Wanderlost (24 page)

Sam nuzzles my neck before whispering in my ear, “Just don't forget about me when you meet all those hostelers with accents. Those Australian guys have quite the reputation, just so you know.”

I laugh and wrap my arms around him. “You're impossible to forget, Sam Bellamy.”

“Good,” he says, planting a kiss on the top of my head before pointing to my suitcase. “Now that you have your phone back, you better find your phone charger in here before I check this sucker onto the flight.” While I retrieve the cord and slip the binder inside, he turns to his own suitcase and extracts something from it.

“Got you a present, Dimple.” He places two boxes of PowerBars in my hand. “Figure these might come in handy where you're headed.”

I laugh. I may be making progress on Operation Aubree, but that doesn't mean I need to be sampling tapas, whatever that is. The outside pouch of my newly acquired backpack (the real kind hostelers wear, not my safety-pinned regular one) fits the bars perfectly.

Sam stands and helps me up, always the gentleman.

He spins me around and places my pack on my back. “Ouch. Hold on.” I grimace as a piece of my hair tangles around one of the strap buckles.

“Need help?” Sam asks.

“Nope.” I hike the pack up my hips and pull the strand free. Sam flashes me a thumbs-up. We head back to the ticket counter and check all of the bags, then make our way to a waiting Dolores.

“Time to say bye to Aubree, Gram.”

“So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good-bye,”
she sings.

I truly love her for quoting
Sound of Music
lyrics. “Bye, Dolores. And thank you for everything. When I get back maybe you, me, and Sam could catch a movie sometime.”

“Forget the movies,” she says. “There's a karaoke bar in the strip mall down the road I've always wanted to peek inside. You two can take me there.”

Way to go, Dolores!

She hugs me and sits back in her chair before nodding at Sam. “Walk the girl to her train like a gentleman. And take your time.” I think she winks, but I can't be sure.

This go-round I know exactly where to head to reach the train platform below the airport. Sam's hand is warm in mine and I think back to the day, less than a month ago, that I trailed down here behind Marieke. Back then I had a hard fist of dread in my stomach, but all I feel now is a warm tickle of feelings for Sam mixed with excitement for my next adventure.

“I'll see you back in Ohio,” Sam says.

“Are you sure you're gonna want to hang out with me in boring old Ohio after we've wandered Venice and climbed in the Alps?”

He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Remember what I said before. Sometimes staying in one place is the biggest adventure of all. Of course, I didn't add that it helps to have the right company.”

I snuggle into his arms for another hug. When he lets me go, he says, “Besides, next up I'll get to introduce you to college. My turn to play tour guide to you.”

I wiggle my eyebrows at him. “
We-elllllllll
. It could be nice to have someone older and wiser telling me what to do. Even if we haven't agreed on the wiser part yet.”

“You are seventeen, going on eighteen, I-IIII'll take caaa-are of you,”
Sam sings. Or attempts to sing.

Then he grows serious. “I don't really think you need that, you know,” he says, and I nod where once I would have argued.

The train to Paris pulls in and screeches to a stop, as a display above our heads lights up with the destination details. I glance behind me, shift to line up with the opening doors, and turn to Sam with a smile.

He steps in and tugs on my backpack's straps. “Hey, so . . . likeyoubye.” He leans in for another soft kiss before I can respond. My insides are total mush as the doors to the train slide apart.

Sam nudges me gently, forcing me to take a step backward to keep my balance. “Don't miss your train, Dimple.”

Overhead a bell chimes twice and an announcement says the doors will be closing. I step on, my eyes still locked with Sam's. The doors swoop shut, leaving a partition of glass between us.

Sam puts a hand to the glass and I do the same. He smiles that smile of his that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle, and I return it. I feel all lit up from within. I think he can probably tell by the way my grin is plastered on my face, because he laughs and shakes his head, then mouths, “Go. Have fun. You've got this.”

He blows a kiss as the train pulls away from the station and I watch until he's gone.

Then I hitch my backpack higher on my hips as I turn to survey the compartment. I get that tickle in my chest again when I see the conductor walking the aisle, asking for tickets. I find a seat and sling my bag onto the shelf above it before fishing in my pocket for my ticket. I hand it to the conductor with confidence.

Sam is right.

I do have this. I so totally do.

My editor, Annie Berger, may be an only child, but wow does she get sisters—and me. Her thoughtful comments and suggestions turned the focus dial and made everything so much sharper. I hope she never gets wanderlust, because I need her driving my bus.

