The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Baggett

  As Helene read slowly through the list, making comments after each point, I felt my body temperature start to rise along with her words. Fear ebbed away and was replaced with less polite emotions. She wrapped up her presentation and asked me if I had any questions or anything I’d like to say. You know, before the clock started ticking.

  What could I say? That I really was a hard worker? That my mean new boss just didn’t like me? That I couldn’t possibly be on probation or lose this job, because the magazine was my whole life now? Please, please, pretty please don’t fire me? The reins on my own future had been yanked from my grasp. There they were, dangling in front of me but just beyond reach. There was only one way I could think of to take them back—and so I did.

  When I opened my mouth, instead of the Chernobyl-like explosion I feared, someone else’s eerily collected words issued out: “Helene, I appreciate you letting me know about the areas where I could use improvement. Based on your feedback over the past two years, I really thought I’d been doing a good job, even exceeding your expectations. This is the first time that I’m hearing that I’m not.”

  I turned to my new boss, who still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Claire—I’m not sure why you didn’t talk to me earlier. If I’d known that you wanted something done differently, I would have tried to fix it. But now I’m getting the feeling that it’s already too late to make the changes that you want.”

  I dared myself to keep talking, knowing that if I stopped, I would never again be foolish enough to say what I did next.

  “Helene, I’ve truly enjoyed working with this staff, and I’ve learned so much at this magazine. I don’t think I need a whole month to get my act together. Please consider this conversation my two weeks’ notice.”

  Ten minutes later, I was sitting at the Bryant Park sandwich kiosk, waiting for my friend and former coworker Stephanie, whom I had emergency-called on my flight from the building. By the time she got there, my face had already melted like sidewalk chalk after a downpour, streaks of charcoal, bronzer, and pastels rolling toward the gutters.

  “La-aaady. What the heck happened to you?” Her jaw was agape as she approached. “You look like you got hit by a bus or something.”

  Indeed, I did feel as if I’d been pushed in front of an oncoming M15, but I wasn’t surprised that she’d called my attention to it. Steph had never been the type to sugarcoat things, one of the main reasons I liked hanging out with her. Even now, as I hiccupped out the story of a pretty dismal few days, she gave me her unglazed opinion on the whole situation.

  “So it sucks that you were put on probation instead of getting promoted. But seriously—what are you so upset about?” she asked.

  “Well, for starters, I just lost my job.”

  “Hell, yeah, you did. But that’s because you wanted to lose it.”

  I tried to correct her, but she cut me off.

  “Come on,” she said, in a familiar tone that indicated I was to cut the bullshit pronto. “You were the one who gave your notice. Tell me that you really wanted to stick around, that you were willing to do everything they were asking so you could keep your job.”

  “No, but I didn’t want—” I dug a heel into the pavement.

  “Look, I know that this seems like a really lousy situation right now, but give it a few weeks and you’ll realize that it’s so much better things worked out this way. That place was making you miserable. You’re always working or stressed out that you should be working. I barely even see you anymore, and I sit four floors above you.”

  Ouch. She was right, but it still stung. I stared down at the black splotches of petrified gum polka-dotting the damp pavement, feeling a hot flush creep up my neck.

  “But you know what’s the best part about all of this?” she said. “You’ve been given this really cool, unexpected opportunity. This is your chance to cut the cord from work, to figure out something else to do with your life besides setting up base camp in your cubicle.”

  “You mean, like not get another job? What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Anything—as long as it’s different than what you’ve been doing every day for the past few years. Take some classes at the New School. Go on that big trip you’ve been talking about with Holly and Jen. E-mail editors and start freelancing. Haven’t you told me that you want to break into travel writing?” She looked at me expectantly.

  “Eventually, but there’s no way I could do it now. You need to be, like, the next Bill Bryson to get an assignment from a major travel magazine. I’d have to get a lot more experience before I could even think of pitching a story to one of the glossies.”

  “And how are you going to get that experience if you’re hanging out here?” Steph pressed. “You have to actually leave the island—and then you can write about the world.”

  Leave New York? The very thought threw me into a panic. I’d just lost my job; I didn’t think I could handle losing my city, too.

  “Regardless of what you decide to do from here, the hardest part is over. You may not have planned to leave, but you’ve outgrown your desk chair. It’s so obvious; you’re itching to challenge yourself, try new things. Don’t you think?”

  I was still too shaken to see the bigger picture. “I guess. Maybe.”

  “Don’t talk craziness. Of course you are,” she said, glancing down at the dial on her enormous watch. “Crap. I’ve got an interview that I’ve already rescheduled fifteen times. But don’t worry. If you start to question whether you did the right thing, just ask yourself, ‘Do I really need to work for a boss who wants me to improve my letter-opening skills?’”

  It would have been kind of funny if it hadn’t been so true. Steph gave me a quick squeeze and bolted across Sixth Avenue just before the light turned green. A fleet of taxis streaked across the intersection, and she was gone.

