Wanderlove

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Kirsten Hubbard

  Jacket photograph copyright © by Laurence Mouton/PhotoAlto/Corbis

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2012 by Kirsten Hubbard

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hubbard, Kirsten.

  Wanderlove / Kirsten Hubbard. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Bria, an aspiring artist just graduated from high school, takes off for Central America’s La Ruta Maya, rediscovering her talents and finding love.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89751-1

  [1. Travel—Fiction. 2. Artists—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Central America—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H8584Wan 2012 [Fic]—dc22 2011007435

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  to bryson, my travel partner for life

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1: The Lake

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part 2: The Jungle

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part 3: The Island

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 4: The Ruins

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens.

  ~Bill Watterson

  I hope the leaving is joyful: and I hope never to return.

  ~Frida Kahlo

  1

  Day 1

  Arrival

  Travel companions

  Overpriced organic fruit & nut bar from airport terminal

  Ergonomic travel pillow

  Phone with astronomical roaming charges

  Sketchbook (knockoff Moleskine)

  Assortment of pens and pencils

  Left behind

  Old version of myself

  As soon as I see the blond girl bouncing down the aisle, I know she’s heading for the empty seat beside me. It’s just my luck. A woman in a floppy hat already fills the window seat. After three minutes of laboring at a sudoku puzzle, she starts to snore—even though our plane’s still at the gate of LAX.

  The girl tosses herself into the seat with a gusty sigh that practically rattles the double-plated windows. She’s wearing a stretched-out sweater and drawstring pants, her dark blond hair in a sloppy pile on top of her head. Her fingers are covered with wooden rings.

  I’m wearing quick-dry khaki capris, a crispy Windbreaker, and hiking shoes that make my feet feel like Clydesdale hooves. They’re brand-new. Like my too-short haircut and my purple suitcase, along with everything in it.

  I’m pretty sure the woman in the window seat is wearing a tent.

  “So where you headed?” the girl asks, wedging her skinny knees against the seat in front of her. I shut my sketchbook and slip it between my legs.

  “Guatemala,” I reply, “same as you.”

  “Well, obviously. But where in Guatemala, exactly?”

  “All over the place.”

  “Where first?”

  I grasp for a name and come up with nothing. I never read the itinerary for my Global Vagabonds group tour. “I don’t really travel with a set plan. It’s too restricting.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Is that right?”

  Once I start, I can’t stop. “I’ve found it’s the best way to travel. Heading to whatever place intrigues me, you know? If I feel like sunbathing, I go to the beach. If I’m hungry for culture, I hike a Mayan ruin. I’m a photographer, really.”

  What I am is full of shit. My mom gave me the camera for my birthday last month, with a warning not to tell my dad. Just like the stack of art books my dad slipped me last year, when I was preparing my portfolio for the art school I’m not attending. I think their secret presents make them feel like they’re each gleefully undermining the other in their endless uncivil war. At least I get consolation prizes.

  “You’re a photographer?” The girl’s blue eyes widen. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “You must be really talented.”

  It’s the really that gets me. She doesn’t believe me. And why should she? It’s not like I look particularly well traveled. Or talented. Whatever that looks like. My Windbreaker makes crunching noises as I shift away. I should have brought a better jacket, something funky and artsy. But even in the days I considered myself an artist, I never had the guts to dress the part.

  Plus, the Windbreaker was on my Global Vagabonds Packing List:

  1) photocopy of passport

  2) under-clothes money belt

  3) crispy Windbreaker the color of gutter water

  And like always, I followed the rules.

  Just when I’m about to implode with embarrassment, the woman in the window seat taps my shoulder. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” she says. “I’m traveling in a big group. I could never travel like you do. I think you’re so brave.”

  I grin. “Thanks! It’s no big deal … I just know how to take care of myself.”

  I think I sound pretty convincing.

  It all began with a stupid question:

  Are You a Global Vagabond?

  The cashier at the sporting goods shop jammed the pamphlet into my bag, like a receipt or a coupon for a discount oil change, something easily discarded. But to me, it seemed like an omen, appearing the exact moment my resolve started to crumble.

  Blame my wilting willpower on my best friends, Olivia Luster and Reese Kinjo. They’ve never agreed on anything—except backing out on our trip.

  The trip had been my idea in the first place. We’d chosen Europe, the obvious choice for eighteen-year-old travel virgins fresh out of high school. But after just a couple weeks of emailed images of the Louvre and La Rambla, links to online travel guides and airfare deals, Olivia and Reese dropped by my house. They never hang out together, so instantly, I knew something was up.

  “We’ve decided we can’t travel with you this summer,” Olivia said. “The timing’s just not right—we’re sorry.”

  I sat on my bedroom floor involuntarily, like someone had snipped my marionette strings.

