The first time I wake up on Thursday morning, it's just gone five, more than an hour before I planned to be awake to get ready for today's road trip and almost two hours before the sun is set to rise. Kitty is fast asleep next to me, closer than she was when we went to bed last night. She has a tendency to shift towards the middle, taking up every inch of space I give her, and I don't want to wake her so I roll onto my side, right on the edge of the bed.

Before I left on this trip, I promised my parents that I would keep in touch and I have not been great on that front, aside from the occasional picture. I usually talk to my parents most days – pretty much every day, really – but I've been spending my emotional energy on Kitty and I haven't stopped to actually chat when my parents reply to a photo.

I open up our group chat, appropriately named Campbell Soup, which until recently was just the three of us until Isaac started middle school and got his first phone, and the first thing he wanted was to be inducted into the family chat. Cece (Cecelia, but nobody calls her that) is extraordinarily jealous now, especially because half of her friends have phones, but it's the one thing Mom and Dad are pretty firm about. No phones before sixth grade. Cece doesn't know how lucky she is – I didn't get mine until I was nearly fifteen.

hey sorry I've been incommunicado! v busy with kitty, we're having a great time, I text. It's just after eight back home; Mom will probably be in bed and Dad will be on the way back from taking Isaac and Cece to school. I don't know how I survived all those years of starting at ten after eight, every morning a fight to get to school on time.

Fliss!! Good to hear from you!! Mom texts. How are you baby? How's Kitty? I've been so worried about her, I can't imagine what she must be going through.

she's actually fine, I reply. like, weirdly so? she's living her best life out here (which ofc is great!! i don't want her to be sad!!!) but like ... she was supposed to get married last week and i feel like no matter the reason that it didn't happen, that's bound to stir up some emotions?

Maybe her happiness is the emotion that's being stirred up? Mom suggests.

hmm. hadn't thought of it like that.

As long as she's okay, that's all that matters! I went for a drink with Sarah last night and she's been so worried, please can you (subtly) encourage Kitty to talk to her mom and let her know she's alright?

Will do, I say, adding a saluting emoji. Kitty and her family are tight knit, as close as close can be when they're all so crazy busy, but her brothers and their wives are so active in the family group chat that she has to keep it muted for her own sanity.

P.s. if Kitty's worried that her parents are upset with her for calling off the wedding, please let her know they're not at all. I think Sarah's feeling guilty, if anything, Mom texts.

she hasn't mentioned anything like that. what's sarah guilty for???

It's a few minutes before Mom replies. I imagine Dad has just made it home and he's debriefing her on the school run, on whatever insane batshit crazy stuff my siblings talked about on the way. They're a pair of total weirdos and I love them to death.

I think because Levi's her friend's son and she introduced them, she's convinced herself that Kitty felt pressure to settle down with him to make the parents happy? I told her she's crazy and Kitty's her own woman! But you know what Sarah's like.

Sarah Cohen is an overthinker. Most of the time she uses it to her advantage, working out every possible angle of a problem, every potential outcome, but it's not so helpful when it comes to second-guessing her kids.

yeah i dont think that's a thing, I say, i do think she at least thought she loved him at first & she did say he's still one of her favorite people. just, like, not romantically?

Fair enough, Mom says. So your trip's going well? It's not too weird that it's supposed to be a honeymoon?

no lol we're leaning into the whole honeymoon thing. the hotel thinks we're married and so does a random gondolier dude who serenaded us on a boat yesterday. so if anyone asks, i'm mrs campbell-cohen now ;)

Hahaha sounds like you're having fun ;), Mom says. I need to get ready to open the store, good to talk to you baby! Keep me in the loop. Loving your pics. Keep 'em coming xx

Will do, love you x

Love you more xxxx

I send her a whole bunch of pictures from the last few days, including one Kitty took of me after we got off the Big Shot, in which I am green around the gills and giving her a death glare. Turning my phone over on the nightstand, I close my eyes and try to get another thirty minutes of sleep before our busy day.

*

The second time I wake up is when my alarm goes off, an incessant beep beep beep that yanks me out of the deepest dream, aided by Kitty, the back of her hand slapping my stomach when she tries to throw a pillow at me.

