The Source of All Things by Tracy Ross

My parents slide down the algae-covered rock and laugh—at the urgency, the cold air, and the slight, acceptable indiscretion we’recommitting, uphill and just out of range of the car beams passing through the night.
    We soak until the last rays of sun paint the mountains pink. We all scan the hillsides for deer. Spot one and you earn a dollar: my new dad’s rule. A star—my dad points it out—burns itself into view. “Wish on it,” he says, and we all do. When our skin begins to prune, we jump out of the water, rushing to pull clothes over sticky goose-pimpled flesh. We run to our yellow Jeep Cherokee, where we blast the heater, screaming the lyrics to “Free Bird,” my all-time favorite song. It’s dark when I lift Mom’s head off my shoulder and move into the front seat. Dad and I call truckers on the CB radio, using our handles, Coyote and Pinky Tuscadero. Outside the window, the Sawtooths rise into the night.

    A few days later, autumn light reflected off a burnished Redfish Lake. Decaying aspen leaves smelled good, in a sad, slowed-down way. This was our fifth trip to Redfish that year and the last one until next spring. As we wound down from swimming and sand-castle making, I sat with Dad on the white-sand shore and told him how I wanted to go into the Sawtooth Mountains, next summer maybe, on a real backpacking trip.
    Dad stomped out a cigarette and put it in his pocket, then smiled down at me like I was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. He slung an arm around my shoulders, scrunching the feathers in my blue-and-orange down vest. Dad took my hand and led me back to the trailer, where Mom and Chris were fixing dinner: tacos with hot dogs on the side. We crunched the chalky cornshells and guzzled big cups of milk. Later, at the foldout table, we played cards—Spoons or Go Fish—while Dad sipped beer from his koozie and Chris begged him for a taste. When I went to bed, Mom did too, crawling onto the foldout couch directly below my foldout bunk. She read for a while, then drifted off while I listened to the card game. “Pair of jacks,” said my dad. And I fell asleep.
    When I woke up next, sandpaper was crawling on my skin. At least that’s what I thought it was, until I felt hot breath against my cheek. The bunk bed where I slept was two feet from the camper ceiling, dark as a coffin and covered in dust. I couldn’t sit up, so I stayed perfectly still, while my eight-year-old brain tried to grapple with sandpaper and beer breath.
    At first, I thought someone had broken into the trailer, that I was alone, or else Mom would jump up, tear at her hair, and start screaming. Dad would grab his rifle and shout, “Identify yourself or I’ll shoot.” Chris, a gigantic pansy, would run out of the trailer and hide in the trees.
    In the dark, the sandpaper kept moving, five round pieces the size of fingertips. I thought I could hear two people whispering, or one person talking to itself. While it mumbled, the sandpaper scraped my stomach, then pulled up my pajama shirt. It touched my belly button, then worked its way to my nipples. When it was through scratching me there, it slid down to the elastic on my pj pants, where it lifted them off my belly and scraped its way south. In the dark I could feel myself sweating, but I was too terrified to move. The sandpaper stopped near the top of my vagina, then found an opening.
    I was swimming in tar. I would suffocate. I listened to the wind beat against the trailer until the breath grunted away from my faceand the sandpaper pulled up my pajamas, patting the waistband, laying it gently against my skin. In its place two leathery hands pulled up my sleeping bag and tucked it ever so carefully under my chin.
    The next morning I waited until I heard Dad go outside to get the fire going for coffee and eggs, then slid out of my bag and climbed down from the bunk. Chris was stretched out on the kitchen