Runaways

by Rachel Sawden

  “Listen, mate, I was just trying to watch out for her,” Kush said cowering on the dirty floorboards. “Petal, tell him —"

  Before I could say anything, Miles laid two solid punches to his face. “I swear to God if you so much as look at her again, I’ll beat you until you can’t remember your own sorry name.” As Chad yanked Kush to his feet and shoved him down the gazebo step, Miles turned his attention to me. “Are you okay?”

  My thoughts spiraled out of control. With each happy thought I tried to force into my head, it was countered with a replay of what just happened. I should have been smarter, I should have gone with the girls to get water. I should have been clearer with Kush. Perhaps he took my non-rejection as flirtation? I hated the sight of violence. Audrey lost her life in a senseless act of violence. There were other ways to handle things. And as creepy as Kush was, he didn’t deserve to get punched in the face.

  As pain throbbed through my knees from the fall, everything was now too much, the eyes on me, the frantic music, my dry-ass mouth. I had to get out of there and away from everyone who wasn’t Jade and Lana. So I opened my mouth and called out our code word, “Matches!”

  Chapter 18

  Date: March 3, 2010

  Hanoi, Vietnam

  Five days and five hundred and thirteen kilometers later, after traveling by tuk tuk, kayak, minivan and Boeing 737, I stood in the hostel common room between Jade and Lana. Their claws were bared during their first fight as business partners. The day had started well enough. We had awakened bright-eyed and bushytailed and spent the morning exploring Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake, the markets in the Old Quarter, and the “Hanoi Hilton” (it’s not a hotel). By lunchtime, my camera battery was dead, and our legs were worn out. So, after nearly two months of continuous sightseeing, watching movies and hanging in the common room seemed like it would be a relaxing time.

  I lazed on the couch, editing images as Ever After played on the television, and Drew Barrymore and the prince bantered. The girls sat at a table by the window, going over their strategy to tackle getting the collection made. Their business meeting began with the conceptualization and designs, but things went south when Lana produced a profit and loss sheet.

  “Why does everything have to be about money and consumerism?” Jade said as paper crumpled.

  “Are you kidding me?” Lana raised her voice. “You’re trying to enter a consumer industry!”

  “I want this to be about spirituality and ethical consciousness, not simply profits.”

  “This is a business, you damn hippy!”

  A chair scraped back, and I turned to see Jade leaning over the table, finger in Lana’s face. “I am not a hippy you…you…slut!”

  Before Lana could get another word out, Jade stomped through the room and out of the door. Lana shook her head, gathering sheets of paper, and flopped onto the couch with the longest sigh I think I had ever heard. The girl had some big lungs.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked placing my hand on her knee, but she shook it off.

  “I think we could all do with a little space from each other.”

  Ouch.

  The day after our little shroom escapade in Vang Vieng, we ended up sprawled out with the other hung-over travelers at the restaurant that played reruns of Family Guy, mindlessly pushing stir-fried vegetables and rice in our mouths as morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon turned to dusk. I had neither seen nor heard from Miles since that night as his tour had left. Though I had little sympathy for Kush, I couldn’t condone the sheer brutality that Miles inflicted on him, and I had let him know. I spent the next day and a half after that incident laying low and avoiding Kush. As we boarded a minivan heading to the capital of Vientiane, I saw Kush one last time, his face decorated with a shiner of a black eye, and I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Had I told him to fuck off point blank, perhaps it all could have been avoided.

  Lana and I sat in silence alone in the common room, and I played with my pictures until the credits rolled and she left without a word. Taking a break from editing I pulled up Facebook. Though it was banned in Vietnam, Facebook has prepared for the communist exile. Our hostel had posted a sign for an alternative URL directing me to a stripped-down version of the social media giant. Upon logging in, I was greeted by a million notifications.

  Most of them I could ignore, but there was one I didn’t. Among friend requests from our Hawaiian boys blinked a friend request from Miles. I accepted all. Within a minute of scrolling through the newsfeed, a new message appeared in my inbox.

  Miles Cooper: Are you in Hanoi?

