Up here, the mountains are tan and red, but looking down at the city all I see is a wall of green.

There are so many palm trees lining the streets that the entire valley looks as if it is a tropical rainforest.

When the trail gets even steeper and I have to scramble over some rocks, my phone vibrates. I’m listening to an audiobook and plan on just ignoring the call but then I see who it’s from, Sydney.

We haven’t talked for a while and I miss her.

“Hey!” I say, huffing and trying to catch my breath.

She immediately presses the FaceTime button and even though now I’m totally regretting my decision to answer her call, I have no choice.

“Oh my God, where are you?” she asks in her bubbly voice.

I flip the phone around and show her the mountains that wrap around me.

“That place is insane,” Sydney says.

“I know, right?”

“So, what are you doing?”

I turn the phone back to me and try not to focus on my red, sweaty face in the upper right hand corner.

“I’m taking a hike. This canyon is only ten minutes away and I thought I would check it out.”

“I wish I was there,” she says.

“Me, too!”

“So, I guess you’re a super healthy California girl now, huh?” she jokes.

I nod.

“It’s disgusting.” I nod. “You should see me. I’m having green smoothies made from vegetables multiple times a day and I’m running, and swimming, and, apparently, hiking now!”

“You make me sick!” She laughs.

“You need to come visit and rescue me from becoming the super me.”

“I will!”

Sydney doesn’t know exactly where I am, but she does know that I’m in California.

Perhaps I should be more careful and not FaceTime with her just in case but I know that she’ll never tell anyone a thing.

I ask her about how she has been but she only briefly glosses over it before getting to the real reason she has called.

“I saw Nicholas on TV,” she says.

“Yeah, me, too,” I say with a huff just as a stitch in my side starts to act up.

Getting tired, I drop my hand down away from my face.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I stop trying to walk and talk into the camera at the same time. “I saw him, too.”

“What does this mean?”

“I don’t know. I guess that the FBI is after him.”

“They are saying he killed his partner,” she whispers.

“He didn’t,” I say.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, he did not do that, Syd.”

As much as I want to tell her the details of what we did at that house together, she doesn’t know much about that and the less she knows the better.