Wanderlove (32 page)

I know what it’s like. To sabotage yourself.

Even if I want to track him down, I don’t have his email address or his cell phone number—if he had a phone, the damned hermit. I don’t have any way to contact him, other than calling Starling again, and I can’t do that, not after how our last call went. Now that I’ve wasted an entire day on the island, he could be anywhere. And my plane leaves Guatemala City the day after tomorrow. I can’t afford to postpone my flight. In every possible way, I have royally fucked this up.

Nothing makes you hate yourself more than that.

In the evening, I sit at the end of the dock. Our dock. The sun is just starting to set. I open my sketchbook to a blank sheet and stare at it. If I were in a movie, I might tear out the pages, one by one, and fling them into the water. But I don’t want to litter.

It’s too dark to draw, really, but I know I need to. Because I’m already forgetting.

I can remember the moments. Smearing mud all over him.

Sharing too-small hammocks. Sitting on an overturned rowboat and talking about my art. Listening to him talk about diving, about his tattoo, about his regrets. But his face is dim, like a faded photo. A travel ghost.

I start flipping through the pages of my sketchbook. I’ve had no problem drawing Starling. And no matter what Emily said about her own sketch, I totally nailed her likeness, legs and all. I can draw pelicans from memory. The dive shop. The dock. I can name every single one of Rowan’s muscles. I just can’t draw him. I should have when I had the chance.

But instead, as usual, I let fear get in the way.

I hung on to my relationship with Toby so long, I thought the best antidote was doing the opposite. To run without looking back. But that’s just another way of compromising.

Another way of letting Toby have power over me. I was so afraid of anything getting in the way of my independence, I couldn’t see that Rowan had helped me find it in the first place. That’s probably why I let myself think the worst when it came to Rowan and Jack.

As long as I had a reason not to trust Rowan, I couldn’t fall for him.

Or so I thought.

And now I’m leaving Central America. I’ve learned hardly any Spanish. I won’t see Laughingbird Caye again. Or Santa Lucía, or Livingston. I haven’t visited a single Mayan ruin, which was what inspired me to pick Central America in the first place.

I imagine myself showing up at my friends’ houses the night I get back, suntanned and sage-like, imparting all my travel wisdom. Reese would probably be disappointed by my lack of serious peril, other than my stolen purse. “You mean, you didn’t see even 
one
 botfly?” she’d say. Olivia’s reaction would be markedly different. “Tell me more about the make-out session on the beach,” she’d demand. Or “You mean you didn’t get laid at all? You prude!”

They wouldn’t want to hear about the baby iguanas skimming across the river. Sonia’s soca music. My Technicolor rainbow glasses. The jungle. The island. And the lake—how it looked coming through the mountains. Like a shock of blue light.

Or they’d listen, but they wouldn’t care. No one would. Hearing about vacations is like hearing about dreams—no one cares except the person who’s experienced them. Without tastes and scents and context, they’re meaningless.

Meaningless
. I hate that word.

Even more than
potential.

I turn another page and find a drawing of the art school girl, paintbrush in hand, running barefoot down the hall. The girl I’d thought I would become, before I met Toby and altered my future in an attempt to synchronize it with his. I wanted her happiness more than anything in the world. But why was I so certain she was happy? I never even saw her face. Maybe she was running because she was crying.

Maybe she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.

I’m on my feet before I know it, halfway down the pier before I’ve crammed my sketchbook all the way into my daypack. I’ve got one last chance, one last hyenashit-insane scheme, and it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be brutal.

But I know I’ve got to try.

Sometimes, what you love the most is what you have to fight
the hardest to keep
.

Day 19:

Flowers

Starling sits atop a desk, cross-legged, an ivy-colored skirt gathered between her knees. She wears Birkenstock sandals and a white headband instead of a Mayan scarf. Her hair is coiled in two Princess Leia buns at the base of her neck.

She’s peering at a thick book over the top of her glasses, the red-framed ones from the lake. I rap my knuckles on the doorjamb.

She looks up. “Holy fuck.”

“You read my mind. You’re an English teacher? I thought you were, like, teaching business basics to impoverished families.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, obviously.”

“Why didn’t you call first?”

“So you could yell at me again? You wouldn’t even let me explain.”

She closes her book and sets it on the table. “I’m sorry about that. . . . I was upset. But why in the world are you looking for me?”

I can’t tell whether she’s playing dumb, or she really has no clue why I’m here. Maybe I’m acting brave, but my relief at finding Starling is so earthquaking I’m amazed my knees don’t give out. The trip from Laughingbird Caye to Flores, Guatemala—
alone!
—was the toughest journey I’ve ever taken, in more ways than one. Since I don’t have the energy for hinting or guessing, I opt for full disclosure.

“Because Rowan left me on the island, and it’s my fault, and I want to make amends. And if anyone knows where he is, it’s you.”

“Unfortunately,” Starling says, “I don’t.” My expression probably resembles a deflated pig face. “He hasn’t talked to you?”

“Nope. Not yet.”

“So he could be anywhere.”

