A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter thirty

t h i r t y

*

The heat only grew as Young-mi and I lounged at the base of Yosemite Falls, until it was unbearable even when we were sprawled out doing nothing. We were forced into the relative shade of the tree-lined path, which continued the trail away from the falls, carrying us into Yosemite Village. We ended up in the visitor centre's theatre for the respite of the air conditioning, before overpaying for sandwiches and fizzy drinks.

Somehow, we whiled away hour after hour as we talked and explored the village, and I managed to remember to write a postcard to Flo when we wandered past a post office. That, I admit, took quite a while. I tend to avoid writing by hand if I can, and when I do, it's virtually illegible to anyone but me – and my dad. He's developed a knack for understanding my scrawl, which looks like my own language.

Once I had painstakingly written out each letter of each word to Flo, I bought a global stamp and sent it off, and Young-mi and I ended up wandering back to our campsite.

We've been here for more than an hour now, and when it hits four o'clock, I realise it's been ten hours since Arjun tripped over my foot on his way out this morning, when he mumbled an apology and told me to go back to sleep.

"Reckon they're all ok?"

Young-mi looks up from her book, a Chinese novel with a convoluted plot that I couldn't follow when she tried to explain it to me.

"Yes. Is long hike."

"But ten hours?"

"It is very hot day, maybe they go slow. Or take long rest at top." She turns the page, her eyes drifting back to the Chinese characters that I envy her ability to understand instinctively.

"Hmm."

"Don't worry, March. I can feel your worry like spiders all over me."

I'm not worried so much as ... gentle concerned and curious, wondering what everyone else is up to right now. They must be down from Yosemite Point by now; they're probably getting food or they're on the shuttlebus, or waiting for a medevac to Modesto...

"Ma-arch," comes Young-mi's sing-song voice. She throws a pinecone at me, and these are no measly English pinecones. Yosemite fir trees are bigger, and so are their cones, which must be five times the size of the ones I've grown up around.

"Young-mi-i," I mimic. I throw the cone back; it bounces off the back of her thigh.

"Stop fussing. Arjun will be back soon; I will go and you can kiss him."

"Ok."

She smiles triumphantly as though she's just won an argument, and she goes back to her book. I plug in my earphones, and I go back to mine.

*

The book is really good. I need to remind myself to download the sequel with next month's free audiobook credit, and I also need to skip back a bit because I'm pretty sure I just fell asleep listening to it without setting a sleep timer. I've got it down to an art, now. I've figured that it usually takes me twelve minutes to fall asleep once I've gone to bed and started the audio, so every night I set it to fade out once that time's up.

But it's not night and I didn't set a timer, and I've fallen asleep on a mat in the middle of the campsite with my earphones in and my phone on my stomach. I'm jerked awake by the spiky thud of a pinecone landing on my thigh and my earphones rip out when I jump, twitching away from the impact.

This time, the pinecone isn't thrown by Young-mi, because she's not here anymore. It must have come from the tree looming over me because the only other person I can see is Arjun, and he's fast asleep on his front, just a metre away. His back rises and falls slowly as he snoozes, the occasional quiet mumble escaping his lips.