So... I've never written in third-person before, so I think I need some help with the point of view stuff? Thanks. ^^
Prologue
The canyons sing to Sage. Down near the riverbank, the sound of rushing water echoes around her and the color of the sky is like liquid music. There is the smell of dirt, but the air is clean and she can actually breathe it in. This place is not flimsy and soluble. It is as real as the mud under her fingernails and the lines on her hands.
This is the place where Native American tribes fought to survive, where outlaws of the Wild West escaped to, where cowboys navigated with their cattle. This is the place where lizards and snakes and bighorn sheep are everywhere and yet no one can see them. This place is supposed to teach her to see with brand new eyes, to listen with brand new ears, to love with a brand new heart.
Her old Chevy pick-up truck seems out of place here, nestled in a bed of reeds. A splash of baby blue in a land of browns and subtle greens. The one fragment of society that lives here.
And staring at it, she can remember everything. The reason why she came here is scrawled into the sandstone, clear as day. Everything that had made her scream at God, whywhywhy. Flinging her questions at Him, she knew He’d understand all their poison implications. But He just smiled down at her, laughed. She was just another pathetic follower that had once believed, that had looked to him for answers only to find that he had none.
So she packed everything she needed – a few changes of clothes, a camera, a notebook, a guitar, some old paperbacks, and every dollar she had earned in her lifetime – and sat down on a vinyl seat. She listened to my engine carry her halfway across the country and ate music notes for sustenance, searching for her own answers. She slept in the bed of her truck, a handful of starlight stuffed into her mouth to keep her from breaking.
Somehow she wound up here a week later, looking up at water-carved pillars.
Her eyes are still the same. Her ears still won’t listen. Her heart still only pumps blood.
Sage looks down at her hands, where they stroke guitar strings and coax out a melody that she hasn’t heard before. If she had a mind to, she would write it down. But she doesn’t. Nothing is ever as beautiful the second time around. Nothing is as exhilarating and adrenalin-inducing when you can predict the crescendos.
So instead, she just plays, letting her hands do what they please as her mind wanders. The noise bounces off the canyon walls and floods the valley. It carries in the wind, kissing the ground before it floats into the air and gets lost in the endless sky.
She wishes she could sprout wings and go up with it. But she’s already lost enough.
Mitchell watches the windshield-wipers sweep across the glass, even though there is no reason for them to sweep. He is not driving, it is not raining, but he likes the hypnotizing back-and-forth motion. After months of forgetting how to think, the daydreams have come again.
He tilts his head up and looks at the lack of clouds. It should rain. Rain would be nice. Summer makes the air dry and heavy. He scratches the dry skin on his weather-beaten hands. Rain might fix that. Of course, so would some hand cream, but he can’t seem to bring himself to turn the keys and see the miles crawl past his window. He did that once, and he didn’t quite like it. Miles aren’t so friendly, especially when there are a lot of them.
He leans back, puts his feet on the dashboard, and closes his eyes. It is night time inside his head. He wishes the stars would come out.
Chapter 1
Five days after Sage’s father died, she found herself at his funeral, wearing some little black number and tipping over in a pair of heels she had bought last-minute. Her mother was crying and relatives that she’d never met kept patting her on the back, telling her how sorry they were and how they understood what she was going through.
No. She didn’t want to hear that. He wasn’t their father. He wasn’t the one who’d slapped a paintbrush into their hands and let them paint abstracts on the walls. He wasn’t the one who’d introduced them to Emily Dickinson and read them Thoreau when they were too young to understand how the words fit together.
“He was a dreamer,” Sage’s mother had always said, scowling when his latest masterpiece failed to bring in the high price that he’d predicted. And here she was, bawling her eyes out. Love worked in strange ways. You hate the guy, but after twenty-some years, you get too attached to leave him.
Sage remembered the days when her dad would come home from wherever he had been – never anywhere too exciting. He spent hours taking walks in any place he could think of, which included but were not limited to beaches, hardware stores, malls, fast food joints, and Wal-Marts. These hours he would spend breathing and looking, and Sage never quite understood why he chose those places and how he could possibly breathe in a sea of human noise.
So he would come home when the light outside just barely started waning, and she would fling herself into his arms, wanting so much to capture the essence that can only be described as daddy. Sometimes he would hug her back, and sometimes he wouldn’t. But always he would look her in the eye with his same old smile, and they would go into his studio.
And Sage would paint.
She turned out every bit of art history onto canvases, from impressionism to cubism to surrealism. Her cave drawings covered the walls and the floors, reminders of times when life was simpler and stick figures were allowed to chase lines.
She could not lie and say that her images were not beautiful; she had eyes, and they could see perfectly well. By the time she was thirteen, every fine arts college she knew the name of was sending her brochures. Thing is, Sage hated painting. She hated confining herself to a block of plaster and turning her thoughts into splashes of colors and shapes. She hated having paint always in her hair and on her clothes.
The difference between Sage and her father was that he created moments. She preferred to capture them. When she was fourteen, she used her allowance money to buy a good camera, one with interchangeable lenses and a screen that let her see the pictures that she took. That camera became her best friend. Her dad hated her photos as much as she hated his paintings.
