Wanderlove (35 page)

Day 20:

Travel Ghosts

We walk along the trail toward the Grand Plaza, neither of us talking much. From time to time, our fingers touch, until Rowan puts his hands in his pockets. I try not to read too much into it, but it’s hard. Especially after I’ve traveled so far.

Suddenly, I stop in my tracks. “This is it.”

“Temple I? Yeah, it’s probably the most famous one.”

“It’s the temple from my Global Vagabonds pamphlet.” I glance at him. “Don’t laugh. But it’s what convinced me to come to Central America in the first place.”

“Too bad we can’t climb it.” Rowan points at the Spanish signs propped at the bottom of each set of steps, which can only read do not enter. temple off-limits. not allowed.

I take a few steps toward the temple, craning my neck to look up at its hulking head and shoulders. I can picture the pamphlet photo exactly. The sunny-faced wannabe travelers, painstakingly racially diverse, probably Photoshopped in front of it. In real life, the temple appears even larger. There’s a pale stripe across its face, broken by a black rectangular opening, like the eye of a Cyclops.

Then something crashes into my legs. It’s a kid with a stuffed spider monkey affixed to his neck. He throws me a terrified look before scampering away.

He’s broken my trance. Now I’m aware of all the early-morning tourists milling through the courtyard like stirred-up ants. They take turns posing in front of Temple I, mimicking the beautiful people from my notorious pamphlet. Maybe it’s because of the thunderheads gathering above, but everyone appears rushed. Power-walking between Kodak moments.

Spending more time composing pictures than beholding the real-life panoramas in front of them.

It amazes me that I’ve traveled three weeks without a camera. It’s definitely made me draw more. I wonder if it’s also made my experience more intense. I don’t need photos of the key destinations, anyway; I’ll bet everything’s available online. But then again, I don’t have photos of particular moments. My most memorable vignettes. Or the people I’ve encountered. Glenna, Sandu, Sonia, and Jack. Ariel and Emily. Starling.

I don’t have a single photo of Rowan.

We start walking again. Maybe we can’t climb Temple I, but plenty of the ancient jungle gyms have been reinforced for foreign feet. At one point, an animal bursts out of the bushes below. I jump and Rowan grabs me, saving me from a three-foot plunge to certain death.

He lets go all too soon, laughing. “It’s just a wild turkey.”

“Yeah, thanks. I can see that now.”

It’s embarrassing, but it breaks the ice. Kind of. Okay, to be honest, there’s still a great big white glacier between us, but at least now we’re attempting to shout around it.

“So,” Rowan says. “What’s your plan?”

“Now?” I shrug, looking out at the treetops instead of at him. “I might stay a little while.” In a few hours, my bank account should reflect the funds my parents transferred last night after I promised full-time paperwork duties for what’s left of my summer break. Enough money to delay my plane ticket, if I need to. I have until the end of the day to decide.

“Just a little while, huh? That’s what I used to say. ‘A little while’ has got a funny way of turning into longer than you think.” We half smile at each other. “Where will you go, if you stay?”

I hate how there’s a thousand ways I can read every single thing he says. I shrug. “I’m not sure.”

“Don’t stay for me.”

I turn so he can’t see my face, which feels slapped “I’m not. I’m staying for me. Anyway, I really mean just a little while. A week. I’ve got college.”

This whole trip, college has been another thing I’ve been running from. It’s funny how you can run from the future and the past simultaneously. I spent a lot of time coming up with ways to avoid it. Teaching in a local school, like Starling.

Selling my art in an island gallery. Maybe even traveling forever, like Rowan.

But it’s like I said before. There needs to be a destination, even if it’s way off in the haze of my unlived life. And in that life, I’d like to be an artist.

An artist who travels a lot.

“No kidding? I thought you were holding out for art school.”

“Well, I’m going to major in art. And if I hate the art program, I’ll transfer. I convinced myself I lost my chance, but that’s not true at all. It just felt . . . safer to say so.” I pause.