For helping steer, thank you to the entire team at HarperTeen and Epic Reads, especially Rosemary Brosnan, Kate Engbring, Bethany Reis, Kim VandeWater, Olivia Russo, and everyone working behind the scenes with so much care and passion.

My agent, Holly Root, is one of the smartest people working in this industry. I'm so thankful to have her for a tour guide through the Land of Publishing.

My critique partners, Alison Cherry, Dee Romito, and Gail Nall, are along for every pit stop, and sharing all things writing with them keeps it so much fun. The fact that they never run from my scary first drafts makes me love them all the more. Big hugs and thanks also go to Lori Goldstein, Dana Alison Levy, and Elodie Nowodazkij for early reads.

All the black licorice ever (no seriously, I really don't want any!) to Marieke Nijkamp and Corinne Duyvis for walking me around Holland, fact checking, and letting me cast them
as characters. Big hugs also to Kip Wilson Rechea and Bernard Rachea for their Spanish translations—in all cases, any errors are mine!

To my husband, John, and my kids, Ben, Jack, Caroline—I love exploring this world with you. You're my happy place, and wherever we're together, that's my home.

This book stemmed from a senior bus tour my grandmother, Mary O'Brien Shenkus, took to Europe, and I need to thank her not only for offering inspiration but also for instilling my own love of travel. I hope she enjoyed being sent on one last trip abroad! I also had my great-grandmother Emma Jordan Keach's day planner from 1914 by my bedside as I worked on the first draft of this book in 2014 and each day I'd see what she was up to on the same date a hundred years prior. I had fun trading her buggy for a bus in this story. No doubt both these women would have been the first under that waterfall, and I'm lucky to have had them in my life.

And last, thanks go to my parents. When I was twenty-one I had the zany idea to spend a year traveling around the world solo. They let me move back home after graduation and put off a job hunt so I could waitress double shifts and save every dime from that day on. They helped me pack and repack my backpack and search for youth hostels in Nepal. I was all bluster and bravado until the moment we were standing in the drop-off area of the airport, me in tears and reconsidering the entire adventure. Unlike Aubree's parents, my dad took me by the shoulders and said, “You have to do this because if you don't go RIGHT NOW there will be a million things
keeping you home—a job, a husband, kids. I order you to get on that flight.” Years later I learned from my mom that he was so scared for my safety out in the wide-open world that he cried the whole way home. But he still made me go. That's love for you, guys.

So for everyone out there with wanderlust—whether a touch or a fever—I order you to go! (Also, thanks for reading and I love you.)

READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT JEN MALONE'S
MAP TO THE STARS
, AVAILABLE NOW.

I never dreamed my first encounter with an A-list movie star would involve hairy feet and a bowl full of tiny fish.

Mom and I stood a safe distance from the upholstered chair of
People
magazine's Most Beautiful Man of 1990-something in the living room of an opulent Hollywood Hills mansion. His in-need-of-some-manscaping feet were stuck in a mini-aquarium of hundreds of swarming fish and he jumped every time one took a nibble at a callus.

“How is this a thing?” I whispered to my mother. I hoped the chatter from the gossiping Ladies Who Lunch (plus a few men who looked even more groomed than their female counterparts) filling the room would be enough to drown out my question.

Mom shrugged, attempting to compose her face into something resembling a California-cool “been there, seen that” look. She didn't come close. Where we were from, people hosted home Tupperware parties, not home Botox-and-spa-treatments parties.

“Mr. Glick, would you like a pomegranate spritzer?” the beautician working on the big-shot movie star asked, motioning to me as she lifted one foot out of the mini-aquarium and placed it on her knee so she could use a block of wood wrapped in sandpaper to scrub away the last of the dead skin the fish hadn't snacked on.

So. Gross.

I sucked in a breath and crossed the room, balancing my tray of mocktails in one hand. Apparently, alcohol and needles to the forehead don't play nice together. After spending half my waking hours at my grandmother's hair salon, I wasn't afraid of hard work, but I'd never waitressed a day in my life. Me plus a tray filled with deep red juice plus a room decorated entirely in white, PLUS intimidating Hollywood types, equaled certain impending disaster.

I exhaled carefully and used my free hand to grasp the stem of the martini glass. Mr. Movie Star grabbed it from me and took a sip. He made a face and handed it back. “What say we see about making this pack a little more punch?”

