There’s nothing to fear. He’s being kind, too.

She continued to watch him distrustfully.

“Thank you,” I said again as he shut the door.

“My pleasure.”

He walked off to his own vehicle without a backward glance at us. I climbed into my seat and grabbed the bag of potato chips.

Look at the map, she said. Wait till he’s out of sight.

No one is watching us, I promised her. But, with a sigh, I unfolded the map and ate with one hand. It was probably a good idea to have some sense of where we were headed.

Where are we headed? I asked her. We’ve found the starting point, so what now?

Look around, she commanded. If we can’t see it here, we’ll try the south side of the peak.

See what?

She placed the memorized image before me: a ragged zigzagging line, four tight switchbacks, the fifth point strangely blunt, like it was broken. Now I saw it as I should, a jagged range of four pointed mountain peaks with the broken-looking fifth…

I scanned the skyline, east to west across the northern horizon. It was so easy it felt false, as though I’d made the image up only after seeing the mountain silhouette that created the northeast line of the horizon.

That’s it, Melanie almost sang in her excitement. Let’s go! She wanted me to be out of the car, on my feet, moving.

I shook my head, bending over the map again. The mountain ridge was so far in the distance I couldn’t guess at the miles between us and it. There was no way I was walking out of this parking lot and into the empty desert unless I had no other option.

Let’s be rational, I suggested, tracing my finger along a thin ribbon on the map, an unnamed road that connected to the freeway a few miles east and then continued in the general direction of the range.

Sure, she agreed complacently. The faster the better.

We found the unpaved road easily. It was just a pale scar of flat dirt through the sparse shrubbery, barely wide enough for one vehicle. I had a feeling that the road would be overgrown with lack of use in a different region—some place with more vital vegetation, unlike the desert plants that needed decades to recover from such a violation. There was a rusted chain stretched across the entrance, screwed into a wooden post on one end, looped loosely around another post at the other. I moved quickly, pulling the chain free and piling it at the base of the first post, hurrying back to my running car, hoping no one would pass and stop to offer me help. The highway stayed clear as I drove onto the dirt and then rushed back to refasten the chain.

We both relaxed when the pavement disappeared behind us. I was glad that there was apparently no one left I would have to lie to, whether with words or silence. Alone, I felt less of a renegade.