“Wendy loaned me her brother and a pair of hiking boots, and he took me out to this place where all the kids go to jump into the Hoback River,” I say all in one breath.
Mom looks at me suspiciously.
“Wendy loaned you her brother?”
“Tucker. You met him that time our car slid off the road, remember?”
“The boy who brought you home from prom,” she says thoughtfully.
“Yep, that’s him. And thanks so much for bringing that up.”
For a minute neither of us says anything else.
“I brought you something,” she says finally. “A present.”
She unzips a compartment of her suitcase and pulls out something made of dark purple fabric. It’s a jacket, a gorgeous corduroy jacket the exact color of Mom’s African violet on the kitchen windowsill. It will play down the orange of my hair and play up the blue in my eyes. It’s perfect.
“I know you have your parka,” Mom says, “but I thought you could use something lighter. And besides, you can never have too many jackets in Wyoming.”
“Thanks. I love it.”
I reach to take it from her. And the moment my fingers touch the soft, velvety fabric, I’m in the vision, walking through the trees.
I trip and fall, scraping the palm of my right hand. I haven’t had the vision in weeks, since prom when I saw myself fly away from the fire with Christian in my arms. It doesn’t feel as familiar to me now, as I make my way up the hillside toward him. But he’s still there waiting for me, and when I see him I call his name, and he turns, and I run to him. I missed him, I realize, although I don’t know if it’s what I’m feeling now or in the future. He makes me feel complete. The way he always looks at me like he needs me. Me, and no one else.
I take his hand. The sorrow’s there, too, mixed with everything else: elation and fear and determination and even a serving of good old-fashioned lust. I feel it all, but overshadowing every other emotion is the grief, the sense that I’ve lost the most important thing in the world, even as I seem to be gaining it. I bend my head and look at where our hands join, Christian’s hand so finely constructed, like a surgeon’s hand. The nails are neatly clipped, his skin smooth and almost hot to the touch. His thumb strokes over my knuckles, sending a shiver through me. Then I realize.
I’m wearing the purple jacket.
I come back to myself to find Mom sitting next to me on her bed, her arm around my shoulders. She smiles sympathetically, her eyes worried.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be, silly,” she says. “I know what it’s like.”
Sometimes I forget that Mom had a purpose once upon a time. It was probably a hundred years ago if she was my age at the time. Which (I do the math quickly in my head) would put her at sometime between 1907 and 1914, approximately. Which means ladies in long, white dresses and men with top hats and big, bristly mustaches, horse-drawn carriages, corsets, Leo DiCaprio about to win his ticket on the Titanic. I try to picture my mother in that time, reeling with the force of her visions and lying awake in the dark trying to put the pieces together, trying to understand what it was she was meant to do.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m going to wear that jacket,” I say shakily. It’s lying on the floor near the bed. It must have slipped out of my hands when the vision struck me.
“Good,” says Mom. “I thought it would look good on you.”
“No. In the vision. I’m wearing that jacket.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“It’s happening.” She calmly smoothes a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Everything’s aligning for you. It’s going to happen this year, this fire season, I’m sure of it.”
That’s weeks away. Just weeks.
“What if I’m not ready?”
She smiles knowingly. Her eyes are twinkling again with that strange inner light. She lifts her arms and stretches them over her head, yawning. She looks a lot better. Not so tired. Not so worn down and frustrated about everything. She looks like her old self, like she’s ready to jump up and get started on my training again, like she’s excited about my purpose and determined to help me succeed at it.
“You’ll be ready,” she says.
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” she says firmly.
The next morning I sneak quietly down the stairs and get myself a quick bowl of granola cereal, stand in the middle of the kitchen eating it, and wait for the familiar rattle of Tucker’s truck in the driveway. Mom startles me by appearing as I’m pouring a glass of orange juice.
“You’re up early.” She examines the new woodsy version of me in the hiking boots, water resistant shorts, sports polo, the backpack hanging off one shoulder. I’m sure I look like I walked out of an Eddie Bauer ad. “Where are you off to?”
“Fishing,” I say, swallowing my juice quickly.
Her eyebrows lift. I’ve never been fishing in my life. The closest I’ve come is marinating salmon steaks for dinner.
“With who?”
“Some kids from school,” I say, inwardly wincing. Not quite a lie, I tell myself. Tucker is a kid from school.
She cocks her head to one side.
“What’s that smell?” she asks, wrinkling up her nose.
“Bug spray.” Mosquitoes never bother me, but apparently they eat Tucker alive if he forgets bug spray. So I wear it for solidarity. “All the kids wear it,” I explain to Mom. “They say the mosquito is the Wyoming state bird.”
“You’re really fitting in now.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly friendless before,” I say a little too sharply.
“Of course not. But something’s new, I think. Something’s different.”
“Nah.”
She laughs.
“Nah?”
I blush.
“Okay, so I talk more like the kids at school,” I say. “You hear it so much, you pick it up. Jeffrey does it too. They tell me I still talk too fast to be from Wyoming.”
“That’s good,” she says. “Fitting in.”
“It’s better than sticking out,” I say nervously. I just caught sight of the rusty blue truck snaking its way through the trees in front of the house.
“Gotta run, Mom.” I give her a quick hug. Then I’m out the door, down the driveway, jumping into Tucker’s truck while it’s still moving. He yelps in surprise and slams on the brake.