Into Nothingness

Bailey Sasseville Into

Nothingness

The sky here was so vast, so clear, that when you looked directly upwards you could almost see the blue turning to black where the gases bound to Earth were the thinnest and gave way to the vacuum of space above. The desert was a nearly flat expanse of sand and scrub, with only a few slight rises and falls, and a mountain range so far in the distance I thought I could drive forever and never reach it. The road stretched like a ribbon in front of me, on and on into infinity, or until the heat warped the air so much that it just wavered into nothingness. Other than the cacti and bushes, I was the only living thing in my view. No coyotes, or lizards, or snakes, or hares, or even hawks. No people. About half an hour ago I had passed a dusty Jeep going the opposite way, but since then I had seen nothing before or behind me, even though I had driven for miles and miles. Out here, speed limits didn’t matter. You were only constrained by your fear, and I had none. I would not die today. It was well after midday, and the temperature had probably reached a hundred degrees, but I had the A/C off and the windows down, my skin alternately burned by the boiling sun and cooled by the drag of wind. I didn’t mind how uncomfortable it was, or how sweat soaked my bra and rolled down my back, sticking my skin to the vinyl of the car seat. I wanted to feel everything, cram these last days full to the brim with feeling, even the bad. A day before my ninth birthday my grandma had come to the trailer park to babysit me. We were sitting on the couch watching cartoons. My mother worked long hours and was never home until after I went to sleep, so most of my time in those days was spent with my grandmother. I had almost

fallen asleep, lulled by the drone of the television and the warmth of her arm around me, when suddenly she gasped, and brought a hand up to her mouth to stifle a cry. I looked up at her in confusion, then at the TV to see if something on it had made her react like that, but it was just a commercial. She pressed a kiss to my forehead and gave me a tremulous smile. I thought she might have been crying. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “Everything’s alright.” Content to believe her, I closed my eyes. For the next month, though, things were different. Grandma was in our trailer constantly, singing and cooking and telling me stories. She told me about her childhood, how she had grown up on a farm with only brothers for siblings. She told me about meeting my grandfather, and losing him. She told me how the women in our family always knew when they were soon to die. She told me lots of things, and I don’t remember most of them, because I didn’t know how important everything she was saying was to her, to me. And then she died. I didn’t understand it, not really, until a week ago when I was pulled from my sleep in the middle of the night by a single conviction that reverberated in my head and my heart so staunchly I knew it had to be true: I would die, soon. I could feel the event drawing relentlessly closer to me, hurtling like a runaway train while I was tied to the tracks, unable to do anything but watch as the sound of the engine grew louder and the iron rails vibrated under me. I was terrified of how it would happen. Would it be painful, or like falling asleep? Would I be aware of every second? Would it be from stepping out in front of a car, or tripping on a loose stone and splitting my skull? But more than that, I was afraid of dying here and now, alone in a dingy trailer park I’d never left, an inconsequential end to my short and miserable life. I decided to leave. When I died, I would still be alone, but instead of spending my last days brooding in the trailer

and cleaning up my mother’s beer bottles, I would have seen something of the world—mountains, maybe, bodies of water bigger than a pond. I would be part of it. I packed a bag and took my grandmother’s truck from where it had been sitting, untouched, beside our trailer since her death nine years ago. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew that no matter which turns I took, one way or another, I was going to meet my end.

A few hours later, when the sun had just sunk below the Earth but the world was still bright, I pulled into a lonely gas station, miles away from any other buildings or houses or roads splintering off in other directions. After pumping gas I went inside to buy water and snacks. The cashier was an old man wearing a blue uniform that looked faded from years of wear, and a nametag that read “Carl.” He moved slowly as he punched in the prices for my chips, his hands covered with liver spots, clouded eyes peering through thick glasses. The longer I looked, the more I thought I saw a thin layer of dust sitting on his shoulders and in the deep-set wrinkles of his forehead, as if he had been sitting behind the counter for the last 50 years, only moving to accept cash from the rare customer. When I went back out, I saw a girl walking up to the station, wearing hiking boots, shorts, and a tank top, slumped under a heavy backpack. She looked like she had just arrived, though no other cars had passed, and there was no way I would have missed seeing her on the road for miles in either direction. Only slightly less weird was the small brown chicken tucked under one arm. Her eyes met mine and she began walking towards me. I hurriedly opened my car door and threw my purchases in. Whatever was going on with her, I didn’t want to get involved. “Hey,” she called. Halfway into my car, I reluctantly turned. She looked less strange than I had first thought. She

