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[kmozymoz]

Chapter One

I startled awake as the tiny plane touched down on the runway with a labored shudder, the wings shaking against the force of the brakes. It started to slow, and I lifted the shade on the window to look out. Clouds blanketed the sky, but enough light was shining through to glisten off the water in the distance, nestled beneath high mountains. In some ways, it already reminded me of home — covered in pines and surrounded by mountains.

I stepped off the steps onto the runway and headed inside the airport to collect my suitcase. I already had a heavy backpack slung over my shoulder, and I thought again about how I had probably overpacked. But everything I read said it was better to be overprepared than to find myself in a bad situation without items essential to survival.

I moved through the crowds inside the airport to wait at the carousel for my bag. People around me chatted excitedly, discussing their own plans for hikes and sightseeing. Some were dressed like they expected it to be below zero outside at all times, decked out in sweaters and heavy winter coats with matching boots. I wondered how they would feel about those choices in the 50-degree September weather.

I pulled my bag off the carousel, and almost dropped it as I suddenly noticed the tag hanging off the side handle.

Beaufort Sisters’ Grand Adventure 2018

I was mostly pre-occupied with packing my backpack for this trip, and had somewhat blindly tossed things into my suitcase once the backpacking materials were in order. I hadn’t really looked closely at this luggage in almost a year. I had forgotten the tag existed, let alone realized it was still attached to the side.

Eve was so excited to give it to me with my birthday present. She ordered it off one of those crafter websites through a custom order, making sure to get it in our favorite colors — blue and green — and carefully choosing the right balance of fun and tasteful in the font choice. She added an opaque shape of a bear and a tree on the outsides of the script as extras.

I rolled the bag to a seating area and dumped it over on its side, quickly removing the tag and unzipping the bag to shove the tag into a pocket out of sight. Zipping it up again, I moved fast toward the exit and tried to ignore how tight my chest felt.

I got halfway across the parking lot before realizing I needed my rental car. With a frustrated sigh, I turned around and went back to the rental car area inside the airport. There was no line and two tellers open, and I walked up to the man with the friendly smile, which I returned half-heartedly.

“How can I help you today?” he said.

“I have a rental car reservation.”

“Last name?”

“Beaufort,” I said, spelling it for him. “Grace.”

He tapped the keyboard a few times, then looked back up at me. “Do you need to add any other authorized drivers?”

“No. Just me.”

“All right,” he said cheerfully, “I just need your driver’s license please.”

I dug the card out of my wallet and slid it over the counter to him. He picked it up and examined it with focus, then excitement.

“Colorado, huh? I spent some time there one summer in college, what a beautiful state,” he said. “You from Denver?”

“Boulder,” I answered.

“Oh, even better! What brings you up here to our neck of the woods?”

I started to wish I had picked the teller without the friendly smile. “A trip,” I mumbled, pretending to look at something on my phone.

He got the hint and kept typing, then told me what car to look for on the lot and the rest of the relevant information. He handed receipts and other information over to me.

“Welcome to Anchorage, enjoy your stay!”

I nodded and took the keys, and found the parking spot he’d pointed me to. It was a small lot, and the black SUV wasn’t difficult to spot. I loaded up and plugged the hotel address into my phone. It was only about fifteen minutes away, and just enough time to see some of the city before dusk.

I arrived in my room just in time to watch the sun start to dip below the horizon, sending brilliant flares of color splashing across the sky. I specifically requested a top floor room on the west side of the building so I could watch the sunset — tonight, and the last night.

Thirteen sunsets to go.

—

I woke before the sun came up the next morning and took a hot shower, knowing it might be my last good shower for a while. I ran over the contents of my backpack one more time, double-checking for the flashlight, head lamp, snacks and hunting knife. I doubted I would need half of it, but I didn’t want to risk not being able to die on my own terms. I might have deserved to starve to death or get eaten by a bear, but I was too much of a coward to go out that way.

I hauled my things down to the first floor and ate breakfast, then made my way to the lobby area where I was told to meet up with the group. Several people were already gathered there, similarly loaded down with gear and belongings. Two pairs looked to be couples, while three others looked like a group of friends. The couples were probably in their late 30s or early 40s, while the other group looked college age. We all subtly took each other in, trying to read as much as possible without words. We exchanged polite morning greetings, then the groups turned back to each other and glanced around for the tour guide.

Two others joined a few minutes later, and I guessed they were brothers or cousins in their 20s. They looked like the type to take the most difficult trail or climb a sheer mountainside just to prove they could do it without breaking a sweat. Those types could be found in every corner of Colorado.