“You’re wasting your talent, Sage,” he snapped at her. “Why would you want to throw everything away just to show people the world that they see everyday?”
Because I love this world, daddy, she thought. You may not, but I do, and I want to show that to people. I want to show them a glimmer in time that they’ll never see again.
Sage blinked, returning herself to the service. It was almost over, and she’d daydreamed through most of it anyway. Her mother’s hand found hers and squeezed it.
“Hey,” Sage said, looking up at her.
“I will miss that man,” her mother said. “Lord, I hated him, but I will miss him.”
Sage smiled bitterly. “He didn’t make you draw until your hands bled, Ma.”
“Speaking of which, I think it’s time you pursued a real career. You’d make a great lawyer, or maybe an engineer.”
She was entering dangerous territory. Sage had made it perfectly clear to her mom what she wanted to do with her life. Mom had no right to turn her away from that. So Sage closed her eyes and said, “Let’s not talk about this now.”
“Okay,” Mom agreed and patted her cheek. Why she insisted on making her daughter feel like a little girl, smaller than nothing, Sage would never know.
The funeral ended and they made their way back to the car, offering curt nods to anyone who tried to give them sympathy. They were in a hurry, they said. They were in mourning and didn’t want to talk, they lied. Truth was, they just didn’t want to bother with people they barely knew.
Sage got behind the wheel of her car, Mom in the seat besides her; she had lost her license after a rather embarrassing drunk driving incident. Sage turned on the radio to a classic rock station, letting the sound of Led Zeplin’s guitar fill the car. Mom frowned and turned the dial until Mozart came on. Sage glanced at her mother disapprovingly.
Mom sighed. “Your noise gives me a headache.”
Sage considered saying that the music she listened to was just as good as her mother’s, but she pressed her lips together and stared straight ahead. It was better not to argue. Less effort, less words, less shouting.
Bury everything under the road and drive away. That’s how they lived.
The landscape of suburbia whizzed past Sage, a dozen different architectural styles crowding one block, surrounded by tulips and small maples. Neat lawns were in style, and dandelions were not allowed. Not a single yellow head peeked out through the green. The children of those houses would never get the chance to blow the white fluff of the elderly flowers, would never toss their wishes to the wind.
Mom made some attempts at small talk, but eventually lapsed into silence. Sage could see her mom’s profile in her peripheral vision. She was a smudge of white skin, blue eyes, and brick red lipstick. She looked older than she should have for forty-three.
“Mom,” Sage whispered, eyes still glued to the windshield.
Mom made a noise in the back of her throat. “Yes?”
“Where do we go from here?”
“Just make a left, dear. I thought you’ve had all these streets memorized by now.”
“No mom.” Sage gritted her teeth and squinted. “I don’t mean the street. I mean here. What do we do now?”
“I don’t understand,” Mom said in way that implied that yes, she did understand perfectly well.
Being blunt would upset her. Being blunt would get to the point.
“What do we do without dad around?” When she didn’t answer, Sage added, “You can’t drive. You’re stuck in a dead-end job.” She finally looked at her mother, right in the eye. “You’re not happy. And you know I’m not.”
“What are you talking about? Of course we’re happy.”
“No we’re not.”
Sage watched as her mother’s brows furrowed. “Why are you unhappy?”
“I want a life, Ma. Never had that, and I can’t have one now.”
“Yes you can. You just choose not to.”
Sage slammed her foot on the breaks at a red light and turned her head so sharply that she gave herself whiplash. “Does it ever occur to you that maybe a life of photography is the kind I want? If I were a lawyer or whatever you’d like, I wouldn’t really be alive. I wouldn’t be doing what I love.”
“You wouldn’t have any money either,” Mom muttered under her breath.
Sage shook her head as she nudged the car forward again. “You’re unbelievable,” she said.
Marcia looked at her daughter’s face. She wanted so much to know what Sage was thinking, but her face was almost always a mask of indifference.
Marcia knew that if she pushed her daughter too far, she would never return to her. Already, Sage was distant and quiet. She lived in her own little world, and Marcia would have liked to take a stroll through that world, her arm hooked through Sage’s.
She stayed quiet, though. She wanted Sage to be happy, but she also wanted her to make a decent living. Young people were always so idealistic, she thought. They said that they would rather do what they loved than make money, but twenty years down they road they would be struggling to make ends meet. Marcia didn’t want to see that happen to Sage. She didn’t want her daughter to end up like her.
She sighed and tapped her foot in time to the music playing. It made her want to take a nap, but then she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. But then again…
“A nap might be nice,” she said aloud. She looked up at the ceiling of the car, wondering why the Chevrolet company thought that grayish-brown was an attractive color for the interior of a car.
“What?” Sage asked. Marcia thought that there was something condescending in her voice, but she chose to ignore it.
“Nothing,” she said, closing her eyes. “Just thinking out loud.”
Violins and old car sounds lulled her to sleep, where she dreamed of her late husband and the smell of grass.
