Wanderlove (17 page)

The element of surprise is on my side. Rowan doesn’t notice me until I come up behind him and whisper in his ear:

“I’m open.”

It sounded less suggestive in my head.

He’s so startled he drops the ball. I grab it and hop away, the mud slurping at my bare feet. From the hilltop, Sandu cheers, waving my shoes. The boys gather around me, hollering. They haven’t yet learned to be shy around women. Luckily, they don’t seem to care that I’ve got no idea how to play soccer. Playing with grown-up foreigners shatters all the rules.

I hold the ball over my head for just a moment before a boy slaps it from my hands. I scream and run after him, which is a bad idea, because I slip and fall flat on my back.

Unfortunately, the mud doesn’t swallow me up. So I am not protected from the humiliation of Rowan leaning over me, the gray sky framing his concerned face.

“Are you okay?”

Concerned—but maybe a little amused, too.

“Fine,” I mutter.

“Nothing broken?”

“Not that I can tell.”

I hold out my hand. As soon as he grabs it, I yank hard, sending him tumbling into the mud beside me. I have to laugh at his stunned expression. “Oldest trick in the book!” I tease.

Rowan reaches for me, but I roll away just in time. There’s something refreshing about being so caked in muck you just stop caring. Until he scoops up a glob of mud and aims.

“You wouldn’t. . . .”

He does. It hits me square in the chest, and I yelp as the mud oozes down my shirt. I try to scrape it away with my forearm, but it only flattens, forming a mud pancake in my cleavage. Which is even
less
hot than it sounds. I lunge at him and shove him onto his back, pinning him with my knees on either side. He’s laughing so hard he doesn’t resist, even when I paint his face with my muddy fingers. Cat whiskers. A clown nose. A unibrow.

All of a sudden, we realize we have an audience. The boys are standing in a forlorn cluster a few yards away. They don’t find us amusing—we’ve ruined the game.

A slight rain begins to prickle our dirty faces. And in that second, it’s like we both become self-conscious. Or maybe it’s just me. Because I’m the one who has the imaginary boyfriend and is straddling a guy I barely know before an audience of children.

Ahem.

We both stagger to our feet, scraping mud from our shirts.

Sandu’s waiting for us at the top of the hill, shaking his head and grinning.

“Don’t say anything,” I tell him.

He holds up his hands, like,
I wasn’t about to!

On our way back to the guesthouse, we stop by the beach so Rowan can wash off in the ocean. When I refuse to join him, he makes up names for me—like Mudsicle, Franken-slime, and Mudusa—until I tell him to quit.

“Did you know
medusa
is the Spanish word for ‘jellyfish’?” he asks.

I pry a flake of dried mud from my neck. “Since I know about twenty Spanish words, no.”

“If you’re lucky, I’ll teach you.” He pulls off his shirt and tosses it on the sand. He’s got to stop doing that. Abdominal oblique, I think, and there’s a flit of wings in my chest.

I turn away.

Maybe I can’t control what Rowan thinks of me, but I’ve got to control how I think of Rowan. He’s off-limits. Might as well be straitjacketed in barbed wire. And Starling made it clear he could never be interested in me, even if I let myself be interested in him.

I think of Tom and Liat, the soupy friction between them.

The way they discussed everything except what itched, until Tom devolved into a man-shell who could only mutter about bats and insects.

I think of my parents and their relentless wars. They care enough to stay together but have paved their marriage with battles and bickering, and now they don’t know any other way to be.

I think of Toby and me. The tension I never noticed in those joint sketching sessions, before it became so abruptly evident I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it all along—like waking to a cacophony of screechy birds, or becoming suddenly aware of an embarrassing song playing on a store’s speakers (usually “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by the Pro-claimers). I should have noticed that Toby’s art lessons tapered off the moment I started to get really good. If I had, all the fallout after I made fast track and he didn’t wouldn’t have surprised me.

Rowan and I have at least two days before we reach the island. And if anything, the tension keeps getting worse. I don’t want to travel like that.

That means he and I will have to open up, at least a little bit.

And if he doesn’t start, I’ll have to.

Day 8, Evening

Chinatown

Once I finish showering, I douse my arms and legs with 35 percent DEET bug spray. I despise DEET. It stings the cuts on my ankles from shaving. And it stinks. Plus, it always seems so counterproductive drenching myself in insecticide seconds after I’ve washed. But Rowan—who can be worse than Reese—terrorized me with tales of mosquito-borne malaria, yellow fever, and dengue, which I’d never heard of. Apparently, it’s also known as breakbone fever, because when you’ve got it, bending an elbow or a finger feels like snapping a bone.

It’s pretty much the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard of.

Actually, it’s the second-most. First is botfly larvae, which I can’t even think about without wanting to cry.

I wrap my towel around my shoulders like a shawl and look at myself in the scratched-up mirror. My hair’s a dark, wet tangle, and my cheeks are lollipop pink from the frigid shower. Hot water seems to be a luxury on the budget backpacker circuit.

Finally, I open the door. The night billows with sound. I linger by the doorway, noting all the layers.

A ceaseless chain saw buzz.

A low, mournful whistle.

A shrill shriek.

The rustle of leaves.

A sound like a car engine turning on
and off.

A sporadic, chirpy bark.

Because I am not Tom of the Jungle, I can name only the last one.

I sigh. Despite my nervousness, I know it’s time to confront Rowan. My only consolation is that our talks always seem to go better at night.

I find him sitting in a battered director’s chair on the hotel porch, reading a book by flashlight. He’s draped his wet hiking clothes over the picket fence behind him. I should probably do the same. “Hey,” I say.

