“She’s optimistic,” he notes.
“You have no idea,” Gray says.
“I want to know the secret spots,” I say. “Not the tourist traps.”
He hesitates for a second, but then he grabs a brown paper bag off the counter and draws a map to a vortex called Heather’s Knoll. He tells us tourists rarely go there; it’s more of a local meditation spot. I ask him if we can get there on bikes. He nods and I thank him and reach for Gray’s hand. When we walk outside, I examine the map.
“What’s a vortex?” I wonder out loud. I hadn’t expected an answer, but Gray explains it’s a power spot and supposedly Sedona is full of them.
“What do you mean, ‘power spot’?” I ask, and he tells me there’s magnetic energy moving through the earth and supposedly these energy fields connect at certain places around the world, and Sedona is one of them. People think it has healing powers.
We head toward a bike rental shop and pass crystal sellers and bookstores, healing centers and acupuncturists.
I ask him if he believes in that sort of thing, and he shrugs.
“I’m not really into New Age stuff,” he says. But he tells me people from all over the world travel to Sedona to meditate or pray. He explains vortexes are considered more spiritual than anything. It’s a place where you can feel more in tune with the universe, that if you sit still and listen long enough, you’ll hear answers to your questions.
We walk into the Golden Word bookstore and I buy a book on Sedona vortexes written by a local author. I pick out a postcard for Gray of a car crushed under the weight of a huge cactus. I buy my mom a sterling silver ring and my sister a bookmark picturing Cathedral Rock, the famous red cliffs in Sedona that look like church steeples. Gray gets me a postcard featuring Snoopy Rock because he likes the name of it.
We stop to order sandwiches at the Black Cow Café and we fill our water bottles for the ride. Sedona is a city of hills, and in the ten-mile bike ride, we steadily climb. We stop twice for water breaks and once so I can photograph a snake slithering across the road. As we travel farther away from downtown, I’m more aware of the silence. I can’t hear anything except the sound of our pedals inching us forward and the rubber tires gripping the asphalt. It’s as if we’re inside a dream dipped in red ink. The barista told us about this—he said we’d be surprised by the silence around a vortex.
We find the dirt road he drew out, marked only by a green sign bleached from the sun. We can barely make out the word HEATHER. We turn and pedal up a red gravel road, until we reach a dirt parking lot where the ground is padded smooth. We hop off our bikes and lean them against a tree trunk. We don’t worry about locking them up. We don’t worry about anything.
A sign in the parking lot reads RESPECT THE SILENCE. I grab Gray’s hand and we follow a dirt trail that winds through a tunnel of trees. We pass a circle constructed on the ground, outlined with smooth round rocks. The circle is divided up into pieces, like a pie. I whisper and ask Gray what it is. He tells me it’s a medicine wheel, used for meditation.
“It’s supposed to create positive energy,” he says. “I think Native Americans started it.” He tells me each piece of the wheel represents different people coming together. It’s about respecting people and creating a peaceful balance in the universe. I watch him with surprise.
“You said you weren’t into New Age stuff. How do you know all this?”
He smiles. “Amanda loved Sedona,” he says. “We used to drive up here every summer. That book you bought downtown, she owned the same one.” I feel my shoulders sink.
“Why didn’t you tell me? We didn’t have to come here,” I say, and he tells me it's okay. He wants to be here.
“I’ve never seen this spot before,” he says. He pulls me along and we pass another sign saying, QUIET: FOR PRAYER AND MEDITATION. The path opens up to several lookouts, but I keep going. Gray follows me and I veer off the trail, where the trees open up and warm, flat rocks rise out over a high cliff. We walk out to the edge and I inhale a deep breath and soak in the silence. The air feels different out here—lighter, crisper, charged with energy.
