Destination Anywhere

by Sara Barnard

I smile back. “Right.”

  BEFORE

  My seventeenth birthday

  aka

  Good days, bad decisions

  aka

  There’s a reason it’s illegal, Peyton: Part Two

  I turned seventeen on a Wednesday in February, the first birthday I’d been able to celebrate with friends since primary school. Mum encouraged me to have them over to our house, but I said I’d spent years’ worth of birthdays at home, and I wanted to spend this one somewhere else. She said she understood and gave me money so we could all go out somewhere for dinner together. I gave the money to Eric and told him to get us “something good,” basking in my own bravado, buoyed by the way he smiled, impressed, and looked at me with something like respect.

  At college, Flick draped birthday bunting round my shoulders like a scarf and handed me a card. “Sorry about not getting you a present,” she said. “Obviously my friendship is gift enough.”

  This was clearly a joke, but it cut too close to the bone for me to find it funny. I tried to smile. “Obviously.”

  That Friday night we all stayed at Flick’s, where they presented me with a chocolate cake made by Casey, festooned with way too many candles. They sang for me, and when I got teary I tried to say it was because of the candle smoke. After Flick’s mum, who had stuck around to wish me a happy birthday, left to go to work, Eric produced the “something good” he’d promised me. Cocaine.

  “Holy fuck!” Nico said.

  Eric dropped a party hat on my head. “Only the best for Pey-Pey.”

  “Didn’t you get that with my money?” I asked. “So, you’re welcome.”

  He laughed. “Everyone say thank you to Pey-Pey for getting us a present on her birthday.”

  They let me go first. It was my birthday, after all. And so that was me on the celebration of my seventeenth birthday, kneeling on Flick’s living-room floor, head bent over her coffee table, my boyfriend holding back my hair, snorting cocaine for the first time. I think there might have still been chocolate cake crumbs on the table, because it made me sneeze, which made them all laugh. It took a few minutes for the high to hit me, which made me think I’d done it wrong until I suddenly stopped doubting anything and simultaneously understood the word “euphoria” better than anyone in the world ever had. “I get it!” I said, over and over. “I get it now!” I also said, “Holy shit! Holy shit! Why don’t we do this all the time?” Over and over.

  Travis was laughing, and he looked so gorgeous, more gorgeous than he ever had. It was like I had new eyes. “You’re adorable,” he said.

  “I am adorable!” I said.

  It didn’t last, though. It felt like it came and went in an instant, leaving me hollow and sad, way too quickly, worse than I’d been before. I wanted more to get it back, but Travis shook his head at me, unusually protective. “Once is enough for your first time, Pey,” he said. He kissed my nose, which he’d never done, and held my hand. Travis wasn’t a fan of coke—he said it was too expensive for what you got—and the whole time we were together I never saw him take any from Eric.

  Was it fun, taking cocaine? Sure, for about five minutes, and then it was shit. And it was shit for way longer than five minutes. It was shit every time I thought about how I’d done it; how horrified and disappointed my parents would have been if they’d known; how horrified and disappointed I was with myself, for how I was suddenly a person I wasn’t sure I even recognized. Sometimes it would come into my head out of nowhere, Peyton! Cocaine?! and my skin would prickle and burn with shame and confusion.

  And yet I still did it again, didn’t I? Not for a while, but the next time I had the opportunity, I did. And just look what happened then.

  NOW

  WHISTLER

  What we find out, pretty quickly, is that we’ve chosen the wrong time to visit Whistler, because a lot of the activities and attractions, like the gondola that travels between the two highest peaks, are closed.

  “What a shame,” Beasey says, looking giddy with his obvious relief. “We won’t be able to dangle almost fifteen hundred feet in the air in a tiny cage. Woe! Such woe!”

  “This is what you get for doing Canada in October,” Lars says, shrugging. “The great in-between.”

  “It looks so cool though,” I say, sighing. “Oh well. I’ll just have to come back one day.”

