Your Destination Is on the Left

by Lauren Spieller

  I take a deep breath. “I do.”

  “Great. Now call your friend.”

  A few minutes later, Taryn rounds the corner a block away from the studio. When she catches sight of Fiona, her eyes get a little wider and her steps slow. I glance at Fiona, wondering why Taryn is being such a weirdo, but then I see the way the sun is shining on her hair, and how her colorful wrap dress looks like an explosion of paint. No wonder Taryn looks nervous. That’s exactly how I felt the first time I saw Fiona too.

  “Hi,” Fiona says when Taryn stops in front of us.

  Taryn looks at me. “Dessa, you didn’t tell me your boss was, like, a model.”

  Fiona throws back her head and laughs. Maybe having Taryn along today is a good idea after all.

  The three of us climb into Fiona’s car and immediately roll down all the windows. Taryn has to hold a big plastic bin on her lap because there’s so much random stuff in the back seat, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “You’ll see,” Fiona says with a grin. “Seat belts!”

  Thirty minutes later we pull in front of a junkyard that’s right off the highway. On the other side of a tall metal fence, smashed cars are piled one on top of the other, at least ten high. “Whoa,” I say, leaning forward so I can peer up at the top of the stack.

  We get out of the VW, and Fiona spreads her arms wide, as if she’s presenting us with Shangri-la instead of a pile of broken-down cars. “What do you think?”

  Taryn looks dubious, but I grin. “I think it looks like we’re going shopping.”

  Fiona puts her arm around me. “Exactly.”

  We walk inside, and a large man comes out of a mobile home parked off to the side. “Fiona, I didn’t expect you for another couple weeks.”

  “Hi, Ricky.” She gives him a hug, her arms barely reaching all the way around him. “I woke up this morning and I thought, this feels like a day to go hunting.”

  “You already know the deal, but would you like me to tell it to your friends here?” he asks, looking at Taryn and me.

  “Yes, please,” she says.

  He pulls himself up to his full height and clears his throat. “Welcome to Ricky’s junkyard, home of abandoned, repossessed, and shitty cars. Plus other people’s crap that they don’t want no more.”

  Taryn laughs, and Ricky grins at her.

  “Tell them the rules,” Fiona prompts.

  “Right. No stealing, no pulling something out from the bottom of a pile, no climbing in or on the cars. Just . . . don’t be stupid, you know? Oh, and anything you find, you bring it to me. I’ll give you a fair price.” He points back at his mobile office. “Shopping carts are back there, in case you find something too heavy to carry, or you’re like Fiona here, and you find about ten things too heavy to carry. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Taryn and I say.

  “Okay,” Ricky says, already walking back to the trailer. “Have fun.”

  “Let’s go to the back,” Fiona says. “That’s where all the good stuff is.”

  We grab a shopping cart, and the three of us make our way down the aisle. The cars tower so high overhead that they block out most of the sunlight. I peer between the cars, but there’s nothing holding them up but the support of the next car. One good earthquake could bring the whole towering mass of metal down on our heads.

  “Don’t worry,” Fiona says, catching sight of my face. “Most of these cars have been here for years. They’re not moving.”

  I nod, but walk a little faster.

  We reach the end of the car jungle, and a massive yard stretches before us. It’s full of odds and ends organized into surprisingly neat rows. Taryn rushes forward, but Fiona stops her. “Be careful what you pick up. You never know what’s going to be sharp or rusted or falling apart, and sometimes you’ll find something nasty living underneath the junk.” She sees our confusion, and says, “Scorpions.”

  Taryn and I clutch at each other, but Fiona just laughs.

  “Are we looking for anything in particular?” Taryn asks.

  “Anything that speaks to you,” Fiona answers. “Dessa—I want you to find at least one thing to bring back, okay? Maybe for the show, maybe not. But don’t overthink it, okay?”

  I take a steadying breath. “Okay.”

  “Great. Meet back here in thirty minutes.” She gives me a wink, then disappears down the aisle, leaving Taryn and me behind.