I didn't follow much celeb gossip, but my best friend, Wynn, was addicted to it and thus I knew a thing or two about Billy Glick's fondness for beverages with “a punch.” I swallowed a snarky comment and instead managed, “Um, sorry, sir. I'm, uh, I'm only seventeen so I'm not allowed to handle alcohol. The catering company said—”

Another waitress, who looked like she'd been plucked from the audition line for
America's Next Top Model
, stepped
in and whisked the glass from me. “I'll see what we can find you, Mr. Glick.”

I turned back toward my mom, who was now applying fake eyelashes to a woman cradling a tiny dog wearing a satin suit. Mom could apply fake eyelashes in her sleep after decades at the salon back home, but I don't think she ever had a designer puppy audience while she did it. Never had I felt so far away from sleepy Shelbyville, Georgia, home of the World Famous (well, relatively speaking) Pecan Festival. Before I could escape back into the kitchen, a group clustered in the corner called me over.

“Do you know how many calories are in these lettuce wraps?” one asked, motioning at the tiny plate she held.

“Um, hello. It's
lettuce
,” I wanted to reply, but I bit my tongue. I always have a whole host of perfect retorts that never make it past my throat. I'm basically the least confrontational person you'll ever meet, turning into a garden gnome anytime things get prickly. Stupid grin on my face, concrete legs.

When I hesitated, the woman closest to me waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “Not to worry. We actually called you over for something else.” The man and woman next to her giggled and leaned in. “Okay, sweetheart, you've got us completely stumped and that doesn't happen often. We've got a thousand bucks riding on your answer. I say down your pants and my friend Ella here says bra. Which is it?”

I nearly dropped my tray. “Ex-excuse me?” I stuttered.

“Your spec script. Where've you hidden it? Your cater-waiter
uniform doesn't leave many places, and we're baffled.”

I stared slack-jawed at them. “I'm sorry. I don't . . . spec what?” I'd been told in training to avoid eye contact with the guests and
definitely
not to speak to them unless to answer them about which vintage pinot noir had been used in the cranberry meatballs, so I kept my voice low and glanced around the room.

The trio in front of me burst out laughing and the first woman said, “Oh, honey, you are just too cute for words. When did you get here? Yesterday?”

I couldn't tell if this was a rhetorical question or not, so I answered her honestly. “Um, five days ago.”

More laughter. The one named Ella elbowed the guy next to her. “We should go easy on this one. She's just a baby.” She turned to me. “Allow us to enlighten you. Spec script: a script written on speculation, i.e., not under contract with any production company or major studio. As in, one of two things every single one of your cohorts here has tucked on—or in—their person. The other option being a headshot, if they're of the struggling actor variety, versus the struggling screenwriter variety. Exhibit A. See the manicurist over there?”

I followed her head jerk to the corner of the room, where a small table was set up in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased the valley below.

“Stack of papers rolled up between the OPI bottles and the gel dryer? Script. Now . . . waitress to the left of her. See the corner of her headshot peeking out from the top of those
knee-high boots she's rocking? One quick unzip and that sucker's in the hands of the casting director she's passing a canapé to. That's how this town rolls, sweetie. Are you saying you really don't have either?”

I shook my head slowly. What planet had I landed on?

“Damn,” said the guy as Ella adjusted her short skirt so it rode even higher on her thighs.

“Who wins this bet?” she asked.

The man shrugged and pulled out a wallet from the pocket of his fluffy robe. “You'll find a way to swindle me out of this somehow anyway. Might as well act preemptively.”

With a good-natured grin he counted out ten hundred-dollar bills into her palm while I tried not to ogle them. Nothing in my small-town-Georgia life had prepared me for any of this. The house, the people, and definitely not the hundred-dollar bills changing hands like they were sticks of gum.

“Um, could you excuse me, please? I need to refill my tray.”

I wove through the various spa stations set up around the room, beelining it to my mom so I could let her Southern drawl take me home for a minute or two. I found her in the kitchen, microwaving towels to warm the massage table.

“How's it going? Worth it to see the house?” she asked.

Mom knows how much I love anything and everything to do with architecture and, even if we hadn't been so desperate to make money—any money—she figured the chance to get inside a Robert Addison–designed house would be all the encouragement I'd need to don a waitress uniform.

“It's, um, different,” I managed. I didn't mean the house.
That
was awesome, with its futuristic look and floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass where any normal house would have walls. No chance any place in Shelbyville would ever have the high-tech NanaWall systems built into the folding doors leading from the kitchen to a back deck. Probably no one there had even heard of NanaWalls, besides me with my lifelong subscription to
Architectural Digest.

