Where We Used to Roam by Jenn Bishop (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📕

“Once I’m off to college? How about now? I want a dog!”

Dad laughs. “One thing at a time, E. One thing at a time. We’ve got plenty on our plates right now as it is.”

I think about Dumbledore for a sec and how he’s maybe sort of grown on me. “What about a cat?”

They’re quiet for a second. “Let’s talk about that once you’re home,” Mom says. “We’d better rustle something up for dinner. Say hi to Delia and the crew and send them our love. I’ll text some updates tomorrow, but otherwise expect to hear from us bright and early Sunday morning, ’kay?”

“Okay.”

“Love you, Emma,” Dad says.

“Love you, too,” I tell them, and then click to end the call.

I flip back to that picture I showed Tyler, that one of Austin from last summer. I zoom in on my brother’s face, back before everything happened. Is that what he’ll look like when I see him on Sunday? Or will he look like the Austin I last saw, the one Dad had to practically babysit?

No. I shake my head, willing that image away.

He’ll be back to how he used to be. He’s better now. He promised.

Later that night, after I’ve finished the buffalo book, I tidy up the den. While we’re at Yellowstone, a cat sitter will come by to take care of Dumbledore, but I do not trust that cat around my Becca box. I make sure to stash all the stuff I’ve collected from Goodwill and yard sales in a few file boxes in the closet. I put the Becca box on the highest shelf. Dumbledore is too fat to jump that high. It’ll be safe.

At this point it’s about 75 percent complete, but that’s okay because I’ve still got another three weeks to work on it after Yellowstone. Plus, whenever I’m working on a shadow box, time away seems to help. With a weeklong break from working on it, maybe I’ll come up with some new ideas I wouldn’t otherwise have if I’d kept working on it every day.

Before he left earlier today, Tyler gave me his grandmother’s cell phone number, so we can stay in touch. He says I have to send him pictures of any and all buffalo I see. Easy.

When we get to the park the following day, it’s late afternoon. All four of us are sick of being cooped up in the car. Since we’re spending the first night at the Old Faithful Inn, Chris suggests we start with the park’s most famous attraction.

Visitors are required to stay a ways back from Old Faithful. Too close and you’ll get sprayed, Brian the park ranger tells us. And you do not want to get sprayed by boiling-hot water.

Point taken.

Brian’s wearing one of those cool ranger hats. Well, maybe not cool cool, but still, they’re special. You can’t get those hats just anywhere.

I’ll be honest: it’s hard to believe anything substantial is about to burst out over there. White smoke puffs out of a hole in the ground, but not much more than you’d see from a campfire. Is Brian sure this thing’s going to spew scalding water more than a hundred feet into the air?

A little spurt shoots up, and an older woman with curly white hair and a cowboy hat in front of me yelps. Her husband shushes her. “That’s not the real thing, Sally. We’ve still got another minute.”

A moment ago Brian gave the forty of us gathered here his whole spiel about Old Faithful. Sadie could barely put down her phone to listen, but I did. On the drive out, Chris said people travel from all over the world to see Old Faithful, and it’s one of his and Delia’s favorite attractions in all of Yellowstone.

I’m not so sure yet. What can top seeing bison everywhere for the next few days? But I’m trying to keep an open mind.

I adjust my Red Sox cap and check my shoulders for sunburn, and then all of a sudden there’s less smoke pouring out and I know it’s about to happen. I mean, true, Brian did tell us the whole reason it’s called Old Faithful in the first place is because it’s so predictable. But it’s another thing to wait all this time, watching, watching, watching. Water begins spewing out—but not hundreds of feet yet, more like that splash park my parents took me to when I was little.

But then it’s shooting up into the air. The thickest blast of water I’ve ever seen, spraying several stories high into the sky. “Now, that’s an eruption,” Chris says. Everyone gathered around us lets out a cheer.

I can’t take my eyes off it. Not even for a second. The shock of white against the crisp blue sky. Smoke—or maybe it’s actually mist—wafts off it, eventually evaporating.

Old Faithful continues to spray, though no longer to the highest heights, and then it slowly lowers until only the smoke remains.

Delia twists the top off her water bottle and takes a swig from it. “Wasn’t that something?” She offers me some water, but I pass.

The thing is, it was. Words can’t capture it, exactly. How something can simmer under the surface like that, only the faintest trace of it, and then explode.

Sure, we can predict it now. Scientists studied it so we’d know all about how it works and why.

But how weird—how strange, unsettling, terrifying, really—must it have been to see it for the first time. To not understand what the smoke was signaling. To not know the rhythms. To watch something so ferocious explode right out of the earth.

By the time we’re checking in to the Old Faithful Inn, my stomach is growling for dinner. Chris hands me and Sadie keys for the room we’ll share the first two nights before moving on to explore other parts of the park.

As we head up the staircase, it’s like I’ve stepped back in time to the early twentieth century. Hand-carved wood covers every inch of the place. A