The Trip

 Seattle in 1982 is everything a troubled high school kid could want; night life, freedom, a prep school called Peregrine where a freak flag is practically a prerec.The suburbs, where Callista York lives in modern affluence, lies across the lake and a world away. She and her best friend Adam, who started at Peregrine with her and lives nearby, both need escape. Her parents are chasing polyamory out of town. He is being persecuted for his lack of manliness. They get it by driving around in Adam's muscle car, pretending to be a romantic couple to deflect the sexual shame that dogs each of them, and with drugs. One Friday after night skiing they try magical mushroom tea, which takes them to a place they call The Realm. It's a technicolor wonderland brimming with the promise of quests, and echoing with images of favorite landscapes and suppressed heart ache. Callista meets a mermaid who promises her freedom from her past, and a mysterious girl who tells her to go away.

When they return to the snowy world, one of Adam's ski school students is missing. A young cop investigates, drawing the conclusion that there is a love triangle between Leslie, the missing Freshman, and Adam and Callista. There's no way to set him straight. Outing Adam is out of the question. Callista's best friend Harriet is worried about the fact that the York family is leaving Callista alone in their woodland home on Thanksgiving. After showing up at school with bruises, Adam mysteriously falls out of touch. Callista walks home on the neighborhood trails, and Franklin, the cop, pursues her in the dark. Her alter ego, Vivian, appears and speak through Callista's voice, threatening Franklin and implying that the Yorks, both attorneys, will make his life miserable if he bothers her again. He is stung. He can't understand how a young woman would expose herself to the forest at night, with girls disappearing, unless she had reason to believe she herself was safe.

A campus thriller with themes of physical abuse and family disfunction, LGBTQ, violence, incest, drugs, friendship, and coming of age, The Trip is a missing-girl mystery with magical realism and skiing euphoria. Callista takes a heroine's journey into a dark and unsettling world. With the help of her friends and the newfound confidence of her awakened power, she delves into the case while learning to accept what she cannot change.