"What the fuck is that?" she groans, blearily peering at me as I turn off the alarm and get out of bed with a grunt.

"Early start today."

"Ugh, I was having such a good dream." She rolls onto her back, one hand over her eyes.

"We're about to sit in a van for, like, three hours so you'll have time to catch up on your beauty sleep, princess," I say, throwing open the curtains to let the early morning light flood the room. "Come on. Get your ass up. We're going on a day trip and we have to be outside the hotel no later than eight thirty, which means we need to be done with breakfast at eight twenty, absolute latest. Ideally eight ten. I don't want us to be the last people to arrive."

That gets her out of bed. Kitty does a total one eighty, flinging the covers back and sitting up and asking, "Where're we going?"

"Death Valley. It's going to be hot as fuck, probably a hundred degrees, so dress cool but cute. Lots of photo opportunities."

"Wait, Death Valley? As in, in California?"

"The one and only," I say, pulling on my airiest sundress and a pair of lightweight cotton shorts to stop my thighs from chafing. The extra layer of fabric doesn't help with the heat, but I'd take an extra few degrees over blisters from my thighs rubbing together.

"Oh my god, my first time in Cali!"

"It's no LA or San Francisco but I figured it'd be cool to see the lowest point in the country and check off another state."

"Damn right." She leaps out of bed way too perkily for someone who was asleep five minutes ago and locks herself in the bathroom while I attack my sleep-matted hair with a brush. I really need to learn from Kitty. I don't have her curls, but my hair is thick and wavy enough to have broken multiple hairbrushes and every morning it's a battle, if I don't just stuff it into a bun to be dealt with another day. Kitty, meanwhile, uses a leave-in overnight conditioner a few times a week and every night she ties her hair in a pineapple on top of her head so her curls don't get mussed up as she sleeps. Every night I tell myself to braid my hair or at least put it in a low pony. Every night I forget and every morning it's like rats have played in my hair all night long.

Especially after we spent yesterday evening in the pool and I showered my body but didn't bother to wash my hair, so today it is brittle and chlorinated and I really should know fucking better by now, come on, Fliss, Jesus.

In the time it takes me to detangle my hair and tie it into a fat bun, Kitty showers and dresses and even puts make-up on. It better be sweat resistant. We're about to roast.

*

There are twelve of us in total on this trip, which I arranged through the hotel. They put on a variety of small-group excursions to local areas of interest, with a driver who knows the area inside out and space for up to fourteen hotel guests on the minibus, and I leapt at the chance to give Kitty and Levi something to do away from the hotel, out of the city. Back home, Kitty has a scratch-off map of the fifty states on her wall. She has conquered all of the east coast and New England, some of the south, and a bit of the midwest. By the end of this trip, she'll be able to scratch off four more.

"Did you book this as a trip for couples or is it just a coincidence that everyone here is married?" Kitty whispers, trying not to laugh as the fifth couple introduces themselves.

"Coincidence," I whisper back, trying not to draw attention to us. We're the youngest by a couple decades, probably – everyone else is middle-aged, except for Shanice, our guide, who I reckon is about our age, maybe in her mid-thirties. I'm about to warn Kitty to drop the just-married ruse, in case this isn't a safe space, but it's our turn to introduce ourselves and she wastes no time.

"I'm Kitty and this is my wife, Fliss. We just got married last week and we're on our honeymoon," she says confidently. My heart flutters when she calls me her wife. It's not a word I've ever really associated with myself, given my track record with love, but I like it. My hand flexes at my side, the tips of my fingers grazing the back of Kitty's knuckles.

I wait for dirty looks. There are none. Only smiles and a coo of delight from Maureen – retired; Minnesota native; grandmother of ten – and a congratulations from Shanice. Okay. Safe zone activated.

We get into the van once we all know a bunch of stuff we'll never remember about people we'll have forgotten by next week and once Shanice has spent twenty minutes telling us what to expect from the trip. Heat, basically. A lot of fucking heat, even at this time of year, because the planet is hotting up and the seasons are shifting. There are two coolers in the back filled with nothing but ice and bottled water and an extra tube of sunscreen; a third holds everybody's packed lunch and snacks. When I booked the trip, I requested two vegetarian meals because kosher wasn't an option, so I imagine there are a couple cheese sandwiches in there for us.

