Wanderlove Read online

  Like the way we ran into this girl from Toby’s old school, and he gripped the back of my neck a little too tightly so I wouldn’t say anything stupid, and after, got mad when I asked who she was.

  The way my mom thought he was just so cute, and acted way more enthusiastic about my having a boyfriend than she ever did about my drawings.

  The way he wouldn’t even get out of the car the only time I took him to my favorite beach. It’s way too cold, he said. He only opened the door to toss out the condom wrapper.

  The way, when we talked about attending school together, he said no matter what, over and over, like a promise. Maybe I was stupid for believing, and even more stupid for wanting to believe. But either way, he fooled me. When it all fell apart, I was genuinely surprised.

  With that, I shove the sweatshirt into the trash can so forcefully it tips over, while Starling looks on, her expression impossible to read.

  5

  Day 4, Afternoon

  Wanderlove

  I follow Starling down Calle Santander with a garbage bag containing the fortunate few of my belongings slung over my shoulder. Not a single spangle desecrates the lot. The bag still weighs a ton, but that’s partially my fault. I insisted on including a second pair of jeans.

  “You’re going to swelter,” Starling says, tugging up her drawstring pants.

  “I’d rather swelter than look like a belly dancer.”

  She snorts, then links her arm through mine. Apparently, talking shit is the key to Starling’s good graces. As we walk, she tells me we’ll spend one more night on the lake, and then we’ll leave for Guatemala City. A necessary way station, she calls it, like Bangkok or Delhi—unsavory, yet unavoidable. I can’t help suspecting she’s just name-dropping foreign cities, but whatever. After that, we’ll head to somewhere called Río Dulce. My imperfect Spanish can translate that much: “Sweet River.”

  I wonder if you can drink from it.

  By the time we reach the dock, the boat has arrived. Unexpectedly, Rowan stumbles ashore like a lopsided turtle, an army green backpack slung over one shoulder. He nods at me unsmilingly, and I nod back, trying not to let my sudden startled-mouse panic show on my face.

  Alone with Starling, I’m fine. Add Rowan to the equation, and I regain an appetite for my fingernails.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Starling demands. “We’re supposed to meet in Santa Lucía!”

  “Too many people back at the hostel. A second boatload arrived. I was starting to feel agoraphobic. Or claustrophobic. Even xenophobic.”

  Starling laughs. “You could never be xenophobic.”

  “So I thought we could have lunch here instead.” He shrugs off the backpack and gives it a shake. “Bria, I found this for you.”

  My expression must betray my disgust. The backpack looks like it’s been through a war. A war in a swamp. A war in a swamp involving fireballs and monsters with fangs.

  “Think of it this way,” Starling says. “If backpacks are like stuffed animals, years of love and backpacker sweat have magicked that one to life.”

  “We can sew straps on your garbage bag, if you prefer,” Rowan says.

  What an ass. “It’s just so small,” I say, as if that’s the issue. “How do you guys carry everything? Especially when you’ve been traveling so long?”

  Starling shrugs. “Mine’s even smaller. Too much stuff’s a hassle.”

  “And it’s heavy,” Rowan adds. “Plus, small backpacks up your backpacker cred. The most hard-core shoestring types have an unspoken contest to see who can travel the lightest. Isn’t that right, Starling?”

  “While you lug around all sorts of junk you can’t make yourself get rid of. Just look at that stack of bracelets on his leg, Bria. Whenever a little kid tries to sell him one, he buys it. He can’t say no!”

  We all stare at Rowan’s leg. “There’s over sixty of them,” he says proudly.

  “He thinks he’s helping the economy.”

  Rowan’s first travel rule:

  The smaller the backpack, the bigger the ego.

  “Anyway, so many American luxuries are just that—luxuries,” Starling continues. “You don’t need them. They drag you down, and not just physically. I mean, isn’t that why we travel in the first place? To renounce all those things?” She glances at Rowan. “We, I mean. Not other people.”

  “It’s some sort of escapism, anyway,” Rowan says.

