said, “First, he was seashells and the spines of ocean creatures collecting at the bottom of a prehistoric sea. It took him millions of years, but after a while, he got stronger and harder and turned into stone. And then the sea dried up. And then a volcano erupted and made his bones. And the desert formed above him. And the
rain and the wind began to carve him out of the stone. He got taller and taller. And he watched everything. He's been watching since before the dinosaurs were born. He's seen everything. I'm going to come back to visit him.”

When I stopped, I realized everybody was staring at me. Quickly Louis and Kate and Enod shot their gazes up at the hoodoo and stood silently contemplating it. And Audrey scanned the desert. Then they all stared at me again. But the words had stopped, like a flood that'd washed itself away. I didn't have anything else to say. But maybe, I thought, I didn't need to say anything else.