  I ignored it and kept scrolling. Then more new message notifications blinked: I’m so sorry for my behaviour in Vang Vieng. Where are you? Are you safe? Please message me.

  I sighed and responded: Yes, I’m at the Drift Backpackers in Hanoi.

  He wrote back instantly: Please wait there. I’d really like the chance to apologize in person. I’m on my way.

  Why did I tell him where I was? I had so many images to edit. Before I closed the browser, I noticed something in my newsfeed. Adam had changed his relationship status to single. Even though I deleted him, Facebook thought it would be lovely to share that a mutual friend liked that he was advertising his availability to the world.

  I closed the browser, and his face met me once more, smiling at me from my desktop background. I changed the image to the image I had taken of my lantern in Chiang Mai, floating to the heavens with a hundred others, on the night I decided to let him go. Then I turned my attention back to my images and tried to get as much work done as I could before Miles turned up. But the thought of his status wouldn’t leave my mind. Alone in the common room, the sterile white walls closed in on me. I stood and walked to the window, pressing my face against the glass. I knew I had let Adam go, and it was for the best, but for some reason, it still bothered me. Perhaps because I had let him into my heart, he left footprints that would remain forever. Or perhaps it was the fact that he seemed ready for love, ready for the next girl, ready to replace me, even though it had barely been a month since I left his life. I turned and forced my attention back to my images.

  “Harper?” Miles’s voice broke my concentration as I was playing with the dodge and burn tool on my favorite image of the sisters from Death Mountain. He stood in the middle of the room looking at me like a puppy that peed in my shoes. “Please come for a walk with me?”

  I nodded. Though I had images to work on, I needed to get out of that room and get some fresh air. After running my laptop back to the room and locking it away, I led him downstairs and out the door. I met eyes with Jade, who leaned against the building sharing a cigarette with one of our roommates, a cute and scruffy Argentinian yoga instructor. As we walked past, I gave her a slight smile, but instead of returning the smile, she glared at Miles.

  Crossing the road in Hanoi was like walking through a swarm of bees around a knocked over a hive, and confronting the two-wheeled traffic was a real test of mettle. The scooters didn’t stop for pedestrians. Instead, you walk steadily across the road, trusting that they drive around you. You stop, or you run and get hit. We stepped into a one-way street, and Miles walked on the side of incoming traffic until we made it to the sidewalk. Just a few beats later, we were walking past the murky Hoan Kiem Lake, an urban oasis surrounded by cafés and shops.

  “So the hostel didn’t look half as bad as I had thought it would,” he said after ordering a cone of vanilla ice cream from a street vendor.

  “It’s actually the cleanest place we’ve stayed in. We do have to share it with seven strangers, though.”

  With ice cream in hand, I followed him to an empty bench in the shade of an ancient weeping willow on the edge of the water. A moment after we sat, he blew out a deep breath and said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, licking the chilly confection.

  “No, it’s not. I let my temper get the better of me. I just lost it when I saw that creep get too clos
e to you.”

  “After you put your hands on me?”

  He scrubbed his hairless chin with his hands. “I’m so sorry for that, also. I haven’t quite been myself lately. And I still want to make amends for it, for all of it.”

  “Well.” I held up my ice cream before licking it. “This is a good start.”

  I had waited years for an apology from him, and now it seemed I was getting one on a weekly basis. Memory is a funny thing; the more time I spent with him, the harder it was to remember why exactly I hated him. As I finished my cone, clouds blanketed the blue skies. A breeze nipped at my skin, and I shuddered and wrapped my hands around my bare arms.

  “Here, take this,” he said untying the red cashmere sweater from around his neck before handing it to me.

  I smiled as I pulled the oversized garment over my head, inhaling the lingering scent of laundry detergent. “You know I always made fun of you for the pointless sweater tied around your neck.”

  “Well, it seems you’ve finally realized the method of my fashion madness,” he said nudging my shoulder with his.

  “So things seemed kind of tense between you and Jade.”

