“Right,” he says sarcastically. “Big, burly lumberjack. That’s me.”

Well, he has the big part down. When I walk by his side, his tall frame keeps the sun out of my face.

“I come out here because of all that, and because look at this place,” he says, gesturing toward the trees. “It’s serene. When Ansel Adams said, ‘I believe in beauty,’ he was here, in the Sierras. Maybe even walking this same path.”

I have a weird sense of déjà vu, because this sounds like the Lennon I know, rattling off obscure quotes and talking about the city lights over San Francisco Bay as if they were magic. So maybe I do understand why he’d be attracted to hiking.

He becomes self-conscious now, and laughs a little. “Besides all that, you never know what can happen out here. And that’s the thrilling part. A million things can go wrong.”

I groan. “No, that’s what I don’t want to hear. I like all my things to go right.”

“That’s not how the world works.”

“It’s how it should work,” I say. “I like plans that go smoothly. That’s the beauty I believe in. Nothing is better than when things go exactly how I expect.”

“I know that’s what you like,” he says, eyes squinting out the sun to peer down at me. “And there’s comfort in that, sure. But there’s comfort in knowing that when your plans fall apart, you can survive. That the worst thing imaginable can happen, but you can get through it. That’s why I like to read horror fiction. It’s not about the monsters. It’s about the hero surviving them and living to tell the tale.”

“It’s nice that you feel that way,” I tell him. “But I’m not sure I have that same level of comfort. Some of us weren’t meant to survive.”

“You survived the group abandoning us.”

“For the time being. It’s only been a few hours. I’m weak. I may not make it through the night.”

He chuckles. “That’s why I’m here. If you can’t survive on your own, hire help.”

“I hope you know that the Everharts are broke as a joke and you will get no reward for bringing me back alive.”

“Alive or dead, then. Excellent. That actually takes a lot of pressure off me,” he says with a devilish smile. “Oh, look. Here’s the trail that leads to the caves. Am I good or what?”

A wooden post with several vertical symbols carved into it sits where our trail crosses with a wider one. It appears that the caves are a mere five-hour walk. In the midday sun. Uphill. Fantastic. It all looked so much simpler and kinder on Lennon’s homemade map.

We walk until early afternoon, chatting occasionally about landmarks in the surrounding area and the places Lennon’s hiked previously. But when I fail to answer a question because I’m staring too hard at the rocky path, worried I might be close to passing out, Lennon makes us stop for lunch.

We take off our jackets and sit on them, and after draining half my water supply, I break out my mom’s gifted turkey jerky while he pulls out roasted peanuts and dried fruit. We decide to share. He informs me that high-calorie, high-salt foods are the best things to eat when you’re hiking. These are pretty much my favorite foods, so maybe hiking and me will work out, after all.

After lunch, we fill up our Nalgene bottles with filtered water from a nearby creek and hit the trail again. The land here is rockier, which sucks, because an hour into the hike, I’m getting tired already, and my feet keep stumbling over loose pebbles that slide over the sandy ground. It’s like trying to avoid thousands of land mines. I’m thinking the hiking boots might be better in this situation.

“Not much longer now,” Lennon tells me after I slide and nearly fall.

I don’t think I can make it. I really don’t. The sun is low in the sky, and we’ve easily been hiking for hours. I’m one slippery pebble away from casting aside my pride and begging him to stop again, when we crest a hill and find a small trail breaking away from the main one. I look up, breathing heavy, and am surprised to see a massive granite mountain across a field. One second it was in the distance, and now it’s right here.

“This is it,” Lennon says excitedly, pointing toward the smaller path. “One of the cave entrances should be at the end of this trail.”

“Oh sweet God, I thought we’d never get here,” I say, finding a renewed burst of energy to head down the new path. It doesn’t hurt that it’s level ground. “I can’t feel my feet. Should I be worried?”

“No. You should enjoy the numbness,” Lennon says. “Later, when they hurt so badly and you’re begging me to cut them off, then you’ll look back on these moments with nostalgia. Oh, look. Do you see it?”

I do. It’s a black mouth leading inside the gray mountain. And as we cross the field and approach it, I’m startled by how big it is. The path just ends. No warning. No posted sign.

“I thought you said this cavern has been explored,” I say. “Shouldn’t there be a park sign announcing it, or something?”

“That’s only on the commercialized caves. A few around here have lights strung through them for tourists. This one gets a lot of cavers.”

“Cavers.”

“People who explore caves.”

“I thought that was a spelunker.”

“Spelunkers are the idiots who get lost in caves and have to be rescued by the cavers.” Lennon slides a glance down at my face. “Brett would make a great spelunker.”

I roll my eyes, but secretly I’m thinking he’s probably right.

“So what’s the plan?” I ask as we pause in front of the cavern’s entrance to unhook our packs and retrieve our headlamps. I decided to snag the one Reagan left behind, since Lennon pointed out that it cost several hundred dollars more than my basic model and would be a shame to waste.

“It’s only about two miles from here to the exit on the other side,” he tells me as he straps on his headlamp. “It’s completely safe, so don’t worry. Thousands of people have been here before us.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling cool air emanating from the darkness inside. It’s like natural air-conditioning. Feels nice. “What’s the catch? Is there a cave troll we have to conquer?”

“This isn’t Moria, Zorie. We aren’t crossing the Misty Mountains.”

“Evil armies of miner dwarves?”

“You mean orcs. The dwarves weren’t evil. Did we not do an annual Christmas viewing of The Lord of the Rings trilogy during Sunday dinners every December?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“You loved them.”

I did. “Okay, Gandalf. What’s the catch about this cave?”

“No Balrog to fight. No catch. That I know of. I mean, I’ve never been inside this cave.”

“But you’ve been in others, right?”

“Just the Melita Hills Caverns and Zip Lines,” he says, the corners of his mouth lifting.

“On that school field trip?”

“When Barry Smith vomited on the bus after the zip lines.”

“Those are the only caves I’ve been inside too,” I say, alarmed. And it was basically just an excuse for them to build a gift shop and charge everyone a million dollars for Cokes. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”