Page 85 of Tangled up in You

See? I can be flexible. As long as I plan for it.

By the time her laundry finished she was yawning but forced herself to fold, roll, and stow everything in the backpack so she knew how it would fit. That took her another hour, because she wanted it to be right, to be able to carry as much as possible without it crushing her. And she packed her clothes in the plastic bags to help keep them dry. She also packed half of her food rations she’d purchased weeks ago and brought with her after testing multiple options. The other half would go on the packs with the equipment cases. As they installed sensors, she would lighten her pack by moving things to the empty equipment cases.

The single-person tent would feel confining to sleep in, but hopefully she’d only be camping eight nights, at the most. She also knew she’d likely feel so exhausted at the end of each day that falling asleep would come easy. And if a night was warm enough, she’d sleep in the open. Her plan was to take an easy path to cut through and tackle the farthest sensor station first, at the western end of the line, and then work their way back east, because the farthest sensor positions were the more important ones. That way, if weather proved to be an issue, she could more easily access the ones closer to the trailhead at a later time.

After setting an alarm she settled in with her sleep mask, ear plugs, and a white-noise app playing on her phone.

This project was her baby, her passion. If it worked, it meant making a name for herself aside from being tech billionaire Gudbrand Klevenson’s daughter. She knew some people would attribute her success to her neurodivergency, trying to slap a “savant” label on her, when the opposite was true. Thanks to her mother’s early guidance and her father’s persistence abouther having the very best educational support, she’d developed resourceful skills.

Mom, I wish you were here to see this.

Finally, she felt her brain start to wind down. She had a drive ahead of her, an adventure.

Tomorrow I am determined to have fun.

Whatever the hellthatmeant.

The next morning,after eating breakfast and returning the “unwearables” to the store, Jesse topped off the BMW’s gas tank and set out eastward on what she tried not to think of as “Jesse’s Big Adventure.”

She deliberately chosenotto plan this part of her journey, no schedule or reservations or expectations, because she didn’t want to set herself up for a meltdown if her plans went to crap.

Like the narrowly averted meltdown at the airport over the unexpected change in personnel and the snafu with her car reservation.

Which…to be honest, now that she was on the interstate and cruising merrily along, she was kind of digging the reservation goof. The BMW handled well, felt comfortable driving, and by the time she reached the Idaho/Montana state line she was actually singing along with ABBA on a random satellite radio station she’d landed on.

Personal growth, yay!

The weather was so pleasant and the car handled so nicely she opted to cruise all the way through to Livingston and find a room there for the night. It was a quaint town north of Yellowstone, and she could walk around and sightsee.

And she could even use her new hiking boots and jacket.

This was something she rarely took time to do. If she was going somewhere, shewent. She usually spent as little time as possible on the actual journey somewhere.

I need to make myself do uncomfortable things.

Now that she was about to become a big sister, she needed to work on her flexibility. A small town like Livingston was the perfect place to make an attempt to do just that. Someplace new, someplace where she didn’t know anyone.

It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy “going out” for recreation, but it wasn’t uncommon for the experience to overwhelm her so much she didn’t enjoy it at the time, and only in retrospect after processing the events did she realize she’d enjoyed the activity.

Just not while the activity was in progress.

There’d been times she’d envied her neurotypical classmates who could spontaneously make and change plans, sometimes multiple times in the space of a few minutes, and effortlessly shift gears to be flexible with the changes.

She wasn’t like that.

Correction—she wasn’t like that about activities. When it came to her work, she followed the science, the facts, the results. She could absolutely be flexible there, whether it meant retooling an algorithm, or changing a sensor design, whatever was needed to reach the final goal.

But she absolutely wanted to work on improving her flexibility at a personal level.

She couldn’t go back in time and spend more time with her mom or work harder as a daughter to assure her father he did fine with her. Maybe there was room for her to build stronger ties with him, with Josie, and with her new sibling.

Jesse browsed antique shops and museums, and walked along the river, watching its cold snow-melt waters rushing in its banks. When she stopped for ice cream at a cute little shop, she noticed several fliers posted on a board by the register.

One advertised a local band playing at a bar that night.

She pointed at the flier. “Are they any good?” she asked the clerk.

“Oh, yeah. They play a bunch of stuff, covers and original music. Sort of a mix of country and indie rock.”

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