Rock All Night(81)

Yeah.

I’m not kidding.

Then there were the obsessive thoughts, the unbreakable loops I found myself trapped in.

At one point I went up to Derek – who was having a gala time wandering around the desert, with no visible hint of fear at all – and said, “We should go back.”

“Why?” he asked, mystified. He was having too much fun to consider anything but staying out here forever.

“Because it’s getting dark.”

“So?”

“It’s getting cold, too.”

“So?”

“If it gets too cold, we might die out here.”

Now, in reality, there was probably no danger we would die. It was probably going to get chilly, yeah, but not low enough for hypothermia to set in.

But in my drug-addled mind, I didn’t know that.

And as soon as I said we might die, I had an image of my body, dead and cold, being found the next morning by a search team. And I began thinking, Oh my God, maybe I’m already dead and don’t know it! Maybe I’m actually lying dead on the ground, and I just THINK that I’m wandering out here in the desert!

Which freaked me out even more.

“We might die out here?” Derek asked, as though I’d said we might find a field mouse or a lizard alongside the road. He sounded interested, but not at all concerned.

“Yes,” I said, getting more and more afraid.

“Oh… well, that’d be alright,” he said in the most unconcerned voice imaginable.

“No it wouldn’t!” I cried out.

“Why not?”

“Because… because…”

And I couldn’t think of a good idea why it wouldn’t be okay.

Everybody dies, right?

It’s a normal part of life – right?

And because I couldn’t think of a good reason why, a feeling of complete peace and acceptance swelled up in me.

“…I guess it would be okay,” I murmured.

He smiled at me, and turned back to the desert.

A few moments later I would shiver and think, I’m cold, and I wouldn’t like that. Then I would look around and notice it was even darker than before, and I wouldn’t like that even more. Then I would say, “We should go back,” and the whole conversation would start over again from the beginning.

That whole cycle had to have happened at least five times in a row – but each time, Derek acted like it was the first time he’d heard me say it.

And it felt to me like it was the first time I’d said it, even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t.

But no matter what, I couldn’t break myself out of the loop.

Until Ryan tapped me on my shoulder.

I wheeled around in terror, imagining that maybe it was the SWAT team or the search and rescue guys.

Ryan was staring down at me, his brow furrowed. “Kaitlyn, are you okay?”

No.

No, I’m not.

“I’m cold,” I whispered.

“Come here,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me.

Warmth.

Comfort.

Safety.

I sank into him and held on for dear life.

“Hey guys, I think we need to head back,” Ryan called out.

Killian and Derek turned around and immediately began complaining like ten-year-olds.

“What?! Why?!”

“But it’s just getting good!”

“Kaitlyn’s cold,” Ryan said.

Killian began pulling his jacket off – which was quite an ordeal, considering the guitar strap over his shoulder and how stoned he was. “Here, she can have my jacket!”

“Do you want his jacket?” Ryan asked me gently.

Killian held it out, but the stink of marijuana clung to it like poison gas.

I shook my head ‘no.’

“No, that’s okay,” Ryan said. “But it’s getting dark. If we wait much longer, we’re not going to be able to find our way back.”

“That’s okay!” Derek hooted. “We can spend the night out here!”

Killian must have thought that was the funniest thing ever, because he doubled over giggling.

“We need to head back,” Ryan announced.

“But – ”

“WE NEED TO HEAD BACK. Trust me on this one, guys.”

There was some bitching and moaning, but Derek and Killian finally acquiesced, and we started the long trek back to the cabins.

I clung to Ryan the entire time, absorbing as much of his warmth as possible. His body and arms comforted me; they were the only things I had to latch onto that felt real. And his calm, quiet presence was the only thing that could break me out of my downward spiral of dark thoughts.

Derek was oblivious to my suffering; he was too caught up in the wonders around him. He and Killian kept stopping to stare at things along the side of the road and engage in bizarre, disjointed conversations that ended in uncontrollable laughter.

“Guys, come on,” Ryan would prompt them, and they would begin walking again, only to stop twenty feet further down the trail to stare at something else.

I had forgotten about the dogs this entire time. They had always been a presence, just over the horizon, distantly barking and yapping, but never visible. But as soon as it got dark, they reappeared from the wilderness and looked at us like, You DO know it’s time to go back, right? When Ryan turned us all around and began leading us back towards the cabins, they raced on ahead, barking and yapping their way home.