  “Look, Bria—we’re not trying to be assholes,” she continued while Reese’s nonconfrontational eyes scanned my ceiling. “We’re only thinking of you. You’re just not in the right headspace for traveling.
Remember what happened on your birthday last week?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said, annoyed. “You almost fell off the balcony flashing half of Tijuana in the hot body contest—”

  “I’m talking about the fifty billion kamikazes you threw back before puking in the taxi on our way home. You’re lucky we didn’t get into worse trouble than that. What if it happened in Czechoslovenia?”

  “There’s no such place as Czechoslovenia.”

  Reese, who hadn’t gone to Mexico and probably never will, squatted beside me. “We just don’t think you’re in the right headspace to take a trip, Bria,” she said in that amateur philosopher’s voice that makes my eyes spiral. “You and Toby have been broken up for, like, six weeks, and you’ve barely left the house. You didn’t even go to prom. You’re obviously still healing—running away isn’t going to expedite the process.”

  “You guys don’t get it,” I protested. “I need this …”

  They waited, but I couldn’t continue.

  “We’re really sorry, babe,” Olivia said. “We’ll have an epic summer right here in town, all right? I’ll find you a new boy before college—or several. Remember, no strings!”

  Reese waited for Olivia to leave, then gave me one of her feeble, girlish hugs. “Maybe we’ll travel next summer. After a year of college, we’ll have so much more perspective for a trip like this, anyway.” A piece of her black hair fell into my open mouth.

  As soon as my bedroom door shut, I noticed the plate of raspberry bars on my nightstand. A typical Reese Kinjo gesture: reconciliation by fresh-baked goods. I’ve known her since second grade, Olivia since eighth. They’re like the opposite poles of my personality. Mild-mannered, responsible Reese is who I used to be, while in-your-face Olivia’s who I want to be—with a few sharp edges dulled. We’ve never been a threesome. More like two twosomes, with me in common. I should have realized the three of us traveling together would have been uncomfortable, to say the least. And spending boatloads of money to serve as a pal’s crying shoulder is a lot to ask. But why couldn’t we have figured that out earlier?

  I guess it’s good they never learned my real motivation for heading abroad.

  This particular trip may have been my idea, but traveling was Toby’s. It was a fantasy we planned in pencil. All through early senior year, we passed notes in class layered with sketch upon sketch. I’d draw him; then he’d draw me. Him in a beret. Me with a baguette. The two of us clutching suitcases, floating on gondolas, beaming cartoonishly from painting frames. After we broke up, Toby didn’t believe I would travel without him. He’d told me so. My own fault, for calling him to boast. I just couldn’t teach my fingers to forget his number.

  “You know you’re not going anywhere, Bria,” he’d said, as if our fantasy had never existed. “You’re just not the traveling type.”

  I picked up one of Reese’s bars. Slowly, so I could savor the feeling, I crushed it in my fist. Big drops of raspberry jelly oozed onto my thighs. It was a small thing, but it was enough. I stood, empowered by an unexpected surge of resolve.

  Maybe Toby was right about my friends, but he wasn’t right about me. The thought of travel had been the only thing sustaining me in the aftermath of a fantasy gone rotten. I had no art to comfort me and no hope for art school, and I was stuck in a too-small house with parents who aimed the word divorce like a rocket launcher set to maim. I wouldn’t let Olivia and Reese take it away from me.

  I would do the last thing anyone would expect me to do: I would go anyway.

  Cue inspirational music.

  My resolve lasted approximately an hour and a half.

  In the sporting goods store, where I was surrounded by heaps of travel crap—sleeping bags and luggage tags, airplane carry-ons and astronaut ice cream—doubts whirred in my ear like a swarm of mosquitoes. I hadn’t even bought my plane ticket yet, and there I was, squandering the money I’d earned pushing papers for my father on a clearance-rack suitcase.

  I felt like a fraud.

  And to make matters worse, when I thought of Europe, I could only picture cold greasy chips and streets gone haywire. Teetery double-decker buses and gargoyles dappled with bird crap. And me, navigating the crooked streets with my hands in my pockets—trying not to think of Toby and Chicago, where he’d move without me in September.

  What was I going to do in Europe all alone, anyway? Look at buildings? Go to art museums and feel guilty for all those months I didn’t draw or paint?

  So forget Europe. But where was there to go besides Europe?

  Where did people go?

  I had no idea. That’s why the Global Vagabonds pamphlet seemed like such a prophecy. Travel made easy. All the thorns chipped off. Prepackaged, preplanned.

  Perfect.

  In my bedroom, I ran my finger down the table of contents. All the tours had gimmicky names: Incredible India. Thailand Trek. Jungle Escape—that was Peru and Ecuador. Arctic Expedition.

  La Ruta Maya. What was that?