Soon enough, a van approached the front of the hotel and parked, and a tall, athletic man with salt and pepper hair and a trimmed beard hopped out and came through the front doors. He let out a shout and pumped his fist in the air upon seeing us gathered together.

“This looks like the best group ever, ready for the best adventure ever!” he said, prompting a few smiles. “You’re all here for Alaskan Grand Adventure, right?”

We nodded, and he feigned a huge sense of relief. “I was afraid I’d go to the wrong hotel and take a bunch of people on a really long trip in the woods when they thought they were going on a cruise.”

He introduced himself as Peter, and we followed him out to the van to place our things inside. The morning air bit with an icy edge, and I knew it would be worse in the mountains. Maybe I was wrong to silently mock the people in parkas and sweaters. Small spots of frost dotted the parking lot and patches on the back of the van, which had been scraped to visibility.

We departed on our four-hour trek up to Denali National Park, with Peter narrating the drive. He told us about Anchorage’s history with the railroad and oil discovery, and told us the square mileage of the city alone was equal to the state of Delaware.

As he talked, I took in the landscape rushing by. It was drizzling outside, but that didn’t stop the vibrant colors of fall on the trees — amber and every shade of green imaginable showed up on the trees and shrubs, lush in every acre. Once we left the city limits, it was obvious how much of the state was still mostly untouched in development. It felt limitless, wild, and above all — free.

This is what Eve had looked forward to most. She wanted to see as much of the state as possible over the next ten, fifteen, or twenty years, knowing full well we’d never be able to see it all in a lifetime. That was part of what intrigued her about it; knowing there were parts of Alaska that no living person had probably ever seen before. The place is twice the size of Texas, and much of it isn’t even accessible. But she wanted to try.

On our drive to Seattle for that trip, we stopped at so many places along the way. We passed through Salt Lake City and its surrounding areas, and up into Idaho, where we stopped for trails and odd tourist traps. I still have hundreds of pictures stored in my phone from all of those stops. She wanted to see everything we possibly could in the time we had.

Maybe she knew what was coming.

I dozed off a couple hours into the drive, having not slept much the night before, and when I woke we were almost to the lodge where we would stay for the next three nights while exploring the surrounding park areas.

“Where are you from?” I heard a voice say next to me, and I sat up straighter and looked over. It was a woman, one of the couples, who looked motherly but in a tough love sort of way. She had short blonde hair coiffed neatly a few inches above her head, and she wore dark eyeliner, light pink eyeshadow and red lipstick. She wore outdoor gear that looked brand new, and I wondered if she’d just bought new gear or if this was an uncommon outing for her. If it was the latter, she might be in for a long trip.

“Boulder,” I said. “Colorado.”

“Oh, wonderful!” she said. “We’re from North Carolina. This is much more familiar to you than it is to us. I’m Vicky, by the way.”

I shook her extended hand and smiled. “Grace.”

“How come you’re here all by yourself?” she asked in a drawl. “Shouldn’t you have a fella or a friend with you?”

I felt my expression sour, and Vicky could see it too. “Oh I’m sorry, my big mouth. There’s no shame in seeing this beautiful place with just yourself along!”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I was supposed to come here last year with my sister, but it never happened. So I just came by myself.”

“Good for you. Life is too short to wait on other people. But if you’d like to tag along with Joe and me at any point, he’s my husband over there, you are more than welcome.”

“Thanks.”

We pulled up to the lodge, a huge structure made of light, refined wood and plenty of bay windows on each side. It was a stark image in front of the green-covered mountains behind, which were already tinged with white snow at the tops. But the sky was clear and the air was even more crisp as I climbed out of the van.

Colorado air is generally clean and clear, but something about the air in Alaska felt even more pure. Like it didn’t know what pollution was like, had never experienced such a blight in its atmosphere. I took a deep breath and smelled notes of pine and sage.

Peter explained a few logistics and plans before we headed inside as a group, telling us to meet for dinner later in the kitchen area, where we would meet the rest of our tour guides for the events in the coming days. I walked in, feeling myself momentarily hesitate at the doorway. I wasn’t sure I was ready to do all of this alone.

The floors were a similar light wood, polished to a shine, and the walls were adorned with rustic decorations, including a stuffed moose head on the wall above a grand fireplace that was encased with large, smooth stones. Plush chairs and sofas were positioned around the fireplace, along with cozy-looking blankets and a bookshelf with classic titles like White Fang, The Hatchet and other outdoor-focused or Alaskan novels.