  “What show is she talking about?” Taryn asks.

  “It’s her art show,” I explain, fighting off the feeling of anxiety pooling in the pit of my stomach. “It’s in a little over a week at a gallery in town.”

  “And she’s letting you put a piece in it? That’s amazing! What are you making?”

  I bite my lip. “That’s kind of the problem. I don’t know yet.”

  “Oh, well you have some time, right? You’ll figure it out. Maybe I can help you find something cool to jumpstart your artsy-fartsy brain.” She looks around. “Where should we start?”

  I bend over a bunch of broken picture frames. “Here, I guess.” I pick one up, but it’s barely in my hands before one edge falls off. I put it back.

  “What are you going to do with this stuff?” Taryn asks, lifting an old pair of cracked leather boots by their laces.

  “Not sure. Hopefully, turn it into something new. Something beautiful.”

  “You’re definitely not going to be needing these, then,” Taryn says, dropping the boots onto a pile of gardening gloves.

  We continue exploring, peeking into boxes and looking over old VHS tapes and the occasional cassette player. I think about picking one up for my YiaYia—I noticed a big box of cassettes in her garage—but I don’t have the money to spare, not if Fiona wants me to pick out something today.

  When we reach the end of the row, Taryn turns left, toward some leather jackets, and I make my way down another aisle to the right. I can’t bring back just anything. I have to find something really great, something that will impress Fiona and pull me out of my art funk.

  I walk past stuff that feels too obvious: toilet seats, bottle caps, silverware, and coat hangers. She’ll expect me to bring that kind of thing back. I briefly consider a set of mismatched dining room chairs, stacked ten high, their wooden legs locked in a rickety embrace, but I decide it’ll be too hard to untangle them. Plus, I have no clue what I’d actually do with a chair once I got one down.

  I keep walking, quickly skipping over a creepy chest full of porcelain baby dolls, most of them missing at least one eye, and turn left at a broken-TV graveyard. None of this is right. None of it makes me feel anything, except a growing sense of panic that I’m going to come back empty-handed. I check my phone again—it’s been almost twenty minutes since we got here, and I haven’t found a single thing worth taking home.

  I walk faster, barely even glancing at the junk in front of me. I’m walking so fast I’m practically jogging, when I hit a cul-de-sac of trash.

  I sink onto a scratched-up steamer trunk and kick at a cardboard box in front of me. This isn’t working. None of this is good enough. I should have stuck with Fiona, watched what sort of things she picks up, asked about her process. I drop my head into my hands. Fiona gives me a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be in a real art show, and I’m already blowing it.

  “Dessa?”

  Taryn is standing at the mouth of the aisle, her red hair a blaze against a sea of gray and brown and twisted metal.

  “There you are,” she says. “Did you find anything?”

  “Not unless you count a place to sit.”

  She strolls toward me and looks around. “You’ve got a nice selection here,” she says, toeing a rusted bicycle tire. “But I may have found something better.”

  We weave back through the rows, Taryn leading the way. She strides forward without slowing, taking each turn as if she’s navigated this lot a thousand times before. I hurry to keep up, and when she stops, I almost run into her.

&
nbsp; “Ta-daaaa,” she says, holding out her arms.

  An antique vanity mirror leans against an upended sofa. It’s missing about a third of the glass, and what’s left is cloudy and cracked. At first I don’t see the appeal, but then the sun comes out from behind a cloud, and it catches the mirror just right, and I understand. The faded glass glows gold, the warped iron frame struggling to contain it. It looks old and magical and alive.

  “There’s something about it, right?” Taryn asks.

  “Totally,” I say. “I have no idea what I’m going to do with a broken mirror, but . . .” I pick it up. It’s a bit unwieldy, but not too heavy. “How much do you think it is?”

  Taryn shrugs. “No idea, but I bet you can get a good deal since it’s broken.”

  With Taryn’s help, I hold the mirror at arm’s length so I can look directly into the cracked glass. Pieces of my reflection are missing, turning my face into a patchwork.

