Your first-grade teacher will explain to you that that the color black absorbs more heat than any other color, which is why you’re feeling so hot on the playground. Not long after that, you will get in an argument with your older brother and make a silent vow to never tell him the words “I” and “love” and “you”.

Years later, no one will tell you that you probably shouldn’t wear black skinny jeans, knee high socks, a black My Chemical Romance t-shirt, and high-top converse when you go hiking at a waterfall in Mississippi the summer before your freshman year. Actually, your mom might tell you it’s not a good idea before you leave the house that morning; but it’ll go in one ear and right out the other. Someone hiking in the opposite direction of you, your mother, two brothers, aunt, and three cousins will inform you that you are close to the waterfall, that it’s all up hill until you hear the rushing water, and then it’s down hill from there. No one has to tell you that you’re hot and miserable already and that getting into the cool water with your family may be a temporary reprieve but will ultimately make the trek back to the car worse with drenched clothes suctioned uncomfortably to a teenage body that hardly feels like your own. You’ll argue with your mom until she gives you the car keys and permission to walk back to the parking lot. Alone.

There will be no friendly hiker to inform you that your reverse logic is incorrect. No, it will not all be down hill until you can no longer hear the waterfall and then uphill back to the parking lot. The maps along the trail will tell you where waterfalls and historical trees are located through the use of blue circles and green trees dotted along the paths. As helpful as that might be, they will not tell you where the hell you actually are on the map. Instead of asking two hikers if you’re headed in the right direction, you will walk in circles in nearly one-hundred-degree weather because you think one of them might be transgender and the evangelical church you’ve attended since you were eight has convinced you they’re the devil reincarnate. You’ll question that logic later, but first you have to find your way out of the trail to the waterfall in Mississippi. You’ll try to call back on helpful things you learned from nature shows and Annabeth Chase in Rick Riordan’s The Battle of the Labyrinth. As the documentarian said, moss does grow on the north side of trees. You will not know what direction the parking lot is, though. Annabeth told you, second hand because she actually told this directly to Percy Jackson, that you should make all right hand turns until you get out of the labyrinth. This would be very helpful if you weren’t walking in a literal circle. When you try taking all left hand turns instead, you will recall standing up covered in dirt but never laying down. You will be too busy hyperventilating to explain to a couple traveling with their dog that you are lost and convinced that this is the end of your fourteen-year-old life. They will eventually ask enough yes or no questions to understand the situation and give you the cool water that they were carrying for their dog. They will accompany you back towards the parking lot.

From first grade to present day, your older brother will very seldom tell you the words “I” and “love” and “you”. That day in Mississippi, minutes before a huge storm rolls in, he will come looking for his little sister. He will come looking for you. He will carry you back to the parking lot despite the way you stubbornly fight him. He will find strangers with a gallon of Smart Water, refuse to let you drink it, and dump it on your head to cool you down in the middle of a parking lot in Mississippi. From that day on, you will seldom tell your brother the words “I” and “love” and “you”, but you will break your first-grade vow because you will realize he had been telling you he loved you all along even if he never used the words.

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Taryn White is a third year MFA student at McNeese State University, where she has earned her BA and MA.