sheep Utah friends had snorted cocaine before skiing down Alta’s High Rustler.
Wunderlich was a vast natural park where Greta sometimes rode her horse. Mandy was driving there with Brittany who wrote for the school newspaper and planned to be a journalist. As they drove, they searched for signs of a liquor store in each strip mall they passed. They finally spotted “Town and Country Liquors” and paid a guy to buy them the vodka. They turned out of the parking lot and headed west toward the hills, leaving the glow of city lights behind. Mandy’s stomach was flipping around, the liquid protein sloshing through her system. Would Adam show up tonight? But she couldn’t talk about this thing with Adam—she didn’t know Brittany well enough yet. She had told only one person– Greta. The turn into Wonderlich Park would have been easy to miss, but they spotted its brown wooden marker. As soon as they turned off the main road, the air filled with the earthy scent of bay and eucalyptus. They crept down the park’s winding road. Mandy could not see much beyond the car’s headlights and the trunks of towering redwoods at the road’s edge. Soon they found themselves at the end of the parking lot in a small clearing. There were three other cars—she recognized Greta’s Rabbit GT, Larks’s “Town and Country” station wagon, and Kiley’s Volkswagen. Larks was one of Adam’s best friends. Maybe Adam really would be here. As they walked toward a clearing, they saw a small group standing next to a giant, black oak, its gnarled branches silhouetted against the darkening sky. They stepped up to the shadows and joined the group. Larks and TJ had come together—TJ was in Mandy’s math class. Steve was Kiley’s boyfriend. Kiley and Greta were at the picnic table a few yards away. Adam was not here. Mandy swallowed back her disappointment. Adam only showed up when she didn’t expect him. Like appearing at the front door of the house where she was housesitting last weekend. Mandy had groggily opened the door in her sleep state. It took her a moment to see Adam standing in front of her, not Greta who had come the night before. Before Greta appeared, Mandy had been thumbing through fashion magazines and listening to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album, the song “Nowhere Man” reverberating in her brain:
He’s a real nowhere man Sitting in his nowhere land
HVWP COMMONPLACE 12
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