The next three days were spent in Santa Fe. The school arranged activities throughout each day. Some of them were more to our interest, such as the mountain biking, and others were the obligatory educational outings like museums and nature treks. But throughout it all, Stephanie and I always found ways to drift off from the group as much as was allowed.
My nerves were never quite completely calm when I was around her, but over the course of the trip, I began to feel more comfortable, less self-conscious. I just enjoyed being around her, making her laugh, always amazed at how her smile took me over. Sometimes there were what felt like awkward pauses between our conversations. I desperately tried to find things to say at first, but eventually I got the sense that, like me, Stephanie didn’t always need something to talk about. Just walking beside each other was enough sometimes. That was a relief to me.
The class enjoyed the time in Santa Fe, but the real excitement on the trip was still to come. Three days after arriving in Santa Fe, we filed into the bus once again, this time destined for Carlsbad Caverns.
The ride from Santa Fe to Carlsbad was going to be considerably shorter than the original one we had taken from the school to Santa Fe, so the chaperones on the trip were less strict with where we sat. Stephanie and I were finally able to sit beside each other on the bus.
We talked about our families, where we wanted to go to college some day, what we wanted to be when we grew up.
“I want to travel a lot,” she told me. “But then later I want to have a family and stay at home.”
“Where do you want to travel?” I asked. I thought that was a suitable question. It sounded grown-up.
“I don’t know, exactly. But I want to see all the famous places that you usually only see in the movies: Paris, New York City, Italy, California.”
“I’ve been to New York,” I said proudly. “My cousins live there. Maybe you can come with us next time my family goes to visit them.”
“Really? That would be so much fun!”
However unrealistic it was, we both loved the idea.
She took my hand in hers, and as we interlocked our fingers, she picked up her jacket off the floor. She positioned our hands in between each other on the seat and laid her jacket over them so anyone walking by wouldn’t see us holding hands. We were rebels for love.
We arrived in Carlsbad that evening. At the hotel, after we had unloaded our things, the class met in the lobby. That night, our class activity was to watch the bats fly out of the caves at sundown.
Carlsbad Caverns was close enough to our hotel that we could walk there. On the way, Stephanie walked with several of her friends, and I with mine. I liked the feeling that we could separate within the group at times, with the quiet confidence that we would soon meet up again. And such was the case when we watched the bats.
There were semicircular rows of benches surrounding the cave opening. I sat next to Jake, but made sure there was an empty seat on my other side.
It wasn’t long before Stephanie snuggled beside me. She was about to say something when an excited murmur arose from the small group of spectators which included our class. The first few bats flapped out of the mouth of the Caverns, followed closely by more. Soon it was a cloud of frantic movement which emerged, and it was still growing.
“One of them better not land on me,” Stephanie said, scooting closer to me and clutching my arm, despite the fact that the bats were at least thirty yards away.
The bats swooped and swirled out of the cave entrance. We were told by the park guide, a woman in her thirties who appeared to have more hair on her upper lip than most of the boys in our class, that the bats would hunt mosquitoes, moths, and other insects during the night, before returning to their cave through the same entrance.
“They are almost completely blind,” she told us. “So how do you think they hunt?”
No one in the class spoke up. We were enthralled with the bats. The storm of them seemed endless. They circled in the night air like a hurricane, erratic but with an agenda.
“It’s called echolocation.” The guide continued. She proceeded to explain how it worked, but the principles of sound waves and the Doppler Effect hardly seemed as interesting as the horde of bats ascending into the sky.
The torrent of bats was soon reduced to a stream, and then a trickle, and eventually the spectacle was over. The bats would feast in the distant darkness while the class gathered together to leave. After each of our heads were counted and present, we walked back to the hotel.
We got to choose who we roomed with, so I chose my friend Jake, Jake chose me, and we were matched up with two other classmates, Chase and William. We didn’t know them very well. They were slightly lower on the unspoken totem pole of Junior High than we were, mainly because they didn’t play any sports. But they were nice enough guys. Nonetheless, Jake and I mainly kept to ourselves.
That night, Mr. Ransum came by the room to tell us it was time for “lights out”. Jake and I got in bed. Chase and William had done so thirty minutes before and were already asleep.
“So are you and Stephanie going to make out tomorrow?” Jake asked me.
