Runaways

by Rachel Sawden

  As we were finishing our last bites, Lucky announced that we were approaching the floating village. I pulled out my camera and followed the crowd up a lacquered ladder to the top deck. The sheer magnificence of the landscape of limestone karst cliffs rising from the waters blew me away, but when I raised my camera to capture it, through my viewfinder I found the beauty in the details.

  At the base of the nearest cliff-face sat a network of small floating huts docks and pathways. Vietnam flags waved proudly from each hut. Children dove from the platforms into the water. It looked like a wonderful place to grow up. Women rowed rowboats filled with sodas and fruit between the junk boats. One of the boats caught my attention, as a tiny speck of a girl sat in her wares handling the money, her mother beaming proudly at her. I was so caught up with capturing a moment between the mother and daughter, I barely noticed that Miles was no longer there. Nothing else mattered to me, until something ice cold was pressed into my back.

  I squealed and whipped around to see Miles holding up a can of Coke. After swatting his forearm, I took it from him. Hanging the camera around my neck I thanked him, cracked open the can and sucked down the cold sugary goodness. Taking a glance around the boat, Jade and Lana were off in their own little worlds, but they seemed happy and I just wanted us all to talk and clear the air so we could go back to being friends already. As Miles and I finished our sodas, the junk boat puttered through the islets before slowing to a stop outside of the largest of three limestone isles. Lucky told us that this was a large circular cavern accessible only by kayak through a small cave.

  “Want to go with me?” Miles asked, giving my hand a squeeze that made my stomach skitter.

  “Sure.”

  Back on the lower deck, I debated whether or not to take my camera with me. I didn’t have a waterproof housing, but I toyed with the idea of taking the chance. Ultimately I decided that losing it, along with the images I took that day, wasn’t worth the risk so I packed it away. As Miles peeled off his shirt, exposing his pale unblemished skin, some old feelings stirred. He still had that strong, broad-shouldered swimmer’s body. And though he had seen me in a bathing suit in Vang Vieng, as I undressed I felt shy under the weight of his gaze.

  Lucky and a deckhand passed him a kayak on the swim platform, and he dropped it into the water. He got in first at the front seat and held the platform, steadying the kayak as I lowered myself into it behind him. Along with four other kayaks, one containing Jade and Arturo, we paddled away from the boat and towards a looming karst cliff-face.

  The tide was low, so we didn’t need to duck as we glided under the entranceway that narrowed from twenty feet to ten feet wide into a ceiling-less circular cavern. It was like being in the middle of a limestone donut topped with a glazing of forest. Sounds echoed off of the limestone, reverberating in all directions until dying out. Soon the other kayaks left, and with no voices to bounce around the cavern, it was almost too quiet.

  And as I dropped my gaze from the cloudless blue sky, my eyes glued to Miles’s back, watching his muscles flex as he paddled. On paper, he was a perfect catch: good-looking, great family, well connected, established in his career. If I got my five-year career plan on track, he would make the perfect partner. Though I knew I had decided to put boys on hold, I still wanted to get married one day, to love and be loved, and birth adorable babies. And in reality, he was sweet, caring, charming and he gave me butterflies, and…

  Oh God, I think I like Miles Cooper again. As in, like-like him.

  And that thought terrified me.

  I really am over Adam.

  After returning to the boat we continued cruising through the bay until we made berth at a long pier at one of the larger islets to explore “Paradise Cave.” With a new set of nerves balling in my stomach, I let Miles take my hand as we navigated through the tourists down a slippery path past dripping stalactites and towering stalagmites and columns ages old and bathed in coloured lights, pausing to capture its beauty. I was finally getting the hang of my exposure setting.

  After exiting through the gift shop, we found a bench away from the crowds and as we waited for our tour to head back to the boat, we stared across the bay and I reeled from my revelation.

  “Travel with me,” he said, finally breaking the silence.

