Alina

17

The sun rose and everything fell. This had been happening a lot lately. During all of her time in the wilderness, it had never not happened, she would have realized if she stopped to think about it. But she never did. Instead, Alex completed the first step in her daily routine: picking up the flotsam scattered around her tiny campsite and gently stacking it back into the makeshift hammock she had crafted out of the bandana she bought for a Rosie the Riveter halloween costume that had never been. Alex stored her toothbrush, her dental floss, her retainer and her glasses in this little crib hanging above her tent straddled between two scrawny branches of neighboring trees. The intention of the hammock was to keep her items safe from bears. There were no bears in the area, a fact Alex did not know and did not bother to check. Alex’s little brother knew, but he said nothing. He started to wonder why Alex stored their food inside their tent, as even she must have known that trail mix and beef jerky was more appealing to bears than Alex’s orthodontic appliances, but then he remembered that Alex was a dumbass.
Mornings were consumed with cleaning Alex’s dirt covered toothbrush, an item rendered immediately useless when Alex discovered that she had forgotten toothpaste, and afternoons were too bright. Nighttime was when the real work could take place. Alex and her little brother were on a quest. The kids’ dental hygienist mother had went on a weeklong vacation to Fiji with her new boyfriend Zesto, an act Alex fiercely viewed as abandonment. But if Alex was thinking rationally, she would have realized that she was a sophomore in college, and more than old enough to take care of her high school brother. Alex’s brother realized this, but he said nothing, choosing to shrug and follow her on a mission to “find their birth father”, who would never abandon them. Alex’s brother thought that “birth father” was an awfully dramatic way to describe their dad, who had only been divorced from their mom for a year and a half, and as he almost pointed out to Alex, he had, in fact, abandoned them. But he said nothing, and went along for the ride. Maybe I could write about this in a college essay, he thought. He still felt that his original plan to write about his winning goal in the soccer game or his mission trip to Ghana was stronger, but this could be a good third option. It’s always good to have a backup backup, he thought. Plus, it was less of a “mission trip to Ghana” than a luxurious safari in Morocco, but he had read somewhere that they could never dock you for lying. Or maybe that was on the SAT essay. Either way, he decided to give his sister some company.
So Alex drove the two of them forty miles to her father’s beautiful cabin and unloaded her camping materials in what she thought was a secluded enough area. She cooked up grand ideas and beautiful speeches about storming into her father’s house and yelling, “Alex is home!”, knocking down all the photos of her father and his new family, throwing her step-siblings out of their beds and retaking her rightful position as the center of his attention. But when the first night fell, she did nothing. She was scared and vulnerable, and for the first time in a long time, not confident. Also, he didn’t have any new children and his house was filled with pictures of Alex and her brother. Alex eventually realized this, and her confidence shot back up, along with her body. She marched up to her father’s door, her brother trailing closely behind, and stared at the door handle. And then she retreated back to her tent and went to sleep.
The next night, the same thing happened, and then the next and the next. She walked up to her father’s house, stared at the handle and then returned to the tent without saying a word. On the fifth night, as their trip was coming to an end, Alex headed back to the tent with tears in her eyes. Alex’s brother noticed this, and said something.
“Hey,” he said. “Life is about taking the first step. You had an idea, however misguided, or whatever, and you followed through. You took steps, and you picked up everything, or maybe not quite everything, and left and came here. And you didn’t quite speak to Dad, but you got damn close. And anyway, you’ll see him at Thanksgiving. But, the point is, you made a choice to come here, and you followed through. Maybe that’s enough. It’s enough for me and it should be enough for you.”
That’s dumb, she thought, and continued walking. She climbed into her sleeping bag and went to sleep.
Alex’s father, unlike Alex, was not an idiot. The campsite was a mere fifteen feet from his house, and he had security cameras. This meant that he had about thirty minutes of footage of his daughter staring at his door. His kids were essentially in his backyard, and yeah, there were trees, but they were hardly in the wilderness. And he recognized her car, which was parked in his driveway. He had bought it for her less than two years ago. But he knew that he had a pair of weirdos, and he knew to give them their space. And he would be ready to talk when they were ready to come in. And one day, they were, partially because Alex realized that her frustrations with her mother and Zesto were really about her pent up struggles to make friends in college, and that she had created a romanticized portrait of her father to serve as a foil for her actual guardian. Also, her mother would be pissed if she got a cavity. And so, on their last night in the wilderness, she and her brother unzipped the tent and tiptoed to her father’s house. Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.