She leafs through the loose papers until she finds a plain piece of printer paper with a sketch of a desert sunset.
The pink’s not quite right, too light, watery as a washed wound.īeck unearths her mother’s notes from her backpack and sighs, wipes away the sweat beaded on her nose. But there’s something about the sky just now that eats at Beck. The goal was to soar down the coast, tear past LA, and get to Arizona without stopping. She shouldn’t have pulled over, not when they’re almost there. The world is all one long horizon, unchanging even as dusk washes the sky pink. They crossed the California border in Yuma three hours ago, but parked on the sloped shoulder of the highway, it feels like it’s been days since she saw another car.
Deep in the desert, the road is like a weathered conveyor belt, rolling the car through an unchanging backdrop of red dirt and sky. There’s no deer crossing signs, no falling rock warnings-actually, Beck can’t think of the last sign she saw on this highway.
Roads in the Southwest aren’t like the roads back in Washington, all tunneled with trees so thick you can’t see the sky. She holds a hand up to block the light from her eyes, palm facing the sun, and she feels the last heat of the day die behind the jagged horizon. She’s got that twitch in her calves, the kind that scuttles through her legs and begs her to get moving beyond the shift of her foot from the gas pedal to the brakes. In Arizona, on the road between nowhere and somewhere, there is a moment where sunrise and sunset look the same.
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