The Lost Girls (6 page)

Somehow it didn't seem strange to launch right into such a personal topic with Jen, who wasn't one to hold back whatever she was feeling when she felt it. Before our vacation to Argentina last year, I'd seen Jen only a few times at group happy hours. She kept her golden brown hair blown out straight, usually wore at least one item in a shade of pink, and almost matched my height of 5 feet 4 inches (okay, 5 feet 3
³
/4 inches) without her three-inch heels. But she also didn't seem like the typical girly girl: she laughed hard, spoke loud, and tended to voice the uncensored version of her thoughts. Since then I'd learned a bit more, like that Jen was a film addict with a flair for the dramatic herself. With her resonant voice and sweeping gestures, she struck me as a modern-day Katharine Hepburn. While Amanda was definitely ballsy, her quicksilver emotions gave her an air of vulnerability, while Jen's tendency toward total openness made her come across as almost fearless to me. So it also seemed fitting that she'd committed to such a big adventure.

“Come to India!” a woman with henna-stained hands and a scarlet sari beckoned, waving a brochure with an “Om” symbol.

“I
really
want to go to India!” I said to Jen excitedly.

“Have you ever been before?” she asked.

“Yeah, once in college during this study-abroad program called Semester at Sea. But I've only seen the southern part and really want to go to yoga school near the Himalayas.”

And so the endless possibilities of the open road began weaving their way down almost every pathway in my mind as we continued walking through the labyrinth of exhibits. I listened to Jen tell me how she and Amanda had met in their freshman dorm and hit it off instantly, but it wasn't until departing on a postgrad backpacking trip through Europe that they had truly bonded. And after an incredible six-country tour in four weeks, they'd vowed to be travel partners for life.

Jen rattled off all the misadventures they'd shared—getting hopelessly lost on the outskirts of Venice, attacked by killer gnats on a bike ride in Bruges, stranded at a station in Antwerp after boarding the wrong Eurorail train, and caught pilfering hotel rolls and jam after breakfast hours by an irate Frenchman.

“I always said that we could never go to Thailand together or we'd likely get thrown in jail accidentally, like Claire Danes's and Kate Beckinsale's characters in
Brokedown Palace
—and even our friendship isn't worth that,” Jen joked, dramatically flipping her hair.

I'd imagined what it would have been like if I'd met them back then on my own postcollege backpacking tour of Europe. Then my mind fast-forwarded to the three of us taking on the world, seeing wildebeest while hiking in the Serengeti or sitting next to monks in a Buddhist temple in Tibet.

As we walked, Jen and I collected brochures to plan our dream itinerary and took turns asking the country reps questions, such as what time of year was best to visit and whether the country required a visa for entry. Every booth we passed represented another new adventure we might actually get to experience on the road. My imagination started circling the globe at warp speed—Peru, the Seychelles, China! I wanted to see them all. As I was plotting how we might take a ship from South America to Antarctica, Jen placed a hand decorated with a dainty pink ring on my shoulder, and for the first time in our brief acquaintance she struck me as maternal. “Um, how 'bout we narrow it down just a bit. Is there anywhere you
don't
want to go?”

I smiled sheepishly. Okay, we were back into first-date territory, but I sensed we were in it for the long haul. When Jen and Amanda had first thrown out the idea to go on a yearlong trek around the globe, I knew they'd somehow change the way I saw the world, even if I didn't fully believe we'd all be crazy enough to actually circle it together. Even after telling Elan about the
trip, I'd still feel torn about leaving a life of comfort and security for the great unknown. But as Jen and I roamed the expo hall vibrating with exotic music, food, and flags, I began to believe the journey could actually happen. It ignited the wanderlust that often simmered underneath my skin. There's a Buddhist saying that goes “Leap, and the net will appear.” I didn't understand what the restlessness was that was driving me, but I was compelled to take the leap. I could only have faith that there would be a net to catch me if I fell.

 

N
ow, seeing the worry in Amanda's eyes as the March wind whipped around us outside EJ's, I convinced myself in a matter of seconds that the trip wasn't going to happen and that it had all seemed way too good to be true. Then Amanda gazed past me, and I spun around to see Jen approaching, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

“You're backing out of the trip, aren't you?” Amanda wailed as soon as Jen got within earshot. Suddenly I was just as concerned about Amanda as I was about Jen because she was wringing her fingers in panic. Amanda could be like a kaleidoscope of emotions, shifting from excited to nervous to feisty in a single moment.

Jen let out a little laugh, but there wasn't any joy in it. “No, the total opposite, actually.” She slid off her sunglasses, and I could see that her eyes were puffy and face was splotchy red. “Brian and I had a big fight. I told him about the trip, and he lost it,” she said.

“I'm so sorry, Jen.” I instinctively put my arm around her.

“What happened? What did he say?” Amanda asked, putting her arm around Jen's other side. Jen resignedly leaned into us but then straightened resolutely and motioned toward the restaurant entrance. “Let's grab a table so we can sit and talk.”

As we pushed through the double glass doors and the doorbell clanged to announce our entrance, we were blasted with warm, cinnamon-scented air. Once inside the booth, I glanced at Jen. I noticed that her clothes were uncharacteristically wrinkled and imagined her slipping into them after grabbing them off Brian's floor in a hasty getaway. Her eyes had that pained, bloodshot look of someone who knew she was about to lose her best friend. I didn't want her to feel the inevitable emptiness that comes after a man—who has been the last person you've spoken to before falling asleep each night for years—has exited your life. Though I hadn't been there when she and Brian had first met, I sensed how much she cared for him.

I gripped the edge of the padded seat, preparing for Jen to start crying, but she surprised me. Rather than rehashing every minute detail like usual, she gave us the CliffsNotes version of her past twenty-four hours with Brian. After a sleepless night filled with tears and talking (and some shouting), they'd both decided to take things one day at a time and see how they felt after she traveled for the first two months. And until then, they weren't going to make any rash decisions.