was probably my age, right on the edge between teen and adult. Her short brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but at least half of it had fallen out. Her skin was deeply tanned, with a light smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hat had an image of a horse over the text “Oasis High Stallions.” “Can I get a ride?” she asked. “I can trade you this chicken.” She held it up. It looked at me with tiny, beady eyes, and clucked softly. “Oh, uh, sorry, I don’t need a chicken.” What did she expect me to do with a live chicken? Besides, I wasn’t in the habit of picking up random strangers who mysteriously appeared at gas stations in the middle of nowhere. I turned away and got into my truck, and tried to ignore her while I put on my seatbelt and turned on the engine. As I was about to put the truck in drive, something made me glance back at her. She looked crestfallen. No, more like she was pouting. If I was honest, I would have been pouting in her situation, too. I had the only visible car—I didn’t even see one for the cashier—and night was falling. I sighed. Other than the chicken, she looked like any other kid from the trailer park. She probably wasn’t hiding guns or drugs in her backpack. She looked too nice. Her soft brown eyes were innocent, not dangerous. “I’ll give you a ride anyways,” I said. The girl grinned at me so wide her eyes nearly closed. She had a dimple on her right cheek. She jogged around to the passenger side and climbed in, throwing her backpack at her feet. The chicken sat on her lap, staring at me, while she buckled up. “Is it riding up here?” I asked nervously. I had never been in close contact with a chicken, but its beak looked sharper than I had thought one would be. “Yep, she is,” the girl said, stroking the bird’s head lovingly.

“I’m Olive, by the way.” We had been sitting in silence for an hour. I didn’t like breaking awkward silences, while she hadn’t even seemed to notice it was awkward. “I’m Phoebe,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe.” She turned that brilliant smile on me once again, then went back to petting her chicken and staring out the window. Not wanting to fall back into a lull, I said, “Can I ask why you have a chicken?” Olive laughed, lifting one hand to brush back hair that had been pushed into her face by the wind. “She was walking on the side of the road so I just went and picked her up. I didn’t want her to get eaten by a coyote or anything. She’s too cute for that. I named her Lucy—she looks like a Lucy, don’t you think?” I didn’t generally think chickens looked like they had names, but I nodded. We sat in silence for another long stretch of road. Though I had been suspicious of her at the gas station, I now felt intrigued. I wanted to know why she was out here on her own, without even a car, but with a chicken. Was she running away from something, like I was? Or was she going toward some predetermined destination? Abruptly, Olive turned back to me. “So, where are we going?” she asked. I floundered for a second, and she laughed again. “I mean, where are you going?” “Nowhere, really. Just kind of driving.” “What, like a road trip?” I shrugged. That was better than the mess of reasons I had come up with when I had stolen the truck in the middle of the night: I wanted to see more of the world before I died; I didn’t want to live the rest of my life in that that cramped and dirty trailer; I wanted to be alone, not that I hadn’t been before.

“Why are you driving around these backroads, then?” Olive said. “If I had a car and the power to go anywhere, I’d go somewhere interesting.” I didn’t know how to explain my fascination with the vast, uninhabited tracts of desert, the way it felt like I could see every star in the universe at night, the lonely howls of coyotes as the sun set and shadows stretched for miles. So I just said, “It’s pretty.” Olive looked at me and laughed. “Trust me, there are prettier places in the world.” When I had left home, I didn’t care where I went. I just wanted to go as far as possible. But this strange girl, who I had only known for hours, made me want to know what was worth seeing—what she thought was worth seeing. I kept my eyes on the road, on the world sprawling ahead of me, and asked, “Like where?”

