A Blind Spot for Boys (21 page)

T
wo days later, I was headed home, loaded down with a bleak novel Mom had pushed on me that I’d never read no matter how good for me it was supposed to be, a PowerBar I felt nauseous just thinking about, and a camera that wasn’t mine. On our drive back to the airport in Cusco, the last sight of the cathedral had made me want to grab a return flight on a rescue helicopter to Machu Picchu Pueblo, track Quattro down, and order him to stop blaming himself for accidents.

But the official plan was for me to fly with Stesha back to Seattle after I saw my parents off on their flight to Belize. Ash would meet them tonight at their hotel. Barring any further disasters, natural or man-made, by tomorrow midmorning, the three of them would be knocking off one more of my parents’ Fifty by Fifty adventures: scuba diving with manta rays.

“I still don’t know about this,” Mom said, frowning at my crutches while we waited for them to board.

“Mom, it’s just a small sprain.” I shifted my weight to my good foot and lifted the crutches like wings. “See? I’m totally fine.”

“Ack! Stop! You’re not in the Cirque du Soleil. And you sound scarily like Stesha.”

I smiled, knowing that I did. Earlier in the same hotel lobby where we’d started our trip, Stesha had brushed off everyone’s concerns about her getting on an airplane, huffing over our protests, “It was just a small concussion.” Then more emphatically, “Not a single line of research suggests that flying after a concussion is dangerous.”

Dad now returned from the airport gift shop, holding a plastic bag.

“What’d you buy?” Mom asked.

“Just a few things,” he said evasively. Then to Mom he said, “You might want to use the bathroom before they call our flight. You know how you love the toilets on planes.…”

At that apt reminder, Mom hustled off to the restroom, and Dad thrust his bouquet of olive branches on me: a couple of fashion and gossip magazines in Spanish and a bar of dark chocolate.

“Hurry,” he said, gesturing for my bag, “give me the book and the PowerBar.”

I laughed as we traded. How well Dad knew me. Over the last day, we had reached a détente of sorts. He’d relented after I explained why Quattro and I had tried to make a mad dash up to Machu Picchu, not for cheap thrills but on a serious mission.

Still, Dad carried a fatherly grudge. “What really bothers me
is that he put his needs before your safety,” he had said last night during dinner at the closest restaurant to our hotel. Then, he spat out one name—“Hank”—as if that were shorthand for selfishness and cowardice. “You can be friends with him, all right? Nothing more.”

“That’s not fair. Quattro’s not a Hank,” I had protested. “And Hank isn’t so bad. He let us stay in his casita, remember?”

“She has a point,” Mom had agreed, spearing two pieces of chicken on her fork as if she couldn’t shovel in the food fast enough. I don’t think any of us had ever been so ravenous for a hot meal.

Dad had started harrumphing, but I’d interrupted. “Dad, if Mom told you that she wanted to commemorate Grandma up on Everest, you would figure out a way to make it happen. And you’d go with her. I know you would.”

Mom had leaned her shoulder against his, nodding over her wineglass as she angled a loving look at him. “She’s right, you know.”

As I dropped Dad’s peace offerings into my tote bag, I felt myself softening. Our family had made a pact not to spend a single unnecessary penny or sol while on this trip. And here was Dad, trying to take care of me and smooth things over between us. I didn’t want us to leave angry or awkward with each other either, not when I now knew how life could blindside us, a life-changing diagnosis here, a dream-ending mudslide there. From overhead speakers, a woman’s deep voice called their flight. All around us, travelers sprang from their seats, ready to leave this flood-damaged region.

Mom returned from the bathroom, smelling of antiseptic soap. She hugged me tight, pulled back, and scowled at my wrapped ankle. “It still doesn’t seem right to send you home alone. And damaged!”

“Mom. I’m not damaged. And I’ll be with Stesha.”