  “You can’t be serious,” I blurted out in surprise.

  “Why not?”

  My stomach tied in a knot as I turned to meet his eyes. How could he be serious? We had only run into each other days ago. What would that make us? What would he expect from us? From me? Amongst the many reasons I could think of, I said the most important one: “I can’t leave my girls.”

  “They have each other. Whatever they’re going through, they’ll work it out.” He placed his hand on my knee. “Come with me on my tour. We’ll travel properly, stay in nice hotels, eat amazing food, see each country in style.”

  “Miles, I can’t afford that.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, leaning in. “Haven’t we had fun today? I’ve missed you so much over these years, and I don’t want this to end. Not yet.”

  He caught me so off guard, I couldn’t think or move. I blew out a deep breath and tried to rationalize what he was saying. “This is happening so fast, don’t you —”

  “Before you know it, your trip will be over.”

  He did have a point. Time was slipping away faster than I cared to admit. It felt like only yesterday that Lana and I landed in Mumbai. To travel in style did sound awfully appealing, but my latest realization about my feelings about him scared me. But I had to know. “What would that mean for us? For you and me?”

  “Whatever you want. Friends and we’ll see what happens? I just know I’d regret it forever if I didn’t ask.”

  I stared at the horizon as my mind spun with so many questions — could we travel as just friends? What if more happened? Was that what I wanted?

  “Don’t answer now.” His words cut off my train of thought. “Please think about it, but I do need to know by noon tomorrow. My tour leaves for Sapa tomorrow evening.”

  I nodded, took a deep breath, and decided to do just that: think about it on the drive back to Hanoi. But I felt more conflicted than ever.

  ***

  Back in the crowded hostel room, tensions continued to flare between Jade and Lana. I had always wondered about the origins of the word hostel, but when you cram together a group of sleep-deprived, malnourished vagrants where women’s hormones cycle together, it ends up creating a rather hostile environment. For the sake of their business I hoped they could hash it out before we arrived in our next stop, Hoi An. They would need to communicate effectively as partners with each other and the tailors so the pieces can be made properly.

  As the girls organized their lockers and got in each other’s way, I sat on my top bunk uploading images to my computer, weighing the pros and cons of Miles’s proposal. He and I had been getting along great, and the same could not be said for the girls and me. If I went with him, I wouldn’t have to put up with anyone else’s PMS. I would have more living space, better living space. I would eat the kind of food you savour rather than eating to survive. I would be giving up on the social aspect of backpacking, we have met some really fun people along the way, but then it would be a matter of quality over quantity of social interaction — investing in one friendship with Miles rather than the fleeting friendships we made. And the romantic in me allowed myself to dream the dream I had when I first laid eyes on him when I was seventeen.

  But a little voice kept saying, Miles Cooper will always be Miles Cooper. He would always be the guy who took my virginity and broke my heart.

  Suddenly a foul smell permeated the air. Like rotten eggs and blue cheese that had been left to sit in the sun for a day. Then the random roommate who we had never seen before emerged from the bathroom. “Sorry, guys, you do not want to go in there for at least an hour.”

  And then I decided: I was going with Miles.

  Chapt
er 19

  I awoke with my body shaking violently. My eyes flicked open. Lana was straddling me on the bed.

  “What? What’s going on?” I yelled.

  She shoved a piece of paper in my face. “She’s gone!”

  I grabbed the piece of paper and waited for my eyes to focus in the dim light, turning black squiggles into letters and words.

  The Universe has spoken to me. I’ve left with Arturo. I’ll meet you in Phnom Penh.

  - Jade

  As her words registered, I realized that traveling with Miles was circling the toilet.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked, still pinned to the bed by Lana’s womanly hips.

  “I’m not giving up on the business. I’m going to Hoi An as planned,” she said, finally releasing me.

