Yellowstone

To Sara the earth looked soaked in a eerie florescent orange-red glow which she thought magical. Her uncle told her that the smoke in the atmosphere due to forest fires caused the light. The smoke followed you from Oregon to Utah, her uncle joked. Sara joked back I’m smoking. Sarah’s mom heard that out of context which made her panic for a moment which then brought laughter and caused Sara to pantomime vaping, pretending to be a sassy teen rebel.

During the night in Utah before the drive to Yellowstone a apocalyptic wind storm tore down trees that had stood for over a hundred years. Sara, on a foldout bed in her Uncle’s basement, had smiled in response to a loud cracking sound of wood splitting. Her sister Jessie, fifteen, two years older than Sara, punched Sara’s shoulder, asking her, why the creepy grin, aren’t you usually afraid of storms? Sarah replied in her mind: because of a secret.

The blur of green pines passed through Sarah’s hazel eyes as she gazed out the window. The endless straight road led only to Yellowstone. The robin blue of the sky signaled that they had left the Oregon smoke behind. Her mother drove, her uncle sat in the front, Sara in the back with Jessie. They drove through four states that day, her mother chimed: Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Four states in a five hour drive. Her mother stated this fact as if it should astonish rather than it being a mere circumstance of geography based on imaginary lines.

Her uncle and mother had been talking politics, plagues and religion. Their voices mixed with the sound of wind pouring in through the window opened a crack. In a Idaho gas station/ convenience store only half the people had worn facemasks despite the death from the plague creeping towards a million with no cure in sight. A faded Rolling Stone cover of Obama, his head tilted back in a handsome laugh under a marker scribbling the sniper crosshair design, hung high on a wall next to an elk head. Pink guns were sold next to pizza, key chains, Idaho and potato themed souvenir stuffed animals and cinnamon buns. It’s like we’re in a dystopia Sara heard her Uncle say after getting back into the car.

Sara rolled the dystopia word over in her head. We can’t be in a dystopia she thought. I’ve discovered happiness for the first time in my life just a week ago. The ground shook me. Her secret memory replayed. Just the thought of it made the nape of her neck tingle, the electrifying sensation racing down her spine and tickling the edges of all her extremities. She had her first kiss. It wasn’t technically a kiss although she decided that’s how she’d think of it. It felt as good or better as she ever imagined a kiss could be. She was at a group sleepover party. She and her favorite friend found themselves both awake in the bathroom together at 2:00am while the other girls slept.

I don’t like boys her friend confessed.

The line was a call back to an earlier group discussion which circled around celebrity boy crushes.

Neither do I admitted Sara. I think they’re gross. Maybe we’re not grown out of the ‘boys have cooties’ phase.

I don’t think that’s it, replied Sara’s friend, Simone. Despite both being sleepy the intensity of Simone’s concentration shook Sara.

They looked at each other. Sara admired Simone’s black curls, the deepness of her brown eyes. She admired how cool and confident Simone seemed in her new body. Sara always laughed recalling the time Simone slurped chocolate milk up her nose with a straw and then spit it out through her mouth onto the lunch trey. Sara’s two older sisters were gorgeous and Sara felt that she looked like a mangy rooster. Simone in that moment looked on her like Sara was pretty enough to be on billboards over Manhattan and Hollywood. Sara felt like her soul burned which caused her skin to glow. Her heart raced. Simone reached for her and then paused in blunt awkwardness. Sarah nodded and Simone reached and touched her and the touch felt like ice cream melting in her mouth.

*

Sarah heard her father’s muffled voice on speaker, talking to her mother while her mother drove. A whole town by a lake by their city burned down. The fire crept closer to Albany. In seconds forest fires spread in rushes as quick as flash floods, on maps they creep. She heard her father speak of evacuations. Jessie then showed her a video on her phone. In the video the sky and ground basked in dirty pulsating orange light, like looking at the world through a campfire spark. Sara wondered if the images were real. Sara heard her Uncle ask what about your pet chickens?

Sarah thought of her pet chickens: Rue, Speedy, Godzilla, Pecky and Dweeble. Each had personality. They tickled her palms with their pecks as they fed from her hand. She cleaned their coop and gathered their eggs. She loved them and she felt that they loved her, in their goofy ways of chicken love. Instead of scribbling in a journal Sara talked to her chickens.

She imagined that pulsating fire caused orange sky and ground she saw in that surreal video overcoming her pets. Swallowing them. She felt that if her pets died then a part of her would die as well. All the love she poured into caring for those silly beautiful birds evaporated. Her friends, gone forever, and with them, the happiness and purpose that they brought her. Her eyes welled with moisture at the unthinkable horror. One town burned already. She heard her father say he would leave the chickens to die right before his voice cut off.