While the others decide who gets to go in the front (they all get travel sick, apparently), Kitty and I take the two seats in the back like we're the popular kids on the school bus. The seats are small, a snug fit for the two of us, but it's not like we mind being pressed up against each other, unlike Andrea, who takes advantage of the spare pair of seats to put some space between her and her husband.

"Do you mind if I snooze?" Kitty asks.

"Go ahead."

"Wake me up if we pass anything cool," she says, before resting her head on my shoulder and closing her eyes. I press my forehead to the window and watch Vegas turn into desert. It doesn't take long. Twenty minutes after pulling away from the Strip, all I can see is sand and spiky little shrubs along the roadside. When we enter Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, the greenery increases and so does the elevation around us, but not by much. It's still desert. It's the same story the whole way along the Pahrump Valley Highway, even when we pass through Pahrump itself. Not much changes except for a few more billboards, a few more gas stations, a few more roads turning off towards clusters of flat buildings. Soon we're back to long stretches of beige. I take a video and send it to Campbell Soup.

There's no fanfare when we cross the border. No fancy sign welcoming us to the sunshine state. Just a little green road sign, so small I almost miss it, warning us that we're entering Inyo County, California. I nudge Kitty, who has dozed on my shoulder for the entire hour and fifteen minutes since we left. Her ability to sleep on command, anywhere she wants, is enviable.

"We're officially in California," I say when she blinks up at me. She leans across me to look out of the window, her hand on my thigh for leverage.

"This here is Death Valley Junction," Shanice calls out to us a few minutes later. She has been narrating the whole journey, her voice a soothing consistency as she has talked about the landscape and the history of the areas we've driven through. "It's also known as Amargosa, and last time I checked, the population was two."

I can't imagine living out somewhere like this, but to be one of only two people? Jesus. The place is dead. Derelict. It looks like everybody packed up and left a hundred years ago, and all that's left is an old hotel that is inexplicably still open.

"The hotel and opera house were owned by a New York ballerina for forty years," Shanice says, slowing as she passes the Amargosa Opera House, a weirdly long, eerie white building with a single car in the parking lot. "She performed on the stage every week for forty years."

"Who to?" Kitty asks, her mouth stretching around a yawn.

"Sometimes nobody. Sometimes people passing through on the way to Death Valley. She was a bit of a cult hit for a while, before my time, though she kept going until a few years before she died in 2017."

This town, this story, is like something out of a movie. It gives me the shivers, driving past derelict cottages and crumbling old railroads, and I'm glad when the landscape is back to desert for the next half an hour.

"We're going to take a little bit of a detour now to one of my favorite lookouts in the park, the highest point in Death Valley National Park. Today is exceptionally clear," she says, ducking under the sun visor to peer at the cloudless blue sky, "so we might be in for a treat."

We turn off I-90 and after what feels like forever, the narrow road opens out into a parking lot and when we get out (which takes a while, thanks to everyone sitting in front of us) the view takes my breath away. After almost three hours in the back of the van, it's a relief to stretch my legs and breathe in the hot air and marvel at the salt and sand spread out thousands of feet below us, mountains rising on the other side. It's absolutely silent. Nothing but the crunch of boots on dusty ground, the noises of awe coming from the other couples on the trip.

"That, down there," Shanice says, standing at the front of our group and gesturing to the streaks of white, "is Badwater Basin. Lowest point in the US and the hottest place on earth. We'll head down there later on, but I wanted to bring you guys here, to Dante's View, because I have a sneaky suspicion that..." She trails off a lifts a pair of binoculars to her eyes, and I see her satisfied smile before she lowers them and says. "You guys are lucky. Anyone want to take a guess at what I can see over there?"

She points across the salt flats to a mountain range to the right, but my distance vision isn't great even with my glasses, and my geography is even worse. Kitty presses up against the railing, squinting like she's about to have an epiphany.

It's Maureen who comes up with the goods, when she says, "I can't see anything myself but judging on the direction you're pointing, which I think is towards Sequoia National Park, I'm going to take a wild guess that it's Mount Whitney."

