Wanderlove (24 page)

Thanks, but . . .” I pour the rest of the drink over the edge of the balcony. Then I spit for good measure.

Rowan laughs. “I’m glad you feel comfortable enough around me to spit.”

“So where were you tonight?” I ask, wiping my mouth.

“I just needed a break.”

“You wimp. It’s only our first night here!”

“Don’t remind me.” Rowan crosses his arms, the eye of his dragon peeking through his fingers. “Anyway, I have another apology—but you have to get in first.”

“The hammock?”

“That’s right.”

I reach out and test the sturdiness of one of the posts.

“Seems wobbly.”

“Who’s the wimp now?”

He’s got me. I climb in beside him, playfully pushing his feet from my face. I remember how shy I felt the last time we did this, back at the Rainforest Retreat. I can hardly believe only five days has passed since then. Or ten days, according to Olivia’s sister’s dorm-time scale. It feels like weeks and weeks.

“So what else are you sorry for? Besides tricking me with liquefied seaweed.”

“For not trusting you.”

That’s not what I expected. “To do what?”

“To do what’s best for yourself. When it comes to telling your parents.”

I try not to squirm. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Especially after I’d asked you to trust
me
.”
I’m still not sure if I do
. “Well, I told you I’m untrustworthy when it comes to doing what’s best for myself. And by that, I mean what’s
really
best. Not other people’s ideas of what’s best.”

“Like your parents’?”

I nod. “They were okay with the tour group. Well, they said, ‘Guatemala? Why would you want to go there?’ But they put a lot of faith in structure. Plus, they’re dealing with a lot of personal stuff. They fight all the time—and I mean
all
the time—but just can’t bring themselves to actually get a divorce.”

“I’m sorry. That’s rough.”

“Honestly? I wish they
would
split.” I try to shrug, but my shoulders are wedged in too tight. “Some people just aren’t meant to be married.”

Rowan nudges the wooden post with his foot so the hammock starts to sway. “It’s too bad, what you said about the structure, though. That’s exactly why I hate tour groups like your Global Whatevers—they stick to the well-trod trails.

They avoid anything new or different. They’re like hummingbirds scanning a landscape for red flowers: hover, swoop, then dart away.”

Put like that, it sounds a little like Hyperactive Diver Disorder.

“I just think it’s a shame, is all,” Rowan continues.

“To miss the beauty in all the details. The side streets and smaller islands. The overlooked places. Like the way we saw Livingston—you enjoyed that, right?” He looks so hopeful it’s endearing.

“Of course I did!” It’s true. Even during my brief few days off the beaten path, I’m amazed, even
stunned,
at what I’ve seen. Not just in Livingston, but along the banks of the Río Dulce. Through the windows of the chicken buses to Guatemala City and across Belize. And today, on the back roads of Laughingbird Caye. Color and frenzy and beauty and poverty that makes me want to simultaneously stare and cover my eyes. Backpacking really does push aside the curtain.

Maybe everyone should be required to sign up for a dose.

But then . . . I think about my father. His lonely train trip across Canada, the one he traced for me on his maps.

And that family trip to Spain he always talked about—it’ll never happen. Of course he wouldn’t understand fearless travelers like Rowan and Starling. Neither would Glenna Heron, professional beadworker. Global Vagabonds is the trip of her life. And I just can’t bring myself to look down on that.

“The thing is,” I begin, “not everyone can travel like you do, Rowan.”

“Sure they can—as long as they have the money. They just need to open their minds.”

“But most people aren’t raised to think this kind of travel’s an option. Like me—I just fell into it accidentally.”

“Best bag you ever lost.”

I smile.

“But I’m being honest,” he continues. “I don’t see how anyone moderately educated and raised in Western civilization can’t be enchanted when they hear about places like these. Like Livingston, or Antigua Guatemala. Or the lake.

Do you know what Aldous Huxley called it?”

“‘The most beautiful lake in the world.’ As a matter of fact, I read about it in my Global Vagabonds itinerary.”

“Really?” Rowan cringes as his entire belief system comes crashing down around him. “But still. What I say stands.

Groups like that visit Tikal—on day trips. They visit Panajachel, which is great, but never make it to the other villages: Santa Cruz, San Marcos, Santa Lucía. They hear about the offbeat places. Why don’t they go?”

“Because they hear about the dangers, too.” Rowan tries to sit up straight, almost flipping us out of the hammock.

“Sure, traveling can be dangerous. People get robbed, and stabbed, and raped. More likely, they get the runs. They get bitten by mosquitoes, and stray dogs, and exotic arachnids, and sometimes their parts swell to enormous sizes. They itch, and they sting, and they burn in the sun. They tumble off highways in chicken buses, and crash in tourist-class minivans. They even get their purses stolen in Mayan marketplaces.”

I wrinkle my nose.

“But all that’s hugely unlikely—with the exception of mosquito bites and sunburn. And yet even experienced travelers are still afraid.

“What everyone forgets—even me—is the people who actually
live
here. In places like Central America, I mean.

Southeast Asia. India. Africa. Millions, even billions, of people, who live out their whole lives in these places—the places so many people like
us
fear. Think about it: they ride chicken buses to work every day. Their clothes are
always
damp. Their whole lives, they never escape the dust and the heat. But they deal with all these discomforts. They
have
to.