  It was then I realized that he had stretched out his arm along the top of the bench behind my neck. And I don’t know what came over me, perhaps it was because I was a little homesick and he reminded me of home, but I snuggled into the warm nook under his arm and unloaded everything I had been bottling up. I told him of Jade and Lana’s bickering over the business and how we should spend our days, an abridged version of my story with Adam (omitting Xavier), and my guilt for making my parents worry when I couldn’t message them every day. And how much I missed Audrey. I felt so guilty that she would never get to experience traveling the world. His arm curled around me and he wiped the tears away, and once I had drained myself of all the words and emotions that had been overflowing within me, we cuddled in comfortable silence, watching the gentle lapping of the water.

  A stroll through the Old Quarter, two pho soups, a water puppet show and several martinis later, he walked me back to The Drift.

  “Welcome to my humble abode,” I said, as we stood in front of the reception desk, wondering who put those words in my mouth.

  “Yes, humble it is,” he said, with a smirk as he strolled past the row of computers next towards the elevator.

  I swatted his shoulder. “It’s not that bad. Seriously, come upstairs and take a look. It’s only eight, everyone should still be up.”

  He hesitated before joining me on the staircase that twirled through the center of the building. It would be innocent enough, I could prove to him that I wasn’t living in squalor in a very non-romantic room of multiple occupants. I slid my keycard into the slot and pushed the door open, but no one was in sight. Miles stepped in behind me and browsed the room. I pointed out the lockers to the right of the hallway, the bathroom on the left, and the four bunk beds pushed against the light blue walls.

  “It’s much cleaner than I expected,” he said running his fingertip along a metal bedframe and inspecting it. “And what about your roommates?”

  “They seem normal, though I haven’t met them all.” I pointed at the bunks that weren’t ours. “This one comes in when we’ve all gone to bed and leaves before we’re up. We went out last night with these two girls from Ghana, they’re really cool and coming with us to Ha Long Bay tomorrow. This one is empty, and that one is the Argentinian guy, Arturo, you saw earlier with the pajama pants and man-bun with Jade. I think he as a crush on her.”

  When I turned around, he looked as if he hadn’t heard a word I said. “I like that we’re friends again,” he said, taking a step towards me.

  Relief washed over me when he said friends, as if he drew a line in the sand, a boundary for expectations. But as I looked into his eyes, I saw that spark I remembered too well, and a smile curled my lips as I remember doodling “Harper Cooper” over and over again in my notebook as I studied for my final exams in high school. He took a step forward and raised his hand, brushing the back of his hand against my cheek. Then I remembered that I needed to be the one to enforce the boundaries. I gently pushed his hand away.

  “Miles, we’re friends again. Just friends. So let’s not ruin this.”

  Then the door handle clicked, and the door swung open.

  “— and Harper is always such an idiot when it comes to that sack of bad energy, Miles. She just keeps going back for —” Jade stopped mid-sentence when she saw us, Argentinian man-bun towering over her from behind.

  Heat spread across my skin like wildfire as she slapped me with her words.

  “I should go,” Miles said, stiffening his posture.

  Before I could protest, he turned and strode past Jade and out of the door. I glared at her as she skirted around me and into her bunk with Arturo. I bit my tongue, grabbed my towel, and headed for the shower and lathered up. I knew she was just stressed out, but she had no right to act the way she was. And I was not an idiot. I was in full control of the situation. She had no idea what it felt like for me to run into him again, to be able to patch things up, make peace with my past and maybe, just maybe, hang onto a piece of the past where Audrey still lived. I knew she hated Miles, but there was no excuse for bitching about him and me behind my back. I decided to say something to her and stand up for myself. I yanked my pajama bottoms on and ripped a t-shirt over my head as I placed my hand on the bathroom door handle I heard the room fill with people.

  Lana and the Ghanaian girls had come back, and I was not about to make a scene and bring our roommates into our squabble. With the air-conditioning chilling my damp skin I padded through the room giving a polite but terse greeting, climbed to my bunk, stuck my earphones in, and decided that a good night’s sleep would be the best course of action.