  “It’s perfect,” I say. “Let’s go find Fiona.”

  • • •

  “Oh, you poor thing,” YiaYia says, patting Taryn’s hand. “That Luke sounds like a real piece of work.”

  Taryn and I are sitting at YiaYia’s kitchen table, clutching glasses of lemonade. “He’s a piece of something,” Taryn agrees.

  “Well, don’t you worry about staying here with us. I’ll smooth things over with Dessa’s parents.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “I could call them—”

  “No, no, you two have fun. Maybe go swimming?”

  I lead Taryn back to my bedroom and give her one of my mom’s hideous one-piece bathing suits. I step behind the open closet door for privacy, but Taryn strips down to her underwear in the middle of the room.

  “You have a tattoo!” I exclaim, instantly jealous. “Is it a butterfly?”

  “No.” She yanks her shirt back over her head.

  “Oh. Um, okay.”

  “Sorry,” she says, sighing. “It’s just, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No problem.” I sling a towel over my shoulder. “Ready to go?”

  We set ourselves up in two pool chairs. Taryn tosses me a pair of sunglasses, then squirts a blob of sunscreen into her palm. “Your grandma’s awesome. Do you see her a lot?”

  “Nah, only a few times a year. We try to stop by her house whenever we’re in the Southwest, though.”

  “She’s got a superbig cross in the bathroom. Catholic?”

  “Greek Orthodox.” I hold out my hand for the sunscreen bottle, and she passes it to me. “She’s really into all that stuff. But I’m not religious.”

  “Me neither.” Taryn smears lotion onto her legs. “But I always thought it would be cool to date a guy who was super into, like, Hinduism or something.”

  “But what if he didn’t eat meat? Would you become a vegetarian? Or just not eat meat when you were together?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, never mind. I like ribs way too much.” She lies on her side so we’re facing each other. “Speaking of dating, whatever happened to that guy on your phone? The friend you were hung up on at the bar?”

  I feel a little jolt at the mention of Cy. I forgot I told her about him. “We kissed.” I drop the bottle of lotion into my lap. “But it didn’t work out.”

  “What happened?”

  A litany of excuses sneaks up the back of my throat, but there’s no reason to lie, especially not to Taryn. “I told him I didn’t want to settle down and be a traveler forever, and Cyrus decided that meant I didn’t want to be with him. And I don’t know . . . maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t want to be with him. Not if it means I’ll never get out of my RV and into the real world.”

  “Is traveling really so bad?”

  “No, it’s . . . it’s great. Or it can be. But it’s not me. I love it, and I love my family. And I love—” I take a deep breath. “I love Cyrus.”

  Taryn sighs. “But you want more.”

  “Is that terrible?”

  She shakes her head solemnly. “No. Not at all. You’re allowed to want something different than he does. You’re allowed to choose for yourself. And honestly, if he’s not willing to stop traveling for you, it’s not really fair of him to ask you to give up your plans for him.”

  Taryn lies back and closes her eyes. I do the same, letting her words play over and over again in my head. Why shouldn’t Cy have to give something up too? Why does what I want always have to be wrong?

  “What I said before,” Taryn says suddenly, “about my tattoo. It’s my mom’s initials. I had the guy write them in this awesome pattern called an ambigram, where both sides are mirror images of each other. From far enough away it kind of looks like wings. Or a butterfly.”

  “You must be really close with your mom, huh?”

  “I was. Before she died.”

  I suck in a breath. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Taryn. I wouldn’t have—I didn’t realize—”

  “You didn’t know,” Taryn says. “How could you? Anyway, I decided to come visit you because I needed a break from my dad. He’s not much fun since my mom died. It messed him up.”

  “What about you?” I ask quietly.

  She throws her arm over her face to shade her eyes from the sun. “I don’t know, man. Sometimes I think it messed me up, and sometimes I think I was messed up to begin with, and I just didn’t know it.”

