Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King

Author:A.S. King
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: JUV039230
ISBN: 9780316191814
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2011-10-02T22:00:00+00:00

THE NINTH THING YOU NEED TO KNOW—BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL

We leave for the Grand Canyon at five in the morning. Dave drives while Aunt Jodi stays particularly quiet in the passenger seat, aside from yelling at other drivers.

“Jesus! Take it easy!”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“How about a turn signal? It’s the thing that happens when you use that stick on your steering column!”

Mom and I are in the backseat, and though I brought my music and my book, I’m not plugged in to either. I’m just looking out the windows, taking in the terrain. For a while it looks a lot like driving through Pennsylvania. I expected deserts and cacti, but it’s fir trees and tall grass, only the grass is browner.

My mind wanders to Ginny. Last night I leafed through a few of Jodi’s magazines and found one of Ginny’s shampoo ads. She does the Favors from Nature line. She looks even more amazing in the pictures, where the motto, IT’S ONLY NATURAL, floats in bold type above her beautiful head. If you look at that picture, it’s hard to imagine she’s hanging out with a bunch of crew-cut feminists who chant “vagina.” But maybe that’s just a weird thing for anyone to imagine, no matter who’s in the picture. I wonder what they’re doing today.

“I didn’t expect so many trees,” Mom says after we pass through Flagstaff and continue northwest. Only ten minutes after she says it, everything flattens, and we hit a desert-looking place with mountains in the distance. “Maybe I spoke too soon,” she says.

Finally, after four hours in the car making occasional small talk, we pass a sign that reads GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK.

We have to drive another ten minutes to see the canyon for real. It really is the most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen. Mom even cries a little, it’s so amazing. All we can say is “wow.”

Mom says, “Wow.”

I say, “Wow, wow, wow.”

The first look is overwhelming—an audible gasp sort of overwhelming. I can’t really process what I’m seeing. It’s almost like being underwater—at one of those underwater paradises, like the Great Barrier Reef, that you see on TV documentaries. Everything’s enormous and a blur, a beautiful blur, and I feel weightless, unattached, or floating or something. As if the Grand Canyon is making me drunk.

The ants say: What did you expect? It’s the Grand-freaking-Canyon!

Dave stands on Mom’s right, and Jodi stands on my left. They don’t say anything, but when I look at Jodi, she smiles at me and nods back toward the view and pats me on the shoulder.

We turn back on the road we came in on and follow it to a small village where our hotel is. It’s the oldest hotel around, and it has a view of the canyon, which seems to be rare or something, because Dave says it was hard to get a room here on short notice, but he has connections. He checks us in, and we make our way to our rooms.

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