We had unplugged the phone and ignored the first couple of knocks, but eventually my father had the front desk make an extra key. I groaned when I heard it slide through the lock and open our door.
"Rise and shine, children!" he called, pulling the blankets from our beds. "Your mother's ready and wants to leave in ten minutes. So hurry up!" He unlocked the adjoining door and left it open, bellowing a firm reminder. "Ten minutes!"
I got up, showered in the shortest shower I'd taken since summer camp in the fifth grade, and examined my reddened eyes and nose in the foggy mirror.
Why was I crying? In the tender moments before fully waking, I had been without my tough outer-shell and victim to tears. I remembered that I had, indeed, loved Caleb more than it would ever matter to recall, because it obviously had never been enough. Part of me wanted to let the pain leave me in its most natural form, yet another part feared it would never truly leave and I would forever cry. It was easy to forget in the early hours of the morning, when the day was fresh and beautiful, that I wasn't supposed to love Caleb anymore.
I dried my thick hair with a towel and admired how long it had grown since I'd cut it last. Even if my eyes were a dull shade of bluish-grey and my skin tone was only really nice in the summer, at least I could be proud of my hair. I added some mascara to my lashes and was ready to go after saturating my locks with some leave-in conditioner. They had the delightful habit of drying in gentle waves, so I refused to use a blow dryer if it wasn't freezing.
Once we got downstairs to the breakfast hall, I'd moved past being sad and miserable and embraced feeling numb. I got some oatmeal and coffee and sat opposite my brother, who somehow always managed to eat at least one serving of everything the hotel had to offer. My mom pulled up a chair and sat on my left.
"You guys sleep well?" she asked.
Adam nodded and pointed to the chocolate muffin stuffed inside his mouth.
"Adam," she chided, sighing for his lack of table manners. She turned to me. "What about you Charli?" Her expression was hopeful as it searched for some kind of forgiveness on my end. After all, I knew she wanted to make amends. Resentment had already brought me to the point of exhaustion, so I answered in my usual, bored tone to let her know I wasn't that mad anymore.
"Fine, I guess."
"All right, everybody, finish up," my dad called, flipping the ring of keys to our rental car around on his finger. "We've got about a half-hour drive to the reservation and I'm not sure exactly where to go, so we'd better head out soon."
Dad scrolled through his iPhone, trying to study the map while meandering to the car in the Birkenstock sandals he always wore on vacation. He came home from our last trip to Hawaii with brown and white feet because he only took them off before going into the ocean. Whenever I saw them in his closet at home, I remembered fun times baking in the sun and the smell of seawater in my hair. They didn't belong here; in that moment, I hated those sandals for not knowing their place. This was not a vacation.
We pulled onto the two-lane highway and chugged down the road with nothing to see save for the earth and sky. The blades of grass rippled beneath the caress of a delicate breeze, reminding me of my bizarre dream of whales and a yellow sea. It was less disturbing now. Under a brilliant sky, the whole thing seemed more like a hazy memory. I kept thinking about it anyway.
Before I knew it, we were pulling into a parking lot and I hadn't said a word the entire time. I got out of the car and listened to the wispy echo of slamming doors resound somewhere beyond me. We were in the middle of nowhere, standing before Sitting Bull College. There was nothing remarkable about its appearance. I had seen a concrete building with classrooms before. It was the quiet world around the school that was something of a wonder. It was almost like nothing existed—nothing but the wind. It was that very wind that made this smooth land so mystical.
"Rowan will be along shortly. We're a little early I think." Mom checked her phone for the time.
"That's the dude we're supposed to meet?" Adam asked and Mom nodded. "They gonna feed us?"
No one had the chance to ask him why he was hungry already when he'd eaten half an hour ago because a man in cowboy boots and faded jeans came sauntering toward us, waving.
"You must be Patty," the man said as he grasped my mother's hand. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened when he flashed a warm smile. I observed him in quick, subtle glances—the long black braid woven with several strands of gray, the rugged attire. He carried himself with an air of grace. He couldn't have been much older than my parents, but still had the calm of a very old wise man.
"Allow me to take you for a tour!" Rowan continued and we followed him through the main passageway of the school.
Despite the generic exterior, I was surprised by how foreign everything inside seemed. Even the paintings hung along the corridors captured the essence of a culture different from the one I had known back home. The director was gracious enough to answer our questions about the customs of his school and of the Native people still living on the Sioux reservation between North and South Dakota. He seemed pleased by our earnest interest. Even mine was earnest at this point. Despite resenting my new predicament and the constant sting of anxiety, I was abandoning my angry mask. Especially when I heard about the winter ride the young Sioux descendants still made to Wounded Knee in honor of those who were lost. We were surprised to learn they still taught the kids how to hunt buffalo. It was so captivating. A life like Rowan's was not something I had ever known much about and I was going to ask more questions when I saw my mother sling her backpack around her side to access its contents.
