What if CPS comes and finds you underage, living by yourself in a house?

“It’s a ranger’s dream assignment,” he said. “Kind of a miracle to get a job so close to home, and everyone wants Rainier. She had my grandparents stay with me while she worked in Utah and Montana and Wisconsin for a while, mostly being a guide in boring historic houses when what she really wanted was to be on a mountain. When she got Rainier a few years ago, it was winning the lottery. She came home after the first season and said, I’ll be here till I die. My aunt stayed with me for Rainier, when I was younger, but now I hold down the fort.”

I had stared for hours at library book pictures of Rainier’s grassy snow-dappled fields, evergreens and alpine wildflowers, hillside creek beds of crystal water splashing over rocks and tumbling down sheer cliffs in roaring falls and the gorgeous snow-capped peak, rising above a veil of mist I could see as I walked Seattle’s streets. It hurt, knowing how close it was and what it looked like, and I ached, wishing I could be there.

“I don’t blame her,” I said.

“Me, either. That’s why I want to go to UW for environmental science, and if Natan gets the hell gone, I can apply for their master’s program with Salishwood. Because then I might have a better chance for a mountain position near home, maybe even Rainier. What are you smiling about?”

“You in a ranger uniform on a mountaintop. I like it.”

He smiled back. “Hopefully. Where are you applying?”

“Applying?”

“College.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“Look!” I said. “No line.” The sidewalk in front of the box office was empty, a hopeful sign we’d have good seats. Except the movie had started twenty minutes earlier.

“We walked too slow,” I said. “I distracted us with my demands for your in-person AMA. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not.”

In the frozen yogurt place beside the theater, the only other thing open after 5:00 p.m., Sean demonstrated a sophisticated layering technique of yogurt, then gummy bears, more yogurt, Oreos, and so on. Recipe of an eight-year-old. Or a seventeen-year-old living without a parent around. I filled my cup with vanilla and strawberries and mint cookies and we walked to sit in the near dark on rocks at the water’s edge, but this time in the light of the setting sun, watching ferries cruise to and from Seattle.

“I have to say, I thought living on an island would feel—smaller? Trapped? But the open water, the forest, so many stars. Feels big.”