“Could be,” she agrees. She checks her phone. “Is it after five already? You’re lucky I’m still here—usually I’m long gone by now. How about we grab something to eat?” She probably hears my stomach snarling. I haven’t eaten since a sweet corn tamale in Belmopan, the Belizean capital, six or seven hours ago. And to be honest, I’m not sure I entirely believe her, and it might be more difficult for her to lie sitting across from me over a meal. “As long as I can leave this damned thing here,” I say, shrugging out of my backpack and tossing my daypack on top of it. Some travel companion—it’s killing me.

Flores is located on a tiny island in a lake called Petén Itzá. Like Antigua, it’s Spanish colonial, with pastel-colored buildings and cobblestone streets. At the top of the hill, a white double-domed church seems to glow in the dark. The prices at the café Starling chooses are so cheap I order a feast: hot chocolate, steamed vegetables with tofu, french fries, and
pollo a la plancha
, which turns out to be grilled chicken.

“So how in the world did you find me?” Starling asks.

“You told me you were in Flores—it was never a secret.”

“Yeah, but I never said
where
in Flores. And I never told you how to get here.”

“It wasn’t hard. Flores is a popular destination.” I’d used my fifteen minutes of free hostel Internet wisely. Rowan was right: all the travel information I needed was a straight forward Google away.

“But how did you travel here, exactly? Did you fly?”

“Are you kidding? I’m broke.”

Starling exhales noisily. “Can you just explain yourself already? Fine, I admit I underestimated you. You made it back to Guatemala alone. I just want to know how it went down!”

I squeeze a glob of neon-green ketchup onto my plate. I eat three more french fries, which are so squishy they’re more like mashed potato spears, and tell Starling the story I documented in my sketchbook on the bus to Flores.

My Epic Journey

Phase One: The Boat

I left a note with my email address on top of Ariel’s
head. I left another note in the dive shop mailbox addressed
to Devon and Clement, and a second for them to give to
Sonia. Then I waited at the main dock for the day’s first
water taxi. In the early morning, the Caribbean looks
pink.

Phase Two: The Taxi

To my surprise, I had the same Belize City cab driver
as last time—the one with the jalapeño-flavored Pringles.

I swear he still smelled like them.

Phase Three: The First Bus

I pictured all of Belize as spindly beach forest, but the
back side of Belize is real forest, almost as dense as the
jungle in Livingston. On our way there, we passed the sign
for the turnoff to the Community Baboon Sanctuary, and
I admit it: my heart did a pirouette. A lonely one.

Phase Four: The Border

Ugh. Ninety-degree heat with a billion percent
humidity, and a line as long as a football field. When
I finally made it to the immigration office, I was
inexplicably terrified they’d deny me access to Guatemala.

Like maybe my mom and dad had called and told them to
deport me back home to the United States. Luckily, I got
across all right. I had to leave my English at the border:
Your language is no good here.
But as it turned out, once I needed it, I remembered more high school Spanish
than I thought I did. Who knew?

Phase Five: The Second Bus

Someone must have buried a fleet of bowling balls
under the road from the border to Flores. Thank God the
scenery distracted me from my tailbone. A basketball court
filled with goats. Churches with names like Iglesia
Evangelical de la Luz y Vida Eterna. Men beating weedy
lots with machetes. Shacks folding in on themselves. Cattle
pouring over the road like a river of brown butter.

~ July 30th, somewhere in Guatemala
It was dark by the time the bus crossed the bridge to Flores, which looked like a fantasy kingdom to me in my strung out state. Until I climbed off the bus and realized I had no idea where to go.

“So you’ve done it,” Starling says, applauding. “You’ve mastered Central American transportation.”

“It’s not hard when you know your destination.”

“But how the hell did you find my school?”

“First, I found a kid.”

“A kid?”

“Actually, she found me.” I was standing on the busy sidewalk, a boulder splitting a brook, when a local girl took pity on my helplessness. Miracle of all miracles, her sister was in Starling’s class. Well, Flores is a tiny village, but still. For the first time since I met Rowan and Starling, it felt like the fates had flicked a little happy dust my way. “She happened to know who you were. The rest is history.”

Starling points at my food with her fork. “You know, tofu’s made of soybeans. Same as tempeh.”

“I know that, Starling.”

“You said you were allergic to tempeh.” It takes me a second to remember what I said in Panajachel. “I did say that. But you said you didn’t know where Rowan was. So we’re both liars.”

It’s a gamble. But a good one. Gradually, Starling starts to smile.

“So where is he?” I ask. “Is he in Central America, at least?”

“Think about it. It’s been, what—three days? Two? He barely makes any money diving. Just enough to get by. And he refuses to take money from me, unless it’s a real emergency.” I poke at my
pollo a la plancha,
my appetite fading as my mind stacks the Central American destinations Rowan told me about. Utila. Little Corn Island. Chachauate Key. Costa Rica. So many places. Damn Rowan and his Wanderlove.

And didn’t he say something about heading south when we first met? But does that mean farther south in Guatemala? Or Brazil? He could have wrangled up a subzero parka and headed to Antarctica, for all I know. I wouldn’t put it past him.