  They smirk at each other, as if sharing some private, sibling joke, while I am so far removed from this conversation, I might as well zoom off in a tourist-shaped flying saucer. I watch a yellow dog trot by, swollen teats swaying. Spaying and neutering are probably some of those so-called American luxuries.

  “But by renouncing Western culture—or by trying to escape it, whatever—aren’t you also spreading it?” I ask. “Like the first European settlers coming to America? Bringing their European diseases and infecting the natives? Even if you don’t mean to, something always sticks.”

  They both look taken aback.

  “Well,” Starling begins.

  “I mean, isn’t there a McDonald’s in Chimaltenango now? With home-delivery service?”

  “So I’ve heard,” Rowan says.

  I pretend not to notice their expressions as I unzip the backpack and prepare to transfer my stuff. If they think I’ll be a docile companion, a travel pet, they’re in for a surprise.

  “I’m a big fan of la comida tipica,” Starling says. “But sometimes, you just need some tempeh. You know what I mean?”

  She looks at me, and I shrug. The three of us are sitting around a table, jammed against a wall papered in vintage maps. In that unspoken way of theirs, Starling and Rowan strolled straight to the restaurant, a colorful hole-in-the-wall specializing in vegetarian global cuisine. They selected the table without discussion, fell into the seats as if they were overstuffed recliners, snapped open the menus with indolent flicks. I guess it’s cute in a sitcom sort of way. But their synchronization keeps reminding me that I’m still a stranger. A whim tacked on to their colossal history. It makes me want to hug myself.

  “Actually,” I say, “I’m allergic to tempeh.”

  Starling glances at me. “Oh yeah?”

  “It makes my face itch.”

  “That’s too bad. It’s good stuff.” Starling’s pocket starts to jangle. She pulls out her phone, checks it, and stands. “I’ve got to take this call. Ro, can you order for me?”

  “That depends on who’s on the phone.”

  “Oh, come on,” Starling says. “It’s my boss in Flores! Not Jack, if that’s what you’re worried about. Besides, you’re the one who’s started buddying up with him again, not me.”

  Rowan glares at her. “Marius has strep throat. I told you. There’s no one else available on the island to cover his dive class. Everybody else is booked because of Lobsterfest. And the shop pays better than La Casa Azul.”

  “Wow, you’re so practical! Now you’ve made me miss my call. If you’ll excuse me.”

  I feign interest in my fork as Starling storms off. Rowan doesn’t explain anything, even though their exchange was packed with questions. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all, except when a woman comes to take our orders. As he watches the traffic on Calle Santander—the cyclists, the tourist vans, the tuctucs, like red ladybugs—I scour my brain for an electrifying conversation topic. “So who’s Jack?” I ask finally.

  Rowan blinks at me, like I’ve yanked him from a nap. Remarkable—he’s already forgotten I’m here. “Who’s what?”

  “Jack.”

  “Oh,” he says dismissively. “Just a dive buddy.”

  I count to ten, then try again. “So what’s the deal with all the maps?”

  “Maps?”

  Is he dense? “All over the walls.”

  “Oh, right. Take a closer look.”

  I swivel in my seat and focus on the world map behind me. On closer perusal, I discover it’s wildly distorted, like planet Earth on acid
. Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are as large as a vertically swollen Africa. North and South America are tiny. A swarm of Asian islands crush a shrunken Europe. There’s a legend, but it’s in another language.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s in Swedish,” Rowan says. “The sizes of the countries correspond to the number of different languages spoken there.”

  “Eight hundred and sixty in Papua New Guinea,” I read. “Wow—that’s ridiculous.”

  “They’re all like that.”

  “Like what? Linguistic?”

  “Unique.”

  I cross the room to examine a map of the United States. “Leading church bodies by county,” I read out loud. With my finger, I find Los Angeles County, colored blue for Catholic. I move to a second map of the United States This one features UFO hot spots, predominantly concentrated in the Southwest. I assume another world map depicts Pangaea, the ancient collective continent, but the caption explains it’s the opposite: a NASA rendering of the earth 250 million years in the future. Other maps are designed to look like mythical creatures or political figures.

  When I glance back at Rowan, he’s smiling. Finally.

