How to Start a Fire Read Free Page B

pinpoint the location of the Stratosphere Giant, currently the tallest tree in the world—although that statistic was debatable, since not all trees had been measured.
    Despite the weather, Kate demanded they go on a hike. It was then she and Anna learned that George was on the track team as well as the basketball team. Her pace was brutal. George was so awestruck that she barely noticed her companions huffing and puffing in her wake. Kate struggled to match George’s speed while offering morsels of information she had gathered over the past few months.
    “The oldest coastal redwood is over two thousand years old. Can you imagine that?”
    “Which one is it?” George asked.
    Kate looked around. “Don’t know,” she said. “But many are at least six hundred years old. Take your pick.”
    George stopped in her tracks and craned her neck to try to see the top of a tree. As she continued along the trail, she found a white anomaly among the green brush.
    “What is this?” George asked.
    “It’s an albino redwood. A mutant,” Kate said. “They can’t manufacture chlorophyll, so they’re white. They survive as parasites, linking their root system with normal trees and getting nutrients from them. They can grow to only about sixty feet. But aren’t they cool?”
    “They’re amazing,” George said.
    Kate’s obsession had been sated. She had seen in real life what she had only read about in books. But it seemed she’d passed her obsession on to George, as if it were a physical object that could be handed off.
    Anna liked the trees and all. She didn’t mind the hike, but her internal experience was far milder than the other girls’. Anna slowly caught up with George and Kate, pulled out a joint, and lit up, smoking among the greenery.
    “How can you smoke in a place so beautiful?” George asked.
    “It makes it
more
beautiful,” Anna said.
     
    They stayed in the Redwood Lodge one more night and made s’mores on their camping stove in their room, which meant flattening them on a skillet. Kate shook her head in disappointment; this was not how it was done. She missed the smell of burned marshmallow and wanted the musty, used odor of the motel room to disappear. Anna lit a joint, even though George pointed at the No Smoking sign.
    “That only refers to cigarettes,” Anna said.
    The scent of marijuana overpowered the various odors of past occupants that seemed layered in the room. Anna passed the joint to Kate, who lately, after months of rejecting the offer, had found herself giving in now and again. She took a drag and suffered a brutal coughing fit.
    George shook her head in the manner of people who don’t partake.
    Kate said, when she could speak again, “It will make the s’mores taste better.”
    George, being the guest, was served first. The chocolate and marshmallow dripped onto her fingers, stinging them with their heat. She took a bite and thought,
Why does it need to taste better?
     
    The next day, Anna drove thirty minutes north on the 101 and crossed the Oregon border.
    “Welcome to Oregon,” Anna said, as if she were a representative of the state. “You have now officially been to two states,” she said to Kate. “How do you feel?”
    “I think I like Oregon. It’s definitely my second-favorite state,” Kate said.
    “Excellent,” said Anna as she began looking for an exit so that they could start their journey home.
    After forty-eight hours of constant chatter, the trio drifted into silence. It wasn’t the tense silence of those who’d had their fill of one another, just an unspoken sparing of words. They knew when to speak and when to stop.
    “I’m hungry,” George announced as the mileage signs to Santa Cruz dipped into double digits.
    “I know a place,” Kate said.
    An hour later, they were sitting in Smirnoff’s Diner on Church Street, devouring an assortment of pies and French fries. Ivan, Kate’s grandfather, guardian, and the owner of the establishment, approached