Going to school on Monday is weird, I don’t know exactly how to act around Benjamin. Lunch rolls around and he doesn’t let on that anything's different. We talk like we normally do—he talks and I nod or grunt occasionally. We eat our food and migrate to my spot.
Can I really call it my spot now? Since Benjamin is always here, I guess it’s just the spot. The spot where we wait for the bell to ring.
I learn something new about him: he has a pet snake. This surprises me. He tells me it’s a western hognose snake. He used to have a corn snake, but it died a few years ago. He tells me its name its Betty he got her after his corn snake as a baby. Apparently, she has a feisty personality and a big appetite. Which he seems to be very pleased with. He says he wanted to get a bull snake because they’re bigger than hognoses and corn snakes but still manageable. He decided to get the hognose when he saw one in a reptile magazine.
My day only gets better when Mr. Stewart is back and different. Happier, less hellbent on making my year miserable. I learn from the girl sitting across from me his wife gave birth on Monday, so he spent the week with her and their new baby. The whole thing is super weird. Thinking of Jeremy Stewart as an actual person, with a first name and a kid.
But math isn’t awful so I brush it off and do my work. He says that there will be a quiz on Wednesday and he tells us what it will be on so we can study. However, I will not study, I have never studied, and I always get decent grades. I’m a solid B student, I’ve never gotten a C on a report card and I never intend to.
I’m a naturally smart kid and I’m good at memorization which is very helpful in a common core system where memorization is key. Memorize important quotes in chapter ten, memorize these equations, memorize the whole goddamn French dictionary. Not really but sometimes that's what it feels like.
I go home, grab a snack, and chill out in my room. I don’t go to the desert, I don’t turn on music. I sit in silence. It’s nice, sometimes.
I eat dinner, I go back to my room, I turn on some music. I fall asleep, wake up, repeat. For five days. Then the weekend comes. Benjamin asks on Friday if we’re going to the garnet mines, I forget I told him we’d go. I already regret it.
“Sure.” I say. I have a love-hate relationship with those mines. Sometimes you find good chunks of garnet but damn those holes are terrifying. We ride the bus home together, I don’t go inside since we’re not staying overnight and I’m not bringing Alton.
“Where’s your dog?” Benjamin asks.
“Some of the mines are really steep and there are some freaky holes. I don’t know what I’d do if he fell down into one, I wouldn’t be able to get him out.”
“What if he had fallen off the cliff last weekend?”
“I’d’ve climbed down, put him in the truck, and taken him to the vet.” I stare at the road. “These mines aren’t like that cliff, they’re straight drops on smooth surfaces. They go down forever, can’t see the bottom of a lot of them.”
“Wow, what if I fell down there?” He laughs.
“Then I’d laugh at you for being stupid enough to fall. Just don’t get too close.” I recall my most scarring childhood memory. There was a coyote, it got spooked by me running to it, I thought it was a dog. It fell down into one of those mines but it didn’t die when it hit the bottom.
It cried and cried for hours, I cried too. I was a little kid and it freaked me the fuck out. The garnet mines terrify me. The enclosed, steep man-made caves feature in my worst nightmares.
The main garnet mine is a giant hole in the ground, it’s walls are steep but it’s big and open, with a somewhat definitive bottom. You can see through the cracks in the rocks to the big nothingness and there’s one part in the corner with these old wooden beams set over it and a terrifying drop below.
I shudder. I love those mines but dear god do they terrify me.
As we get close to the mine the road gets somewhat perilous, there’s this big open spot I usually stop at. It’s easy enough to turn around in and only about a ten minute walk to the mine. “How far is it?” He asks.
“Ten minutes.” I tell him there’s a big boulder that blocks the path a little ways ahead. This is true but I don’t tell him I’m scared to drive farther because of the memories I have of this place or because I don’t want to roll my truck off the mountain. I think about how this is the only place where I really fear the desert. I'm never afraid of heights, or narrow roads, or even caves, but at the garnet mines I am.
It's a different world. The desert is chock full of it's own enclosed planets.
We hike up the road and, only halfway there, I’m sweating bullets since there's nothing even resembling shade around here, no junipers or cottonwoods. The only shade is under the cover of the mines in which I never travel.
I think about the skeleton of the poor coyote still lying at the bottom of that hole.
I tell myself to stop thinking about it.
We get to the mine. “Wow.” Benjamin says. “A hole in the ground. That’s what we hiked all this way for?”
“Yep, c’mon.” I make my way down the gentle slope to the ancient wooden ladder that leads into the hole. I lower myself onto it, testing each rung even though I know it will hold. They have for this many years, it isn’t suddenly going to change.
“Is this safe?” Benjamin asks as I make my descent. It’s not a long ways, seven rungs, each about 14 inches apart. Even if one broke it wouldn’t be a long fall.
“Safe enough, quit being paranoid.” Says me. I hold the ladder and help him as he makes his careful way down. “C’mon.” I say and walk along the wall. There’s a ledge around most of the perimeter, then it dips back down, not too far, but far enough to make me nervous. A hole on the side of the cliff is where we’re headed. I’ve never been very far into it, but just sitting outside it you can find some nice pieces of garnet.
“I don’t know how I feel about this, is it really safe to be down here?” He asks, following me, nonetheless.
“I’ve been in here a million times and never gotten hurt.” That’s not entirely true, I’ve skinned my hands and knees plenty of times crawling around in here. We sit on the slope near the hole and sift through the loose gravel. Benjamin is in absolute awe that there’s still garnet.
“Why didn’t they pick all this stuff up?” He asks, his hand full with tiny morsels of little red stones.
“All that stuff in your hand is completely worthless.” I say. “Too small, too crumbly. It may be cool to look at but it’s not worth anything.”
“Oh.” He dumps his pile of rocks. I laugh at his dejection. We sift for a little while longer and I actually find a decently sized piece, it’s a little bigger than the nail on my pinky. Still not worth anything, but better than a piece smaller than a gnat.
Benjamin is very impressed by my find. “You can have it.” I say, dropping it into his hand before standing up.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I got lots.” Mom has a whole jewelry box full of garnet that we’ve found throughout the years.
He thanks me. We climb out of the mine and wander around. I take him to the top of this hill where there’s a great view of a massive hole, it goes in and right back out, creating a tiny land bridge between the two gaping openings.
“Can we go down there?” He asks.
The hole isn’t deep, it’s more of a tunnel than anything, something about it makes me nervous, though, just like everything else here. But I can’t let Benjamin know that. “Sure.”
I drive us down there and the sun has began to set. “I guess we will be staying the night.” I say.
“Do you have everything you need?” He asks.
“Yep.” I didn’t take out the sleeping bag or pillow he used, nor did I remove the peanut butter. I did remove the bread and jelly, though. So, for dinner we eat peanut butter straight from the jar as the stars begin to come out.
“It’s so incredible.” He says. “It’s so bright.”
I nod and scoop more peanut butter out of the jar. We’re sitting on the hood of my truck, looking at the black silhouettes of the mountains against a hundred million stars. “Do you do this all the time? Go out and stargaze.”
“Yeah, I love it.”
“Can you take me when you go?”
“I have been.”
He nods. “I really like it.”
I nod. “Me too.”
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