Jolene looked out the back passenger window of her rideshare at the faded wooden sign marking the trailhead. Immediately, she longed to be back in her crappy apartment, watching crappy network television and drinking crappy beer to forget about her crappy day at her crappy job. She didn't enjoy hiking or outdoor activities. She didn't even find pleasure in the white-girl city hiking that involved overpriced 'workout' clothes and high-calorie lattes.

Jolene held a certain disdainful judgement in her small-town heart for the women who lived — or struggled to pretend to live — that stereotype of Insta-perfect life. Growing up in a rural college town surrounded by a mix of physicists and farmers, she had longed to escape to a glittery city life; to lead a life of wine tastings, live music, and First Fridays at the trendy art galleries.

What she found were the same shallow bigots she'd hoped to escape. Each of them full of their own expectations disguised as questions and unwilling to even entertain a new perspective, much less pay for it. "Oh, you read Tarot? Can you tell me my future? Will I be a famous influencer? How can I attract better sponsors? Should I start a video podcast about travel tips or beauty tips or just the difficulties of being a boy-mom? How much do you charge, like, five dollars? Can I just buy you a coffee, instead? What do you mean two hundred an hour? Are you crazy?"

"Are you sure this is...where you want to be?"

Her driver's voice snapped Jolene out of the downward spiral. As she focused on him, he looked back at her with concern on his deep brown face. She thought back over the drive, about the pieces of his story that he'd shared about moving from Nigeria, and the differences between the States and his home.

"You said that the biggest difference between Nigerian culture and American is that in Nigeria, people take care of each other. And you're right, a lot of America has lost that community spirit. But I think, overall, you're more likely to find it in the Midwest than anywhere else. My best friend, well really my brother...he emailed me to say that Avalon, Indiana has both opportunity and community. I trust him. So, here I am...." She trailed off, gesturing to the trail marker at the edge of the small gravel pull-off.

Her driver nodded, then he reached over to a compartment in his dash and offered her a business card. It gave his name as Henry Obiora and listed a cell number and email address. "If this promise of community and opportunity is true, or if you find you have made a mistake and require a ride home. Either way, please let me know."

She tucked it into a safe place in her wallet and met his friendly face with a warm smile. "Thank you. I...I will." And she meant it.

A few minutes later, she was standing at the edge of the pull off, next to the sign, staring into the shadows of the forest ahead. It was mid-morning, and the bright May sunshine made it hard to see far into the deeply shaded trail. As the gravel dust from Henry's departure settled, she adjusted the straps on her backpack and stepped with care through the overgrowth and onto the trail.

Lashawn's email detailed meticulous instructions on how to navigate through the park to find the secluded little town somewhere on the other side. The confusing and twisting roads more often than not left people utterly lost. That made cutting through the state park's dense forest the easiest route. Or, rather, pushing through its thick and thorny undergrowth.

A few yards along the trail, the underbrush thinned out. This made the path itself more obvious and moving along it much easier. Jolene established a decent stride, her well-worn boots treading well on the carpet of rotten leaves and bare earth underfoot. The morning sunlight strained to reach the ground, forsaking any thoughts of sun-dappled in favor of cool, shadowy, and secluded. 

The variety and volume of the birds in the canopy overhead gave a lovely soundtrack to her walk. She recognized the bright notes of a cardinal and the raucous cawing of several crows. A gentle breeze rustled overhead but did not stir against her skin. Not that she left much exposed. Between the sun's effect on her pale complexion, and the threat of mosquitos, ticks, and thorns, she had decided on a loose, lilac-colored seersucker shirt and comfortable old jeans. She wore a ball cap to pull back her short brown curls and cover her head against ticks.

The smell of the forest was curiously comforting. The fresh scent of recent growth mingled with the musk of rotting vegetation and the earthy smell of exposed dirt. Every 'woodland stroll' candle promised it, but never delivered. It felt like the idyllic sort of 'country life' she had read about in novels as a kid.

