Page 27 of Secret Nights and Northern Lights
“And you would know that based off what?” I tease. “My essays from high school?”
Something flickers over his face, but it’s replaced with a smile before I can identify it. “Yes, actually. In fact, I’m pretty sure your help with my essays is the only thing that got me through junior year English.”
Already uneasy, my stomach flip-flops at the resurgence of the buried memory of us sitting at my kitchen table, me marking up his paper onThe Great Gatsbywith my favorite red pen while he smiled goofily at me like it was the most amusing thing to watch me correct his work.
“You ready to head out?” he says, bending to collect his camera bag from the ground.
With Ben all packed up, we begin our journey to the next stop on our list. Ben stays quiet in the car while I jot down some notes, but once I click my pen and tuck my notebook away, he asks, “So, how’s the rest of the Miller family these days?”
“What?Are you telling me you haven’t kept up with my brothers on the many social media pages they love to post about themselves on?”
It’s true. Unlike me, Marcus and Mason are never shy about sharing themselves with the world. Mason’s Instagram is filled with daily mirror selfies with captions like #ERDOC, #MDLIFE, and #TRAUMA. One especially thirsty post featured him wearing only scrub pants slung low and a stethoscope around his neck, captioned #HEALER. (Jacklyn willneverlet him live that one down.) But for whatever reason, his page is wildly popular.
Marcus’s page is more domesticated thanks to Carrie, mainly featuring pics of the kids at soccer practice and sunrise viewsfrom inside the state park. Regardless, either of my brothers is easy enough to find information on, and maybe Ben never cared enough to utilize social media to check up on me, but I’d be surprised if he never once looked up the twins. God knows I’ve certainly checked up on Ben every few months (days).
Ben takes a bit to answer, and when I look over at him, he’s worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “Uh, no,” he eventually says, eyes shifting to something in the rearview mirror. “I don’t follow them.”
Well. There I have it, I suppose. He could have found any information he wanted within a few taps of the screen but chose not to. Instead, Ben moved on from all of us without ever looking back, leaving me burdened with guilt because I was the person who drove him away.
“Oh, well, everyone’s good,” I say, pushing through the sudden awkwardness filling the car. “Dad’s still working too many hours in the ER, but Mason’s also a doctor now and works there with him. Marcus is a park ranger upstate, married to a beautiful, intelligent woman who is way out of his league, and they have three adorable, but equally loud, kids. And Mom spends her days babysitting the grandkids after school and unsuccessfully campaigning for my father’s retirement.”
When I glance across the console again, Ben wears a crooked grin. “Mason’s adoctor? Never would’ve seen that coming.”
“Yeah,” I agree, picturing all three boys catapulting off the dock at top speed or free-falling from the rope swing tied to an overgrown tree limb extended over the lake. “Me neither.” I lift my coffee from the cupholder and hold it over my lap as it cools, tracing my middle finger around the curved plastic top.
Ben steers us through another roundabout—incredibly common in Iceland—and clears his throat. “We, uh, had a lot of good times back then, didn’t we?”
My stomach coils into a knot. “Yeah. We did.”
The car falls quiet again, and this time I choose the stilted silence as opposed to following this conversation into treacherous territory.
A few minutes later, Ben announces, “Looks like we’re here,” as we turn into another parking lot.
Hereis the Geysir geothermal area, where set among fields of boiling mud pits and hot springs one can find the original Great Geysir as well as Strokkur. While the former rarely erupts these days, Strokuur remains active, spewing a cascade of water up to twenty meters high every six to ten minutes.
We follow a path on a short walk toward a fenced-in field where steam rises off pools of aquamarine water, ranging in size from small puddles and trickling brooks to larger pond-like springs. Cutting through the field, careful not to stray beyond any roped-off areas and risk sinking into bubbling mud, an eruption in the distance grabs my attention as a stream of water blasts skyward and then plummets back to the earth.
“Andthatwould be Strokkur,” Ben says.
Again, the thrill of a brand-new world stirs something unfamiliar inside of me, and I turn to Ben with barely contained glee. “This is so fucking cool!”
Smiling back at me, his eyes flash with enthusiasm. “Yes.Veryfucking cool.”
“Come on.” Without paying attention to what I’m doing, Igrab his wrist and tug him in the direction of the geyser, intent on seeing it up close.
We make our way to the crowd gathered near Strokkur, as close as we can get without endangering ourselves, and stand side by side in expectant silence, awaiting the next eruption. Minutes later, it happens, and I startle as the spray rockets upward with awhoosh, then rains back to the ground in heavy droplets, ending as quickly as it began. Laughter bubbles out of me, mirthful and anticipatory, like a child playing with a jack-in-the-box for the very first time. I tilt my head up to Ben, who watches my reaction with that same crooked grin from earlier.
It’s then I realize I’ve been holding his wrist this entire time.
My eyes flicker down to our hands and back up, and I release him with a murmured, “Sorry.”
“No need,” he says, grin widening, “but I should probably get some work done.”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll just be right here.” Suffering through my own embarrassment. Yet again…
Ben goes off to do his photographer thing, but I stay planted near the geyser, waiting through several more cycles and trying unsuccessfully to time each one. Even knowing it’s coming, the eruption startles me every time, and I laugh like a fool over and over again.
Eventually, Ben returns and points to a steep, muddy hill in the distance. “I need a better angle. You up for a hike?”