  Sapa was due north of Hanoi, Hoi An was due south, and I wasn’t about to let Lana go alone. So there it was, my teenage fantasy being sucked into the sewers. But when I saw Lana’s face scrunched up and wet with tears of frustration, I put my disappointment aside.

  We got dressed and ate breakfast in the café on the first floor of the hostel. Lana rammed spoonful after spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth while I pushed mine around in the bowl. Barely a word was spoken, but anger was written all over her face. Once we were finished, she distracted the receptionist, and I stole a wad of paper from the hostel printer and we ran up to the common room. I worked on my images while Lana spent the rest of the day trying to recreate Jade’s drawings. I admired her resolve and determination, especially for the fact that she had the artistic skills of a colour-blind second grader.

  As she scribbled, I sat next to her, wondering how to phrase my message to Miles. Should I tell him that I was going to say yes, or should I leave it as, “I can’t”? For some reason, I balked at telling him outright that I planned to come with him as if it was a definitive proclamation that I was open to the prospect of our relationship progressing beyond friendship. In the end, I decided to tell him about Jade’s disappearance and that I could not leave Lana by herself.

  Opening a new message for Jade, I restrained myself from spewing out all of the angry things I wanted to say to her. For letting Lana down, for putting a kink in my plans, and for making me worry about her every moment she’ll be God knows where with some guy we know nothing about. I was once told never to write letters, emails, or Facebook messages while angry. So I asked her to check in with me every day so I knew she was safe. But the next night as we crammed ourselves into brick hard beds no wider than out bodies on a sleeper bus headed for Hoi An, I rehearsed the choice words I had for Jade for the twenty-two hours we were stuck on that bus.

  ***

  Date: March 7, 2010

  Hoi An, Vietnam

  We arrived in Hoi An at dusk too tired to be angry. Instead, we focused our energy on finding a place to stay, and then food. After checking into a guesthouse, we wandered the banks of the Mekong River into the Old Town and were too wonderstruck to be mad. Except for the temples and pagodas, shops and dressmakers filled the buildings, none standing taller than two stories, each painted a soft yellow and adorned with dark wooden shutters. Light poured from the open storefronts into the streets and strings of Chinese Lanterns zigzagging between the scalloped roofs gave the town a magical feel. On the bus I had plenty of time to read the guidebook and get the fast facts on this place. Hoi An was another UNESCO World Heritage site that was a restored relic of old Vietnam preserved in time. As a trading port, it experienced a constant influx of foreign ideas and cultures, which explained the beautiful muddle of architectural styles and cuisine. We walked off our dinner of spring rolls and risotto with passion fruit ice cream cones in hand, and Lana planned her attack of the dressmakers for tomorrow.

  In between eating our way through all the Old Town’s restaurants, we lugged around silk saris, struggling to choose from the six hundred dressmakers in town. The colourful silks would serve as trim to accent the stretchy and hard to find bamboo cotton. The pricier dressmakers had the bamboo cotton Lana wanted, but with the language barrier, Lana struggled to explain her rudimentary drawings to the tailors who only spoke rudimentary English. The first day began in high spirits, with us zipping from shop to shop through the narrow streets on bicycles, but after two days of fighting the language barrier I could see the fire in her soul slowly extinguishing. And on the third it was time to pick up the final pieces. When she unraveled the garments, she was near catatonic with disappointment. While I could appreciate the craftsmanship of the seamstresses, the garments looked as if they were based off the drawings of a colour-blind second grader.

  As she stood in the middle of the road holding up a piece that vaguely resembled yoga pants, I took her by the hand, pulled her out of the way of the rickshaws, and into our favourite restaurant, The Mermaid. With elbows propped up on the table, she rested her face in her hands, unable to respond to anything I, or the waitress, said. I ordered her a green mango salad, and as I pushed food through her partly opened lips, the life began to return to her.

  “I don’t know why I thought I could do this,” she spoke her first words in nearly three hours. In Lana time, that was like a week.

