“Oh, Sam.” She sighed like she’d been my parent for more years than she liked to admit.

Talking to Summer was like listening to the old Girl Scout song “The Song That Never Ends.” There was a circularity on the surface that made sense but was also crazy making. I would have tried to sort out this conversation, but rising out of the desert, right at the foot of a bluff that looked like an erect head of a python, sat the sign for the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Summer yanked the steering wheel to the left and hit the edge of the asphalt. By some miracle we didn’t tip over and skid into the ditch. The popping sound of pebbles and stones kicked up against the underbelly of the cab, and the combination of the swerving and the noise woke Holly.

I heard Holly grumble and say, “What tha?” It was nice that when Holly was asleep, I could relax, but this was the next stage, and I needed to be alert and not sleepy with avoidance.

There were a lot of things I was expecting to see when we arrived at the sanctuary, but the reality far outplayed my imagination. Even after seeing photos, I couldn’t have been further off with my animal-camp fantasy. This place was not a hippie establishment with thrown-together lean-tos and food troughs scattered in the fields. Along the driveway to the center of the sanctuary were tidy cabins and a place to camp and park RVs. A wide green field corralled horses within white fences, all seemingly held in place by an umbrella of wide blue sky. A few hundred feet more, and our camper rolled to a stop at the bottom of a cliff where the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary Welcome Center was housed.

“This is not what I imagined,” Holly said with a bit of wonder in her voice.

“Me either. It’s stunning.”

Summer said, “It’s amazing, right?”

“Have you been here before?” I asked.

“No. I’d never heard of it until I met you guys.”

I shook my head. “It’s so orderly. So organized. I thought it was going to be a huge field of dogs, and we’d have to search for Peanut for hours.”

Holly shrugged. “Honestly, me too.”

“You guys, that’s silly. They can’t mix animals and let them run all over the place. They would kill each other. Transmit disease and generally reproduce.”

“I thought you didn’t know anything about this place.” I glanced at Summer.

“I don’t,” Summer said. She put the camper in park, opened the door, and slid out of the seat.

Holly glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

My heart leaped. Was that an accident on Holly’s part, a by-product of waking up and not having her irritated-antennae tuned in and focused on me? Or was this a bonding moment, like when people lived through a hardship and found an inside joke in the darkness, or when soldiers from the same platoon who otherwise hated each other came together to save the day?

“You two drive me crazy,” Holly said, and my soldier’s heart broke in two. I wanted to stop my feelings right there, get ahold of them, and say, No, don’t do it. You’ll only be hurt in the end. But being with Holly again had me feeling the freedom I’d felt in college, admiring her fierceness, wanting it for myself.

“Summer, I looked up your IMDb page like you suggested, and you did a whole special on the sanctuary two years ago. There’s a photo of you with an enormous parrot on your head,” said Holly.

“Oh yeah,” Summer said, slamming the cab door. “I forgot about that. We hoped that would take the place of the porno.”

I climbed from the back into the front seat and out of the passenger-side door right after Holly.

“Summer,” I said, annoyed, “can you just try to be more honest with us? I mean, I think you owe us that.”

“I’m an artist, you guys. Truth is a flexible concept.”

“No, it is not.”

“I got you here, didn’t I? I think you owe me a thing or two. But you can pay me back another time. I’m going to the pig house. I have an old beau there who, if I remember right, knows how to treat a lady.”

I watched her walk away. Sometime in the night, Summer had replaced her white jeans and platform shoes with a prairie skirt and flip-flops. She’d given herself two braids that hung on either side of her face. From behind she looked like an eighth grader who hadn’t gone through puberty. It was endearing.

“Have you seen her eat yet?”

“I have not,” said Holly, “but she must have eaten something from that giant bag of hers. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a month’s worth of bento boxes in there.”

“Maybe,” I said, unsure. “I’m worried about her.”

“Don’t worry about her. Summer takes care of Summer.”

It felt good to stand on the pea gravel and not feel the sway of the camper, the growl of the engine beneath the seats. The canyon had a photographic quality to it, as if we were standing in front of a green screen while a technician projected the perfect Utah scenery and weather for our pleasure. I stretched and said, “What’s the plan?”

“This isn’t a heist, Samantha. We’re going to go inside, ask where the canines are housed. Tell them we are here for the dog and probably sign a paper. Then, if all goes right, we will pick him up and leave.”

“What about Summer?”

“She can stay here. I snatched the registration and insurance for the camper when she thought I was sleeping.”

“You did?”

“Someone had to.”

“We’re just going to drive off and leave her?”

“Do you want to drive twenty-three hundred miles across country with her? Who knows what she’s got up her sleeve.”

Yes. Yes I do. I was not prepared to be alone with Holly. And I liked Summer. Simple as that. In some ways Holly seemed more of a stranger to me. My Holly wore a tie-dyed shirt with cats on it to sleep. Often she’d slip on a pair of jeans and go to class braless, makeup-less, her hair pulled into a pony. I searched Holly’s face for my past mischievous friend. Her leaner, more angular self, her pale-yellow button-down shirt. I didn’t know this strict person. This humorless woman.

“Holly, we can’t just leave her here.”

“I think we can, Samantha. What’s she doing with us anyway? Doesn’t she have some famous friends she can plague? She’s unpredictable and could be unstable. All those mists and ointments she’s always rubbing into her skin—they’re probably hallucinogens.”

“You sound like my grandmother. She just seems lost.”

Holly smoothed her hair, which was the equivalent of taking earrings off before a country-western bar fight.

“Lost like you, Sam? Does she make you feel better about yourself?”

“Wow, Holly.” I shrank back. I tried not to, but I did.

“Say it, Sam. You can’t bear to think about being stuck driving with me. You’d rather have that train wreck between us than spend any time with me.”

I clutched my hands together to stop them from shaking with frustration. She was right, of course. She could always read me—and there it was, the sadness again.

“Summer may be a train wreck, but at least she’s not . . .” Mean? Severe? Unfunny? I hesitated for a moment. My next word might change our relationship forever. If I named Holly, I’d better be careful, because once that label was out there, she would never, ever let me forget it.

In the pause I heard Summer’s voice from behind me. “No name-calling. No garbage dumping. No bringing up past grievances. Remember the rules. And Holly, stop trying to trap Samantha, using me as bait. She’s not as strong as she seems.”

The bright Utah sun brought out the lines in Summer’s sober face. Lines that had come from a mix of joy as well as sadness and defeat, just like the rest of us mortals. I was catapulted back to my grade-school playground, feeling again the sting of hearing from girls that my jeans were too short and my cartwheels sucked.

She looked between us. “I came back to get my sunglasses. This sun is brutal.” She turned, and as she walked away, she lifted the registration and insurance folder out of her bag and held it straight in the air with one sinewy arm. It was a glorious flipping of the legal bird, and I thought, Score one for Summer.

“Dammit. She’s sneaky,” said Holly. “How much do you think she heard?”

“What difference does it make, Holly? I heard all of it.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

REJECT BEFORE REJECTED

Holly and I, with our grim postfight faces, stood in the visitor center in the middle of Angel Canyon, possibly the most beneficent spot in the world. As if to highlight our petty energy, a staff member escorted a white short-haired dog missing a front leg through the gift shop. Visitors stopped to pet the scruffy animal like he was a celebrity.