  “Pretty neat, right?” he asks.

  “They’re incredible!” I join him at our table. “Who owns this place?”

  “He’s a Guatemalan world traveler.”

  “Is he here?”

  “Not now. He’s traveling, as usual.” Rowan nods at the distorted map above our table. “I always thought I’d decorate my home with maps like these. If I ever settle down, that is.”

  “I heard that!” Starling shouts, tossing herself into the chair beside me.

  “Heard what,” Rowan says flatly.

  “You admit that you’ll never settle down.”

  “I didn’t say ‘never.’ I said ‘if I ever.’ ”

  “It’s all in the subtext.”

  “I’m sure he will someday,” I say helpfully, “when he’s ready.”

  Starling shakes her head. “Not when you’re a whore like Rowan.”

  My jaw drops. Rowan, however, just looks exasperated, like he’s dealt with this before. “Starling, give me a break! That’s in the past, and you know it.”

  “If you consider a few months ago the past! Bria, tell me what you think.” Starling leans against the wall, looking like a smug Sunday school teacher about to share a moral fable. “Imagine being eighteen years old. A fledgling dive instructor in one of the most beautiful places on earth—”

  “Assistant,” Rowan says, correcting her. “Assistant instructor. Can we quit this?”

  “With no strings holding him back. From the very first minute, surrounded by a crowd of charismatic hooligans. Influential charismatic hooligans. And an ever-changing smorgasbord of backpacker chicks, all awaiting his instruction …”

  Rowan’s had enough. “Starling, come on!”

  With perfect timing, our server arrives with our food, distracting Starling from her oversharing session. Rowan looks relieved, but I’m not sure how I feel. Part of me is dying to know the details. But if the details describe another guy like Toby Kelsey—because if the rumors are true, Toby definitely got around toward the end—I think I’d rather travel in ignorance. I scoop chili powder onto my pad thai, wondering if my meal is hypocritical, since I thought eating Paraguyan food was so ridiculous.

  “Careful,” Rowan warns me. “That stuff’s really hot.”

  I shrug, take a bite, and try not to cry.

  “So where was I?” Starling says, chewing. So much for distraction.

  “Trespassing,” Rowan replies.

  “Trespassing? What do you … Okay, I get it. Fine. Fine! Forget the girls. I won’t go there. But there’s something else Bria should know if she’s going to travel with us. With you, especially.”

  “You don’t mean …” Something like panic passes through Rowan’s eyes. It’s gone as soon as Starling shakes her head, but takes lodge in the center of my chest instead. I’m getting the distinct impression there is something they’re not telling me, and it’s starting to seem sinister. It better not have anything to do with black markets and body organ harvesting.

  “I’m talking about your religion,” Starling says.

  Or cults.

  “May I tell her about it, Rowan? Pretty please?”

  Rowan leans back in his chair. “You’re going to, whether I want you to or not. Anyway, it’s not a religion. More like a philosophy.”

  “Or an affliction.”

  I glance at him nervously. “An affliction?”

  Starling spreads her arms grandly. “He’s afflicted with Wanderlove!”

  “Don’t you mean wanderlust?”

  “No. Not lust. Wanderlove.”

  “Wanderlove.” I try out the word.

  “See, wanderlust is like itchy feet,” Starling explains. “It’s when you can’t settle down. But Wanderlove is much deeper than that … it’s a compulsion. It’s the difference between lust and love. Have you ever been in love? Maybe with that boyfriend of yours?”

  Thoughts of Toby bubble up, like acid reflux. I force them down with a shrug.

  “Well, have you ever been in love with anything? Not a person, necessarily.” I shrug again, helplessly, and she shakes her head. “Poor baby.”

  Indignant, I keep searching—sifting through the months, back and back—until I find it: the most obvious thing of all.

  “I used to love to draw.”

  I expect Starling to roll her eyes, and feel thankful when she doesn’t. “Okay. Do you remember how it felt? In your gut?”