“What? I don’t know, maybe. Why tomorrow?” I asked. Jake’s question had caught me off guard.
“Well, we only have a few more days, and tomorrow in the caves I heard they turn off all the lights for a little bit and you can’t see a thing,” Jake explained.
Jake was referring to the next afternoon’s excursion, which was a guided tour of Carlsbad Caverns.
“You think I should kiss her in the dark?” I asked.
“At least you know you won’t get caught.”
I wondered how Stephanie would feel about that. I also wondered if her friends were asking her similar questions about me.
That night I dreamt. I dreamt of a legion of bats feasting on exquisite butterflies, while I kissed Stephanie in darkness. The ornate severed wings of butterflies fell like flakes of ash around us. Suddenly, a bat with antlers like a buck flew through the collar of Stephanie’s shirt and fluttered and writhed against her body while she screamed and spun. I helped her frantically take off her shirt, but the bat was somehow already gone, but it had bitten her, and she bled. Naked from the waist up, she was frightened and embarrassed. I stepped forward and hugged her, and she hugged me back. So tightly.
When I awoke from the dream, it was light outside. Chase and William had already left the room. Jake was asleep still, his back to me. I checked the front my underwear and found a wet spot the size of a silver dollar. At least subconsciously, something about the dream had excited me. I got out of bed and showered.
When I exited the bathroom, I began to brush my teeth. Jake was awake, watching TV in bed.
“You know they got HBO here?” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s an expensive TV channel. They have really good movies. And they don’t edit them at all. If they say curse words or show naked ladies they just leave it in there. My dad won’t let me watch it but sometimes I do when nobody’s home.”
“Cool,” I said, still distracted by my bizarre dream. It was beginning to fade though, the way dreams slip away once you wake up. They don’t solidify into your memory like everything else does, they go someplace else. They just dissolve. All I could remember from my dream was that Stephanie was hurt somehow, and I didn’t like that. Had she been naked in my dream? And butterfly wings. Why butterfly wings?
The dream completely faded by the time I went to breakfast.
The class ate cereal and stale muffins and mushy fruit in the hotel dining area. I scooped Frosted Flakes into a Styrofoam bowl and sat down at an empty table. Jake was skipping breakfast today. I scanned the room for Stephanie, but I didn’t see her. A few of the teachers were sipping coffee at a table nearby. Banana peels sat on the table in front of them.
When I was almost through with my cereal, I heard Stephanie’s voice behind me. She had just arrived to breakfast and was trying to find a decent apple among the fruit set out by the hotel, meanwhile talking and laughing with her best friend, Jennifer.
Jennifer tapped Stephanie on the arm and pointed at me. Stephanie looked over and gave a huge smile and a small wave. I smiled and waved back, and then she returned to selecting her breakfast. I was more than just happy to see her, I was relieved, and I didn’t quite understand why.
Stephanie found an apple she liked and Jennifer poured a bowl of Fruit Loops for herself. They both headed over to my table.
“Good morning!” Stephanie said, sitting down.
“Morning,” I said, smiling at both of them. “How did you two sleep?”
Secretly, the thought of them sharing a bed together intrigued me.
“Horrible! This one kept kicking,” Jennifer said, pointing at Stephanie.
Stephanie playfully wrinkled her nose at Jennifer. She then looked back at me and smiled.
“Well I slept just fine,” she said.
Stephanie smelled amazing, like girls always do right after a shower. I enjoyed that bit of intimacy, seeing her early in the morning, her hair still slightly wet.
“Are you excited about the caves today?” Stephanie asked me. I noticed she was having trouble cutting in to her apple with a plastic knife.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “It should be awesome.”
Stephanie smiled at me and nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
“I think it’s gross,” Jennifer said. “You never know what lives down there.”
“I heard there’s an actual gift shop down there,” Stephanie said. “Can you believe that? An underground gift shop.”
“I bet they sell rock candy,” I quipped, and Stephanie laughed. I loved to make her laugh.
“Wait, what?” Jennifer asked. She didn’t get it, but I didn’t care.
Stephanie gave her apple another try with the plastic knife, still unable to slice through it.
“You might as well just bite into it,” I said.
She sighed. “I don’t even really want this anymore,” she said, and plopped the apple into my empty cereal bowl.
And soon we were on our way to the Caverns.
End of Part II