  “Hell yeah,” Stefan says, grinning. “We’ll have a reunion. Five years’ time, all seven of us in a Justin 2.0. December. We’ll have a Christmas tree. Fairy lights around the windscreen.”

  “Promise?” I say hopefully.

  He ruffles my hair and I duck away, batting him off. “Promise,” he says, laughing.

  The good thing is that the lack of tourist attractions means we have more time to spend on the natural ones. We all agree to do something called the Train Wreck Trail, which is a short and easy hike that includes a suspension bridge—Beasey makes a face at me, but the bridge isn’t that high and he keeps his cool—over the Cheakamus River to the train wreck site. There are seven old train carriages—boxcars—scattered among the trees like they, too, had grown there. They’re all covered with years’ worth of colorful, vibrant graffiti, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. I love it so much I actually bounce on my feet. I have to stop myself clapping my hands like an excitable sea lion. But it’s just so cool. It’s so cool.

  “How did this actually happen?” I ask, looking around for a place to sit or even lean, reaching for my sketch pad.

  “I don’t want to know!” Lars protests. “It’s cooler if we don’t know.”

  “It’s magic,” I say.

  We take so many photos between us, even managing a group selfie (only Seva’s arms are long enough to get us all in shot) with one of the boxcars behind us, a splash of hot pink and orange against the rusting brown.

  Later, when we’re back in the RV, I sketch myself standing atop one of the boxcars with the trees stretching high up to the sky above me, my arms held aloft. I call it Train Wreck on a Train Wreck.

  “Can I see?” A German voice comes from beside me, and I look up, surprised, to see that Maja has sat down on the sofa at some point and I hadn’t even noticed. God, that’s embarrassing. I get so engrossed when I’m sketching.

  “Sure,” I say, turning my sketch pad so she can see.

  A smile lifts her face, the unconscious kind that means the person really means it. It’s my favorite type of smile, especially when it’s sparked by someone looking at my drawings. “That’s great,” she says. “Very cute. Even though you aren’t a train wreck, of course. I wish I could draw.”

  “Everyone can draw,” I say.

  “I wish I could draw well,” she corrects herself, laughing. “Like you. Like this.” She points to my sketches. “There’s so much expression in your drawings. I remember when I took art at school, everything I tried to draw always looked so flat. Is this what you want to do? Be an artist?”

  “An illustrator,” I say. “That’s the dream. But my parents say that I should be more realistic. They say, keep art as a hobby, get a proper job.”

  She makes a face. “Parents.”

  “I know, right?” I say. “What do you do, when you’re not traveling?”

  “Dream about traveling again,” she says, smiling. “I’m a financial administrator. Oh, Peyton, please don’t make me talk about my boring job.” She covers her eyes with her palm. “You’ll make me sound so dull.”

  I can’t help laughing. “Sorry.”

  “Canada must be a great place to be as an artist,” she says, settling herself back against the sofa. “All the scenery is so beautiful.”

  “Definitely,” I say. “Though I usually prefer drawing people.”

  “Even better,” Maja says. “You have all of us.” She laughs, gesturing toward Lars and Khalil, who are trying to play a game of makeshift tennis across the length of the RV with two frying pans and some balled-up socks. “Right?”

  I grin back at her, almost huggi
ng my sketch pad to my chest with the happiness of the moment. “Right.”

  * * *

  In the evening, we all have dinner together in Whistler Village at a bistro before everyone starts talking about going out to find a bar or club in the town, and I feel so very, very seventeen. I keep quiet, not wanting to spoil the party, until they move on to discussing who will go back to the RV with me and keep me company, which is 100 percent mortifying.

  “I will,” Beasey says. Khalil snorts, Beasey ignores him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Maja give Seva an aww look, and I feel my cheeks flame. But I can’t exactly say no—I don’t even want to say no—so I nod and smile.