“I’ve come to realize it really doesn’t need to be all or nothing.”

“True,” Rowan says.

We round the corner and are faced with another sweeping view of the ruins. Nothing compares to the morning vista from Temple IV, but it’s breathtaking all the same. “And what about you?”

“I guess it depends.”

After that comes the silence. A silence that stretches longer and longer, thickening, amplifying into a current of jungle noise, a crescendo of insects and howler monkeys.

I turn to Rowan. “I want to draw you. All of you.” Then I pause. “That came out wrong—you can keep your clothes on.”

Slowly, he breaks into a grin. “You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

“When? And where?”

“Anywhere. And right now.”

Because if I put it off even an hour, I’ll chicken out. Also, it looks like rain, and nothing ruins a good sketch more than a downpour.

“Just sit,” I tell Rowan. “Like you’d sit if you were . . .”

“Sitting?”

“Right. Relax your back. And your hands.” He settles back on the ancient gray steps of Tikal’s North Acropolis, holding a book in his lap. I spread out my windbreaker on the wet grass and sit atop it, cross-legged. From here, his chin is lifted too high. “Look down,” I say. “No, that’s too much. You look like a sad puppy. No—now you look pissed off.”

“Come show me.”

“Fine.” I go to him and put my fingers under his chin, tilting his face in just the right way. I can feel his breath on my palm. All I’d have to do is lean forward. I remember the way his skin felt after we jumped off the dock. The geography of his back.

“Okay.” I back away. “That’s good.”

I sit down and open my sketchbook.

I try to pretend he’s just a stranger, but I wasn’t lying when I said it’s almost impossible to forget. I have to erase more than usual; I want it to be right. In case we go our separate ways forever, this drawing is all I’ll have of him. To gaze at or throw darts at, depending on how I feel when I get home.

Once I’ve built the framework of his pose, I start to render. Beginning with his ankles: right crossed in front of left.

“Are you hiding your tan lines?”

He doesn’t answer, but I can see him fighting a smile.

Good model.

At his knees, I sketch the torn hem of his cutoffs. He hates when I call them that. Too many pockets—they’re a bitch to draw. His daypack.

His hands.

His arms. I try my best not to make his dragon look like the Loch Ness monster. His white shirt, unbuttoned three buttons. The angle of his clavicle. A place my mouth has been.

I release my breath slowly so he won’t know I’ve been holding it. It’s hard to believe he’s not feeling anything, but if there’s even a chance he isn’t, I can’t let him know I am.

Now his face.

It’s the hardest part. Imperfections in the figure are forgivable, but achieving a likeness in the face is more important than anything else. I break it down into pieces—mouth, chin, ridiculous ponytail—convincing myself he’s just another model, some stranger posing for fifteen bucks an hour. But every time I lift my eyes, I see his.

I’ve drawn people who made faces whenever I looked up.

Don’t do that, by the way, unless you’d like a pencil in the eyeball. But Rowan’s not like that. He’s taking this seriously.

He just gazes at me, utterly relaxed, while
I’m
feeling so much my pencil’s shaking.

The thing about drawings is you can work on them forever; they’re never finished, not really. You can always find something to fix. I know I need to stop, but I’m afraid of what’s going to happen afterward. I’m not so afraid of his opinion, although yes, my heart will shatter like a stomped-on piece of pottery if he doesn’t like it.

But it’s good, I think. It looks like Rowan.

So that’s not what I’m afraid of. I’m scared that after I’m done, we’ll stand up, and it’ll be time for me to go back to my shuttle, and he’ll go back to his hotel, or his shuttle or bus or wherever, and it’ll be the end of my trip. Of our trip.

Of us.

I waste a few more minutes on the background. Instead of drawing the ruins behind him, I sketch the faintest outline of volcanoes and the lake.

That’s my Rowan.

Finally, I glance up at him. He’s still as stone.

