Brothers/Sisters

Wheat-gold and chalk-white mountains, flanked sparsely with trees. We’re still in the rainshadow. The rock face is bare in some places; jagged, flat-topped buttes rise from the trees, the low misty clouds filtering through them in some places like light in a dense forest. Parallel to the cliffs but lower and closer to the road, the periodic telephone pole clings to the mountainsides.

Outside Cody, there are two tunnels that burrow through the mountain. One lasts forever, every time, and you drive until your world is nothing but alternating tunnel wall and orange light; the other tunnel passes like a breeze. To the side is the reservoir, a scenic blue lake rimmed by mountains, as they are here. I think I went swimming in it when I was fourteen. I think I even jumped off a bridge here on a dare.

Ask wants to stop. Carina says no; Jason doesn’t care. I just stare out the window. Ask is outvoted. We move on, putting another rest stop behind us.

Next: the witch house (that’s what I called it as a kid), a five-story monstrosity that sits amidst flat grasslands outside Cody. It looks like a massive treehouse with a bright red roof, and was supposedly built by some retired architect to get the attention of his estranged wife by building a mansion without any nails. What looks like a massive pile of sticks leans against it; from various angles, the entire thing looks part log cabin, part pile of sticks. But they’re actually staircases and landings and other building parts.

Wyoming attracts weird.

Though it’s not always visible from the car, the Shoshone river runs fast alongside us from Cody to Yellowstone. There’s a gorge we could’ve stopped by to see it, which is a good place for whitewater rafting. If you’re into that.

The Shoshone dissolves into a creek and the trees draw closer to the road, coming down from the mountains to rise from the ditches at the sides of the road. I’ve seen moose or two in that creek, but it’s bare right now. It’s easy to tell when an big animal is next to the road in Yellowstone during tourist season, because cars will be stopped at the side of the road in long lines, anywhere from ten to thirty to more cars. A moose might garner a good twenty-five. A grizzly, on the other hand? Fifty, easily.

“Have you ever driven in the mountains before?” I say to Ask.

He seems to ignore me until we’re at the gate. Then, before he rolls down his window to pay the admission fee: “No, Garrett. I live in Montana but I’ve never driven in the mountains.” He mutters something unintelligible and turns back to the booth.

There’s some bickering over Ask’s age from the guy in the booth (“Are you sure that you’re old enough to drive?”), but then we’re on our way again.

“Cruisin’,” Carina says, then leans against the window. The radio static has finally intensified enough to bother Jason, who takes a CD pack from the glove compartment, flips through it, and—after about three seconds of deliberation—finally decides that we’re listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the last leg of our little expedition.

To our right—directly, now—the rock face is steep in some areas. In the winter and spring, the snowdrifts here are higher than a good-sized SUV. Taller, even. Falling rocks, the signs warn, with a helpful little picture to demonstrate. To our left, the roadside drops off into a low valley. A rusty red road guard separates us from a vertical drop. To be fair, the roads here are well-paved and well-maintained. The road flattens out near the East Entrance, only to climb again. It’s all smooth turns; nowhere near the near-180’s of Beartooth.

The valley is green right now, but it’ll be frosted over in a month or two. Still, the clouds press lower, forcing the trees into a darker, more vibrant, shade of green.

Carina rolls down her window and a burst of mountain air rushes in to greet us. Not just mountain air—Yellowstone air. It’s different than Cody; it’s not like Red Lodge, either. I can smell the sharp scent of the pine trees that border the road on both sides, running up and down the mountain. The ones on the top of the taller cliffs aren’t even visible through the clouds. The rock face dips down and rises sheer again, like a wave, and I think I catch glimpses of wildlife every time. But there’s usually not much up here except the occasional bear. But from the green, we’re out of the rain shadow, for sure.

We reach Yellowstone Lake to the tune of Californication (after getting stuck behind some excited Bison-watchers and some not-so-excited Bison). Ask wants to stop again, and we go through the same little argument again.

I watch the lake through Carina’s window. I’ve seen it iced over, and I’ve seen it when it seemed flatter than a bathroom mirror, perfectly reflecting the mountains that surrounded it, when some chunks of ice still held on well into April. The valley flattens out by the lake just as we reach the first smattering of rain, though it’s not enough (in Ask’s opinion, at least) to use the windshield wipers. This becomes a fiasco of its own (“You can’t see anything,” Carina insists, and the visibility is a bit limited after about five minutes) Jason ends up admitting that they’re broken anyway.

“I haven’t gotten around to replacing them,” he says.

“Then I’m going to replace them when we get back to Red Lodge,” Carina says.

“Guys. It’s fine,” Ask insists. I hold on to the handle above the seat anyway.

Another fifteen minutes: the rain lets up, and we see the sign. BRIDGE BAY AREA, ELEV. 7735., it says. As if in greeting, a bison ambles across the road and we have to wait another five minutes before we can actually get into the campground.

The roads are a comb-shaped series of loops, with picnic tables scattered in tall yellow grass. There’s also a little inlet that seeps out from the lake, though our spot is a little more in the trees, at the end of a loop.

Next to a picnic table, a fire pit, and a grill (the standard), we set up two tents: a blue dome-shaped bunker of a tent for Carina and Jason, and my brand-new green triangular ridge tent (it’s a classic). It’ll fit two, but some part of me hopes it doesn’t have to. But when I retreat into my tent to set up my sleeping bag and pillow—which is a sweatshirt, because I forgot a pillow—Ask follows.

“Why’d you tell them I was sixteen?” he asks.

“What?” Great. No pillow. I take a sweatshirt from by bag and wad it up.

“Before we left.”

I lean back on the sweatshirt and stare up at crease in the middle of the tent. “Dave told me to.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“How do you know?” I roll onto my side, adjusting the sweatshirt. My neck hurts, of course.

“He would’ve said nineteen. Like on the—my—ID.”

“Why nineteen?” I roll over again, this time to my right side so that I’m facing Ask, who’s sitting cross-legged and messing with a deck of cards. Carina was right to doubt; we don’t look like cousins. I don’t think I can use that lie again, unless I add a second or third in front of that cousin. I guess we’re both dark-haired, but that’s where the similarities stop. Ask is tan and lanky, and I’m...neither of those things. Paleish and almost burly, though too small for the word to actually apply. “Where’d the ID come from?”

“It’s fake.”

“Yeah, I gathered that. Why Alessandro? And the picture…”

“Sort of fake. The picture...is not me.” I knew there was something off about it. But—

“Then who? Who’s the picture of?”

Ask is about to reply when Carina bangs lightly on the tent flap, her hand making scratching noises against the nylon.

“Hey,” she says. “Jason’s got hotdogs on the grill if you’re done partying in there.”

“We’ll be right out,” I call. Ask scrambles out of the tent before I can even sit up. Funny how he thinks I’m letting go of this.

“By the way,” I say, just before he’s out of the tent. “Don’t steal my shit.”

Ask stops. “I don’t steal…” He trails off, and then, softly: “Shit.”

He’s out of the tent before I’m able to ask what’s wrong. I give the sweatshirt-pillow another good fluff before joining the others.