  Beasey and I walk around Whistler Village for a while before we head back to the RV park, admiring the full spectrum of autumn in the colors of the trees: reds, oranges, golds, greens, and every shade in between. I try and take pictures, but it’s getting dark and it’s not the same.

  We stop off at a Dairy Queen to get a Blizzard Treat each, even though I protest that it’s too cold—“Oh my God, you’re in Canada,” he says. “Acclimatize. Ice cream in October!”—and argue over which one to get before landing on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (him) and Mint Oreo (me). We’ve already ordered when he asks me if I’ve ever had an Orange Julius, which is like a kind of orange milkshake, and when I say no he insists we need to get one each of those, too.

  “Aren’t you meant to be being frugal?” I ask. “Haven’t you still got half the world to see?”

  “Some things are worth the money,” he says. “Overpriced North American specialties are worth the money.”

  “Are they, though?” I ask, dubious.

  “Peyton,” he says. “For the rest of your life, if anyone ever says to you, Have you ever had an Orange Julius, you’ll say, You know what, yeah, I did. When I was seventeen, in Whistler Village one evening with my friend Beasey as we headed back to our RV.”

  The smile on my face is uncontrollable. “That’s what I’ll say?”

  “Yep,” he says, so confidently. “Don’t think of it as buying a drink. Think of it as making a memory.”

  “You’re quite weird,” I say.

  “Thank you!” he says, delighted.

  When we get back to the RV, we bulk up with our gloves and hats because it’s cold, piling blankets into our arms and going to sit outside the RV to feel the chill and smell the air with an Orange Julius apiece in our laps. Beasey is talking about Khalil going bungee jumping when they were in Australia, how he’d almost done it himself but couldn’t make the leap.

  “Do you wish you had?” I ask.

  “Massively,” he says. “But that’s easy to say now, isn’t it?”

  It’s almost eleven when I get a message from Dad, asking if I’m free for a phone call. I’m surprised and then worried, wondering if he’s calling with bad news. What if something’s happened to Mum or Dillon or Grandma? My worry intensifies as the thoughts flood in, reminding me that I’m on the literal other side of the world, that if something happened to someone I love, I couldn’t just be there—I’d have to travel. Oh God, what am I doing here? Why didn’t I think this could happen?

  I go into the RV to make the call, my heart thundering with panic. When he answers with a distinctly unpanicked, “Hello, Peyton,” it’s not enough to calm me down.

  “What’s wrong?” I demand. “Has something happened?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he says. “What do you mean?”

  “Is Mum okay?”

  “Of course she is. I would tell you if she wasn’t.”

  “And Grandma?”

  “Everyone’s fine, love.” The “love” softens us both and I blink back sudden senseless tears. “We’re all fine.”

  “Okay, good,” I say, sighing out my anxiety, sinking down onto the passenger seat at the front of the RV. “Good. What do you want to talk about, then?”

  “It’s been a while since we spoke,” he said. “I wanted to hear your voice and make sure you were doing okay.”

  “I’m doing great,” I say. “We’re in Whistler right now.”

  “The ski resort?”

  “Not in the actual ski resort, but near there, yeah.”

  “I remember Whistler,” he says. “Beautiful place.”

  “You’ve been?”

  “Many years ago,” he says. “I went to a conference in Vancouver for work and they pulled out all the stops. Flew us to Whistler in a seaplane.”

  “You never told me that,” I say.

  He laughs. “You never asked.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when I got to Vancouver?”

  “Because I was frantic with worry that my daughter had run away,” he says. “I wasn’t going to start reminiscing and offering tourist insights. Anyway. How is your trip? Are you keeping safe?”

  “Yes, Dad. Everyone’s looking after me really well. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I do,” he says. “I wanted to ask you—you haven’t gone to Canada because cannabis is legal there, have you? I’ve been researching.”

  I roll my eyes at the steering wheel. “Oh my God, Dad, no.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t have some kind of drug problem?”