“Taking it day by day is probably the best thing to do,” I said, squeezing her hand and thinking that a gradual phaseout might be less painful than a quick break. Travel would give Jen and Brian both physical and emotional distance, and that might help them figure out what they really wanted.

Then I gave her the same advice I'd given myself many times: “You can always change your mind and come home if you decide that's best once you're on the road for a bit.”

Amanda quickly broke in. “And it sounds trite, but if it's really meant to be with you and Brian, you'll figure something out. Even if you
do
stay on the trip the full year. He could come visit you. You could come back here a couple times if you had to. Or maybe you could meet somewhere halfway.”

“Yeah, I think I just need to take my mind off it and get back to the trip planning,” Jen said, her voice cracking slightly.

“Are you sure?” Amanda asked. “Do you really want to do this now?”

Jen nodded, so I reached for my laptop and sat it next to the mugs of coffee we'd already half downed. Then I pulled from my overflowing tote bag stacks of brochures we'd collected at the travel expo, pens, notebooks, and the Lonely Planet and Let's Go guidebooks.

“Think about it, this can be the year to live our dreams,” I said enthusiastically. “Most people never get a chance like this in their entire life. Imagine all the things you want to do and places you want to see.” I paused for a minute, chewing my lower lip as I thought. “I have an idea. Let's each make a sort of dream list, and then we can compare notes. Like for me, I really want to learn how to meditate in India. Write down whatever and don't censor yourself.”

I stopped when I saw Jen and Amanda staring at me.
Do they think I'm crazy? Or just a hippie dreamer?

But then Jen eased my self-consciousness with another one of her smiles. “I think that's a great idea,” she said as Amanda nodded.

I tore three sheets of paper from my spiral notebook and handed them out with pens. Then we busied ourselves writing and dreaming so much we barely noticed when the waitress set pancakes dusted with powdered sugar and omelets framed with sausage links on our table. As our food grew cold, I finally looked up from my notes and asked, “So what have you got?”

Jen started with “I've always wanted to go on a safari in Kenya. And I absolutely want to do some kind of volunteer program there.”

Amanda chimed in. “I want to practice my Spanish and to hike the Inca Trail in Peru.”

They both turned to me. “You already know I want to study at an ashram in India. I've always wanted to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia and climb a glacier in New Zealand. And if I'm going around the world, I
have
to get certified to scuba dive.” I paused to take a breath and realized they were both staring at me again. “I think we can fit it all in if we travel forever,” I joked, and they laughed.

Until that day, the three of us had only fantasized about where we wanted to go. But with the weight of keeping a big secret from Brian off Jen's shoulders, it seemed the time was right to turn our dreams into action. So, in our favorite comfort food spot, we started constructing an itinerary. And that's how our crazy scheme began to take root in reality.

Over the next couple hours, we volleyed ideas about an exact route and the number of weeks we'd like to spend in each country and estimated how much money we'd need to save to cover everything from flights and vaccines to lodging and supplies. As I was the one with the least cash of the three of us, money had been my biggest concern (second only to leaving Elan). To make up for it, I'd been channeling the bigger paychecks I'd gotten from my promotion into a separate savings account. After all, I couldn't spend my raise if I didn't see it. Plus, I'd figured that trip or no trip, building a nest egg was a smart idea. And combined with taking on extra freelance assignments and skipping luxuries like eating out, I'd saved more money than I'd ever dreamed possible in the past eight months: almost $6,000. At that rate, I'd have $10,000 by the time we left.

The seemingly daunting task of coordinating such an extensive trip actually proved easier than we'd expected once we divided the duties by three. Throughout our planning session, our individual travel roles also began to take root. As the group dreamer, I threw out ideas about where to go and what to do. Amanda, the regulator, took charge of narrowing down
the options. And Jen, the organizer, worked out the details. I was impressed with Jen's borderline obsession for charts and spreadsheets as I watched her type up timelines and use Excel spreadsheets to record estimated trip expenses so we'd have some concept of our budget.

The sparse selection of books we managed to find on round-the-world (or RTW) trips all warned against trying to plan too far in advance. And my philosophy was not to lock ourselves into a rigid itinerary because we couldn't possibly know what cool things we might discover along the way. So we decided to follow the guides and map out the year loosely but focus on only the first couple regions of the world to start.

When Amanda first threw out the idea of taking this trip, her sole motivation was to explore South America and experience Latin culture, so that was the logical place to begin. Not wanting to overextend ourselves, we chose the two countries we most wanted to visit, Peru and Brazil, and allotted two months' total for both. “So let's start by buying our plane tickets to South America,” Amanda said, and Jen nodded.

I felt a surge of panic run through me. Once we bought these tickets, the trip would be 100 percent real and there would be no turning back. I'd actually be leaving my life as I knew it—and the man I loved—for an entire year. But I'd also be spending that time living a dream instead of sitting behind a desk. Plus, we'd talked about it so much that I couldn't back out now. “Okay, let's do it,” I agreed, sounding far more sure than I felt.

Covertly pirating a stray Wi-Fi signal, we plunked down our credit cards and took the first of many anticipated financial plunges. For less than $400 each, we secured one-way flights to Lima, arbitrarily selecting a June departure on the cheapest date available.

Having a plan seemed to take Jen's mind off her troubles with Brian. She pleaded with us to take it one step further and
charge the mandatory deposit to reserve spaces with an Inca trail operator. Maybe she needed a greater incentive to keep from backing out of the trip. Maybe she figured if she put her money where her mouth was, she'd be less likely to change her mind. Maybe that was the only way for all three of us to actually take the leap.