I wanted to talk to Abbi about it when we landed back in Denver on Tuesday morning, but as we stepped off the plane her phone went crazy with missed messages.
"Everything alright?" I asked as the phone nearly vibrated out of her fingers.
Abbi's eyes scanned the screen and she frowned.
"It's Zara."
An hour later Abbi and I sat on either side of Zara in her principal's office, crammed in with our suitcases straight from the airport. Zara was already there when we rushed in. She hadn't looked up when we sank into the chairs next to her. She sat there with her face curtained by her blonde hair, head tucked into her chest and arms crossed.
"Zara," Mrs Hamilton started. "Would you like to tell your mother and…"
She looked to Abbi for explanation as to who the hell I was, but I interjected before she could answer.
"Her father."
Mrs Hamilton glanced toward Abbi to check for any protest from her and then returned her attention to Zara.
"Zara," she repeated, "would you like to tell your mother and…father what you did during Geography class, during your national parks presentation?"
I looked over Zara's head at Abbi, who looked just as bewildered as I felt. Zara wasn't a get-in-trouble kind of kid, or at least neither of us had thought she was. Abbi placed her hand on Zara's arm and leaned forward to see past her defensive curtain of hair.
"Zara, baby, what's all this about?"
But Zara remained stoic in her chair, not moving at all, save the tiniest swing of her shoelaces where her feet didn't quite reach the floor. Mrs Hamilton eyed Zara and then adjusted her half-moon glasses with a sigh.
"From what I understand from Mr Phillips, Zara and the rest of her classmates were tasked with giving a PowerPoint presentation about the national parks," Mrs Hamilton explained.
Abbi and I both nodded; we'd each seen her working tirelessly on her project over the past weeks. Mrs Hamilton again tried to tug words from Zara's lips, but it seemed that would require the use of a pry bar.
"Abbi," Mrs Hamilton said, "had you seen Zara's presentation?"
Abbi's cheeks turned a sheepish red as she scratched the back of her neck.
"I've been working a lot of overtime recently," she explained. "But I know Zara's been working on it. There's no reason that she shouldn't have finished on time to present."
Mrs Hamilton shook her head. "Oh, Zara, did present."
Again Abbi and I exchanged confused looks.
" I don't understand," I said. "What's the problem here then?"
Mrs Hamilton opened a laptop and spun it around to face us. "The problem is what she presented."
I watched as the principal clicked through the slides Zara had presented as part of her national parks project. It was immediately clear what was wrong. They were all pictures taken during our road trip to see the Grand Canyon and Moab and Arches, but none of the pictures were really about the parks themselves: they were about us.
There was a picture of Abbi and me sitting on the hood of the car drinking gas station coffee. There was a picture of Zara and me asleep in the back of the car, her head on my shoulder, my cheek atop her head. There was a picture of the three of us at the Four Corners. Picture after picture it was us, smiling, laughing, faces stuffed full of food, cheeks smeared with chocolate, lips red from popsicles, dusty and tanned from hiking.
The grand national parks behind us were nothing but a backdrop, something to fill the small corners and even smaller gaps between Abbi and Zara and me. For most of the pictures it was nearly impossible to even tell that we were there—at the Grand Canyon or beside the largest ball of twine in the world. There was really nothing but us.
The slideshow ended with a blank “works cited” page. I thought of all the library books Zara had checked out, read through, took diligent notes from. It was hours upon hours of work. And yet she used not a single piece of it.
I glanced down at Zara, whose silent stillness was almost imperceptibly starting to break down. Through her golden hair I caught her biting her lip nervously, and a tiny tap, tap, tap of her sneakers bumping together filled the quiet office. Mrs Hamilton was apparently the fuse for her building explosion.
"This clearly does not fulfil the requirements laid out in the syllabus by Mr Phillips and—"
"Yes, it does!"' burst from her.
"Zara!" Mrs Hamilton objected.
I think both Abbi and I were surprised when Zara hopped down from her chair and passionately exclaimed, "The requirements were to show in a report the importance of our national parks. Well, they were important to me because they brought my mom and my dad together. When we were at the national parks we were a family, a real family, and that's the most important thing of all! So I did do what I was supposed to do. Those pictures show how the parks are important to me."
I was too stunned by Zara's outburst to do anything but stare at her with wide, unblinking eyes as Mrs Hamilton chastised her.
"Ms Zara Miller," she hissed angrily, "you will sit down right this instance and show some respect. I don't know what has gotten into you, but you have become a very loud young lady who bucks the rules as you see fit."
As I continued to stare at Zara I saw Abbi, the tangled blonde hair, the clenched fists, the fire in her soul as her chest heaved. I saw Abbi the way I knew her: a
