The Way We Bared Our Souls (22 page)

ON THE DAY WE GRADUATED
from high school, I decided to be late to the school-wide party Kit was throwing at Fort Marcy Park. I made a note on a slip of paper and took it to Shell Rock, where Kaya had once planned to hold her seventeenth birthday party. This was my final burden, and I’d borrowed it from the Indians. “Nothing lives long,” the note read, “only the earth and the mountains.”

I released it into the May sky and watched it float away. It was part of the transient air now, drifting east and west in the same currents that carry tribes, children, and balloons. I watched the note until it disappeared into the airstream along with the fragrance of juniper, along with a hint of water just beneath the surface of the desert. Circling home.

Just because it’s paper doesn’t mean it has to burn.

Sometimes I think that acknowledgments should occur in the middle of a book instead of in its final pages, because the halfway point has always been the clutch moment for me as a writer. That’s where I worry that I’ll never finish or that I’ll never do justice to the story I want to tell. In those intense times of doubt, a relentless cheering section makes all the difference.
The Way We Bared Our Souls
met with its own midlife crisis, but I was able to make it to the end with the help of the following people:

My mom, who first drove me across the Mississippi.

Matt, who let me bounce ideas off him about rodeos, Califor-nia, and young love on our long walks around Brooklyn.

My siblings, especially Stephen, who managed to support my writing despite my rejection of all his YA book ideas.

My “co-
madre
” Susannah, whose lifelong spiritual guidance informed this novel.

My cousin Margo, who was always ready to celebrate with me every accomplishment, however minor, throughout the writing process.

Charles, who remains with me long after death, and whose face I often saw when I moved Thomas through the world.

Lance Weisand of Albemarle High, who first awakened me to the darkness of American history, while also giving me hope that our nation’s ideals could prevail.

Gloria Loomis and Julia Masnik, whose enthusiasm for the project at times dwarfed my own.

My late father, whose paperback westerns and Native American histories I still read when I miss him. And who was also on that long-ago trip across a great river.

Finally, this book would not have made it five pages, let alone to the middle, without the devotion of Liz Tingue at Razorbill. Though as my editor she was always savvy, insightful, and exacting, she was (and remains) first and foremost my friend.

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