A day later, we stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon. The sun was directly overhead, making the river gleam like a mirror where it weaved among the rocks far below. Olive looked at me expectantly, wisps of her hair escaping her ponytail and blowing across her face. I felt the sudden urge to reach out and tuck them behind her ear. I turned back to the canyon, stared at the birds wheeling below. “Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes. “This is better.” That night we laid down in the bed of the truck to sleep, with Lucy the chicken nesting in the passenger seat. In the morning, we’d keep heading west, toward the ocean. I’d never been there, but as a kid I’d loved listening to my grandmother tell stories about the crashing of waves, dolphins jumping, seaweed that looked like mermaid’s hair. I also liked the idea of driving as far west of the trailer park as I could, right to the end of the continent, and then on into the water. I wondered what it felt like to drown.

I should have felt uncomfortable, traveling and even sleeping in such close quarters with someone I barely knew, but it felt as easy and natural as breathing. After just a day of exchanging stories, hearing about her life on the reservation before she left, her friends and cousins and siblings, her favorite books (anything by Neil Gaiman) and least favorite color (gray), I couldn’t imagine it being any other way. Before either of us fell asleep, I finally asked the question I’d been wondering since I met her. “Why were you at that gas station?” We had both been looking up at the sky, but now Olive turned to look at me. She seemed to consider for a second, then said, “Do you believe in magic?” “I believe there are things I can’t explain with science,” I said. It was hard to find any other explanation for why my death hung constantly at the edge of my consciousness, drifting ever closer. Olive hummed. “Well, my family has this weird magic, I guess you could call it, that’s been passed down from my mother’s side. I don’t know if it’s really magic, or luck, or something else, but I’m always in the place I need to be. Sometimes I walk a mile but it turns out I’ve gone 10. Or there’s this feeling pushing me in certain directions, like to turn right when I should turn left, or to go talk to a random stranger. Whenever I do, I get this warmth, this peace, like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” She smiled a little bit. The moonlight was so strong that I could count the freckles on her nose. I didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t that I couldn’t believe the magic—if anything, it sounded like my family’s ability (or curse) to know when we’re about to die. What scared me was the implication that her turning up at that gas station, asking for a ride, was somehow a twist of fate to put her where she was supposed to be: with me. I swallowed, looked away. “Is that why you have a

chicken?” Olive burst into laughter. “Yeah, I guess we’ll need it at some point.” I fell asleep trying not to think about how she and I were now “we,” and how I was a bomb she didn’t know was ticking.

The next night, we left Lucy the chicken in the truck and sat on the beach in Santa Monica, eating soft serve ice cream as waves washed up onto our toes. To our right was the pier, flashing lights of every color, distant music playing and children laughing. Earlier we had ridden the ferris wheel, the roller coaster, and even the carousel. We had played arcade games and eaten funnel cakes. And then, as the night grew late, we bought ice cream and came to sit farther down the beach, where it was quieter. It was cooler, too, by the water. The gentle breeze combined with the ice cream raised goosebumps on my skin. Olive noticed my shiver and laughed. She pressed her strong, tanned arm against my significantly paler one, then looked up at me to smile, like she knew I had been watching her. For days I had been driving with my foot firmly on the accelerator, but now it felt nice to stop, just sit and breathe for a while. “I’m going to die. Soon,” I said. I wasn’t really planning on saying it, but it was threatening to burst out of me, and the roar of the surf, the wind, and her smiles combined to make me feel especially light and fragile, like I could blow away at any moment. “That’s shitty,” she said, finally, and I couldn’t help but laugh at how much of an understatement that was. Her eyes met mine, a kaleidoscope of colors as they reflected the lights of the pier. “But I’ll be there until the end.” And I knew that they weren’t just empty words, that she knew it as utterly as I knew my fate. The universe was supremely unfair—that was what I

had always thought. And that was probably true. But maybe it felt it owed me, too, and that was why I was here, where I was supposed to be: with Olive’s hand in mine, seeing the gentle crashing of the ocean for the first time, watching the waves fade into the edge of the world, into nothingness.