Lost
That morning, she slips from the too-small circle of her boyfriend’s arms, his lips pressing against the thin skin of her neck, her cheeks. His beard scratches her chin as the deep tenor of his voice wobbles around her, “You sure you don’t want to change your mind? If you wait until the weekend, I can go with you” She laughs and reminds him that it is only one day, only hiking. Besides, the thought of him being with her makes her anxious, claustrophobic even. Their apartment had felt small and confining as she got ready: tight corners and their overstuffed coach and the walls full of pictures of the two of them grinning. It is her first day of freedom; the first day after quitting a job that had rubbed her raw. And now, she needs to get out and leave the city with its endless crisscross of intersections, flashing brake lights and hairpin turns punctuated by screeching rubber. She needs to leave the pulse of the life that she cannot remember building. A life that she had somehow managed to step into, the pace of it sweeping her up and along.
She shuts the car door on the sour smell of the garbage cans pulled to the curb, her mouth filling with the taste of bile. She places her hands on the sun-warmed wheel and drives out and out until she is leaving the city lights and smells and the noises that threaten to knock her over in the middle of the night when the stars were still sharp in the sky. She drives until the towering mess of buildings is blotted out by tangles of pine branches and tree trunks. She rolls down the car windows and sucks in the cold air. She had spent the previous night in a bar with sweet-smelling drinks that made her stomach fizz and pop. She had been celebrating her new freedom, toasting with strangers seated next to her, their eyes on her lips as she explained to them why she was alone. Explained to them how she just wanted to breathe again. One of them had suggested outside, hiking, tree trunks so dense you could lose yourself. The cold air feels good in her lungs, clearing the last of the smoke.
She sings as she drives, mouth gaping, music leaking from the sides, the words silky on her tongue. She sings top volume, half shouting, so buoyed by her newfound freedom. She drives into the park, the voice of her GPS barking out each turn. She finds the trailhead and parks, slipping her cell phone into the glove compartment, another suggestion from someone the previous night: total isolation. She grabs the backpack she hastily packed that morning: a bottle of water, a few granola bars, an orange from the fridge that looked a little shriveled.
As she hikes, her breath hangs in the air in front of her, small icicles of oxygen she wants to break apart and suck on, the way she did when she was a kid. As she hikes, the now unknown parts of her future swallow her. She can hear the small voice of her mother creeping along her spine, the mean laugh her mother had given when she told her that she had quit her job. Her mother’s words grow hard and sharp in her stomach, bounce around her brain and leave her eyes stinging. Her mother’s voice in an endless loop describing each of her failures, spelling out all the ways that she had turned into a disappointment of a daughter.
She’s wishing she hadn’t left the phone after all, that she had waited until the weekend and done this with her boyfriend. She’s wishing she hadn’t listened to all those blurry voices encouraging to be alone. To distract herself, she starts singing, swallowing the musky scent of leaf rot, the sharp smell of pine. Her voice breaks against the packed earth of the trail, and still, she can hear her mother’s voice pressing against the small bones of her lower back. Maybe she needs a challenge, the trail is too easy, everything laid out for her, predictable. She steps into the beckoning arms of the trees. She lets their sticky sap and sharp needles collect in her hair as she ducks and weaves and steps over rocks (or doesn’t) and stubs the ends of her toes. Her mother’s voice only a whisper. She hikes until she feels tangled in their branches, the trail she came in on now a moving target swirling around in her brain as she tries to remember what direction she came from.
Once she realizes she is lost, she feels a scream stretching at the back of her throat, feels it kicking at her esophagus and making it difficult to breathe. She feels her heartbeats skipping around the tips of her fingers – so erratic. She hears only her own voice reassuring herself that it will be okay. Now, her mother’s voice is gone, and the stillness makes her teeth chatter. She clenches her lips together to stop them. Everything, finally, so quiet. She sits and listens to the trees around her, the soft shushing of their leaves. She thinks how much better this is from everything she has walked away from.