We’re surrounded by a rusty canyon that’s streaked with black and gray rocks. It looks ancient, as if we’re standing at the feet of a philosopher. I stare out at the beauty that embraces us and feel one thing. Humbled. It puts me in my place to know these rocks have existed thousands of years before me and they’ll survive thousands of years after I’m gone. It makes me feel inconsequential. My problems become so small and meaningless they evaporate and blow away in the desert air.
So many people worry their lives away. They take themselves so seriously. They try to fight time and aging and gravity and death. They spend so much time stressing and planning and overplanning that they miss out on living. I never want to be like that. I never want to waste time. After all, we’re just passing observers, as insignificant to these giant formations as a speck of dust. So we might as well appreciate the view and enjoy the journey.
I feel weightless. I wonder if this is what people mean about the magic of Sedona, if this realization is the vortex whispering a secret to me.
A thin layer of sweeping clouds touches the tip of the canyon peaks, and green trees grow deep in the shaded rocks underneath us. I can hear only my breaths. We sit down on the warm rocks and take off our shoes and eat our sandwiches, whispering a little back and forth but mostly just absorbing the air around us and honoring the silence.
We lie out on the rocks for the rest of the afternoon and let the sun lull us into contentment, and even Gray quietly admits there’s a healing energy to this place.
Gray
We eat dinner in Sedona at the Red Planet Café, an alien-themed restaurant. We’re greeted as earthlings by our waitress as she hands us plastic menus that look like they glow in the dark. I order the Mars attack sandwich, the cyclone fries, and a moon milk shake. Dylan orders the Neptune wrap. We drink out of glowing green straws, and fluorescent alien heads stare down at us from the ceiling. Our table looks like a satellite orbiting space, and our seats look like huge eggshells cut perfectly in half. Electronic music plays around us, as if we’re trapped inside a Super Mario game.
Dylan thinks the atmosphere is funky. I think it’s creepy. We agree to combine our descriptions and call it crunky.
We’re both flushed from a full day in the sun, and strokes of pink color Dylan’s nose and cheekbones. I wonder how warm her lips are. I’m eager to find out. I bet she has some great tan lines after today. I’m anxious to see those, too. I plan on tracing every inch of them with my finger.
When we leave Sedona the sky is turning a bluish black. The red rocks, gray in the distance, look like dinosaurs curled up to sleep. While we drive, Dylan asks me what I was thinking about at Heather’s Knoll. We spent hours there, and I was shocked Dylan managed to stay quiet for so long. She didn’t exactly sit still. She spent most of the time writing in her journal and investigating the other paths around the vortex with her camera. But she rarely spoke.
I look out the window and stall. I don’t want to admit to what I was really thinking all day. When Dylan was leaning back on the warm rock, her eyes closed against the sun, my mind was fixated on her. And I was pretty much thinking about one thing: sex. Wondering if she wants to have it. When. With me? We sleep together every night. I’ve seen her naked. But she always pulls back. She lets me in on everything else. Her secrets. Her soul. But now I want it all. And it’s driving me crazy.
I think about having sex with her every other second. I consider it a healthy obsession. I have a box of condoms shoved away in a desk drawer that I bought two years ago. “Ribbed for a woman’s pleasure.” Unopened. Taunting me.
I decide to tell Dylan I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was trying to empty my mind.
“What about you?” I ask. She also stalls before she answers, and then admits she was thinking about my family. I can feel the mood shift in the car. There’s a serious edge to Dylan’s voice.
<
br /> My guard instinctively takes over. Once you invest in people, once you let them in, they feel entitled to make your problems their own. And I don’t want that. I don’t need that. Not right now.
First Fight
Dylan
I blurt out the question before I lose my nerve.
“Have you gone through any counseling since Amanda died?” I ask. A few weighted seconds crawl by.
“Counseling?” Gray repeats, his voice hard. He’s already on the defensive. “Where is this coming from? I haven’t gone through counseling,” he insists, as if this would be weak. As if it would label him as something.
“Has your mom or dad?” I ask, and I try to keep my tone light, as if this is a casual conversation. He sees it as more of an interrogation.