"I'm sure you're anxious to have this back, Rowan." She pulled out the rolled-up blanket and held it out to Rowan with both her arms extended, dropping the empty backpack with disregard. I thought he was going to give us a fur or something, like a typical bartering scene you'd see in a movie about Native Americans, but he only smiled without taking the offering. I figured he didn't want to seem too eager to snatch it from her hands.
He ran his hand over his chin as he leaned forward with curiosity. "Would you show me?" A subtle shade of pink blotted my mother's cheeks while she tucked her short blonde locks behind her ears. She managed to unwrap the pipe without dropping it and once again held it out before him, a small token of his peoples' history sitting in a stranger's palms.
I gawked at the pipe again, feeling that strange urge to run a curious finger across its surface. I suppose I had seen it many times, tucked away at the back of the china cabinet behind porcelain dolls with blonde hair, I had just never been drawn to it as I was now. Thinking back, I tried to remember if there had ever been a time I would have, for whatever reason, held it in my palms. I couldn't think of any.
"Beautiful condition, Mrs. Ohana. You've been taking good care of it." The gratitude in his twinkling eyes was stronger than his simple words, and finally, he took the relic from her hands to examine its impeccable shape.
I thought we were going to shake hands and leave, until Rowan gave the peace pipe back to my mother.
Oh crap. It really is a wagon spoke, my brain was screaming at this point. Fortunately, I was wrong again.
"Would you be willing to come to a ceremony with the pipe? It would be a tribute to our ancestors and the many lives lost—a cleansing. I spoke with the council and they agree that you and your family should be a part of it... of course, if you're willing."
Dad smiled and Mom was silent at first. I knew her silence meant her inner self was screaming with excitement, but Rowan misunderstood.
"Oh! But if you don't want to, we entirely understand. I just thought, maybe—"
"We would be honored to be part of the ceremony!" Mom finally blurted, reaching for my dad's hand with her eyes glazed. "When would it be?"
"Later today. Here, at the school. There's a small meeting hall beside the gymnasium where it's going to take place."
Mom rolled the pipe up in its soft home with a small degree of hesitance. I could tell she wasn't quite sure if she had understood him correctly. Only when he shook all of our hands again and left for his office did she put it away with a sigh. Mom chattered the entire way back to the hotel. She talked about the ceremony and all the other things we'd do until it was time to return to the school. I just tried to ignore her. Her voice dulled until it became little more than background noise and my thoughts began to wander.
I had trouble admitting it to myself at first: I wanted to hear Caleb's voice again. I wanted one final goodbye, even if he was an ass. The news of his fling with Carly, in my head, somehow changed our dead relationship. Instead of saying goodbye to a cheating jerk, I'd held hands and hugged and cried. Now, I needed a new kind of closure.
"All right kids, Dad's got a headache. So we're all just going to rest in our rooms a little before we head out for more adventures, kay?" Mom announced as we trudged down the hallways when we got back to the hotel.
"I don't know, Mom. Charli told me she really wanted to see the white buffalo calf like right now," Adam teased, putting both his hands on my shoulders while standing behind me. "Maybe I could stay here and keep Dad company while you girls run off and go sight-seeing!"
I didn't care if he was kidding. I shrugged off his touch. "Shut up, Adam! I don't want to see anything, ok? Everyone just leave me alone!"
I ran into the room and slammed the door in their faces, something I felt a little bad about seconds later. As a tear rolled down my face, nothing else mattered.
Stop crying like a baby! I decided to hop in the shower, so I wouldn't have to face Adam when he came in from the hall where I knew he was having a talk with Mom.
The hot water warmed my insides as it beat against my skin and drenched my thick hair for the second time that day. Closing my eyes, I pretended I was swimming in the sea under a tropical sun and soaking up a tan that would make the fake 'n' bake queens of Grandeur High cringe with jealousy—especially since I wouldn't have little white crease lines around my armpits.
When I heard the heavy hotel door open and close in spite of the water's steady white noise, I came back to the room that smelled altogether too much like cheap cleaning chemicals and the remnants of cigarette smoke. I grabbed a towel and headed for my suitcase for a pair of clean underwear.
"Why do you have to be such a princess, Charlotte?"
Oh, Lord, here it comes. Adam only ever called me by my loathsome first name when he was pissed at me. I didn't want to fight with him now, not when boy issues were torturing me. I grabbed my stuff and went into the bathroom to dress without a word. I came back out to find him still ready to lecture.
"I mean it's like, we all get it: you don't want to live in North Dakota, la dee daa, and Mom's... well, Mom's crazy... but this is really important to her and you're being such a little brat about it all."
"Are you done?"
