Of the Trees(21)

Ryan’s path took them past the Gray Lady Cemetery. It drew Cassie’s eye, as it always did. The spot was bare, nothing much to see or look at, but something drew her in, pulled her closer. Some unidentifiable something screamed through the wind. Look at me! Look at me! And Cassie did, though she never could see the source of the calling.

What she did see was a green backpack, propped up against the headstone. She wasn’t surprised to see Laney’s bag already there and part of her cut with sadness. It looked so lonely, leaning there against the one, solitary headstone, its owner already immersed in her own world among the ghosts. Ryan noticed, too.

“Should we see if Laney wants to come?” he asked, hesitantly. Cassie frowned but then shook her head.

“What happened between you guys this week?” he asked, driving past the cemetery. Cassie shrugged. It hadn’t been the first time they had a blowout fight, it hadn’t even been the worse one to date, but she didn’t feel like repeating the details. It always seemed so stupid in the retelling, and even if it wasn’t, it would blow over soon enough. The carnies were gone. They’d get over it, apologize, and life would go on.

“Just another epic brawl?” Ryan asked. Cassie grinned, looking over at him. He smiled back. “You know, one of these days you two should involve some Jell-O, a pool, and sell tickets. I’d bet you’d make a lot of money.”

“Did anyone ever tell you how funny you were?” Cassie asked dryly.





“So, what’s our goal today, Hike Master?” Cassie asked, adjusting the laces on her boots. Ryan bent over his trail map. It was creased and worn, a coffee spill darkening one side of it from an afternoon when Cassie had tipped over their canteen, and it had soaked through the seat of Ryan’s jeans. He folded it up and grinned at her.

“A modest four miles,” he answered. “Mom’s ready to pick up when I call.”

“Just four?” Cassie teased, hoisting her pack and following Ryan as he made his way onto the trail. Ryan highlighted the trail, section by section, along his used map, like connecting the dots. It took most people who attempted the whole thing, a distance of precisely two thousand, one hundred and sixty miles, at least five months. Part of Cassie thought he was crazy, and part of her really wanted to join him.

“Well, it’ll be dark early,” Ryan said, holding back a piece of hanging brush for Cassie to duck under.

“And this is another really hilly section, isn’t it?” she asked. He tried to hide his grin and couldn’t. “All right, lead on.”

It wasn’t long before Cassie felt the familiar burn that always warmed her when they hiked. Laney and Jon had come on occasion and mostly complained the entire time. This had become Ryan and Cassie’s thing. It was his passion, his goal to complete, but she liked to be a part of it, liked seeing the map that he highlighted and knowing her footsteps followed that same path, that it was both of them who had accomplished so much so far.

The trail here was well worn, the footpaths easy to find even as the sun sunk lower toward the horizon. The colors shifted around them, moving from the washed out light of early fall into amber brilliance, the trees catching the dying rays of sunlight and splashing orange and gold over the forest. The birds sang their last song for the day, making way for the skittering creatures of dusk.

They didn’t speak much. Partly because the trail here really was steep in places and Cassie needed her breath, but also because when they were hiking, they usually didn’t speak much. They had in the beginning, awkward and sometimes gasping conversations that left them both out of breath, especially when Jon or Laney were with them. They made terrible time then, all of them laughing and joking and talking about things that didn’t really matter at all. Over the course of the summer, however, when it was just Cassie and Ryan alone, they became increasingly quiet together.

It wasn’t a bad kind of quiet, it was good, easy. They found a stride together and surprised themselves, covering more ground each time in a comfortable rhythm.

He had mentioned it once. They had collapsed on the muddy ground together, sipping warm water slowly. It had been midsummer, and they had hiked the entire day together, getting fourteen miles from their car. The weather had been terrible, raining on and off before ending in a downpour. Cassie had been soaked through, despite the rain gear she had on. Her boots were squishy with mud and water, and she had been exhausted. Still, it had been her favorite day of hiking so far. They had hit their stride that day. Despite rain, mud, and the hot, muggy intervals between downpours, something had shifted. Ryan felt it, too. Cassie knew it as soon as she sat beside him, leaning back against a fallen tree. He grinned at her, the rain sluicing his features, his hair plastered to his skull, and she had never seen him happier.

“This was good, wasn’t it?” he had asked, his words loud over the pounding rain.

“Yeah, it was definitely good,” Cassie had answered. She remembered laughing, looking, she was sure, just like a drowned rat. But he didn’t seem to notice, his eyes glowed when he looked at her, and he smiled with such tenderness that Cassie wondered, to this day, if he hadn’t been about to kiss her. But then his mom had shown up, her headlights a cut of glittering, diamond light through the raindrops and against the trees, and he had stood, offering her his hand.

They had invited Jon and Laney less and less after that day, enjoying the time together, each matching the other’s pace and knowing intrinsically when the other needed to slow down.