Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
After parking, Amos led us over the deceptive-looking trail that started from a decent parking lot, giving you the illusion that it would be easy.
Then I saw the name on the sign and my insides paused.
Fourmile Trail.
Some people said there wasn’t such a thing as a stupid question, but I knew that wasn’t correct because I asked stupid questions all the time. And asking Mr. Rhodes if Fourmile Trail was actually four miles, I knew, was a stupid question.
And part of me honestly didn’t want to actually know I was going to hike four times the amount I was used to. I didn’t exactly look out of shape, but looks were deceiving. My cardio endurance had gotten better over the last month of jump roping but not enough.
Four miles, f-u-c-k me.
I glanced at Amos to see if he looked alarmed, but he gave one look at the sign and started.
four miles and four waterfalls, the sign read.
If he could do it, I could do it.
I’d tried to talk twice and had ended up panting so bad both times that I immediately stopped. It wasn’t like they were excited to talk to me. As I wound my way behind Amos, with his dad taking up the rear, I was just glad to not be alone. There had been a handful of cars parked in the lot, but you couldn’t see or hear anything. It was beautifully quiet.
We were in the middle of nowhere. Away from civilization. Away from . . . everything.
The air was clean and bright. Pure. And it was . . . it was spectacular.
I stopped and took a couple of selfies, and when I called out to Amos to stop and turn around so I could take a picture of him, he grudgingly did it. He crossed his arms over his thin chest and angled the brim of his hat up. I snapped it.
“I’ll send it to you if you want,” I whispered to Mr. Rhodes when the boy had kept on walking.
He nodded at me, and I’d bet it cost him a couple years off his life to grind out a “Thanks.”
I smiled and let it go, watching every step as one mile turned into two, and I started to regret doing this long hike so soon. I should’ve waited. I should’ve done longer ones to lead up to this.
But if Mom could do it, so could I.
So what if she was way more fit than me? You didn’t get in shape unless you busted your ass and made it happen. I just had to suck it up and keep going.
So that’s what I did.
And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel better that I could tell when Amos started slowing down too. The distance between us got shorter and shorter.
And just when I thought we were going to the end of the fucking earth and these waterfalls didn’t exist, Amos stopped for a second before turning to the left and hiking up.
The rest of the hike went by with me having a huge smile on my face.
We finally walked by other hikers, who called out good-mornings and how-you-doings that I answered when the other two didn’t. I took more pictures. Then even more.
Amos stopped after the second waterfall and said he’d wait there, even though each one was just as epic as the last.
And surprising the shit out of me, Mr. Rhodes followed behind me, still keeping his distance and his words to himself.
I was real glad he did because the path after the last of the four waterfalls got undefined and I turned in the wrong spot, but fortunately he caught sight of the path better than I did and tapped my backpack to get me to follow him.
I did—looking at his hamstrings and calves bunching the whole incline upward.
I wondered again when he got a chance to work out. Before or after work?
I took more selfies because I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Mr. Rhodes. And when I turned as he kept hiking upward, legs stretching as he made his way up the loosely graveled trail, I aimed my camera toward him and called out, “Mr. Rhodes!”
He looked, and I snapped the picture, giving him a thumbs-up afterward.
If he was irritated with me taking a picture, too bad. It wasn’t like I would share it with anyone but maybe my aunt and uncle. And Yuki if she scrolled through my pictures one day.
Amos was exactly where we’d left him, shaded by trees and boulders, playing a game on his phone. He looked way too relieved to be leaving. His bottle of water was mostly empty, and I was just about finished with my own, I noticed.
I needed to get a straw, some tablets to purify water, or one of those bottles with a built-in filter. The shop carried all of that.