Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (38 page)

Epilogue

Twenty months later

“She’s been looking at you,” Glen said. “Accept it or don’t, but she keeps looking. She followed us over here.”

They walked up the steps of the university library together, Ethan resisting the strong urge to look back.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been hoping pretty much all semester, Glen. But with my luck she’s probably looking at you.”

“I’m not saying it’s not weird,” Glen said.

Ethan punched him on the arm. Fairly hard. Then he looked back to see if the girl had noticed. Glen was right—she was watching. Ethan didn’t know her name, but she had curly hair and muscular calves and a pretty smile, and she was in his communications class. It was not the first time he had noticed her. Far from it.

She smiled at Ethan and he smiled back. Then he faced forward again.

“Smooth,” Glen said.

“Oh, shut up, Glen.”

“I’m going to do you a favor. We’re going to find ourselves a nice seat in the library. And then I’m going to go off like I need to find the bathroom or something. And then she can sit down if she wants to. See what a good friend I am? Aren’t you glad we ended up at the same university?”

Ethan didn’t admit it in that moment, but he was. Very glad.

“Is this seat taken?”

As he looked up into her eyes, Ethan could feel his face flush. He desperately wanted to think it didn’t show. He knew it probably showed.

“It’s not,” he said, “no.”

“Your friend isn’t coming back?”

“If he does, he can sit somewhere else.”

She examined Ethan’s face for a moment, as if to decide whether he was joking.

“It’s fine,” Ethan said. “He won’t be back for a while.”

“I’m sorry. I just have to ask. Are you Ethan Underwood?
The
Ethan Underwood? The Blythe River guy?”

“I am. But I’m not sure why you say that like it’s a notable thing to be.”

“It is, though! It is! I read all about you in the paper. Last year. Or was it the year before?”

“Summer before last,” he said.

She sat. They smiled at each other. Briefly. Then they both looked away.

“Amanda,” she said.

“You’re in my communications class, right?”

“Right. I thought I recognized your name from that article in the paper. But then I figured there could be more than one person with the same name.”

She swept her curly hair back behind her shoulders, as if it were distracting her somehow. But Ethan sensed it was a bit of edginess. That it was merely something to do with her hands. It seemed unimaginable to Ethan, who saw himself as the only party who could possibly be nervous in a meeting such as this.

Meanwhile Ethan was not talking. So Amanda raced on.

“I saved that article, but then I couldn’t figure out where I put it. And I tried to do an online search, but nothing I came up with had a picture of you or anything. So I figured I’d just ask.”

“Why did you save it?”

“That’s kind of hard to explain. Partly . . . I just have this thing about adventure. And that was such an amazing adventure story. I love true-life stories like that. I like to read about people lost in the wilderness. I like to watch movies about mountain climbers in trouble. Sounds terrible, but what I like about it is . . . you know . . . when it works out okay. When people overcome the odds. And survive. And also I have a thing about certain wilderness areas. I have kind of . . . well, I started to say a bucket list, but I guess I’m too young to have a bucket list. But there are about three wilderness areas that I’ve read all about, and that just have a hold on me for some reason. I’ve done a lot of hiking. But I’ve never been to the Trinity Alps in California, or Badlands National Park in South Dakota. And I’ve never been to the Blythe River Range. And I want to go there so bad I can almost taste it.”

Ethan looked up to see Glen come around a corner and into view, stop, survey the scene at Ethan’s table, and kindly disappear again.

“Well, if you want to go,” Ethan said, “I’m really good friends with the guy who does pack trips up there.”

“Friendly Sam!” she screeched, as if she’d known him all her life and couldn’t wait to see him again.

Two young women at the next table shot Amanda a dirty look. One made a shushing noise.

“That’s the guy!” Ethan said in an exaggerated whisper.

“Are you ever going back there?”

“Definitely.”

“Hiking?”

“Maybe. Maybe partly. But Sam has these great horses and mules, and you can cover so much more ground that way. But I do hike. In fact, my mom and I hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu over the holiday break.”

“Over Christmas? Wasn’t it freezing up there in the mountains?”

“No, it’s—”

“Oh, God, that sounded so stupid. I’m really not that stupid, I swear I’m not. I just wasn’t thinking. Peru. South of the equator. Winter here, summer there.”

“Right,” Ethan said.

“How was the Inca Trail hike? That’s on my bucket list, too.”

“I thought I was going to die. Especially going over those two high passes. But, you know what? By the time it was over I was so glad I’d done it.”

“So when are you going back to Blythe River?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “Maybe this summer. I’m sure Sam would be happy to have another rider along. No charge for the tour. He promised me a freebie. You’d just have to cover your airfare.”

“You’re inviting me to go to Blythe River with you?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. That probably sounded really bad. I wasn’t trying to—”

“No, it’s okay. It was nice.”

“But we don’t even know each other.”

“But we could by then,” she said.

A long, ringing silence. Ethan didn’t break it. Because it felt so perfect. So right. He felt he could do it nothing but harm. It had nowhere higher to go.

“In the meantime,” she said, “will you tell me about the place?”

“All about it.”

“And your big adventure?”

“Everything there is to tell.”

Glen caught up with him at the Starbucks a few hours later.

“I kept trying to get back to you in the library,” he said, “but you just looked like you were having too much fun.”

Ethan felt his slight smile grow. It had been with him most of the day, whether he thought about it or not.

“I do have to admit it was fun.”

“Tell me you have a date with her.”

“I can tell you better than that.”

“What’s better than that?”

“We’re going away together over summer break.”

“Get. Out. Not seriously.”

“Seriously. She has this thing about Blythe River. And adventures. So we’re taking a pack trip. I called Sam and booked a spot.”

Ethan looked up at his friend and smiled more widely to see Glen’s mouth drop open.

“How in hell did you . . . Ethan Underwood . . . of all people . . . get so lucky?”

“That’s a really good question,” Ethan said. “I was just sitting here wondering that same thing myself.”

About the Author

Photo © 2014 Hunter Kilpatrick

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of thirty published and forthcoming books. Her bestselling 1999 novel
Pay It Forward
, adapted into a major Warner Bros. motion picture starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, made the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list and was translated into more than two dozen languages for distribution in more than thirty countries. Her novels
Becoming Chloe
and
Jumpstart the World
were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List;
Jumpstart the World
was also a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and won Rainbow Awards in two categories. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in many journals, including the
Antioch Review
,
Michigan Quarterly Review
, the
Virginia Quarterly Review
,
Ploughshares
,
Glimmer Train
, and the
Sun
, and in the anthologies
Santa Barbara Stories
and
California Shorts
and the bestselling anthology
Dog Is My Co-Pilot
. Her short fiction received honorable mention in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, a second-place win for the Tobias Wolff Award, and nominations for
Best American Short Stories
, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have also been cited in
Best American Short Stories
.

Ryan Hyde is also founder and former president of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.