  I flipped to the page and was greeted by the grins of four young, jubilant travelers posing with their arms linked. Behind them, a ruined Mayan temple loomed from a thickly forested backdrop.

  La Ruta Maya. The Maya Route. Three weeks exploring Mayan ruins in Central America. I read the name of each ancient city out loud, stumbling over the exotic pairings of consonants: Tikal, Copan, Lamanai, Chichén Itzá, Palenque. I’d paid little attention to Central America on the maps in my father’s office. Guatemala was vaguely synonymous with Mexico. I’d always thought Honduras was a Caribbean island, like Haiti. And I wasn’t sure I’d even heard of Belize.

  I decided not to read any further. I wanted to be a blank canvas, untainted by any preparatory information. That way, my mind would be fully open upon my arrival in Guatemala City.

  “Bria?”

  My mom stuck her head into my room. She gasped.

  “Honey, you’re not suicidal, are you?”

  Meet my mom—who’s only forty to my dad’s fifty-two, goes clubbing twice a month with her dental hygienist friends, and has stretched out way too many of my tank tops with a gigantic chest I did not inherit. We do not “get” each other, to say the least. She likes to joke that she found me in a basket wedged among my father’s rosebushes. How else can we explain that art thing of yours?

  “Mom!” I exclaimed. “Are you kidding me? No!”

  “But your hair …”

  I reached up and touched it, like I’d done compulsively the whole drive home. I had paid twelve dollars for a cosmetology student to sever my long dark hair to my chin. “Your eyes look much larger now,” the student had said, feigning expertise as she’d scrunched wax into my choppy bob.

  “I was ready for something different,” I told my mom.

  Her surprise was understandable. I’ve been a creature of habit my whole life. My parents haven’t known what to do with me in the six weeks since Toby and I broke up, other than try to coerce me into shopping trips (my mom, who loves deals) and hover awkwardly behind me (my dad, an accountant who is intimidated by teenagers) during my epic triathlons of television, breakfast cereal, and art blogs viewed on my laptop.

  “I suppose it’s all right,” my mom said. “It would look better if you smoothed it out more. You can borrow my flatiron, if you promise to return it.”

  “Thanks a million.”

  “Dinner’s ready. It’ll be just you and me again, since I doubt I’ll be able to pry that man out of his damned office.”

  As soon as my mom shut the door, I scrunched up my hair even more. I could already hear her yelling at my dad. I swear they’re addicted to the adrenaline from their nightly hollering matches. They’ll probably forget they ever had a daughter once I’m gone.

  Okay, maybe that’s harsh. But there’s just so much my parents have overlooked. They never asked about the plastic tubs of art supplies I crammed under my bed after art school acceptances came out. They never questioned the nights I lingered, dreading the cold seats of Toby’s car. I kn
ow it sounds borderline psychotic, but sometimes I found myself wishing for the testimony of a bruise. If my parents could have seen my injuries, maybe they’d have understood. But I’ve never given them any reason not to trust my judgment.

  So they believed me when I said that I wanted to stay in town after graduation, that attending a state school instead of art school was preferable, that Toby and I were doing great, I swear, geez, guys, everything’s fabulous! until it was too obvious to lie anymore.

  Enough about Toby. I pressed my palms over my ears, sat back in bed, and closed my eyes.

  I could picture it already.

  I would glide from ruin to ruin along La Ruta Maya, in a caravan of beautiful, happy people, and I’d be the mysterious one, gracious and profound. Butterflies would float down from the jungle canopy and alight on my bronzed skin. I would wear silver necklaces and ankle-length skirts that shifted in the breeze.

  And above all else, I would do what Olivia suggested I do, the day after Toby broke up with me: I’d only hook up with guys I didn’t care about. From now until forever. So when we parted ways, I could easily forget.

  The blond girl scribbles in a journal for the remainder of the plane ride. When I finally muster the courage to open my sketchbook, she gives me a look, like she’s accusing me of copying her.

  My face heats up. I have one trillion sketchbooks, I want to tell her. I could build you a sketchbook house.

  But I don’t. Because then I’d be admitting I’m an artist. Or rather, that I used to be an artist, since I haven’t drawn as much as a chipmunk in months. I have an urge to hide out in the airplane bathroom, but then I’d have to climb over the girl’s legs. So I put my sketchbook away and stare past tent woman out the window, trying to ignore the ache in my chest. It’s totally irrational—I mean, it’s just drawing, Bria, come on now—but the longing skewers me just the same.

  I expect instant culture shock when our plane touches down, but the Guatemala City airport looks like every other I’ve seen. Just with more Spanish. I lose sight of the blond girl as I attempt to navigate all sorts of foreign customs, like Customs. I reach the baggage claim just in time to see her dive into the arms of a pair of scraggly backpacker boys. One’s freakishly tall and wears a stocking cap. The other has a ponytail.