“No,” he says flatly. “I don’t know. I doubt it.” He’s glaring at my profile, and I try to concentrate on the road, but I can still feel the heat from his eyes. “We don’t need to see a therapist,” he adds. “Not that my family’s psychological condition is any of your business.”
Period. End of the counseling discussion. But I won’t give up. I keep my voice calm and try to water down his anger. I tell him that talking to someone could help his family work through this, learn how to cope and make it easier for his parents to transition after he leaves town.
He takes such a sharp breath, I swear his chest is on fire. “Did you get that off a grieving pamphlet?”
“No,” I say quietly.
“What do you know about coping, Dylan?” he shoots back. “Who are you to tell me I need therapy?” he says, as if I’m the crazy one. “Are you saying I’m depressed?”
“No, I didn’t say that, and even if you were, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve been through a tragedy. All I’m saying is, it’s okay to ask people for help.”
“Well, I don’t need to pay a shrink just to hear someone tell me life’s going to be okay.”
I take a long, deep breath and tell him that’s the problem. Life isn’t okay, and denying it won’t help.
“Sometimes you need professionals to help you work through things,” I say.
Gray raises his hands. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he says. He crosses his arms tightly over his chest to contain them.
“There are counselors who have worked with hundreds of people in your shoes,” I say. “They can give your family advice on how to deal with all this.”
He glares at me like my words are a slap across his face. “I don’t need any advice. I’m fine.”
“I’m worried about your parents,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“Doesn’t it feel good to finally talk about Amanda?”
He nods once.
“Don’t you think it would help your parents if they could talk about her?” I try to keep my voice smooth. I crossed a line by making his family’s personal business my own. But isn’t that what friendship is? Isn’t that what love is? It’s more than caring and laughing and inspiring. It’s about taking hurt and anger off people’s shoulders and helping to carry the weight. It’s more important to love people on their worst days than their best.
“Don’t concern yourself with my parents, Dylan. You don’t even know them. Stop buying them gifts and trying to surprise them. It’s weird. You can’t care about people you don’t know. Maybe you’re the one who should see a therapist.”
I know he doesn’t mean it. He’s trying to steer the conversation away from himself, even if it means attacking me. “I care about you,” I say. “And I know you’re worried about your parents. Isn’t that why you’re still in Phoenix?”
He presses his lips together, and then opens them to almost shout, “They don’t need counseling. This is none of your business, so drop it.” It’s more than a subtle hint. But I’m already submerged waist deep. I might as well dive in.
“I just think your mom and dad could use an outlet,” I say. “Maybe you guys could meet with a therapist as a family?”
“What’s a shrink going to do? Tell us to keep a journal and find a happy place?”
“No.”
“Diagnose us with some grieving disorder and prescribe a bottle of artificial mood enhancer? Fuck that.”
I have to fight to keep my voice calm, and I meet his glaring eyes: “Going to a counselor isn’t a weak thing to do. That’s your problem. You see it as desperate.”
“Whatever.”
“Have you ever thought that going to a counselor with your parents is maybe the bravest thing you could do?” I ask. “The most loving thing? The most selfless thing? If you feel so responsible about helping them deal with Amanda’s death, then maybe this is something you need to do for them. This isn’t just about you.”
He starts to yell.
“What do you know about what we’re going through? Nothing! I’m not going to spill my feelings to some counselor who’s just going to sit there and see me as another sad kid who lost his sister. Just another tragic family dealing with death. Because this isn’t just any sister. Or any daughter.”
He slams his fist on the dashboard.
“It’s my sister,” he shouts. “It’s Amanda. And my life is never going to be the same again. Don’t tell me to listen to some stranger say that I need to get over it and I need to move on. Because if they ever knew Amanda, if you knew her, you’d get it.”
“What would I get?” I ask.
“That she deserves to have us miss her every single day. Even if it tortures us. She deserves that.”