  ***

  In the morning the air was still tense, and we kept our space from each other as we gathered our things and boarded the bus for our day excursion to Ha Long Bay. Lana sat with the Ghanaian girls taking up the three seats at the back, and Jade and Arturo found seats in the middle, leaving me to take a seat by myself at the front. I rested my head against the glass and fought with my eyes to stay open as we made our way through the city picking up passengers from other hotels and hostels. The bus was almost full when we approached a five-star colonial style hotel far fancier than all of the other hotels combined. The words “Hotel Metropole Hanoi” were splashed across the covered entranceway. I turned as green as the shutters with envy as I stared though the doors into the marble-lined foyer. As fun as hostels could be, there really was no comparison to traveling in style. A figure I swore was a mirage pushed through the doors and approached the bus.

  “Good morning,” Miles greeted the bus as he boarded. He looked at me and I thought I was still asleep. “Is this seat taken?”

  “What are you doing here? Aren’t you on a tour?”

  I glanced back to the girls. Lana was too caught up chatting with her new friends to notice, and Jade scowled at him.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” he said gliding into the seat, enveloping me with subtle musk cologne. “My tour was planning on going to Ha Long Bay today anyways, so when I left last night I booked the last spot on your excursion at the hostel’s front desk. I’d rather go with you, I hear slumming it is in fashion.”

  I rolled my eyes with a smile. I was glad that we could put the past behind us and become friends again, particularly on a day where I felt so alone. After we picked up the last people and the bus was full, we set off onto the highway. As we left the city behind, we passed suburbs leading into rural areas, and I lost my battle with my eyelids when we drove through rice paddies rambling into the horizon.

  “Harper? Harper? We’re here.”

  My eyes flicked open. To my horror, I had fallen asleep on Mile’s baby blue Lacoste polo-shirt clad shoulder. My cheeks seared and I checked for signs of drool. All dry, thank God.

  “Sorry.”

  He gave me a shy smile and rose to his
feet before helping me to mine. Miles and I were the first to step off the bus, and then everyone else disembarked and congregated in the parking lot. Again Lana and Jade stood at opposite ends of the crowd. A warm breeze swept across my face as gravel crunched beneath my flip-flops as our tour guide, Lucky, led us across the lot and towards a sprawling bay of emerald green waters. According to Lucky, as legend would have it, the gods sent dragons to defend the infant nation of Vietnam against invaders and the dragons spat out jewels and jade, which formed the series of limestone isles and islets topped with rainforests dotting the waters as far as I could see.

  Lucky herded us down a gangplank and onto a pier on the edge of the bay, through the throngs of tourists, and onto one of the countless wooden Vietnamese “junk boats.” Each spectacularly crafted ship ran over fifty feet in length and had two or three decks. The upper-most deck was open to the elements. Many of the ships were topped with orange sails coiled around tall masts. With Miles escorting me onto the lower deck, we were seated at tables draped with crisp linens with cutlery set for lunch. The lacquered cherry wood benches matched the rest of the wood paneling on the hull. Jade sat with Arturo near the bow, Lana sat nearest the stern and Miles and I took a table in the middle.

  “Hello, and welcome to UNESCO World Heritage site Ha Long Bay!” Lucky announced once we were all seated. He then proceeded to walk us through a safety briefing. Once the engines rumbled, we set off and soon dining on a lunch of spring rolls, steamed fish in lemongrass broth, rice, and vegetables were laid out on the tables family style.

  Since the moment I first laid eyes on Miles Cooper, I had always wondered what it would be like to date the most in-demand man in university. Had someone told my eighteen-year-old self that we would be eating lunch on a junk boat in Vietnam one day, I would have laughed, fainted with delight, and then asked what a junk boat was when I awoke. But as we dined, I felt less like the awkward and self-conscious teenager I used to be, and more like a confident woman in control of her emotions. I smiled as he fiddled with his chopsticks, eventually ditching them in favour of the fork and spoon. And though I enjoyed our newfound friendship, there was the faintest whisper at the back of my mind wondering if perhaps, just perhaps, he was sent back into my life to be something more.