  Unemployment felt like a spa getaway compared with my last two weeks at the magazine. Once I’d used the company FedEx number to ship my stuff three miles north to the Upper West Side (my final act of rebellion) and organized my files for the next assistant (to prove that I wasn’t above it all), I found myself in workplace purgatory with no real responsibilities to call my own. Claire, who sat four feet from me, spoke to me only when vitally necessary. On my last day, she forced out a tight-lipped good-bye and slipped off without another word.

  I knew I needed to put some kind of plan B into action. Common sense dictated that I update my résumé and scour career Web sites, but I found that I just couldn’t bear the thought of interviewing for a job. The truth was, I felt completely unnerved by the possibility of landing another full-time staff position. If I accepted a job and failed to live up to expectations, the reason wouldn’t be an insensitive boss or a miscommunication over jury duty—the problem would be me.

  So I decided to blow off relative job security and guaranteed health insurance in order to give freelance writing a try, setting up shop with nothing more than my clunker of a laptop and some free business cards I scored from Vistaprint. I spent my wide-open days drafting e-mails to editors at other magazines to ask them if, by chance, they might have any small articles that needed to be written. I brainstormed ideas, wrote them up, and fired e-mails off into the ether. Several weeks went by without a single response or assignment, during which I started to become one with our futon. My roommates often returned home late at night to find me in the exact same position as they’d left me, eyes glazed over as I cradled the computer in my lap. Just as I was considering waitressing or temping or donating plasma—anything to avoid legitimate job hunting—I landed my first freelance assignment, a story for a kids’ magazine on bizarre tales of heroism by family pets.

  Shortly thereafter, a women’s magazine editor asked me to write two pages on surprising ways your boyfriend could be making you sick (hint: friction is involved). Then a national newspaper assigned me a piece on how text messaging was transforming the face of dating and relationships. Within a few months, I’d secured enough w
ork to keep me afloat and even put a chunk of cash away for a rainy day. I wasn’t doing a ton of travel writing, but my freelance career had taken off.

  So had my social life. For the previous two years, it had been on life support, barely breathing, but it made a quick turnaround once I left the office. For the first time since I could remember, I spent my free time catching up on friends’ lives, rather than working through my bottomless to-do list. I accepted invitations to go to yoga classes and see movies. I arrived on time for happy hours instead of making excuses for missing them. I sharpened my pool skills, played darts, and rediscovered how to flirt. I went out on dates with inappropriate men, then commiserated with my girlfriends about the futility of finding a decent guy in Manhattan.

  My days were laid back and calm, my nights intense and unpredictable. I stayed out far too late too often but no longer had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I felt as if I’d moved to New York City all over again. But though I fully embraced this newfound freedom and felt more certain than ever that I’d made the right decision not to boomerang back into another job, I knew this couldn’t be the endpoint of my transition. There had to be some other destination, some reason things had worked out exactly the way they had.

  Again and again, I found that my thoughts turned to travel, the vagabonding bug I’d caught from Baker and the plans I’d made with Jen and Holly back in Argentina. I allowed myself to consider what would happen if our idea to backpack around the world—a concept that had seemed so ephemeral months earlier—ever solidified into reality. Exactly what would it take to set the wheels into motion? Could I really leave the life I’d created in New York to go backpacking like a college kid?

  In theory, I guess I could. My lease expired in about a year. I didn’t have a full-time job. Despite plenty of social activity, I’d yet to meet a guy I wanted to get serious with. I wasn’t sure whether to feel thrilled or depressed that, at twenty-six, I didn’t have a whole lot more tying me down than I had when I’d graduated.

  Considering my commitment-free existence, I knew there would be few times in my life when it made more sense to travel. And I might have decided to do it on my own—or at least gone to Central America for a few months to hike through the rain forests, go to language school, and eat as many frijoles negros as my digestive system could handle—except that Jen and Holly sealed the deal for me.

  The three of us had been meandering through the stalls at the 26th Street flea market, one of our favorite Saturday activities, when I asked them if they’d remotely consider making good on that wacky round-the-world idea we’d had at Iguazú Falls.

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately,” Jen admitted.

  “Me too,” said Holly, looking up from a tray of garnet rings she’d been examining. “I was half kidding when I said I’d go, but for some reason, it doesn’t really seem so far-fetched anymore. Would it really be so ridiculous to take a few months off before we all get tied down?”

  “Not at all,” said Jen as we strolled past a rack of vintage dresses. “For argument’s sake, even if we started planning right now, we still wouldn’t be able to get on the road until next summer. By then Brian and I will both be twenty-eight, and if we haven’t determined our status at that point, I’m running away for sure.”

  “Oh, that’s right…your age deadline.” I said. “Look, you and Brian will figure things out. You’ll have been together for nearly four years by then. I’m sure he hasn’t been with you this long unless he figures you’re marriage potential.”

  “That’s the thing,” she said softly, an odd note creeping into her voice. “What if I don’t want to be marriage potential? If it doesn’t work out and I’m single all over again—then what?”

  Holly, always the first to find the silver lining in every situation, spoke up.

  “Well, then, you could spend your time planning the biggest adventure of your life,” she said, plopping a floppy hat with a massive brim on Jen’s head. “I mean, what would you rather spend the money on—rubbery chicken cutlets for a hundred and fifty guests and a white wedding dress, or a round-the-world plane ticket?”