  I recall the rasp of charcoal on newsprint, the chewing-gum stretch of a kneaded eraser, the precarious bite of a razor blade in a new pencil. The vibrancy of fresh watercolors squeezed from a tube. A new sketchbook, cracked open to flawless white. The way the smell of turpentine made me feel simultaneously sick and excited. On this trip, I brought mostly pens and number-two pencils—much easier to shove into my bag. I think about the way I’ve squeezed my pencils so hard over the years my middle finger has a permanent bump where the wood presses against it. I run my thumb over it now, trying to calm the thrill in my stomach, the sudden, overwhelming urge to draw.

  “Now,” Starling says, “imagine that feeling amplified, and projected all over the place, like a beam of light. Brightest in front of you, glowing everywhere but behind you …”

  “That’s stupid,” Rowan says.

  “Then you define it better.”

  “Pointless. You’ll never get it.”

  “I’m the one who invented it in the first place!”

  “That’s like saying you invented electricity.”

  Instead of retorting, Starling stands a quetzal coin on its edge with one finger. She flicks it with her other hand. It spins in a blur of gold. All three of us stare at it until it starts to tremble. Then Rowan slaps it flat with his hand.

  “How about this?” Starling says. “The abridged version. Wanderlove is about forgetting the bad things and focusing on the good. Out with the old and in with the new.”

  Silently, Rowan slides the coin across the table to Starling.

  “No matter what he says, that’s Wanderlove,” she tells me. “That’s how he lives it. Isn’t that right, Rowan? The only way to escape the past is to keep moving forward.”

  Starling slides the coin back to Rowan. Harder, so it makes an audible scrape. But Rowan doesn’t touch it; he just lets it sit there on the table, unclaimed.

  Art: The Wonder Drug

  When I was little, drawing wasn’t just for fun. It was my panacea, my cure-all for all kinds of heartsickness. My dependable happy-maker.

  Like if my mom bawled me out for something—spilling pomegranate juice on my dad’s papers, or running through the house with muddy sandals—I fled to my room and curled around a notepad, the repository for all my grief. If I got an answer wrong in class, I scrawled on a scrap of paper hidden in my lap. By junior high, those papers had turned into knockoff Moleskine ske
tchbooks I kept in my backpack. When I waited for Reese to join me at lunch, or when Olivia got talking and talking, I pulled it out and sketched. I was the sketchy girl. You know the one. But I wasn’t showing off—I was making myself happy. It was like a magic power.

  And then I gave it up.

  With a pathetic whimper instead of a bang. It wasn’t this great big temper tantrum I threw, or a resolve I made, or anything even slightly so dramatic. After we got the results of fast-track admissions, art slowly shifted from the light of my life to the bane of my existence. It meant fights and shame. It hurt to talk about. It hurt to think about. Before Toby and I broke up. And after, when I told my parents I wasn’t going to art school after all.

  So for months, I didn’t draw, and didn’t, and still didn’t. Until I found I couldn’t—even when my heart was the saddest and sickest it’d ever been.

  Giving up my art made me need it more than ever. That’s the worst part of all.

  ~ July 16, Santa Lucía, Guatemala

  In the evening, I sit in a striped beach chair in front of La Casa Azul, my sketchbook on my lap. It’s been ages since I’ve drawn, but the absence of my art has never felt this physical. A longing that aches like a Pacific cold-water swim. I blame Starling and all her talk about love.

  I just can’t understand why it’s so difficult to do the thing I’ve done an infinite number of times, especially when I’m surrounded by sketchworthy scenes. The colossal black dogs Osa and León. An anonymous backpacker girl dozing in the shade. The glazed blue bowl of the lake.

  But something stalls on the journey between my eyes, my brain, and my fingers. I don’t even know what to call it. Fear isn’t quite right.

  I left my new/old backpack in the common room, along with the smaller daypack I bought in Panajachel. Though it’s barely dark out, the hostel buzzes with shouts and laughter, clinking bottles, the mournful plink-plunk of a mistuned guitar. Everyone’s gearing up for another evening of rooster beers and skinny-dipping. Everyone except me. I’m sure I’m damaging my backpacker cred—as if I have any to start with—but I want to be alone right now.