Page 34 of So Far Gone

to say.) But then another wave of panic ran through her chest and arms. My God! She covered her mouth to keep from crying out.

“Hey, B.” Doug’s round face slid into the tent opening. “You get some sleep?”

Bethany looked up from between her knees, glad to have him here. “It’s happening again.” Her voice sounded weak and raspy to her own ears.

“Oh, B, I’m sorry.” He came a little farther into the tent, and reached out a hand, but didn’t get any closer. She still wasn’t

used to seeing Doug like this; her once 125-pound, dreadlocked wispy blond boyfriend was a middle-aged 200-pound bald man

now. Still those same kind eyes. “Maybe we should get you to a hospital.”

“No. I’ll be fine.” She checked her watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be onstage?”

“Pretty soon, yeah,” Doug said. “We just set up. I wanted to make sure you were okay before we went on.”

Amid all of this—her mom’s death, Shane’s new church, the trouble at home, the rattly feelings, the waves of panic, her lack

of sleep and resulting questionable decision-making, this insane music festival—Bethany really appreciated how caring Doug

had been with her. And how respectful.

Four days ago, sleepless and jacked up on coffee and adrenaline, she’d crouched next to Leah’s bed, waking her daughter at six thirty in the morning.

Shane had left at dawn to go train for the coming holy war with his yahoo friends up at the Rampart, and Bethany whispered to Leah that she was going away for a few days, to Canada, to hear some songs she’d written played by her father’s band, and to not tell anyone.

(“It’s not a lie if no one asks.”) There was a week’s worth of lunches in the refrigerator, and reading assignments in their desks, oh, and should Shane go after her, there was a note for Anna in Leah’s snow boot about where to take the kids.

Then she kissed her daughter, told her to go back to sleep, left a short note for Shane (“I need some space. Please don’t come look for me.

”), grabbed her passport and her packed duffel bag, and ran out the door, to where Doug was parked across the street, waiting in his father’s old 1972 Firebird, which he’d lovingly and half-assedly restored.

She climbed in, and off they flew, toward the Canadian border.

The ride was beautiful—warm spring day, windows half down, air rushing in, old cassette tapes playing Traffic and Violent Femmes on Doug’s car stereo.

She felt an unburdening. They high-fived when they crossed the Canadian border, and high-fived again when they lost their phone signals for good.

During the last part of the trip, she had put her hand out the car window, and let the rushing air move it like an airplane, the way she had when she was a kid.

That first night, they’d set up their tent near the other early settlers, in the area reserved for bands and their crews,

and she’d continued to feel that open-car-window sense of freedom, pure elation. She smoked pot for the first time in a decade,

out of a pipe shaped like a little Volkswagen Beetle—just a quick toke, to remind herself of the feel in her throat, and to

send the signal that she wasn’t trapped by Shane’s reactionary rules anymore. She let the woman in the tent next door, a big

gust of hippie life who called herself Mama Killa (“Goddess of the moon, my love,” Mama said), paint crescent moons on both

of her cheeks, and she reveled in the other weirdos that gathered around the campfire Doug had built for them (although Bethany

insisted on the “straight” marshmallows for her s’mores, not the far more popular marsh mellows that had been soaked in liquified marijuana). It was a magical night, guitarists taking turns playing while the stars blazed

insistently above them, and a cool mountain breeze sent them under-blanket, and she managed to keep her guilt at bay, cuddled

with Doug on one side and fleshy Mama Killa on the other, all of them giggling as they watched the fire. That night, with

their sleeping bags next to each other, she’d even let Doug kiss her a little bit—

And that’s when the first panic attack had set in.

What was she doing up here? This was not who she was anymore. How would she feel if Leah did something like this? She started

weeping, gasping for breath.

Doug sat up. “Are you okay, B?”

She made him promise not to give her any more drugs.

“I did not give you drugs,” Doug protested. “You smoked on your own!”

“No, I know! I just... I can’t do that again. And this...” She ges tured to their sleeping bags. “I don’t think I want to do this. I don’t... I don’t know.” She started crying. “I’m sorry, Doug, but— I just— I—” She didn’t finish.