Quiet, Canadian island towns where farmland and forests mixed with rocky seashores had painted a portrait that outshone the reality of endless flat fields and trailer parks surrounding a tiny, but prestigious college town and the ancient 19th century jail with attached sheriff's home in which Jolene had spent her early childhood growing up alongside the ghosts of cops and criminals. At least until a fire, when she was 12, ended up taking the lives of her parents and little brother. Jolene stayed overnight at a friend's.

They determined a fault in the out-of-date wiring caused the fire. It was the ninth fire the jailhouse had experienced in its two hundred some-odd years of history. Jolene, of course, knew why the ghosts were angry. But as usual, no one wanted to hear the truth from her.

The sudden sound of three loud, wooden thock sounds came echoing through the trees from behind her. Was it a woodpecker adding its search for tasty grubs as a rhythmic percussion to the sylvan symphony? Probably.

Her surroundings fell silent as the birds ceased their singing.

Ahead and to the right came a single wood-on-wood thock, and Jolene stopped walking. Two extra sounds came from ahead and to the left. Thock-thock. She took a slow, deep breath and felt her chest and lungs struggle against the pressure of the air around her. She tried to push the old cryptid tales out of her head. Stories of creatures in the shadowed forest. The air smelled clean and woody. No smell of skunk, no monster's stench. Just decomposition, wood, and earth.

Crows called, rousing the forest with birdsong. That faint feeling of unexplained pressure released, and she could breathe unhindered again. Her ears rushed with sudden blood-flow and rang quietly for a few seconds. Jolene forced her feet to move again, her steps quicker than before. 

It was over, whatever it had been.

The trail she followed soon opened into a clearing. The blue sky shone overhead and some fluffy clouds had condensed during her walk. They did nothing to conceal the sun, but only drifted in lazy traces across its face. The soft sound of moving water had joined the symphony of birdsong.

Jolene glanced at her watch and then looked again. Somehow, she'd been walking for over two hours. It didn't seem like it had been that long, and so she pulled out her phone to double check. Indeed, it was past noon. Her stomach chimed in, offering a third opinion if needed.

While she had her phone out, she pulled up Lashawn's email. Expecting to have no signal on the journey, she had saved it to her phone. She was surprised to see that she had a single, flickering bar of service. As she stepped forward to get out of a patch of sunlight, it flickered once more and disappeared.

"I knew it couldn't last, " she muttered. "Now, where's this rock?"

The email told her to look for a large, flat-ish rock that stuck out into the stream where it cut through a bit of a hillock. Finding it was easy, and she placed her backpack on top. From within, she removed a blanket, and the snacks she'd packed for herself: honey beef jerky, mixed nuts, and dried apple rings. She'd lived most of her life on honey beef jerky, mixed nuts, and dried apple rings. Also, cereal straight from the box with milk on the side.

She rather liked the modern slang of calling such meals 'girl dinner.' It always evoked within her memories of Jane Austin. Which blended rather well with an impromptu outdoor lunch in the deep forest beside a stream. 

Her thoughts went from Jane Austin straight to Lashawn. It was one of the first things that they'd bonded over when she'd moved in after the fire. Lashawn's parents, Moniqua and James, were Jolene's God-parents and became her guardians after the fire. She'd moved into their house, with a bedroom of her own that shared a bathroom with Lashawn. 

They had been friends before that, in how you're friends with the children of your parents' friends. Bridge nights, game nights, church events and the like when all of the kids aged not-teen are in one group being loosely supervised by the other group of kids aged some-teen, but not old enough to drive. The gold-old days of Midwestern community, when you could trust your neighbors to rat out every misdeed of every child on the block.

While sharing a seat on the bus ride home, she had seen him reading the school library's copy of Emma, the same one she had returned earlier that day. With a smirk on her lips, she jostled his shoulder with her own. "What's up, nerd?" she asked. When he turned and gave her a nasty look, prepared to offer one of his sarcastic retorts, she simply pulled out the copy of Northanger Abbey she'd checked out that morning, and opened it up.