The rooms were dotted along a hallway to the left, and I made my way toward my assigned suite. I hadn’t cared at the time what room I received, so when I opened the door, it was startling to see two queen beds. I imagined it was rare for someone to truly come on this trip alone, so single bed rooms probably were either hard to come by or nonexistent.

The room was a comfortable size, with a window looking out at the crowded mountains in the distance. The comforters on the bed were a dark red with forest green blankets at the foot of the bed. A few scenic pictures adorned the walls, including a bear catching salmon in the middle of a river, and moose in the middle of a marshy expanse. I walked toward the window and saw a trail was situated maybe a quarter mile from the lodge marked by a trailhead sign amid a few tall grasses.

Eve and I once hiked a trail in Fort Collins where we didn’t get any cell reception, and five miles in, we were completely lost. It was a steep trail that was smattered with muddy areas that made it difficult to keep our footing, and dark clouds loomed in the distance, threatening a thunderstorm. I guessed we had taken the wrong fork about a mile back on the trail, but we couldn’t seem to find it again. We half-jokingly blamed each other for the confusion and held each other’s hands through the muddy spots, laughing and yelling out when our feet slipped beneath us.

The thunderstorm reached us just before we found the fork again and started to backtrack, and rain poured down in steady sheets. I tried to pull my jacket up over my head for cover, but gave up after becoming drenched anyway.

We both screamed as thunder boomed overhead and drowned us out. We reached the car at last after at least 20 minutes in the storm, and I fumbled with the keys to the car.

“Hurry up!” Eve had shrieked from the passenger side.

“I’m trying!” I yelled back, and popped the door open. We clambered inside and shut the doors, and immediately started laughing. We both looked awful, with mascara running on our cheeks and hair sloppy and soaking. My shoes were waterproof, but enough water had seeped into my socks that they felt like sponges on my feet.

“You look super attractive right now,” Eve told me.

“You should talk. Take a look.”

I flipped the passenger side mirror down in front of her, and she collapsed into giggles.

Because Eve and I were always hiking trails and going on trips, it wasn’t difficult to convince my mother that I was just going on a trip that I had intended to take with Eve. I told her I knew Eve would have wanted me to go, and that was enough for her to understand. She would worry, but she always worried. She had no real reason to expect anything other than seeing me in a couple months again for winter break.

I covered my tracks as well as I could when it came to school. I hadn’t attended since last fall, right after Thanksgiving, but I managed to get my hands on copies of syllabi through my friends so I could keep up pretenses when my mother asked about school work and progress toward my natural resources degree. I looked up the name of counselors at the university and found one I claimed to be meeting with once a week. She had enough she was dealing with on an emotional level that she didn’t have the space to recognize if I was lying or ask for more details, which was good, because I wasn’t a very good liar when pressed. She also had two other children to focus on.

Growing up, we were a close family, including my father. We often went camping in a small RV that my parents would sleep in while the rest of us slept in a tent outside, staying up until all hours playing card games and eating copious amounts of candy while trying not to bicker too loudly and get in trouble. My two younger siblings, Olivia and Caleb, were often the targets of the bickering with Eve and me. Since Eve and I were only a year and a half apart and Olivia and Caleb were twins four years younger than us, it was often a two-on-two battle with the four of us. The older “We were here first” army against the younger “We shared a womb” force. But there was nothing we wouldn’t do for each other, even if we grumbled about it in the process.

Camping as kids is what sparked Eve and I to take our own adventures in the past four years, once we were on our own and going to the same college. Olivia and Caleb enjoyed camping, but they weren’t as interested in the outdoors in general. They were seniors in high school now, and Olivia planned to study nursing while Caleb wanted to be a web developer. Both of them had bright futures ahead of them, and they were young enough that they could move past losing a sibling. Or two. They had each other, and eventually Mom would be okay too because she had them. They would all be better off in the end.

I wasn’t sure when or if my father would ever know what happened to me. He abruptly left my mother and us for another woman when I was 15, and I hadn’t spoken to him in years. Olivia talked to him occasionally, but as far as I knew, she was the only one who bothered. He sometimes sent birthday cards and Christmas money, but that was it. None of us ever understood exactly how he could leave all of us behind and for the most part not look back. I overheard my mother say “mid-life crisis” a few times to her friends and Aunt Terri, but she made sure all of us understood it wasn’t our fault and she asked counselors at our schools to meet with us and make sure we were doing okay. And we were, because we had my mom. My dad had never really been anything but a buddy to us — she was the rock and glue.