"Ding ding ding, we have a winner!" Shanice grins and hands Maureen the binoculars to see for herself. "This is real special, guys. Mount Whitney is the hightest peak in the contiguous US, about eighty miles from here – Maureen's right, just on the border of Sequoia National Park – which means right now, if you can see it, and everyone can have a go with the binoculars, we're simultaneously looking at the highest and lowest points in the lower forty-eight."

"Holy shit," Kitty whispers, so close to me that I feel the air move and goosebumps erupt on my arms, even though it's nearly a hundred degrees. "This is incredible."

"The difference in elevation between Mount Whitney and Badwater Basin is almost fifteen thousand feet. Y'all have been staying in Vegas, right?" There are murmurs of assent from the group. "Right, so if you've been to observation deck at the top of the Strat, that's just under nine hundred feet high. Can you imagine nearly seventeen times that height?"

I think of the Big Shot and how sick I felt being up so high. The thought of being fifteen thousand feet in the air makes my knees weak. The binoculars make their way to Kitty and me and when she gasps, I know she's spotted the mountain, the way she bunches up close to me, her elbow against my stomach, and says, "Fliss, look."

I do. It takes a moment but then I see it. Miles and miles in the distance, the snow-capped peak of Mount Whitney peeking out from behind the mountains of Death Valley. I get a lump in my throat, rendered speechless by the incredible feats of nature.

"I was born in Alabama and I live in Nevada, but California has my heart," Shanice says. "She's a powerful state. The nature, the beauty, everything is beyond comparison, and I am honored to be able to share that with you guys today."

Kitty takes the binoculars from me and holds her camera up to the eyepiece on double zoom, lining it up patiently and steadily until Mount Whitney is in the shot, and she manages to capture a retro-looking photo, the edges darkened by the sides of the binoculars. To anyone else, it probably looks like the random top of a random mountain. But we know.

After more than thirty minutes of checking out the trails around the parking lot and taking photos, the breeze working in our favor for a couple of moody windswept shots, we pile back into the van and head up to Furnace Creek for a restroom break and to check out the giant digital thermometer. Ninety-eight degrees, which Shanice assures us is unseasonably warm for the middle of October, but what's new? It's just before one o'clock when we get there, perfect time for a lunch break at the visitor center. I was right: cheese salad sandwiches. They're good, though. Thick, soft bread and a generous filling. A couple bags of Lay's original chips, like we need any more salt today. An apple each. Rehydrated and refueled and sunscreen reapplied, we carry on down to Badwater, my ears struggling with the change in atmosphere as we go from almost six thousand feet above sea water to hundreds of feet below.

It's scorching.

Everyone talks about how hot Death Valley is, but I didn't anticipate this. Blazing, blistering dry heat that smacks us in the face when we tumble out of the van onto the boardwalk that extends out into the white salt of Badwater Basin.

"Here we are. The lowest point in all of North America."

Kitty slips her hand into mine like that's where it belongs and leads me to the sign that reads Badwater Basin, 282 feet/85.5 meters below sea level. She stands behind it, laughing as she strikes a pose and says, "Just like my love life."

I gasp, throw my hand to my chest. "How can you say that one week into our marriage?"

"Shit, I forgot we're supposed to be married."

I glance around in case we just gave away our lie to the rest of the group but they haven't made it this far yet. "I don't think anyone heard."

It's too hot to stay here for more than twenty minutes, so we get photos and Shanice takes a couple of Kitty and me 'for our honeymoon album' and in the time we've been out of the van, it has turned into an oven. Sweat beads all over my body in an instant, even my wrists and knees, and the air conditioning struggles to cool the van as the engine works overtime to climb away from below sea level.

"Dear god, I am schvitzing my ass off," Kitty says, madly fanning herself with a leaflet outlining today's itinerary. "If this is how I die, at least I'll die happy."

I do the same, but it doesn't provide much relief. The air is just too hot, inside and outside the van, and Shanice's enthusiastic narration isn't enough to distract me from the fact that sweat is literally dripping off me. I don't want to wish the day away because the best is yet to come, but I can't wait to shower.

"You'd be happy to die sweating to death in a van full of strangers?"

Kitty rolls her eyes at me. "I'd die happy in Death Valley, with you by my side."

*

i went to death valley in 2015 and i was not prepared for the heat - it was 130 degrees (54 celcius) when i was there and our van's air conditioning broke