Page 53 of Places We've Never Been

CHAPTER 13

“Park City, Utah,” Olivia said as we got off the shuttle bus. “Isn’t this cool?”

“Isn’t Park City where celebrities come to ski?” Austin asked. “Maybe we’ll see someone famous.”

“It’s June.” I looked up at the ski runs that in the winter were obviously blanketed in white but were now yellow and green with brush and trees.

“Wow, now I have two annoying little sisters?” Austin said.

“She’s not as annoying as me,” Paisley assured him.

“Yes,” Mom said. “There is lots of skiing here in the winter. But the 2002 Olympics were in Utah and some of those events happened here at Olympic Park.”

“So now we get to pretend we’re Olympians from twenty years ago?” Paisley asked.

“No, now they’ve turned it into a park. There’s extreme tubing and rock climbing and zip lining.”

“You had me at extreme tubing, Miranda,” Austin said.

“Do we have to stay together?” Ezra asked.

“You have your passes,” Mom said. “Run free.”

Ezra and Austin looked at each other and then walked out ahead.

“Be careful!” Olivia called after them.

Skyler hesitated, glancing once at the retreating forms of our brothers and then to Paisley and me.

“You can go,” Paisley said.

“We don’t want you here,” I added.

He smiled, rubbed Paisley’s head, and then said, “Wait up!” as he ran after Ezra and Austin. Old Skyler would’ve never chosen…well,anyone…over me.

“We’re going to sit in the café,” Mom said when we came to a fork in the walkway between the surrounding buildings.

“Okay.” I watched them walk away.

“What?” Paisley said. “Why are you giving our moms a dirty look?”

I smoothed out my features that I could feel were scrunched in suspicion. “I’m surprised my mom is going to sit in a café. They didn’t even buy themselves passes.”

“Thatisweird,” Paisley said. “My mom usually loves the thrill rides.”

“My mom too.”

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to voice my fears out loud. That always made them more real. I’d already told Willow and she didn’t seem as convinced as I had been that something was going on. And she’s the one who had been skeptical about this whole trip to begin with. “Do you think it’s weird that our moms wanted to do this trip now, after all these years?”

Paisley shrugged. “Not really.”

“Yeah…”

“You obviously think it is. Why?”

“I don’t know. I overheard Ezra talking about some secret on the phone, but he’s denying it now. Or at least denying it has anything to do with our parents.”