  “I told you, I only did them at home because of my friends. Who weren’t actually friends. I haven’t touched them since, I swear. And I don’t want to, not ever again.”

  There’s a silence. A distrustful, skeptical silence.

  “Don’t you trust me?” I ask.

  “No,” he says shortly.

  Great. That warm, friendly conversational tone lasted long.

  “Dad!”

  “I trusted the daughter who was sensible and honest,” he says. “The one who wouldn’t dream of jetting off to the other side of the world, dropping out of college in the process, taking my money without asking first. How can I trust you? I hardly feel like I know you.”

  “You did the same thing,” I point out. “You did the exact same thing when you were basically my age. You went traveling, too.”

  “No, I did not,” he replies, so tense that I know he’s trying to stop himself shouting at me. “I did not at all do the same thing. I had a plan. I funded my own trip. I paid my way.”

  “I’m going to pay you back for the plane ticket.”

  “That’s not the point at all.”

  “Is this why you called?” I ask. “To have another go at me?”

  “I called because I wanted to speak to you,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m happy with what you’re doing. You know that. I want you to come home.”

  “You’re making me not want to come back—do you realize that?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Peyton, don’t be such a child.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. If you want me to believe you’re mature enough to handle this, don’t be petulant.” I don’t reply and he waits for a while before he says, “I’m expecting you to come straight home when you get to Banff.”

  “Well, I won’t,” I say. Petulantly.

  “Have you made a plan? A detailed plan?”

  I’m silent. The time after Banff seems hazy and distant, like it doesn’t really exist. I don’t want to think about what happens after this, when I won’t be with these people anymore, when I’ll be alone again, and all the goodness I’ve finally found ends. I swallow. “I don’t know yet.”

  “That’s not okay.”

  “Please don’t get mad again.”

  “I’m not mad; I’m concerned. You’re not really thinking you’ll see your grandad, are you?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Well, maybe you should,” he says, surprising me. “Maybe that will make things a bit clearer for you, one way or another.”

  What a weird thing to say. “I don’t even know him.”

  “Neither do I,” he says flatly. “But, nevertheless, he is family to you. If you really don’t have a plan and for some reason still refuse to come home, at least go and see him.”


  “Won’t he turn me away if he doesn’t know me?”

  “No,” he says. “Under these circumstances, he’ll probably be thrilled. Anyway. I shouldn’t have said any of that. Just come home to your actual family and your real life. Your place at college is hanging by a thread—”

  “Dad!” I shout, actually shout, into the phone. I don’t even know why, but I think it might be something to do with the words “your real life” and what they’ve done to my heart. “Listen to me. I’ve dropped out. It’s happened. I’m not coming back to finish the year, okay? You can’t make me. I don’t care about any of those subjects. I’m not going to do anything with them. There’s no point in me forcing myself to do something I hate just because you want me to.”

  “Peyton—”

  “No, Dad. We can’t keep having this argument over and over.” There’s motion through the window and I suddenly see Beasey’s worried face, peering in at me. I try and control my voice. “Listen, it’s late here. I should go to bed.”

  “Of course.” Dad’s voice is quiet now, almost defeated. “Peyton…” For a moment I think he’s going to apologize, but he doesn’t. He says, “Goodnight.”

  When I go back outside, Beasey is looking anxious, but he doesn’t say anything, just waits for his cue.

  “My dad,” I say, possibly unnecessarily. “He’s not happy I’m still out here.”

  Beasey’s eyebrows go up. “No?”

  “No.”

  I sit back down and he does too, listening quietly as I recap the conversation for him until I get to the bit about Grandad, at which point he makes half an interjection, then stops himself.

  “Go ahead,” I say.

  “I thought the plan was to go and see your grandad,” he says. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “He’s in Alberta, yeah,” I say. “But I’m not actually going to go and see him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t even know him,” I say. “He’s not that kind of grandad.”

  He looks baffled. “Then why did you say you were going to?”