Wanderlove (2 page)

Where
did
people go?

I had no idea. That’s why the Global Vagabonds pamphlet seemed like such a prophecy. Travel made easy. All the thorns chipped off. Prepackaged, preplanned.

Perfect.

In my bedroom, I ran my finger down the table of contents. All the tours had gimmicky names:
Incredible India.

Thailand Trek. Jungle Escape
—that was Peru and Ecuador.

Arctic Expedition
.

La Ruta Maya.
What was that?

I flipped to the page and was greeted by the grins of four young, jubilant travelers, posing with their arms linked. Behind them, a ruined Mayan temple loomed from a thickly forested backdrop.

La Ruta Maya. The Maya Route. Three weeks exploring Mayan ruins in Central America. I read the name of each ancient city out loud, stumbling over the exotic pairings of consonants: Tikal, Copan, Lamanai, Chichén Itzá, Palenque.

I’d paid little attention to Central America on the maps in my father’s office. Guatemala was vaguely synonymous with Mexico. I’d always thought Honduras was a Caribbean island, like Haiti. And I wasn’t sure I’d even
heard
of Belize.

I decided not to read any further. I wanted to be a blank canvas, untainted by any preparatory information. That way, my mind would be fully open upon my arrival in Guatemala City.

“Bria?”

My mom stuck her head into my room. She gasped.

“Honey, you’re not
suicidal,
are you?” Meet my mom—who’s only forty to my dad’s fifty-two, goes clubbing twice a month with her dental hygienist friends, and has stretched out way too many of my tank tops with a gigantic chest I did not inherit. We do not “get” each other, to say the least. She likes to joke she found me in a basket wedged among my father’s rosebushes.
How else can we explain
that art thing of yours
?

“Mom!” I exclaimed. “Are you kidding me? No!”

“But your hair . . .”

I reached up and touched it, like I’d done compulsively the whole drive home. I had paid twelve dollars for a cosmetology student to sever my long dark hair to my chin. “Your eyes look much larger now,” the student had said, feigning expertise as she’d scrunched wax into my choppy bob.

“I was ready for something different,” I told my mom.

Her surprise was understandable. I’ve been a creature of habit my whole life. My parents haven’t known what to do with me in the six weeks since Toby and I broke up, other than try to coerce me into shopping trips (my mom, who loves deals) and hover awkwardly behind me (my dad, an accountant who is intimidated by teenagers) during my epic triathlons of television, breakfast cereal, and art blogs viewed on my laptop.

“I suppose it’s all right,” my mom said. “It would look better if you smoothed it out more. You can borrow my flatiron, if you promise to return it.”

“Thanks a million.”

“Dinner’s ready. It’ll be just you and me again, since I doubt I’ll be able to pry that man out of his damned office.” As soon as my mom shut the door, I scrunched up my hair even more. I could already hear her yelling at my dad. I swear they’re addicted to the adrenaline from their nightly hollering matches. They’ll probably forget they ever had a daughter once I’m gone.

Okay, maybe that’s harsh. But there’s just so much my parents have overlooked. They never asked about the plastic tubs of art supplies I crammed under my bed after art school acceptances came out. They never questioned the nights I lingered, dreading the chill seats of Toby’s car. I know it sounds borderline psychotic, but sometimes I found myself wishing for the testimony of a bruise. If my parents could have seen my injuries, maybe they’d have understood. But I’ve never given them any reason not to trust my judgment.

So they believed me when I said that I
wanted
to stay in town after graduation, that attending a state school instead of art school was
preferable,
that Toby and I were doing
great
, I
swear, geez,
guys, everything’s
fabulous
! until it was too obvious to lie anymore.

Enough about Toby. I pressed my palms over my ears, sat back in bed, and closed my eyes.

I could picture it already.

I would glide from ruin to ruin along La Ruta Maya, in a caravan of beautiful, happy people, and I’d be the mysterious one, gracious and profound. Butterflies would float down from the jungle canopy and alight on my bronzed skin. I would wear silver necklaces and ankle-length skirts that shifted in the breeze.

And above all else, I would do what Olivia suggested I do, the day after Toby broke up with me: I’d only hook up with guys I didn’t care about. From now until forever. So when we parted ways, I could easily forget.

The blond girl scribbles in a journal for the remainder of the plane ride. When I finally muster the courage to open my sketchbook, she gives me a
look
, like she’s accusing me of copying her.

My face heats up.
I have one trillion sketchbooks
, I want to tell her.
I could build you a sketchbook house.

But I don’t. Because then I’d be admitting I’m an artist. Or rather, that I
used to be
an artist, since I haven’t drawn as much as a chipmunk in months. I have an urge to hide out in the airplane bathroom, but then I’d have to climb over the girl’s legs. So I put my sketchbook away and stare past tent woman out the window, trying to ignore the ache in my chest.

It’s totally irrational—I mean, it’s just
drawing
, Bria, come on now—but the longing skewers me just the same.

I expect instant culture shock when our plane touches down, but the Guatemala City airport looks like every other I’ve seen. Just with more Spanish. I lose sight of the blond girl as I attempt to navigate all sorts of foreign customs, like Customs. I reach the baggage claim just in time to see her dive into the arms of a pair of scraggly backpacker boys. One’s freakishly tall and wears a stocking cap. The other has a ponytail.

I figure they’re backpackers because of the backpacks.

No one’s there to meet me. No signs proclaiming bienvenida, bria! I want to sit down, but I can’t find a seat. When I settle on the metal lip of the baggage conveyor belt, a security guard scurries over and orders me off in Spanish. So I stand there with my purple suitcase wedged between my legs, my hands in my pockets to safeguard my money belt. I try to ignore the huddle of middle-aged tourists across the room, along with the sinking feeling in my stomach.