“Your tattoo looks like Nessie,” I tell him. “But it’s the best I can do. You can move now. Maybe we can get lunch, and you can tell me your whale shark story—” In one swift motion, Rowan hops from the steps and closes the space between us, reaching for me with both hands. It happens so quickly I’m still reeling as he sets my sketchbook on the grass and pulls me against him. When he kisses me, my entire body reacts, like I’ve taken that first step into a too-hot shower. I’m sure he can feel my heart pounding from my chest into his. I feel dazed, almost drunk from the reality of him—the heat of his mouth, the texture of his shirt in my fingers as I hold him tight.

I know that this time, the worst thing I can do is let go.

And I won’t be losing anything. Because it’s the most selfish thing I could ever do—to allow myself to fall for someone worthwhile.

Not long after, the rain begins to fall. We hole up in the café of his guesthouse and order mugs of coffee. It only makes my heart more jittery, because Rowan’s sitting right beside me, his fingers woven through mine. “I just need to make sure,” he says with a slight smile. “This isn’t meaningless?” I use our linked hands to give him a push.

“It never was. You know that.”

With his free hand, Rowan flips the lid of a container of condensed milk and splashes it into his coffee. “I really didn’t think you’d come, you know.”

“I didn’t either.”

“I figured you’d be hugging your airplane seat, you’d be so glad to get away. After all I went on about trust and overcoming embarrassment—I freaked out as soon as I discovered you hid one small thing from me. Now I get why you didn’t tell me you spoke to Starling. But in the moment, on the beach . . . I imagined the two of you had this entire best friendship behind my back, and she’d told you every single humiliating incident from the past few years.” I shake my head. “I wouldn’t let her.”

“Let her do what?”

“Tell me about your past. Not any more than you’ve already told me. Because it’s your story. Like you said when the bus broke down.”

Rowan pauses, staring at me. And then he grabs my face and kisses me so hard I have to shove him away, laughing. “I can’t believe you remember that!” he exclaims.

“Where’d you get it, anyway?”

“I actually got it from
The Horse and His Boy
. One of the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis. It was something Aslan said to Lucy, about your story belonging to you. . . . It just stuck.” He brings our linked hands to his face. “I just thought—I thought that was the reason you ended things after Lobsterfest. Like if you could think I’d do something so stupid, that I’d regress like that, put you in any sort of danger . . . of course you wouldn’t trust me.”

“But I do. It just took me a while. As long as you don’t leave in the middle of the night again.”

“Technically, it was first thing in the morning.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “So, Bria Sandoval. Where to next?”

“Well, I really only have a week.”

“Only a week? You sure you can’t stay longer? You could delay classes for a semester, and I could find you a job in a dive shop. Or there are other things we could do. Join one of Starling’s volunteer programs, as long as it’s on a coast so I can teach diving. Maybe even something that involves your art . . .”

I can’t help grinning. “You sound like you’ve thought this out.”

“Ever since Livingston, I’ve been trying to figure out ways to keep you here.”

It takes me a moment to hear his words, to really hear them and comprehend. Then I drape my arms over his shoulders, and—who cares about everyone in the restaurant?—it’s my turn to kiss him into laughter explosion. “I’m here now,” I say, pulling away. “And the here and now is what’s important.

Isn’t that what you said?”

Rowan’s quiet for a moment.

“I could open a dive shop,” he says slowly. “If I get my Dive master certification. Bring the Belizean dive mentality to the United States. Too bad your water’s so damned cold, though.”

“My water?”

“In California. Right?”

I grin at him so hard my face hurts. “California—for now.” We stay in the café until the sun goes down. Then I use a pay phone to call my parents again and, after that, my airline.

I can wait until tomorrow to call my college, where I’ll probably be sleeping on a cot in the basement, but at this point, I don’t care. When you fall for a guy like Rowan, nothing’s certain. But I’m pretty sure we’ve found the antidote to Wanderlove: each other.