“And here we are,” she continued, “off to have fun when all these poor people lost everything in the flood…”

“We’ll figure out a way to help, but I think we’re supposed to keep on living,” Dad said, placing a kiss on the top of Mom’s head.

“Now you sound like Stesha,” she teased lightly, and beamed at him.

Dad swept me into one final rib-crushing embrace before he draped his arm easily around Mom’s shoulder. That’s when my photographer radar went into high alert. The moment was coming, and I discreetly pulled out the camera I kept tucked in my front pocket.

“Thank you,” Dad told Mom. His eyes were full of her. “You made this trip happen.”

“No,
we
did.” Mom teared up. I did, too.

“All of us did,” Dad agreed.

They smiled like they were seeing each other for the first time, back in their twenties again, newly in love. But strands of gray streaked their hair, and as youthful as they looked, their faces were yielding to time. Fine lines radiated from the corners of their eyes and bracketed their lips. Their love wasn’t shiny and new, but one that had been tested and toughened. It would last. As Dad passed through the door first, I captured them in the exact moment when his hand reached back for hers.

Well-heeled Japanese tourists, the men in crisp linen shirts and the women wearing dainty sandals and pulling matching luggage sets, made me feel like an ungainly slob in my beat-up hiking boots. I hobbled on my crutches toward my gate and was struck again by the airport bustling with bathed people, the air pungent with aromas from restaurants. Machu Picchu Pueblo—and the stranded, homeless, unwashed tourists—seemed an entire planet and lifetime away. Quattro… Was he safe? Did he make it out? Why hadn’t he contacted me?

Dressed in eye-popping teal and purple, Stesha was impossible to miss at the gate. The way she’d managed to pull together a colorful outfit for less than fifteen dollars in her one hour of power shopping yesterday was impressive. Even more impressive, she actually looked stylish sitting there in her hiking boots, woven skirt, and patched-up chin. I photographed her, my new muse for
TurnStyle
. That is, she would be my muse if I decided to maintain the site. After the mudslide and the photos I’d shot in its aftermath, I knew I couldn’t focus solely on fashion anymore. What my new oeuvre was, I hadn’t decided, and I was cool with not knowing.

Nearing Stesha, I noticed her deep frown as she read a message on her phone, one she had insisted on purchasing en route to the hospital in Cusco. According to Grace, she had refused to step foot in any hospital ward until she had a way to make arrangements for us.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Stesha as I settled on the free seat across from her.

Her thumbs jabbed the keyboard as if that would make her message clearer. As she typed, she said, “Well, the good news is that everyone else is being evacuated today.”

“Quattro? And his dad?”

“And Helen and Hank. Ruben’s leaving today to trek back.”

I breathed out, feeling twenty pounds lighter. They were all safe. Stesha set down her phone within easy reach. Her eyes lit up just the way intrigue could make Reb’s glow: boy talk! Lucky me, we were going to have hours—hours!—together aboard the flight, first to Houston, then to Seattle, to dissect my feelings.

“You know,” Stesha said, nodding approvingly, “Quattro’s one of the good guys.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, but he’s not relationship ready.”

“Interesting how he keeps showing up in your life, though. You met him in Seattle. You ran into him in Cusco. He looked for you after the mudslide. In my book, that means one thing: Pay attention.”

“Yeah, well, I’m paying attention to the fact that he’s going to college in a couple of months.” Not to mention our walk in silence back to town, topped off with our non-good-bye.

“There are seasons for everything.” Stesha laughed wryly at herself, reaching down to adjust her phone so she could see it better. And people think that kids my age have a problem being tethered to our devices. Right. “I sound like a fortune cookie!”

I grinned. “A little bit.”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you never know what could happen.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you could prophesy everything?”

“No, not at all. But I’ve got a good instinct when it comes to people.”

“If anything, whatever Quattro and I—” I motioned helplessly in the air because I had no idea how to even define what we had.

“Shared?” Stesha prompted.