At last, a woman excuses herself from the group and approaches me. She’s got knobby knuckles and pearly, lacquered nails. She reminds me of a velociraptor.

“Are you Bria Sandoval?”

Dumbly, I nod.

“You’re with us.” She calls to the others: “I’ve found her!”

“I’m with you?”

“Yep. I’m Marcy, the guide with Global Vagabonds. I thought I recognized you from your photo, but you had such long hair. . . . Anyway. Glad we found you! You’re the last one. Now we can jump on the shuttle to Antigua.” I give the group of tourists a hard stare, as if my eyes have the power to transform them. I see mustaches, baseball caps, doughy calves marbled with varicose veins. Where’s my caravan of beautiful people from the Global Vagabonds propaganda? “But—but the people in your fliers were so much
younger.
. . .”

“Unless you want to camp out in this airport for three weeks, what you see is what you get. They’re not so bad. You should have seen the last group—the highlight of their trip was the McDonald’s in Chimaltenango. They couldn’t get over the home-delivery service.”

There’s nothing left for me to say. I pop out the telescoping handle of my suitcase and follow Marcy to the Vagabonds, who frown at me with varying levels of irritation.

Great
. They hate me already.

Just when I think my night can’t get any worse, the blond girl and her boyfriends choose that precise moment to walk our way.

On the squeaky-clean airplane, she looked out of place.

But now that we’ve landed, I realize she’s perfect. All three of them are. Perfectly disheveled, perfectly irreverent. Real-life vagabonds with mismatched clothes and jewelry, scuffed leather sandals, and too much sun. The kind of traveler I didn’t know I longed to be until right this very second, as Marcy and her husband, Dan, whose comb-over is flipped the wrong way, attempt to herd me outside.

The blond girl passes me without a word. But somehow, her silence is worse than any criticism. Suddenly, my Windbreaker feels even crispier. My haircut is too trendy. My new shoes feel like blocks of lead. I’ve only been in Guatemala half an hour, and already I’ve gotten everything wrong.

The freakishly tall guy in the stocking cap passes next, whistling. But I don’t get a good look at him, because the guy with the black ponytail has stopped beside me.

“Tough luck,” he says. He nods at my tour group, which is filing outside.

I shrug, duck my head, and follow my people into the night.

The Global Vagabonds logo of a crazed giraffe beams from the side of our shuttle van. Beside it, drivers lean against dilapidated cabs, watching us with distaste. I crawl into the backseat and scoot to the farthest corner. Too soon, I sense the mass of another person sitting beside me. And just because my life is like that, it’s tent-garbed woman from the plane.

“Hi! I’m Glenna Heron, professional beadworker,” she says, handing me a card with a tiny Ziploc bag of seed beads attached. “And you’re a liar.”

So much for reinvention.

Day 3, Morning

The Mayans

My Dad’s Maps

Maybe it was Toby Kelsey who inspired this trip. But I
have to blame my dad’s maps for infecting me with the
travel bug in the first place.

My dad has three maps in his office—what my mom
calls his hermit cave, since he pretty much lives there when
he’s not at work. One is a world map. The second is a
map of ancient Greece and Italy. The third, hanging right
above his desk, is a map of North America.

He seems to think his maps evoke the impression of a
world traveler, landlocked by responsibility. But really, he’s
only taken one trip his entire life: a train journey across
Canada, at age thirty-three, to fetch an engagement ring from his great aunt in Ottawa. It was the holidays, and he
could only afford a flight as far as Vancouver.

In the days when I spent entire afternoons drawing
beneath his desk, sometimes he would beckon me out to
share. With an ink-stained finger, he’d trace his itinerary
on the map of North America. “Saskatoon,” he’d say,
pointing. “That’s where an elk wandered on the tracks
while the conductor was out smoking cigarettes. A big
mangy buck. It took six men to scare him off.”
Then he would slide his finger down the track marked
in blue ink. “Here there was a forest. I remember the trees
were all the same height, like a mowed lawn.”
Once I asked him if he ever climbed off during the stops
and walked around.

“No need,” he said. “My view from the car was
perfect.”

As I got older, and hung out in his office less and less,
I started to see the maps differently. The idea of my dad on
that train—sitting alone on a bench in coach, maybe with
a blanket over his knees, watching the landscape blur
by—might seem romantic to some people. Sappy people.

He was retrieving a ring for my mom, after all.

But hadn’t he wanted to walk around under the
evergreens? Sift his hands through the pine needles? Touch
the ice-blue lakes?

What’s the point of travel if you never get off the train?

~ July 14, somewhere in Guatemala

I close my sketchbook. It always startles me when words come out of my pen instead of pictures. I never did much journaling before this trip, but it’s never too late to start.

I glance up. I can hear the Mayan market before Dan shuts off the engine. It sounds like the low bellow of a far-off ocean, or a hive of bees. The hum of humanity. Kind of exciting, but after yesterday, I’d rather hide out in the van. Possibly for the remaining nineteen days of this trip.

We spent all day in Antigua, an ancient city that was adored by everyone but reminded me of a dishrag. Clouds slumped in the sky. Water the color of my Windbreaker pooled in the cracks of the cobblestone streets. The buildings were constructed in endless pastel-colored strips, without any gaps between the storefronts. Because most lacked signs, I never knew what one held until I peered inside.

Usually, backpackers.

I should have expected them, after the girl from the plane and her airport boyfriends. But they never stopped astonishing me.