  “You’re great with the business side of things, but you needed Jade here to explain the designs. It’s not your fault. She shouldn’t have left you,” I said before stuffing a deliciously crispy crab wanton into my mouth.

  “To be honest, I thought I’d be the flakey one running off with some guy. I can’t be mad that she ran off to have sex with some bendy tantric hottie who can probably go for days at a time.” She finally picked up her fork and pushed around the salad around her plate. “I just thought with this business that I found my place, my purpose.”

  I knew how she felt. We were all looking for our callings, and I was grateful that I believed I had found mine in my photography.

  “You don’t want to get back into broadcasting?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve burned all my bridges there.”

  “There’s always porn,” I joked, poking her hand with a fork.

  She sank into her chair and rested her chin on the heel of her hand. “The sad thing is, I don’t think that’s the worst idea in the world. Maybe that is all I’m good for.”

  “No, Lana, that’s a terrible idea.” And as she descended back into her catatonic state, I didn’t know what to do. I took a sip of my iced lemongrass tea and checked my watch. It was time for me to pick up a dress I ordered for myself. “I’m popping across the street. I’ll be right back.”

  She gave a nearly imperceptible nod as I stood. After stepping through the bougainvillea-draped doorway, I walked across the street, through the bike parking lot, and into the hectic cloth market. Under a corrugated tin roof, reams of folded fabric were stacked in bookcases blocking off each vendor’s space. Rows of sewing machines stood side by side waiting for something to sew, and the windowless walls echoed the chattering of the day’s business. Threading my way through people shopping, and dressmakers promising me “best price,” I found my lady: an aggressive saleswoman who had sized me up with a tape measure and said I would make a perfect wife for her son as I stepped into the market the day before. She handed me the garment and pushed me into the changing room.

  In his last message, Miles invited me to dinner on the evening when our upcoming nights in Phnom Penh would overlap. Everything I owned was pretty ragged and stained at this point, so I figured I might as well get something personal made. I slipped the fabric over my head and breathed a sigh of relief that the simple purple cotton sundress fit perfectly. It had a fitted bodice that pushed up my boobs, and the A-line skirt and cinched waist gave me curves. In that dress, rather than feeling like a dirty backpacker, I felt like a classy woman. I wished Audrey could have seen me. She had only seen me in a dress on perhaps less than ten occasions since I was old enough to dress myself.

  I wondered what Audrey would have thought about me reconnecting with Miles. Part of me couldn’t believe that I almost we
nt traveling with him. Would she think I was naïve to think that we could travel as just friends? I never told her what happened between us, but she was well aware of his reputation in university. Though the thought crossed my mind more times than I could count, he seemed truly intent on building things back with me. And he was a different person than he used to be. Sure, the old Miles was there, charming, a little brash, and spoiled but he had grown up. He was a man now. And he was a man who wanted to take things slow with me. And as much as I did love the idea of traveling in style, I loved more the thought that maybe there could be something between us.

  After spinning and twirling in my purple frock like a little girl, I changed back into my tank top and leggings. I handed over my money, the hilariously named dong, and as she folded my dress, and slipped it into a bag, she insisted again to introduce me to her son. With a laugh, I declined the offer, thanked her for my dress, and navigated my way back through the cloth market and inhaled the fresh air, happy to leave the frenetic energy behind as I stepped back into the street.

  “Canada!”

  I stopped mid-step, turned in the direction of the voice, and saw a face I would have paid my last dong to see.

  “Hawaii!”

  Chad was sitting on a blue motorcycle in the parking lot of the cloth market. I walked over, grabbed him by the hand, told him to, “Come with me,” and marched him into the restaurant.

  I called her name as we stepped back under the bougainvillea, and as she looked up, for the first time since Ha Long Bay, a smile blossomed.

  Thank God.

  He took a seat next to me and across from her.

  “Hi,” he said with a goofy grin, staring at her with that star-struck look in his eyes.