I shot him an icy glare that was proving hard to melt. I didn't want to feel so angry inside anymore but the stubborn part of me wouldn't let it go. This was going to require force. I was going to have to pretend that my heart wasn't swollen with a wound that refused to be ignored.
"I'm... sorry. I guess I'm just in a bad mood because..." I was going to cut myself off right there and blame it on hormones, when the pressure of sealed emotion broke me. "Caleb was messing around with some other girl. I just always thought we were so perfect for each other. I never saw it coming..."
Adam looked down and nodded slowly. He had just belittled me for being melodramatic about the move, but now that he could see the actual hurt in my face, he turned into the compassionate brother I'd always known.
"Ah, man. What an idiot... And Mom always thought he was so perfect..." His thick brows forged a subtle frown. "You remember my high school girlfriend?"
"Lainey? Yeah, I remember her. You thought you were going to marry that girl!" In that moment when I found the idea of Adam marrying his high school sweet heart ridiculous, it hit me. Lainey dumping my brother to head off to college had done more damage than he had ever admitted. "Oh..."
"We were like you and Caleb, Charli—always hugging and touching—and sometimes we would just stand in the rain kissing like the whole world around us didn't exist." Adam smiled at one corner of his mouth and studied his shoes a little longer before looking back at me. "But life goes on."
My throat tightened, and I felt another bout of tears sting my nose.
"You may have a hard fall to pick yourself up from, but when you do, you'll see how it made you better. You'll take away what you've learned, what you loved, and forget the rest." When he paused again, I could almost see the ghostly memory of Lainey twinkling in his eyes. "I do know Caleb's a tool for letting you go. Do you know how many friends I've had to beat down for checking you out?"
I smiled at my brother and wiped away the last tear as it crawled down my neck.
"I'm going to see if they have any of those cookies in the lobby. Do you want to come?" I asked.
"I need to take a shower, but will you bring me one. No, no, seven, bring me seven!"
"I'm not stuffing my purse full of cookies, Adam. I'll look like a pig. And a weird one, at that. You get two."
"Ah, what? C'mon, Charli, I'll give you a dollar."
"Two, or none."
"A dollar fifty?"
"Two, or none!"
"Ok, ok, fine," he said. Just as the door closed, I heard him shout. "Bring me milk!"
The Native man working at the lobby counter had just put out the cookies, so I took four and asked for directions to the nearest vending machine. It was at the end of a long hallway beside a glass door that led to the parking lot. I was totally stoked to find milk in the carton. That's when I saw a heavy shadow flicker in the corner of my eye.
What in the world was that? It had appeared to be a huge animal. I stepped closer and tried to see past the cars in the lot, but saw only waving grass, some bushes and trees.
Two dark eyes appeared on the other side of the glass, penetrating the indoor lights reflected on its surface with a frightening intensity. I jumped back and practically choked on the morsel of cookie in my mouth. The eyes stared at me for a moment, paralyzing me with surprise and a sudden tinge of fear, until I realized they belonged to a man asking me to open the door.
"S-Sorry... You startled me," I said in a quiet voice and opened the door with caution as the tall young man stepped through the threshold. He had long, dark hair flowing around his shoulders and black eyes like I'd never seen. With a single feather nestled in his mane and a rather antique outfit to boot, he didn't look like most modern-day Lakota. His gaze was both captivating and intimidating.
"Thank you," he replied gruffly before stalking toward the lobby receptionist.
I tried to regain my breath. I wasn't sure if he had frightened me with his powerful demeanor or if I had been stunned by his overwhelmingly handsome face. While high cheekbones and black brows surrounded large angular eyes, a strong jaw and masculine nose complimented lips with the perfect amount of plump. Beneath the dim hallway light, he had the air of a god—striking, powerful, and dangerous.
I felt compelled to follow this stranger, keeping out of sight behind him as he turned to speak, in what I presumed to be Lakota, with the man who had given me cookies. Of course, I couldn't understand them, but the receptionist choked on his words and fiddled with his watch. I watched as the first man brought out another, much older, Sioux. The old man eyed the stranger's face with fear and awe—petrified by the sight of him, yet too engrossed to turn away. The elder continued to answer what sounded like questions before the stranger turned to leave.
He left the same way he'd come, passing me with another captivating silent exchange, a signal to note I hadn't been as inconspicuous as I had hoped. And, once again, I couldn't breathe.
"What was that all about, Timothy?" I heard the young man ask in English.
"They're back. And for good reason." A heavy silence followed his ominous answer. "But they need something... It's... it's near..." The old man was speaking more to himself, and it was hard to discern if he was relieved or terrified from the expression on his face.
I raced for the elevator and pressed three. My room felt so far away. I just wanted to go to my brother and listen to him tell me I was crazy for freaking out about nothing. Adam was passed out when I got to the room. No matter how I tried to pass the time, I was haunted by the man's piercing black eyes, hypnotic and disturbing.