Fated (The Soul Seekers 1)

Even the sun looks bigger than normal—like a huge, blazing fireball, falling out of the sky and plummeting toward earth!

The transition from day to night making the horizon appear infinite—endless!

Then just below that, I add:

I don’t remember ever seeing a sky quite so vast.

Underlining vast, so when I go over it later, I’ll know that I meant it.

My pencil clocking the page, keeping time with the thoughts in my head as I continue to window gaze—seeing what was at first a dry, barren landscape consisting of grays, and browns, and dull faded green shrubs suddenly give way to a rich palette of red earth, swaying yellow grasses, and towering, rugged, flat-topped mesas rising from deeply rutted canyons.

“Wow,” I whisper, but what I’m really thinking is: Small. Tiny. Woefully insignificant—and I’m referring to me.

This place is too big. Too immense. Too vast. Appearing almost cosmic in the way it seems to meander for eternity.

Even though I’d decided to give it a chance, I’ve no doubt in my mind this place will dwarf me.

The sudden realization causing a deep pang of longing for my old life—a physical ache that only the bustling pace of a movie set with its well-defined borders, and small-town environment where everyone has a name, a title, and a purpose, can remedy.

“Welcome to the Land of Enchantment.” Chay smiles.

“Are we here? Is this where she lives?” I squint into the distance, unable to see any houses, just miles and miles of uninterrupted land that seems to sprawl with no end. The sight of it making me wish he’d just stop, turn the car around, and take me back to where I came from.

Chay laughs, the sound pleasant and deep. “New Mexico is known as the Land of Enchantment. The town of Enchantment, where your grandmother lives, is still a ways away. There’s a gas station on the other side of this pass. I figure we’ll fill up and take a few moments to stretch our legs before we move on. Sound okay?”

I nod. Slip my pencil back into my notebook. Too agitated to write, too agitated to do much of anything other than gaze out the window, anticipating the moment when the landscape will be completely blotted out by the absence of sun.

Chay pulls into the station and stops at the first vacant pump, and the moment I exit the truck, I’m amazed at how good it feels to finally stand and walk around for a bit after so many hours of being pent up.

I throw my head back, stretch my mouth into a yawn, and take a long deep drag of New Mexico air. Surprised to find it even drier here than it was in Los Angeles, Phoenix too—must be the altitude. Stretching from side to side before bending down toward the earth—my fingertips brush across pebbly grains of asphalt, forcing myself well past the pain of my cramped and sore muscles now screaming in protest.

“Why don’t you go inside and grab us some Cokes.” Chay reaches for his wallet, but I’m quick to wave it away, already crossing the lot to the Circle K to check out the offerings.

The moment I push through the door, my stomach emits a loud, embarrassing rumble. And when I take in the array of prepackaged, processed foods on display, I can’t help but regret having left my uneaten cheeseburger and fries back in Phoenix.

I drift along the aisles, piling my arms high with supersized bags full of candy, doughnuts, and chips, along with two quart-sized bottles of Coke—one for me, one for Chay. And after adding a roll of mints to the stack, I dump it all on the counter, exchange a pleasant, if not generic greeting with the cashier, and busy myself with tabloid gazing while she busies herself with ringing me up.

Jennika hates when I do this—always quick to remind me that the majority of stories they print are either completely fabricated or carefully orchestrated by the subjects themselves. Still, it’s a guilty pleasure I cannot resist. The fun lies in determining which is crap and which isn’t.

Besides, it’s the only way I have to keep up with old friends. Some people have yearbooks and Facebook—I have the gossip rags.

As always, I start with the cheapest, most outrageous one of all. The one that boasts an enduring fascination of alleged space alien abductions and sightings of Elvis’s ghost. Smiling for the first time in hours when I see this week’s cover does not disappoint—claiming that a very famous, Oscar-winning actress is being haunted by the specter of a long-dead director hell-bent on revenge for the abysmal

remake she’s producing.

Passing over the one that accuses every peasant top–wearing starlet of hiding a baby bump, I reach for the most respectable rag in the bunch—the one whose glossy covers are not-so-secretly coveted by most if not all of the up-and-coming stars.

This week’s cover boasting a seemingly candid photo of—

“That’ll be twenty-one sixteen,” the cashier says, but her voice is just noise in my head.

I barely tune in. Barely make out the words. The counter, my pile of junk food, the clerk—it all just fades into the background, until there’s nothing left but the cover of this magazine and myself.

It requires both hands to steady it—that’s how shaky they’ve become. My cheeks heating, my breath trapped in my chest—unable to lift my gaze from those piercing blue eyes, golden skin, tousled mop of blond hair, lazy half-smile, and the bandaged arm he raises in greeting.

And it is a greeting. Of that I’ve no doubt.

Despite his trying to act as though it’s a gesture of protest—as though it’s some failed attempt to fend off the camera’s intrusive telephoto lens—I know better.