Mom looked up from the stack of towels. “Well, it
is
Hollywood, Annie. What'd you expect?”

I
guess
I expected I'd spend my senior year at Shelbyville High and then head off for college, while still coming home every summer to hang with her and Dad and help out with the women who'd come from three counties over to have my mama “do them up good” at the Curl Up and Dye, voted Best Beauty Salon in Shelbyville for six years running.

Not this. Not moving cross-country and changing schools and jobs, all to get some space from what my dad did to us.

And I definitely did
not
expect Hollywood, which would never even have been on my mom's radar had it not been for the movie shooting in the next town over back home last spring and the promises her new producer friend Joe made about all the opportunities for a makeup artist in La-La Land.

The door to the kitchen swung open and party sounds assaulted us until it eased closed behind the spa company's owner. She surveyed the room and her eyes landed on my mom.

“I'm gonna pull you off that, honey. Billy Glick is
complaining his face is feeling tight after his nightingale-droppings facial and I need someone to apply face cream.” She ducked her head into a bag and rooted around.

“Um, I'm sorry. What is a nightingale-droppings facial? Droppings . . . as in . . . poop?” my mom asked, while I dropped the spoon I was holding.

“Oh, sweetheart, you have a lot to learn. We should do another training session before I turn you loose. Nightingale droppings are a secret of the Japanese geishas. They bleach the skin and exfoliate.”

I could never imagine my mother slapping bird crap on someone's cheeks. There were some women in Shelbyville who would do just about anything to keep up the image of a Proper Southern Lady, but that was one line even they wouldn't cross. As for me, the only thing I ever put on my face was Pond's cream and strawberry lip gloss.

The owner dropped the bag onto the countertop. “Damn. I swore the face cream was in here. He's gonna freak if we keep him waiting.”

My mom took charge. “Annie, grab my purse from the back closet. I've got some from my salon back home on me,” she told the owner. “Made with real Georgia peaches—he'll love it.”

She gave my mother a grateful look and nodded. A moment later, Mom pushed back into the party and I followed behind with a replenished tray. I was just working up the nerve to interrupt a massage in progress in the front hallway of the house when I heard the shout from the corner of the living room.

“Are you insane, lady? Did you really just put cream on my face that's been tested ON ANIMALS?”

Mom looked more surprised than she had when I'd told her I actually didn't ever envision a time I'd want to get my ears pierced. “I . . . I . . . I didn't know,” she managed. She seemed pretty rattled. As the daughter of the owner, no one ever crossed her at the salon. I guess Mrs. Tipton thinking her hair wasn't sufficiently hair-sprayed to heaven was a world away from pissing off Hollywood royalty. The look Billy gave her was nothing short of venomous.

“Get out,” he spit.

“But, but . . . ,” she protested, while Billy stood and planted his feet, pointing his newly manicured finger in the direction of the door. My mother turned to the owner, who had reappeared from the kitchen. She looked from Mr. Glick to Mom, pursed her lips nervously, and turned her hands out in a helpless gesture.

Mom grabbed me by the arm and stormed past the owner and into the kitchen. She snatched her purse off the counter and dropped the face cream back inside. “Screw this! Annie, get your stuff.”

I glanced from the owner, who had followed us, to the
America's Next Top Model
waitress dispensing drinks from a cocktail shaker into martini glasses. This could not be happening. We could
not
afford to lose this job.

I opened my mouth to plead with the owner, to tell her how Mom had left the only job she'd had since high school
and the only town either of us had known since birth. How we'd moved all the way across the country. How I'd had to change schools going into my senior year. Mom could NOT get fired for something so stupid. The dude had had bird crap on his face minutes earlier. Where did he think
that
came from? Poop fairies?

But once again, I couldn't say anything. I just stood there with my mouth opening and closing while Mom fished the keys to our Kia out of her purse and rattled them at me. “Annie. Come on!”

I sighed and untied my half apron, dropping it on the counter. We were halfway across the marble floor when someone called after us.

A woman clicked toward us on towering heels. “Hold up, ladies. Look. I'm Billy's assistant. He's under a lot of stress awaiting news on the sale of his yacht. You understand. We wouldn't want this, er,
incident
to reach the tabloids. Here, I hope this makes up for things.”

She smiled at me as Mom reached for the paper in her hand. Mom took a brief look and then passed it to me. It was an eight-by-ten glossy Billy Glick headshot, signed, “Keep on keepin' on. Luv, Billy.”

Sigh.

Welcome to LA.