Page 19 of Places We've Never Been

“Don’t faint in here,” I mumbled, wrapping my arm around him to keep him upright. With my other hand, I pounded on the door.

A whoosh of cold air rushing around me was my only indication that the door had been opened.

“I’m fine, Norah,” Skyler said, unwinding himself from myhold. And just like that, he was out of the sauna and into the air-conditioned visitors center.

I stood there for several moments, shocked, not exiting, waiting for my cheeks, red from embarrassment, to return to their normal color. Talking and laughing, sounds we hadn’t heard with the door shut, swirled around me along with pockets of heat and cold. It took me another few breaths to remind myself that everyone would just think my face was red from the heat, so I stepped down onto the floor.

Cold bit at my arms and neck. I pulled my T-shirt away from my sticky skin and fanned it a few times.

“How was it?” Paisley asked, the only person still standing by the sauna.

“Hot,” I said.

“Why did Skyler practically sprint away?”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. “Who knows.” I wandered to a rack of postcards along the wall.

Paisley followed me. “I guess there’s a place called Artists Palette that your mom thought you might want to go to before we head to the campground.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” I picked out a couple postcards, thinking it would be fun to send some little letters of my own to Willow over the next few weeks.

Paisley ran her finger over a picture of the sun setting over some dry hills. “The guys want to set up camp and start dinner, so my mom said the girls could take the small RV to the artist place.”

“Perfect.”

“Okay, I’ll go tell her.”

“Young lady,” the visitors center worker called to me. I turned. In his hands were two bottles of water. He handed one to me. “After one hundred and thirty-four degrees, it’s important to hydrate.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks.”

“I couldn’t find your friend,” he said, holding out the other bottle.

I took it. “He’s not my friend,” I muttered as I walked away.

I found my mom in the next room staring at a diorama. The dirt floor looked like a close-up of extremely dry skin. She had a faraway look on her face.

“And I thought I needed some lotion,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

I pointed to the display.

“Oh, yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yes, fine. There is so much to do here. I didn’t realize I should’ve scheduled more than one night. We’re going to have to narrow it down. I guess we could split up tomorrow if there are strong opinions.”

“Are you really anticipating strong opinions about which group of rocks we want to look at?”

“You should’ve heard the heated debate about starting dinner that we had when you were relaxing in the sauna.”

I laughed.“Relaxing?”

“It wasn’t relaxing?”

Not in the least. “It was hot.”