I changed from leggings and a top to jeans and a sweatshirt to look more presentable for dinner, and ran a brush through my hair. In the morning, we would head out on a two-day backpacking excursion into a remote area of Denali, so I sorted through my things and set aside what I wanted to bring in my backpack. As I was strategically stuffing long-sleeved shirts and pants inside, my cellphone started to vibrate on the bed.

I debated for a minute whether I wanted to answer, but picked it up anyway.

“Hi Caleb.”

“Hey!” he greeted, moving from a noisy area to a quieter one. I guessed he was leaving school. “I just wanted to say hi and see how Alaska is so far.”

“It’s good,” I said blandly. “I haven’t been here long, we’ve mostly been driving today. I’m headed down to dinner in a little bit.”

“What’s for dinner?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to hide an irritated tone. “Probably salmon or something.”

“Cool.”

He was quiet for a minute, and I raised my brows even though he couldn’t see them. “Did you need something?” I asked.

Finally he let out a soft sigh and dropped the overly friendly tone for a more serious one. “Look, I just wanted to give you a head’s up that Melissa knows you dropped out of school last year.”

I felt a flash of panic, but it quickly dissipated with the thought that it wouldn’t matter in a couple weeks anyway. Melissa was a friend of Mom’s who had a daughter in her first year at the same college Eve and I went to, so I wasn’t surprised that someone eventually found me out. Her daughter, Jenny, had contacted me a few times to see if I could meet for coffee and show her around, and I made up excuses until she stopped asking. I stupidly told her which classes I was supposedly taking this semester, and she must have asked around with people and found out I was lying.

“Well, I’ll just have to deal with the consequences I guess,” I told Caleb. “It could only go on for so long anyway. It’s time to fess up.”

“Melissa will probably call you first is all I’m saying,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to be blindsided.”

Tears pricked at my eyes, but I bit them back. “Thanks, Caleb,” I said as normally as I could. “You’re a good brother.”

“Shut up, sap.” He was quiet again, then asked gently, “How are you, you know, doing with things up there? This whole trip and all.”

“I’m fine,” I answered a little too forcefully. “It’s not a big deal. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“All right, just thought I’d ask.”

I hated this conversation. Every second of it. I hated keeping this secret, knowing I was going to hurt them, even if ultimately I knew it was better for them. He truly was a good brother, and I was going to let him down just like everyone else. I wanted to explain it to him, but I couldn’t find the words that would make him understand.

“I should probably get going,” I said. “Say hi to Olivia for me, okay?”

“Okay, I will. Don’t get eaten by anything out there. Talk to you later.”

“Caleb?”

“What?”

I looked outside momentarily, out at the clouds hanging over the peaks. Knowing this was probably the last time I would ever speak to him.

“I love you, brat.”

“Love you too, jerk. Bye.”

[kmozymoz]

The Last Sunset

Prologue

Ten minutes left.

When I first made this decision, this moment seemed so far away. I doubted the idea of waiting at all because it seemed like such an agonizing stretch looming in front of me. And now that it’s here…

I wish I had more time.

I try to banish the thought before even finishing it. I said this wouldn’t happen. I said regardless of what occurred in those thirty days, I was going to do this. It’s what I want. It’s what has to happen.

I pick up the full bottle of oxycodone and dump it out on the bed, then do the same with the hydrocodone. A fifth of vodka rests on the nightstand, ready to make the combination extra lethal. I reach for the bottle with trembling hands in an attempt to give myself courage. I fumble with the cap before taking a swig and grimace when it burns down my throat. Five minutes left.

And I see him again.

That stupid, beautiful face giving me that stupid, wounded stare. Knowing what I’m about to do. Thinking I’ll change my mind if I’m reminded of every awful, wonderful kiss, and every kind thing he ever said. Every weak second I ever spent imagining a future with him. Every word echoing loudly in my mind.

“Don’t you wish we had more time?”

No. This is bigger than a month of nostalgic emotions. The fact that I feel this way is just another reason to end it – the whole thing will end in heartbreak, and I’ll find myself in the same place I am now.

I check the time on my phone, and my stomach turns when I see it reads 11:58. My chest starts to hurt from how much my heart is pounding, and I have to take a few shallow, shaky breaths to calm myself enough to focus.

I grab a fistful of pills, ignoring the few that tumble out of my unsteady hands.

11:59.

Midnight.