Of course he got the joke, Lashawn always got the joke. From then on, they were inseparable. She introduced him to Anne of Green Gables, and he introduced her to Edgar Allen Poe. They both discovered a love of James Whitcomb Riley on a school field trip.

The sibling relationship that bloomed over books bore fruit as they went into high school. While they shared few classes, their interests and talents complimented and bolstered the others. He excelled in chemistry, physics, algebra, and calculus. She outpaced their class in English, geometry, trigonometry, and history. They were their own study group and each helped the other into graduating with honors.

Moreover, each one was accepted into university. Jolene moved to student housing in Indianapolis to attend Indiana University at IUPUI, while Lashawn went to study engineering at Rose Hulman. It marked the start of the end. They both made it home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But for spring break, Jolene was burned out and needed some time away from the bleak gray skies and endless snow. She went to Florida while Lashawn went home.

It was during that visit that his parents confronted him about his truth. One of James co-workers had made a joke about seeing Lashawn at a drag brunch in Terre Haute. As one of the performers. Pictures do not deceive, and it was the photographic evidence supplied by the co-worker that caused Lashawn's God-fearing Methodist parents to disown him. Because, without consideration for his middle-class black parents in rural Indiana, he proudly displayed his homosexuality. Didn't he understand how this would harm them?

Lashawn dropped out of school and fled the Midwest with haste, communicating with her only occasionally. He would disappear for months, only to resurface with an email, birthday card, or phone call. He was constantly in new places, doing new things. His dream of designing bridges was given up in favor of writing an adventure travel blog under a pen name that he eventually changed to his real name.

And that was when Lashawn James Nelson, her foster brother and best friend, died. Or, rather, was reported dead when his Christian parents, in order to cut ties with their son's sinful past, identified the brutally murdered corpse of a homeless black youth in Indianapolis as their estranged son. They packed up and moved to Charleston as soon as decency allowed.

Lashawn surprised Jolene at their 20th high school reunion by appearing in drag as part of the entertainment. He admitted that he had the sculptor base his breastplate on the shape of Jolene's breasts. "That way," he explained, "there's a real family resemblance!"

They spent the evening catching up. Lashawn was still Lashawn and quite happy in his authentic life as a gay man and a drag performer. He was not in a relationship, nor did he have any permanent ties. He worked for a promotion company that required frequent travel and promoted his drag shows. He also maintained a travel blog as Jasmine Linae, reviewing LGBTQIA+ travel experiences. 

"It's been great, but I'm ready to settle down somewhere," he said as they sat in a Denny's drinking coffee and eating horrible breakfast food. "You ever heard of Avalon, Indiana? It's down in Brown County."

Jolene shook her head. "No. But it's Indiana. There's all kinds of weird little places I haven't heard of."

"True. I can't even remember where I heard about it, but I looked into it and it sounds like a great place. One of those little artsy communities that's surprisingly progressive."

"Run by a man named Jim Jones?" Jolene smirked over her coffee at him.

"It's not a cult."

"Are you sure? Have they asked you to buy any wacky health supplements? Or yoga pants?"

He paused, then fixed her with a scowl and shoved a wedge of sticky pancakes in his mouth. "No," he said, his mouth grossly full.

She laughed and let him be while they ate. The next afternoon, he hugged her goodbye and set out to see what life could be like in a small, progressive town. His travel blog shut down not long after, without a post on his adventure to Avalon. Still, she got emails from him about once a month describing an interesting and rather idyllic life working for the town's small newspaper.

Little anecdotes about his neighbors and fellow townspeople filled his emails. These vignettes were always a bit strange, but they painted such an alluring picture that when he mentioned a need for someone like her in town, she decided to go...even though it was difficult to fathom how they could need her.

Still, she trusted him. She would deliver papers, make lattes, or seat people at the diner. The things she felt qualified to do.