Today’s the fourth, so I don’t turn my car toward Copper Harbor. That’s going to be packed, and after all this time at Loon Lake, I’m not much for crowds. Plus sometimes a girl just wants to walk through a Walmart.
It’s a long drive to Houghton, but a pretty one. Most of the traffic’s headed up 41 the other way, and even though you’re going past a bunch of different signs, you don’t really see any neighborhoods. They’re all old mining towns, and most of them don’t look like much anymore. There’s Calumet, which has some cool stuff, but I keep on heading south, radio blasting, and cross the bridge, and head up the hill toward neon-lit aisles of more than you could ever want.
Walmart is like the anti-Truman: full of chemicals, lacking sunlight, all processed and neon and individually packaged. I want to hit the candy aisle, mostly, because the kitchen’s not stocked with much of anything sweet this month. Nobody requested snack cakes or even really any desserts, so I have to fend for myself. I only grab a basket instead of a cart, though, trying to be reasonable. Mostly I just need to be washed in the atmosphere of mind-numbing architecture and a bunch of strangers who don’t know any version of my name.
If I mentioned anything to Lydia, she’d probably put the candy on Jonathan’s list and I’d get it for free, but shopping feels a bit like taking some control back. That’s totally not the point of the summer, I know—it’s about following orders and being the perfect little customer service girl—but hey, weekends aren’t for work. Shake things up, do something that doesn’t happen the other five days, and put items in plastic bags that will make Truman cluck his tongue in despair.
The switch-up for lunch is getting a burger instead of having a cold sandwich, and I’ve got my book so I can sit in the booth and read it while I eat. I’m early, before noon, so it’s not too crowded, and that’s the way I like it. Although I’m not sure how crowded it ever really gets here on a weekday.
After lunch it’s time to head to the library because they have public computers.
Maybe it’s silly. Probably it’s silly. Before coming up here I deleted the Gmail app from my phone, and I haven’t checked my email on it since. Residents aren’t allowed to bring their phones at all because the temptation to make a digital record of Loon Lake and the other residents is just too great, so mine gets locked in my glove box most of the time, but I recharge it on the drive. Texts pop in once I hit an area with signal, but the important things only get sent in emails, and I don’t want to run the risk of someone breaking into my car, finding the phone, and reading the important things.
I paid for a library card so I can log in to one of their desktops, read my emails, delete the Internet history even though I don’t know if that step’s really necessary, and log out again. I don’t print anything, so Thursdays are really the only days I read them, if I don’t feel like driving down two days in a row. I don’t delete them, but I can’t really keep them.
He’s old-school in a computer semi-literate kind of way, which means he doesn’t sign his emails, but the display name tells me it’s from Aaron Gladieux all the same. Even though he knows I only check things once or twice a week, he usually writes every day. I read through all of them, clicking from one to the next, and then back to the one that’s his response to what I sent last week. I scroll down to the end and read those lines slowly, over and over: Hang in there, honey. We’ll get through this. I love you. Finally I take a deep breath, swipe at my eyes, and pull myself together enough to write back.
Rebecca Frost 
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