Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Thankfully, I’d found a woman at the campground in Palm Springs who remembered Wolfe asking about BLM campsites in Joshua Tree. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than nothing.
It only took me a few minutes of research to learn that Joshua Tree National Park had over two million acres of federal land, much of it available for free camping. The good news was that boondocking—or off-grid camping—presented challenges for water, electrical, and sewer services, which usually limited a camper’s stay.
By the time I got closer to Joshua Tree, I had to find a hotel room and regroup. Trying to find a random van on two million acres of land required brains, not driving around in literal circles in hopes of spotting one van out of hundreds.
As soon as I scarfed down a sandwich and showered, I pulled out my laptop and got to work. The first thing I did was scroll Instagram for any recent hashtags related to Joshua Tree and boondocking.
It took two hours before I found something. An account called @SkoolieBesties had posted photos of a campfire in front of an old school bus painted in bright colors. Sitting next to her was someone in a soft leather jacket I recognized. It had been mine when I’d gone through a ridiculous motorcycle phase. All it had taken was one dicey incident on the road to make me give up the bike. And when a fifteen-year-old Wolfe had been scared and alone in San Ysidro after a school trip gone wrong, I’d thrown it over his shoulders in an attempt to stop the shaking.
In the @SkoolieBesties Instagram photo, Wolfe’s hand was curled over the frets of a guitar, pressing the strings, his fingers long and slender but rougher than I’d remembered.
My chest squeezed in relief as I searched for the date of the post. Four weeks ago. There were several hashtags in the caption. #NewFriends #JoshuaTree #SkoolieLife #CampfireSongs and #WishMeLuck.
I clicked through her feed until I saw a more recent post with Wolfe from closer to three weeks ago. It was a short video clip of Wolfe playing guitar and laughing with a good-looking guy around his age. This one was tagged #Kaibab #CampfireSongs #SkoolieLife and #FavoriteWayToEndADay.
Wolfe looked relaxed and happy. I couldn’t help but wonder who the guy was and how well they knew each other. Had he met someone? Started something with him?
@SkoolieBesties didn’t have any more photos of Wolfe in her feed, so I clicked over to the other account tagged in the video, @VotoBren.
The good-looking guy turned out to be Brennan Voto, who had a shockingly large following. I clicked through his feed until I found a more recent post with Wolfe from only an hour ago. It was a short video clip of Wolfe and a teenage girl playing guitar together on a small wooden stage. It looked like it was in a dive bar or maybe a small-town pizza place. This one was tagged #Hush #JakesPlace #VanLife and #BGShay.
My stomach dropped. Had Wolfe been traveling with this guy for three weeks? What did that mean? Were they together? Was this guy the reason Wolfe had run off?
I quickly talked myself off that cliff. If he’d had this guy waiting for him, he wouldn’t have kissed me like that back in Legacy. Wolfe was as loyal as they came, and I couldn’t imagine him cheating on someone. But… they could be open.
My fingers tapped and scrolled quickly to see @VotoBren’s other pictures. He had a few of Wolfe, and I traced them back before realizing they were giving me a kind of timeline of Wolfe’s trip.
I continued following hashtags and other tagged accounts until I had a map with dates. Palm Springs. Joshua Tree. Kaibab National Forest. Grand Canyon. Zion. Arches. Moab. He’d moved around with some of the same people, visiting different areas. And the last place he’d been spotted was a town in Colorado I’d never heard of called Hush.
He’d only been there for a day or two. One of @VotoBren’s posts had mentioned the sheer beauty of the area, the lack of light pollution, which made for starry nights, and the good food and company to be had at a bar called Jake’s Place. Hopefully, it was the kind of town Wolfe wanted to stay in for a little longer.
I found several video posts tagged with Jake’s Place, featuring the same teenager from the guitar video with Wolfe, only this time playing onstage alone in what looked less like a casual interaction and more like an actual performance. At the edge of the video, I caught a glimpse of Wolfe with an encouraging, proud look on his face.
Had he been giving her guitar lessons or something? It seemed strange that someone who was good enough to play in front of a crowd would need them, but then again, Wolfe had learned a lot of advanced techniques from Jude, back when he used to play and sing.