2005-04-20 || 3:04 p.m.

|| bargaining for free showers at the kramer junction truck stop ||

out of all of it:
how much more green and lush the desert is than i ever imagined and how i've never felt so safe with doors unlocked and keys coquettishly fanned out on the driver's seat. how all of her co-workers thwarted any chance of polite glad-to-meet-you handshakes for the firmest most heartfelt sweaty bearhugs; sitting around desert potluck in the middle of nowhere with a stray dog and vegan stirfry and cracking open my sister's countless stories that have reached legendary proportion by now: 'she really got hit in the face with a shower head three separate times?' and 'your next book is about the lifetime supply of tuna?' and who is older and who is more mature and who started with the stupid outfits. how we slept in kelly's truck with the back down because our legs are too long to close it all up and whispering at her a few times because i am unaccustomed to falling asleep in such disorienting silence. learning how to pee so that i didn't wet my shoes and spitting toothpaste on dirt. after all that, and driving over the tracks into the saddest part of barstow, and listening to kelly sing and play guitar in earnest for the first time, and seeing landscapes i could only compare to thunder mountain railroad at disneyland, after finally seeing what it is my sister does in the desert, how she lives and with whom she spends that magical time between four o'clock and sunset, my favorite part was after i had gotten home and kelly called to say her friend rachel had told her how weird it was to notice that kelly and i have the exact same hands.

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