documents. I opened it and looked at the letter.
Inside the envelope was sunshine confetti that peppered my floor at home. They’d accepted me for the scholarship program! Mia scooped it up with her fingers. WISP had not only granted me $2,000 for the fall, but they’d given me $1,000 for the summer. We not only didn’t have to move again, I’d have enough extra to take a vacation between summer and fall quarters. I could visit Missoula.
A line from The Alchemist flashed through my mind like ticker tape: When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. With the scholarship money, I’d have the means to save my wages, get my car fixed, and drive over two mountain passes to see a city many of my favorite writers wrote love stories about.
27
WE’RE HOME
Somewhere around Spokane, driving east on Interstate 90, the road opened, flat, with nothing ahead, behind, or beside me. The grass, brown and burnt from the sun, twitched from the wind, fighting to stay alive. Farmers wheeled large metal sprinklers across their land in efforts to keep it green for their cattle. On the two-lane divided freeway, a girl in a green Subaru passed me on the left. I could see that she had boxes, laundry baskets, and garbage bags packed in the back seat and wagon of her car. In contrast, I had a couple of old army backpacks full of new tank tops along with my few pairs of shorts.
We both had our whole lives ahead of us, that girl in the Subaru and me. Maybe she was moving to Missoula for college like I would have, if I hadn’t torn up those applications so long ago, but that was where our similarities probably ended. I imagined her as myself, nearly five years before, singing along to whatever played on her stereo. I thought she should have been me.
I brushed the thoughts away and pressed down on the gas pedal, chasing her, chasing my ghost self. Driving to Missoula wasn’t just me pursuing my dreams; it was finding a place for us to call home.
When I arrived, alone in the dark, Missoula’s downtown strip still seemed to pulse with the remains of the hot summer day. When I got out of my car to stand on the curb, looking up and down the street, two girls in their early twenties passed me, nodded, and smiled. One sang. The other played a ukulele. Both had flowing skirts and sandals. They reminded me of girls I’d met at parties in Fairbanks. Hippie types who hadn’t a clue about makeup, knew how to start a fire, and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in the garden. I’d missed these people. My people.
On my first morning, I wandered, the early sun already prickling my skin. The grass felt dry and inviting to sit in, so unlike the wetness of Washington. Near campus I read a book in the shade of a huge maple tree. Lying on my back, I stared at the sun through the waving leaves. I stayed like that for most of the day, gazing up at the surrounding hills and mountains, noticing the river flowing under a footbridge. That evening, I discovered a park in the heart of downtown. Food vendors lined the edges of a canopied square. People milled about in the grass or on park benches. A band played on a stage. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so happy, the last time I relaxed and let music fill my chest. I wandered the park with a dizzy smile, then noticed that, oddly, everyone else was smiling, too.
After years of living in the absence of friendliness, after the toxicity with my family, losing my friends, the unstable housing and black mold, my invisibility as a maid, I was starved for kindness. I was hungry for people to notice me, to start conversations with me, to accept me. I was hungry in a way I’d never been in my entire life. Missoula brought that out. Suddenly I wanted a community. I wanted friends. And it seemed okay to want that, because, walking around, judging from appearances, I was surrounded by the possibility of those things. Most locals smiled at me from under hats showing the state of Montana’s outline or its 406 area code. One morning at a small café for breakfast, every table filled, I counted sixteen pairs of Chaco sandals, including my own. I saw