Free Before We Go Extinct by Karen Rivers Page B

you can’t photograph it and send it somewhere, anywhere, it’s the worst kind of loneliness.
    I slap my phone against my leg, like that will revive the dead battery for long enough that I can take a picture. I want to show someone (Daff). I want to say, Look at this. I want someone (Daff) to say, Wow.
    Because, seriously, this place . This is not what I was expecting. Not even a bit.
    Mrs. S. would die. It puts the Keys to shame. It’s freaking breathtaking.
    â€œYou can plug it in when we get to the cabin,” says Dad. “The car charger thing is broken but I’ve hooked up batteries to solar panels up there and you can plug in anything. We’re completely off the grid.”
    I give him a look that he misses entirely. I’m lucky my dad is not a genius. It’s kind of like being parented by a cartoon. Everything about him is two-dimensional. There, but not there.
    â€œCool, eh?” he says. He gestures with his arm, a sweeping circle, like Mrs. S. waving down passersby to look at her display of fresh cod.
    Yeah, I nod. I don’t know who I’d want to see this more: Mrs. S.? Or Daff. (Daff, Daff, always Daff.)
    It looks like a scene from a jigsaw puzzle or a postcard of somewhere that no longer exists, as though it really is TIME TRAVEL. The ferry weaves through islands that are dark-green-thick with forests, like cakes with too much icing, top-heavy. So many trees. The islands should sink into the sea from the weight of all that forest. I’ve never seen trees like this.
    Or islands.
    I’ve got to be honest. I didn’t know places like this existed. You hear about deforestation and the raping of the rain forest and clear-cutting and how everything is wrecked, so I guess I just went ahead and believed it was too late. I guess I thought everything had been cut down and destroyed. Everything like this, that is.
    When you live in a city, it can be hard to even know that other realities are out there.
    Reality that’s like this.
    Nature in abundance.
    I feel stupid even thinking that, but …
    I reach for my phone to type nature in abundance before I remember that it’s dead. And so is he.
    Sailboats dot the waters with huge ballooning sails full of wind. We pass an island with colorful tents splayed out down a hillside. Kayakers paddle near the shore in bright yellow and red boats that look like bathtub toys.
    It’s almost ridiculous, how pretty it is. It’s pretend. It can’t be real. But I know that it is because the air smells green and alive and salty and like forever would smell if it had a scent.
    Then suddenly, amazingly (or not), I have an attack of feelings that are the opposite of what I should be feeling. I mean, shouldn’t this kind of thing make you feel joy? If nothing else in the world makes you feel joy, this should. All this greenness. Well, this scene just suddenly and totally pisses me off. Like how dare it be so beautiful? The King is dead. I am so angry and sad and empty. I kick my foot against a huge bin labeled Life Preservers and my toes crunch in a satisfyingly painful way. Then my eyes tear up again and I put my sunglasses on and stare into the black reflection on my phone, keeping my eyes off everything that is alive and diamond-sparkling on the horizon against the backdrop of the too-blue summer sky.

 
    16
    The car pulls to a stop at the top of a public dock. The road has narrowed and gravel crunches under the tires. Dad swings the car up into a patch of dirt and grass that isn’t quite a parking spot. I have a feeling that parking lots aren’t really a thing here. You just … stop. The dock itself is a long, long, long ramp leading to a small landing down a steep plank. It has a railing painted bright red. At the distant end of it, an aluminum boat is bobbing in the swell.
    â€œWell,” says Dad, “you might not talk, but you gotta work. We have to carry this stuff”—he