“So why can’t travelers? If we’ve got the means to get here, we owe it to the country we’re visiting not to treat it like an amusement park, sanitized for our comfort. It’s insulting to the people who live here. People just trying to have the best lives they can, with the hands they’ve been dealt.” I open my mouth to reply, but I can’t untangle my brain from his words.

All stuff I know, of course. I
know
people live in Central America all their lives. And I know people are people, be they professional beadworkers or Garifuna, Spring Breakpackers or Mayans. But on this trip, I’ve never let my brain dwell on those thoughts. I’ve never bothered to imagine myself in someone else’s place. Like the kids selling key chains in the streets of Antigua. Or the mother with the screaming toddler in the Guatemala City bus station. Because then I’d have to admit that in the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty well-off.

I mean . . . art school.
That’s
what I’m agonizing over? The missed opportunity to pay bunches of money to paint and draw?

I know how shallow it sounds. And yet . . . it’s not like I can instantaneously extricate all my emotions from it. My problems might be superficial on a global scale, but they’re real to me. Just like my parents’ marital problems are real to them. And Rowan’s hang-ups are real to him.

“You’re right,” I tell him. “But you’re wrong, too. Because you just can’t speak for everybody. Not even every traveler.

You can’t begin to know what
anybody’s
going through. It’s almost like . . . you only have empathy for those less fortunate than you are.”

“Come on!” Rowan cries, indignant. “I never said that.”

“You do come off as feeling awfully superior.”

“I don’t think I’m superior.”

“No offense, because I think you’re the most insightful person I’ve ever met . . . but you seem to have a lot of pent-up disappointment in travelers who aren’t you or Starling.” I know I’m really stomping on his feelings at this point, but I make myself hold his eyes.

Finally, he cracks a grin. “Thanks,” he says.

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No. I’m really not. I’m thanking you—for the first thing you said. About being insightful. That’s just . . . Wow. I’m honored. It almost eclipses what you said next, which was pretty mean. But point taken.”

I poke my fingers through the netting of the hammock.

“Anyway, who am I to talk? I’m probably more judgmental than you are. I judged Dan as soon as I saw his comb-over.”

“Who’s Dan?”

“Marcy’s husband. I judged Marcy based on her velociraptor fingernails.”

“I judged you when I saw your Windbreaker.”

“Asshole! That’s a low blow and you know it. At least I’m not a boy wearing a stack of multicolored bracelets on his leg.”

Rowan sticks his foot in my face. I grab it and trap it under my arm.

“You’re right, though,” he says. “It’s about time to take these damn things off, isn’t it?”

“Tonight?”

“Soon. It’ll be, like, a rite of passage. We’ll have a cere-mony. And until then . . . I’ll try to be more accommodating of Spring Breakpackers.”

“I will too. Also, Global Whatevers.”

“And even Global Whatevers.”

For a moment, we’re just smiling at each other, and it’s kind of weird but also really nice. Rowan clears his throat like he has something important to add, but all he says is “Look up.”

Mystified, I tip my head back.

I don’t know how, but I forgot about the stars. They coat the sky like smeared wet sugar, so many the whole night seems to glow. When was the last time I looked up?

“Bet you don’t have stars like that back home,” Rowan says.

“No way! In Los Angeles? Too much light pollution, even in the suburbs. If I’m lucky, I see about ten or twelve of them.”

“Just wait until I take you to the Corn Islands in Nicaragua. Especially Little Corn. Or Isla del Coco. It’s in Costa Rica, miles and miles offshore. But if I took you all the way out there, you’d have to dive.”

“Naturally,” I say, playing along.

“Or maybe I’ll take you to this tiny Garifuna island off the coast of Honduras. Chachauate Key, they call it. At low tide, you can hike from the main village across a sandbar and put up a hammock on a deserted isle. Between two coconut trees.

Like out of a movie. And the stars—you wouldn’t believe.

“Or we could go to the Tikal ruins, just over the border in Guatemala. You can stay at a budget hotel in the park, then wake up before dawn and climb to the top of the highest temple to watch the sun rise over the jungle. You’ll swear you can see the whole wide world.”

None of it will ever happen. We both know I’m not going anywhere after Laughingbird except home. But the images are so gorgeous, his words so beguiling, that a sentence slips out without my permission: “Hold my hand.” Rowan stares at me.

I would stare at me too if I could.

“It’s just—what you said was so perfect. I’m not, like, coming on to you.”

After a moment, he reaches out. Because of the way we’re lying, we can only hook our fingers together clumsily. It’s more awkward than anything.

“Anyway, I know you wouldn’t,” he says.

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Come on to me.”

“Of course not,” I say quickly.

“So . . . we’re friends? Or siblings, or whatever it was Starling said? Brother and sister?”

“Of course. Hooking up would be immoral. Like, travel incest.”

Rowan grins at me, then closes his eyes. We sit there awhile longer, listening to the waves, the grackles trilling in the trees, the soft thump of reggae music from the bars down the street. I want to let go of his hand. But I don’t want him to think anything’s wrong.

Days 12–15:

Transformed

I have mastered the island.

Okay, so it’s not that much of an accomplishment, considering it’s so narrow in some places I can see the ocean on both sides. But when you’re from the Los Angeles area, you can’t master much outside your own neighborhood. You know where you’re going, but it’s almost impossible to know all the corners. You know the good parts and bad parts, but not all the parts in between.

Every morning, I borrow the same purple bike from the dive shop and set out to reexplore all the places I’ve already been. And hour by hour, trail by trail, I’m changed.