He put his hand on her forehead. “B, you have nothing to be sorry for. And I would never pressure you into anything. I hope

you know that.” She did know that and she calmed down and eventually fell asleep, humming like a mantra the thing she’d been telling herself since

she left: The kids are okay, the kids are okay . True to his word, since that first night, Doug had not so much as tried to kiss her. And he’d worked to keep drugs away from her, no small feat at a festival where LSD, ketamine, ecstasy, and psilocybin were known as “the four food groups.”

Doug handed her a bottle of water now.

“Thanks,” she said. “You should go. I’ll be right behind you.”

“When you’re ready, walk up to that side-stage area again. Remember it from yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“You got your backstage pass?”

She held it up for him to see.

“Cool. Hey, we’re playing ‘Don’t Be Misled’ right before our encore.”

“Are you really?”

He did his deep DJ voice: “The boys say it’s a banger, B.”

She laughed. “Go ahead, Doug. I’ll be right there.”

He left the tent. She climbed out of her bag in her yoga pants and a sweatshirt and switched off the little battery-powered

space heater, which sat beneath a metal table between their two sleeping bags. The Paititi Festival, as she’d learned, was

held from the end of April to the beginning of May to mark the first Incan harvesting festival, Aymoray qu .

But British Columbia in the spring was damp and cold, a fair description of how she’d felt the last few days.

Sometimes she couldn’t tell when she was shivering from the wet air and when she was shaking from anxiety and lack of sleep.

Of course, it was ridiculous, holding a six-hundred-year-old South American harvest festival in the woods of Canada.

But the utter strangeness had caused her to reflect on her own life; was it any more random than her family being in the thralls of a repurposed, overly literal, two-thousand-year-old offshoot of an ancient Middle Eastern religion?

Before Shane’s frog-in-hot-water conversion, faith had been personal to her—a voice in her head that seemed to come from somewhere outside her being, offering her a sense of purpose, a chance to experience something more , something communal and quiet, a peaceful path out of the self, out of drugs and alcohol, away from the loneliness and insecurity

of her younger years. When she had gone to some Narcotics Anonymous meetings—her mother’s idea—Bethany found she took comfort

in Celia’s chill Unitarian beliefs, and even in Shane’s wide-eyed Christian enthusiasm.

But this path that Shane was on now—which had eventually led him to the Church of the Blessed Fire and the Army of the Lord—there

was nothing quiet about that. And certainly not peaceful. He had become obsessed with the end-times—Pastor Gallen describing

his church as “a quivering bride awaiting the return of our King.” It changed Shane, this mixture of paranoid masculinity

and Apocalyptic Christian absolutism: a dark communion of fear and testosterone. But, if she were being honest, it wasn’t

just Shane’s involvement with this church that had her wanting to run away with the circus. And it might not even have been her

mother’s death (although that was the thing that had unmoored her). It was something older, something deeper.

She put on her coat, hat, and gloves and ventured out of the tent.

Every time she went outside at Paititi, it reminded her of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy comes out of the black-and-white house into a bizarre world of color. She wondered what Leah would name some

of these new hues: sunburned butt-cheek ; beach-ball-in-mud-puddle .

There were bright, angular tents and small geodesic domes, rainbow flags and tie-dyed banners and Indian blankets, signs advertising vegan tacos, fresh fruit, and energy drinks, body-painted dancers floating by like ghosts.

She weaved through, tripping briefly on a tent rope but catching herself.

It was nice to be out in the sun, her panic dispersing.

( The kids are okay, the kids are okay .) She joined a line of people walking the path toward the Day Stage, Tonatiuh , named for the Incan god of the sun.

(She was glad The Buffs were playing here, although it meant they were a minor band.

She couldn’t even pronounce the name of the larger, nighttime main stage.) Along the trail, a dozen people were standing in

front of a half-naked woman live-painting something abstract on a huge canvas. Bethany had seen more than a few furries at

this festival—people dressed in fuzzy animal onesies—perhaps because of the cold weather. But there were just as many people

in shorts and open shirts, in tank tops and halter tops and bikini tops. For the life of her, Bethany couldn’t understand

how these kids could dress this way in the cold, wet woods. It made her wonder at the power of the drugs they had now.

Yes, the drugs. She was fifteen years past her festival-going, chemical-ingesting prime, and she had decided she didn’t want

to slip back. After her single Beetle-toke the first night, she’d only been tempted once, during an anxiety attack on their