My throat is tight. I take a shaky breath.
“I’m only going to say this once, because I love you and I think you need to hear it.”
I look over at him and see that his jaw is set tight. He’s facing forward and his eyes are closed.
“You need to live your life, Gray. You need to live for the future again. Amanda isn’t coming back. I’m not saying you have to forget about her. But you have to move on,” I say. “You’re not the one who died.”
He tells me to shut up before he smashes the window.
“Fine,” I say, and my voice sounds torn. I bite my lips together to stop them from shaking. I focus on the white lines of the road ahead.
Gray turns up the stereo. He pulls his sweatshirt hood low over his head so he can block out the things he doesn’t want to see and the questions he doesn’t want to face. He’s trying to disappear again.
First Forgive
Gray
I’m fine.
But I can’t turn my brain off. Six hours later.
I’m fine.
Why did she have to go there? We had the most incredible day. The most incredible summer. Why did she have to strike the one nerve that would make me lash out like that? I know I hurt her. I could hear it in her voice. And all she did was call me out on the things I need to hear. All she did was care. I’m such an asshole.
I’m fine.
I roll over in bed and stare out my window. I watch the moon in the sky; it looks so peaceful and far away, and that’s where I want to be. It’s been six hours. I miss her. She’s usually in my arms at this time. My bed feels too big for my single body. It’s swallowing me.
I sit up and kick off my covers. I throw a pair of shorts on over my boxers and slip on some flip-flops. I walk out into the hot night. It has to be close to a hundred degrees, even at three in the morning. The dry grass cracks under my sandals like straw.
I drive to her house through dark, lifeless streets. I blast the Killers from my rolled-down window and try to focus on the music instead of the guilt clogging my mind. I feel like smoking again, like filling my lungs with something toxic, because my whole body feels toxic. I hate that I can’t take back what I said. I would never hit Dylan. I would never hurt her. But I just beat her up with words. And I’m supposed to sleep after that? Sleep doesn’t come to people who have a heavy apology resting on their heart. Sleep knows better.
I pull up to the curb next to her house and stare at the dark windows. I t
urn off the engine, walk around to the back, and grab some gravel rocks from the landscape bordering the patio. I throw a small piece up and it ricochets off her window with a loud tap. I’ve done this before. It’s our prehistoric-style telephone call.
I throw another rock, and a few seconds later a dim light fills the window of her room. Dylan pulls the curtains back and I look up to see her silhouette in the frame.
She doesn’t have to ask who it is. She doesn’t even have to acknowledge me. She could be mad, she could be stubborn. She could hold a grudge, could hold me at arm’s length. I close my eyes and pray she doesn’t. Life’s too short to hold back forgiveness. And we only have a few more weeks together. I map out my apology once more while I wait for her to come down.
She makes it easy for me. We sit on the wicker couch outside and she rests her head in my lap and listens while I tell her she was right, that she said exactly what I needed to hear and she’s the one person in my life who has the balls to confront me. And I’m not saying it just to win her back. I mean every word of it. I tell her I spent an hour online looking at counselors in Phoenix. I tell her I need to talk to my parents about it; I just needed someone to kick me hard enough to do it. And I thank her for loving me enough to say the hard things.
She’s half asleep in my lap, her face as serene as an angel’s in the moonlight. I trace my fingers along her smooth skin, and it feels like warm porcelain. I tell her I’m sorry I flipped out. I said things I didn’t mean. Dylan slowly lifts herself up, and her sleepy eyes meet mine.
“I love you, Gray,” she says. “And I love that you care about your parents. But you’re stuck here and you hate it. You’re not doing anybody any good.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I rest my head against the back of the chair and look up at the sky. It’s easy to hear words. It’s another thing to accept them.
“You can’t live for your parents. You’re not responsible for making them happy. They need to do that on their own. You need to work on you. That’s enough for you to handle right now.”