California(34)

She hadn’t told Cal about her idea. It was another secret she deserved.

She still had trouble believing that, for months, Cal had known about the insidious Spikes, had known that August traded with the people beyond them. Since hearing Bo’s story, Cal must have conjectured about August. He might be from the Spikes himself, or he might be their leader. Cal must have reconsidered the Millers’ death, too: Had these strangers wanted their friends dead? And why?

This is what hurt Frida the most: that her husband had bounced these ideas off the wall of his mind like the only child he was—alone, without anyone’s input. He’d played with that tennis ball by himself, and he’d scuffed the same place on the wall again and again without any progress or relief. He’d acted as if Frida weren’t there to help, or as if he wished she weren’t.



They’d moved in together a few months after they began dating. It was a decrepit studio apartment in Hollywood, with a Murphy bed that came out of the wall. Their neighbors were either elderly or junkies, or both, always loitering out front or arguing with one another in the parking lot, and Frida and Cal would hole up in their place, lock the deadbolt, and tell each other about their lives.

Frida had told him how it felt to see her mother cry when Micah left for Plank. How she knew she’d never be enough for her parents. How neither of them expected much of her, how they believed her baking was silly—a stoner’s hobby—and how, secretly, she agreed with them.

And Cal had told her how he couldn’t stand to go back to Cleveland, even after they were allowing families of the deceased into the broken city, even though there was land that belonged to him. He didn’t have the guts, he said. There were the Plank Chronicles, too. She could have recited the names of the animals there, the chores he did, the classes he took. He told her of his desire to carry the school’s idealism into a world that maybe didn’t deserve it.

Even though she knew it was arrogant to think this made them different from any other couple falling in love, Frida had believed that what they’d shared was more than what other couples gave each other.

But, now, she realized how silly she had been. She understood that these confessions, these stories about the past, were a rite of passage for any couple, clichéd but crucial, necessary to their survival. If she’d been with other men before Cal—not random one-night stands, or ongoing trysts with deli busboys, but real relationships—she might have known this.

She would have understood, too, that all the talking in the world couldn’t give everything away, that a person was always capable of keeping secrets. It might have saved her from feeling betrayed by her husband here at the end of the world.



As twilight turned to night they ate beets and the remainder of their jerky in silence, the fire glowing orange between them, popping and hissing in that way that still delighted Frida, even after these two-plus years. She was relieved that she and Cal had been smart enough to travel during a gibbous moon so that it wouldn’t be inky dark once the flames were extinguished.

Frida remembered how undark it had always been in L.A., the sky the green-gray color of something miasmic until well after midnight. She wanted badly to know what that sky was like now, if there was enough electricity to ensure that the city would remain bright and wasteful. Sometimes she pictured Hilda and Dada venturing out into the night together; in her mind they held hands.

After dinner, Cal tied the remainder of their food to a tree branch and then wiggled into the sleeping bag. He didn’t ask her to join him; he had stopped requesting things of her since he’d suggested the stupid bulletproof vest. He probably wanted her to feel she was acting of her own volition, making her own choices, sharing in the difficult decisions of life. How thoughtful.

Frida didn’t even pretend to have other plans: she got into the sleeping bag with him. He was her only shelter, and she wanted to be near him. The sleeping bag reminded her of their days in the shed; its slippery fabric smelled like mildew and dirt. If she let herself relax against him, she could enjoy this, the outdoors, the open space. The moon above them was the white button of a sweater, tucked halfway closed.

“I can grab the flashlight,” Cal said. “If you want it.”

She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

“What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

“I have no idea.” She didn’t tell him that one moment she imagined pilgrim settlements and the next a high-tech world hidden in the brush: computer labs and electric toothbrushes, drivers texting from their hovercrafts. It was all so ridiculous, but in their Murphy bed in Hollywood she would have described each possibility to him in detail. She would have told him her biggest fear: that Bo had been f*cking with him, that miles away there was nothing but more miles.

“They might kill us,” Cal said.

“If you really think that, why agree to the trip?”

“Because you’d hate me otherwise.”

His voice had turned hoarse, and Frida understood he was laying himself bare, making up for lost time, for past lies.

“I just want you to be prepared,” he said.

“What? Prepared to die?”

He grabbed her leg under the covers. “No. But you need to remember that not everyone loves you immediately.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“They don’t want us there, Frida.”