  “Do I have to answer that now?” Jen laughed as she frisbeed the hat back at Holly. She placed it atop her own burgundy-streaked bob and flashed Jen a silly tilted-head grin.

  “Well, maybe if we play our cards right, we can have the chicken cutlets and the world,” I said, putting the hat back on the stand. “Just not in that order.”

  We shopped our way through the market and eventually emerged into the late-afternoon sunshine.

  “Hey, guys,” said Jen, walking between us. “About this trip. You know, I’m pretty sure I want to do it. Maybe not for a whole year, but I’d love to go back to South America. And maybe Kenya? You guys don’t have to do it with me, but I’ve always wanted to volunteer there.”

  “Of course we’ll do that with you!” Holly jumped in, her jade green eyes flashing. “I’ve always wanted to see Kenya too! And Tanzania. And Rwanda. Do you think we could go visit the gorillas while we’re there?”

  “Wait, are you being serious?” I asked, turning around so I could see the expression on both of my friends’ faces. “Is this really an option? We’re talking about a major life change here. As in quitting jobs. Leaving boyfriends. Living out of a backpack and sleeping in bunks and washing out your thongs in some grungy hostel sink. Not to mention staying together for months on end. Are we really ready to sign up for all of that?”

  There was a long pause, and my heart started its downward descent. Hol and Jen glanced at each other, then back at me.

  “Well, I’m totally serious,” said Jen. “We’ve all traveled before and know what we’re up against, underwear washing and all. And it’s not like we’re running away forever to, like, live with the gorillas or anything.”

  “All I know is, we’ll never get another opportunity like this,” said Holly. “I’ve backpacked on my own. I’ve done it with a boyfriend. I don’t see how there’s any way I could pass up the chance to travel with the two of you. I mean, if we don’t decide to take a leap of faith and do it now, then when?”

  “Well, if you’re in,” I said, almost afraid to believe what I was hearing—or saying. “So am I.”

  “Me too,” said Jen, an irrepressible smile spreading across her features as she looked back and forth between Holly and me. “So I guess the only real question now is…when should we leave?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Holly

  NEW YORK CITY

  MARCH, THREE MONTHS PRE-TRIP

  Amanda was already waiting in the doorway of EJ’s Luncheonette for Jen and me, shielding herself from the March winds that whipped between the buildings with enough force to push grown men backward.

  “Holly!” she squealed, looking up from the celebrity gossip magazine she was reading and throwing her arms around me in a hug. Amanda has a way of making you feel like you’re the most important person in the world simply by acting really, really excited to see you.

  I loved that about her almost as much as I admired how she was so, well, ballsy. She was one of the only assistants who threw out her ideas in story meetings right along with women way higher up on the masthead, while I often kept mine to myself for fear of being shot down. She’d be the one to tell the guy who’d wedged a bar stool between us at happy hour that we weren’t interested, while I’d fumble to make polite conversation.

  Even though Amanda and I no longer shared an office, we saw each other more now than when we’d worked together, becoming closer friends who met every weekend for a yoga class or Sunday brunch.

  As we dropped our arms, I asked, “So what do you think Jen’s voice mail meant?”

  Amanda’s hazel-blue eyes clouded with worry. “Her message just said to come here for an emergency meeting about the trip. Oh, God, I think she changed her mind. Maybe we’re not really going.” My chest tightened. I hadn’t even considered that.

  It’d taken me a long time to
get to the place where I’d felt I was really ready to pack up my life to explore the world. Soon I’d be moving from town to town and country to country, and the only home I’d know would be my backpack. If home is truly where the heart is, as the old saying goes, what did that mean for me? Is home a physical place, a familiar spot where you can stay in your PJs until noon and eat peanut butter straight from the jar? Or is it more of a feeling, like knowing where to find safety in an unpredictable world?

  For the past four years, I’d considered New York my home. So in a way, home for me wasn’t a specific address. The reason New York felt so right was that it was like a hundred countries squeezed into a single island. It was a land where Wall Street brokers bumped up against Mexican busboys on the subway; the scent of falafel mixed with dim sum in the East Village; and horse-drawn carriages shared the road with racing bikes in Central Park. I’d fallen in love with the energy in Manhattan. And then I’d fallen out of love with it. And then I’d fallen all over again. New York was like an addictive relationship—when it was good, it was really, really good. But when it was bad, it made me feel like I was on sensory overload, threatening to pull me under until I lost myself. Even the places I’d typically retreat to for solitude—parks that smelled of fresh-cut grass or the lumpy futon that took up my entire living room—felt crowded and confining. Sometimes I just needed more space.

  When I’d first moved to Manhattan from Marcellus, New York, at the age of twenty-four, I’d accepted a position as an assistant “happiness” editor at a national women’s magazine. Though I’d always had an interest in psychology, I was suddenly required to research and write about self-fulfillment all day, every day. My job was to examine happiness and to ask, what exactly is happiness? Is it something you should allow to happen naturally, without thought, like breathing or your heartbeat? Or is it something you should search for, like a dream job or the love of your life?