Rowan glances up. “You look like a superhero.” I twirl, making my towel fan out like a cape. Then I take a deep breath. “Rowan . . . I think we need to talk.” He clutches a hand to his heart. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Ha,” I say. “I’m serious.”

“I know.” He sets his book in his lap; this time it’s
The
Handmaid’s Tale.
I can’t believe he’s already finished his last.

His eyes must scan the pages like lasers.

I slide down the wall until I’m crouching in a towel-covered bundle. “Do you want to start?” I ask hopefully, even though I haven’t told him what this conversation’s about. I’m not really sure myself.

Rowan tips his head, as if examining me. “You make me nervous.”

I squirm. “Sorry. I just thought we should talk, considering—”

“I didn’t mean right now. I mean in general.”

“Huh?” I say, surprised.

“You’re just so secretive. You’re always writing in your journal. You’re like that spy girl in that kids’ book. Do you think I don’t notice?”

“Why does it matter?” I protest. “Lots of travelers keep journals.”

“It’s not the journal that makes me nervous—it’s the way you slam it every time I glance over. And hide it when you think I’m not looking.”

I guess I’m less stealthy than I thought. “But
you’re
the secretive one, Rowan. I’ve told you more than you’ve told me. I don’t know anything about you. You could be, like . . .an international spy. You could be a serial killer.” One I hope isn’t provoked by accusations.

Rowan rolls his flashlight in his hands. “It’s not that I’m trying to hide my past. Not exactly. It’s just . . . I’m over it.

You could say I’ve been born again.”

“Like a virgin?”

“Right!” he says. Then he sings it.

When we stop laughing, he continues. “There’s a reason I’m like this. When I first started traveling, I was always looking behind me. Walking backwards, with my face in the past.

And that meant I was always trying to compensate. Trying to make up for everything that happened to me—like my mother running off, my father being such a fuckup—by
doing
.” He runs his thumb over the edge of his book, strumming it like a deck of cards.

“All that overthinking—that over-remembering—almost destroyed me. Now I’ve got to get over that part of my life too.”

“And that’s why you won’t talk about it?”

“I don’t even talk about it with Starling. To tell you the truth, I’d flat out rather you didn’t know. Really, it’s all kind of cliché.
Precocious youth with messed-up past finds refuge in
immorality. Abroad.
Boring, right? The colorful backdrop notwithstanding.”

It doesn’t sound all that boring to me.

“Remember a few days ago, when the bus broke down?” he asks. “Sitting outside in the dark? We agreed not to dwell on the past. I thought we were on the same page.” I pull the damp towel around me tighter, a cocoon. “It’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

“It’s just
strange.
”

Rowan laughs. Then he shines his flashlight under his chin, making a demon face. “
Strange
I can deal with.”

“It’s like . . . you want to erase your whole life before this trip.”

“But isn’t that the way it should be?”

“What do you mean?

“
Now
is what’s important.” He sweeps his flashlight over the trees. The beam illuminates the branches in two-dimensional detail, like flash photography. “Just look around us. Look where we are. What’s the good of loitering in unpleasant places when the
here and now
is so incredible?” He aims his light at me.

I scrunch up my face. I see what he means, but then again . . . “I don’t want to keep walking on eggshells. Worrying about what we can ask, and what we can’t.”

“I don’t want that either.” Rowan clicks off his flashlight.

“How about we think up some ground rules?” I rub the apparitions of light from my eyes, then rest my chin on my knees. “How about this: if I say a topic’s off-limits, no questions, no jokes, nothing.”

“Like swimming?”

I shrug.

“I can respect that. But the same goes for you.”

“Of course.”

“We need a list.” He pulls a tattered, water-stained scrap of paper from his book and hands it to me. I can make out the words
Utila Bay Express.

“Is this from a boat?”

“Yep. Sometimes I forget to throw away receipts. They make perfect bookmarks.”

“Are you sure you want to write on it?”

“It was a terrible trip. I got seasick. Go ahead.” I write:
Swimming. Old Boyfriends.

“ ‘Old boyfriends’?” he reads.

My pen freezes.

Earlier, when I was freezing my ass off in the shower, I was determined to tell Rowan the truth about Toby. Not everything. But enough to shine the light away from my stupid, stupid lie, the one I swore I’d admit, tonight: that I don’t have a boyfriend.

Now’s the perfect moment. But I just can’t do it.

“All boyfriends,” I say, correcting what I wrote.

“I meant, can we make that ‘relationships’? I know I said my past was rowdy, but . . .”

My face heats up. “Got it.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” He pauses.

“Add
family
.”

I glance up at him. “But that includes Starling. Which means you can’t talk about anything more recent than when—two days ago?”

“Then write
parents
. A big tangled knot I’d rather not unravel.”

I write
Rowan’s parents,
and then, beside it,
Fears. Art.

“Art? Really?”

“It’s personal.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t show me your hand?” My hand. Resting on my leg, exposed for the world to see.

I sigh. I know how silly it is hiding my drawings. I never used to care. I was practically an artistic exhibitionist.

I look at Rowan. He appears casual, unruffled, with his arms crossed over his book, his flashlight against his knee. I know I agreed to this list in my hand, which already seems kind of dumb. But I came out here tonight to find out more, not less. And that’s what I’m going to do.

“If you show me yours,” I say, “I’ll show you mine.”

“My hand?”

“Your tattoo.”

“Up close? No problem.” Rowan pushes the arm of his

T-shirt over his shoulder, displaying the entire piece. I hobble over on my knees to get a closer look, leaving my towel behind. It’s quality art, thank God. Shitty tattoos make me stabby.

“So why a
dragon
?”

“Why do you have to say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“With a sneer.”