I’m sorry her Uncle tried to console. He tried to reason with her, using a example of lighting hitting their car right now. It could happen but is unlikely to happen. She listened and his reasoning did seem to make some sense and bring her some comfort. Why cry over things that are unlikely to happen? She thought of Simone again, smiling while she dried her tears. Jessie playfully punched her shoulder while calling her weird.

*

The Christian Rock station was only one of two radio stations they got, a half hour till West Yellowstone. All my love is only for Jesus, he rescues me, saves me, loves, so I love him, yelled a singer over a basic guitar riff. “Jesus likely never existed,” she heard her uncle say. He then rambled about the theory. She caught him saying: we find comfort in beautiful lies and delusions. Her mother said something about the beauty of god is manifest in nature.

The other station was alternative collage radio, oddly. That was the better music option. A mopey song in a deep voiced monotone repeated the lyrics: all my pain, held in a silver shaped chain/ I carry in my pocket/ My locked heart and locket. “Well that’s depressing,” her Uncle said. Sara laughed. To make her laugh more he imitated the deep voiced monotone singer, singing depressing existential lyrics: all is meaningless, there’s no cleaning up this mess/ Yellowstone is a volcano about to explode/ the earth will die young before it grows old.

Sarah’s mother took her hand off the wheel to reach and slap her uncle’s thigh.

Jessie laughed. “What? All of Yellowstone is a volcano that will explode? And end all life on earth?”

“Why does that make you happy?” Sara asked.

Jessie laughed harder in response.

*

They checked into their West Yellowstone cabin. They checked their phones and ate apples and picked beds. They then drove into the Park. They pulled over to the side of the road. A buffalo stood still out in a pasture with a mountain of trees behind it basked in half shadow, half sun. A stream trickled in front of it. They took pictures. His uncle ran to the stream. He wanted to put his foot in the water. Sarah decided she wanted to do that too. The water at first stung but then it felt nice. She laughed.

At another pull over area they saw a spot of mud that looked like hot oil had been dropped from a plane above to splat on where they now stood. They drove to Old Faithful. In a gift shop while waiting for Old Faithful to release its majestic plume Sara’s uncle bought her a cheap fake silver heart locket. On one side was a buffalo, on the other side a “Y” for “Yellowstone.”

As the sunset they went into a field of geysers, walking nearly alone and excited over the wood walkways, in marvel over nature.

Back in the Cabin, in beds, Jessie let Sara use her phone for just five minutes so that Sara could check her forbidden Snapchat account.

She read a message from Simone.

We can’t be friends anymore.

Why? Sara responded.

My parents found my files. About us. What I wrote about you.

What’d you write about me? Sarah asked.

Sins, Simone replied.

Sara gasped, holding the phone so tight she half feared she’d break it. She felt like a firecracker with a lifespan of half a second. The thrill of knowing Simone wrote of her in titillating ways followed by the sudden death of their friendship, all in less than a second. Her fingers trembled, now no longer to hold the phone case tight.

I can never see you again, Simone wrote. I don’t want to go to hell.

*

“Are you alright?” her Uncle asked Sara in the morning at breakfast.

“Yes,” Sara lied.

They went out to sight see. They hoped to see a bear cub. Her uncle wanted to swim in a lake and splash under a waterfall. Sara stared at her locket instead of the sights out the car window. The “Y”. “Why?” she thought, over and over. Why did this happen? Why am I the way I am? Why is it wrong to feel the way that I am? Why can’t I see Simone ever again? Why is this world so stupid and fucked up t cause a little girl like me feel so rotten now?

She thought of that word: “Dystopia” again. It means after apocalypse devastation, where whatever life is left clings to thinning hope in struggle and desolate meager survival. My life is a dystopia, Sara thought. We’re in one now. My uncle was right.

She tried not to cry. The relief brought to her earlier simply by thinking of Simone is what caused the pain.

They stopped at some bubbling hot springs pool of aqua clear water. The water gurgled. Some water plumes would launch six feet high, others a few feet. Sara grabbed her locket tight. Why. Her lip quivered. When she thought no one was looking she threw the locket into the hot spring. Her mother saw her and tugged her by the arm and spanked her and through grit teeth demanded to know why she’d litter nature like that.

Sara burst in sobs. She fell to her knees. The tourists in that area were scarce at the moment yet still all turned to look at her. A greater distraction removed them away from the crying thirteen year old distraction. A fox had scampered across the driveway. It settled in some shrubs and stood stiff backed. It looked directly at Sarah. Sarah, breathing heavy, wiped her eyes and looked at the fox. Its eyes were big, so unlike her chicken’s little eyes. She felt towards this fox the same way she did towards her chickens; as a friend she could confide too. She felt, unlike the small eyed chickens, maybe this fox would not only listen to her but answer her. “Why?” she whispered to the fox. Why?

The fox looked back at her and gave no reply.