Where Dust Settles
The bus brakes hiss like an exhale I didn't know I was holding, and gravel crunches under the tires as we roll to a stop at the end of a dirt road that seems to go nowhere and everywhere at once. My knee is bouncing before I even register I'm doing it, a habit my brain does without asking permission, and I press my palm flat against my thigh to still it. It doesn't work. It never really works.
"MacKenzie." Priya's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts, sharp as a bell. "You've read that same paragraph of your notebook four times. What does it say?"
I glance down at the page, at my own looping handwriting scrawled across the lines in three different colors of ink because black alone never feels like enough to hold a thought in place. *Rip Wheeler. Broken corral fence, north pasture. Ask about the horse.* I don't actually remember writing any of it, but there it is, proof that some part of me was already planning this moment weeks before we boarded a plane to Montana.
"It says we're about to walk into something I've been dreaming about since June," I answer, snapping the notebook shut before the words can blur together again.
Outside the window, dust rises in gold curls under…