I nodded. “Whatever we shared had more to do with being here. I mean, the Inca Trail! Isn’t it kind of like all the celebrities falling in love on movie sets? And we all know how long those relationships last.” According to the tabloids that Dad had bought for me, Hollywood breakups transcend language, culture, and country. I tapped the cover photo of two unhappy-looking superstars underneath a bold headline—
ACABO DE ROMPER
—as proof. “See?”

“Not really. No,” said Stesha, shaking her head once, then more emphatically so that her curls bounced around her cheeks. “How could you go on a journey with someone and face a disaster without getting to know them? Really getting to know them?”

“That’s what Grace says.”

“She’s right. What you two went through—the trekking. The mudslides. His mother. And this”—she pointed at my ankle wrapped in a bandage—“I mean, this entire trip was nothing but a character test. And that boy passed with flying colors. He keeps showing up. Do you know how rare that is?”

Before I could answer, Stesha’s phone lit up with a new text. “Oh, it’s from Grace. Do you mind?”

“Tell her I miss her,” I said, glad for some time to think. I replayed how Quattro had raced to me after the mudslide. He
had looked for me. He had carried Stesha in air so thin, drawing a deep breath was hard work. He had literally given the shirt off his back to a kid. He had kissed me.…

Unable to dwell in those memories without feeling heartsick, I returned to people watching while Stesha texted a few messages in reply. Here in this heated airport, where a few women tottered around in five-inch heels and businesspeople were stuck to their phones, trekking on a half-millennium-old trail seemed as far-fetched as hoping that things would work out with Quattro. I didn’t even know what working out meant where it concerned him.

“Grace wanted you to know that she was thinking of you,” Stesha said as she placed the phone in her lap. A divot of concern lay between her eyebrows again.

“What’s wrong? Is she okay?” We had met Grace last night for dessert, all of us sighing over the dense chocolate cake. “Her leg, is it okay after all that walking?”

“No, no, she’s fine. Well, actually, she’s upset. Have you been following the news?”

“Not closely, no.”

“Well, you’re not missing much. No one’s talking about the flood in Peru, not here. And according to Grace, not in the States. She did a little digging, and none of the big three relief agencies have collected much in the way of donations.”

“That’s exactly what Quattro said would happen.” I flushed as Stesha’s eyebrows lifted. Quattro again. Hastily, I asked, “What’s that about?”

“Yesterday, it was a mudslide in Peru. Tomorrow, it’s an
earthquake in Bali. Or a hurricane in Louisiana.” She pursed her lips. “People are fatigued.”

“But all these villagers that we just left… they lost
everything
.”

“Well, what can anyone do?” Stesha asked, more curious than philosophical.

The exact question echoed in my mind. What good could any of my photographs do if they only stayed on the SD card? If I was the only one who viewed them? “If you want to make a difference,” Dom had lectured me, sounding like he’d come straight out of one of his MBA classes, “you need to make a video. With all the magazines folding and the ubiquity of camera phones, anyone can be a photographer these days. There’s nothing special about what you do.”

But he was wrong. I had spent a lifetime literally framing my view of the world on photo safaris, first with Dad, then on my own. I had watched my mom create visual narratives for countless executives. And in my hand, I held a camera loaded with still photos and video footage of the mudslide.

Make a video.

Slowly, I said, “I think I might have an idea.”

“I thought you would.”

“What if we produced a video about the mudslide?” I asked, mulling out loud. In my mind, I could already envision the opening sequence: a black screen. The ominous sound of the river. “Short, maybe two minutes, and we put it on your website? And distributed it to all of your clients? And we can put it on my blog. It’s such a puny effort, but—”

“But that’s how you start a revolution,” Stesha said, already
jotting notes in the notebook she’d bought yesterday. “I like it. How much work is this going to take?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never made one.… Well, other than a couple of little movies for physics and history,” I said, already doubting myself. What was I offering? I knew less about making a video than I did about chemistry. “I’m just a photographer, and not even that, really. I take pictures of street fashion.”