  She closes her eyes, and I get the feeling she doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, so I let it go. It must be awful for Taryn not to have a mother, and for her father to lose his wife. I try to envision what it would be like if I suddenly lost a member of my family, or of the other families, but I can’t. My parents drive me nuts sometimes—a lot of the time, lately—but I can’t imagine losing them entirely. Even when I used to lie awake at night dreaming about college, I never worried how it would feel to be apart. I always knew the families would still be there, waiting for me each summer.

  Except, with everything that’s going on with my dad, is that still true? If he can’t figure out a way for us to keep traveling, will there be a caravan to come home to?

  Taryn scratches her nose, and I realize with a jolt that my eyes are wet. I quickly wipe them, then pull out my cell phone. I open Instagram, and scroll through my feed and watch the parade of selfies stream by. Girls I’ve met on the road pose in skinny jeans and scarves, holding corgis and fancy coffee drinks. I scroll faster, past boys I haven’t seen since elementary school, who traded their dinosaur T-shirts for plaid hipster button-downs. I scroll so fast I almost miss the one photo that matters: Cyrus and Rachel, their arms around each other as they laugh into the camera. She’s even prettier than I remembered, with her silver lip ring and her striking blue eyes.

  But it’s Cyrus I can’t stop staring at. It’s not that he looks any different—he looks exactly like he always does. But that’s the problem. Even though we’re in a fight, even though we’re hundreds of miles apart, he looks . . . happy.

  Without me.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jordan is smoking outside the gallery. For a split second I wish I’d brought Taryn along, instead of leaving her to sleep away the day in Rodney’s bed. I take a deep breath, then cross the street.

  “You walk rather slowly,” Jordan calls, her British accent as sharp as her cheekbones.

  I pretend not to hear her. Today is going to be different. I’m not going to let her intimidate me. I’m going to be strong and confident and stick to my guns. Fiona trusts me. Now I just have to find a way to trust myself.

  When I reach her, Jordan drops her cigarette on the ground and grinds it with the toe of her high-heeled shoe. “Where did you get that shirt?”

  I look down at my old black Beatles T-shirt, the sleeves cut off two years ago in an attempt to make it look less like it came out of a water-damaged box in YiaYia’s basement, and more like a sweet thrift store find. When I picked it out last night, I thought it looked good with my skinny jeans and silver flats, especially when I wound a few necklaces around my
wrist and pulled my hair into a low, messy ponytail. But under Jordan’s piercing gaze, I suddenly feel like a sloppy poser.

  “My dad gave it to me,” I say, bracing for her inevitable eye roll, or maybe a lecture on how it’s not proper attire for an art gallery, even on a Tuesday.

  “Huh. I like it. Well, I suppose we should get to it,” she says, pushing the glass door open. “After you.”

  I step through, then follow her across the foyer.

  “Fiona says you have an idea about what to do with the bottle sculptures?” Jordan says over her shoulder as we step into the main gallery room. I have to hurry to keep up.

  “I think so.”

  “Fantastic. So do I.”

  “Great,” I mutter.

  We cross the empty gallery space and come to a doorway in the back that I didn’t notice the first time I was here. She opens it, revealing a small room with nothing inside but a wobbly desk, laptop, notepad, and a chair. No windows, no art, just cinderblock and concrete. Basically a closet pretending to be an office. “Wow, this place is depressing,” I say.

  Jordan crosses her arms. “This is my office. The gallery owner uses the bigger one upstairs.” She pulls out her chair and sits down, leaving me to stand next to her.

  My cheeks grow warm. “Sorry. I thought—”

  “Do you have the thumbnails?”

  “Just a second.” I quickly pull out the binder Fiona gave me, and place it on the desk. She flips to the first set of thumbnails, and starts to scribble on her notepad.

  “I’m going to find a chair,” I say. “Um . . . be right back.”

  She doesn’t answer, so I step back into the gallery. There’s a lone chair against the far wall, so I grab it and hurry back to Jordan’s office. But it’s too cramped in there to fit another chair, let alone a second person. I put the chair down just outside her office, and chew on my lip as I watch Jordan’s hand hurrying across the page, filling it with her ideas for Fiona’s show.