That means he and I will have to open up, at least a little bit.
And if he doesn’t start, I’ll have to.
12
Day 8, Evening
Chinatown
Once I finish showering, I douse my arms and legs with 35 percent DEET bug spray. I despise DEET. It stings the cuts on my ankles from shaving. And it stinks. Plus, it always seems so counterproductive drenching myself in insecticide seconds after I’ve washed. But Rowan—who can be worse than Reese—terrorized me with tales of mosquito-borne malaria, yellow fever, and dengue, which I’d never heard of. Apparently, it’s also known as breakbone fever, because when you’ve got it, bending an elbow or a finger feels like snapping a bone.
It’s pretty much the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard of.
Actually, it’s the second-most. First is botfly larvae, which I can’t even think about without wanting to cry.
I wrap my towel around my shoulders like a shawl and look at myself in the scratched-up mirror. My hair’s a dark, wet tangle, and my cheeks are lollipop pink from the frigid shower. Hot water seems to be a luxury on the budget backpacker circuit.
Finally, I open the door. The night billows with sound. I linger by the doorway, noting all the layers.
A ceaseless chain saw buzz.
A low, mournful whistle.
A shrill shriek.
The rustle of leaves.
A sound like a car engine turning on and off.
A sporadic, chirpy bark.
Because I am not Tom of the Jungle, I can name only the last one.
I sigh. Despite my nervousness, I know it’s time to confront Rowan. My only consolation is that our talks always seem to go better at night.
I find him sitting in a battered director’s chair on the hotel porch, reading a book by flashlight. He’s draped his wet hiking clothes over the picket fence behind him. I should probably do the same. “Hey,” I say.
Rowan glances up. “You look like a superhero.”
I twirl, making my towel fan out like a cape. Then I take a deep breath. “Rowan … I think we need to talk.”
He clutches a hand to his heart. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“Ha,” I say. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” He sets his book in his lap; this time it’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I can’t believe he’s already finished his last. His eyes must scan the pages like lasers.
I slide down the wall until I’m crouching in a towel-covered bundle. “Do you want to start?” I ask hopefully, even though I haven’t told him what this conversation’s about. I’m not really sure myself.
Rowan tips his head, as if examining me. “You make me nervous.”
I squirm. “Sorry. I just thought we should talk, considering—”
“I didn’t mean right now. I mean in general.”
“Huh?” I say, surprised.
“You’re just so secretive. You’re always writing in your journal. You’re like that spy girl in that kids’ book. Do you think I don’t notice?”
“Why does it matter?” I protest. “Lots of travelers keep journals.”
“It’s not the journal that makes me nervous—it’s the way you slam it every time I glance over. And hide it when you think I’m not looking.”
I guess I’m less stealthy than I thought. “But you’re the secretive one, Rowan. I’ve told you more than you’ve told me. I don’t know anything about you. You could be, like … an international spy. You could be a serial killer.” One I hope isn’t provoked by accusations.
Rowan rolls his flashlight in his hands. “It’s not that I’m trying to hide my past. Not exactly. It’s just … I’m over it. You could say I’ve been born again.”
“Like a virgin?”
“Right!” he says. Then he sings it.
When we stop laughing, he continues. “There’s a reason I’m like this. When I first started traveling, I was always looking behind me. Walking backwards, with my face in the past. And that meant I was always trying to compensate. Trying to make up for everything that happened to me—like my mother running off, my father being such a fuckup—by doing.”
He runs his thumb over the edge of his book, strumming it like a deck of cards.
“All that overthinking—that over-remembering—almost destroyed me. Now I’ve got to get over that part of my life too.”
“And that’s why you won’t talk about it?”
“I don’t even talk about it with Starling. To tell you the truth, I’d flat out rather you didn’t know. Really, it’s all kind of cliché. Precocious youth with messed-up past finds refuge in immorality. Abroad. Boring, right? The colorful backdrop notwithstanding.”
It doesn’t sound all that boring to me.
“Remember a few days ago, when the bus broke down?” he asks. “Sitting outside in the dark? We agreed not to dwell on the past. I thought we were on the same page.”
I pull the damp towel around me tighter, a cocoon. “It’s just …”
“Just what?”
“It’s just strange.”
Rowan laughs. Then he shines his flashlight under his chin, making a demon face. “Strange I can deal with.”
“It’s like … you want to erase your whole life before this trip.”
“But isn’t that the way it should be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Now is what’s important.” He sweeps his flashlight over the trees. The beam illuminates the branches in two-dimensional detail, like flash photography. “Just look around us. Look where we are. What’s the good of loitering in unpleasant places when the here and now is so incredible?” He aims his light at me.
I scrunch up my face. I see what he means, but then again … “I don’t want to keep walking on eggshells. Worrying about what we can ask and what we can’t.”
“I don’t want that either.” Rowan clicks off his flashlight. “How about we think up some ground rules?”
I rub the apparitions of light from my eyes, then rest my chin on my knees. “How about this: if I say a topic’s off-limits, no questions, no jokes, nothing.”
“Like swimming?”
I shrug.
“I can respect that. But the same goes for you.”
“Of course.”
“We need a list.” He pulls a tattered, water-stained scrap of paper from his book and hands it to me. I can make out the words Utila Bay Express.
“Is this from a boat?”
“Yep. Sometimes I forget to throw away receipts. They make perfect bookmarks.”
“Are you sure you want to write on it?”
“It was a terrible trip. I got seasick. Go ahead.”
I write: Swimming. Old boyfriends.
“Old boyfriends?” he reads.
My pen freezes.
Earlier, when I was freezing my ass off in the shower, I was determined to tell Rowan the truth about Toby. Not everything. But enough to shine the light away from my stupid, stupid lie, the one I swore I’d admit, tonight: that I don’t have a boyfriend.
Now’s the perfect moment. But I just can’t do it.
“All boyfriends,” I say, correcting what I wrote.
“I meant, can we make that ‘relationships’? I know I said my past was rowdy, but …”
My face heats up. “Got it.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” He pauses. “Add family.”
I glance up at him. “But that includes Starling. Which means you can’t talk about anything more recent than when—two days ago?”
“Then write parents. A big tangled knot I’d rather not unravel.”
I write Rowan’s parents, and then, beside it, Fears. Art.
“Art? Really?”
“It’s personal.”
“Is that why you wouldn’t show me your hand?”
My hand. Resting on my leg, exposed for the world to see. I sigh. I know how silly it is hiding my drawings. I never used to care. I was practically an artistic exhibitionist
.
I look at Rowan. He’s so casual, unruffled, with his arms crossed over his book, his flashlight against his knee. I know I agreed to this list in my hand, which already seems kind of dumb. But I came out here tonight to find out more, not less. And that’s what I’m going to do.
“If you show me yours,” I say, “I’ll show you mine.”
“My hand?”
“Your tattoo.”
“Up close? No problem.” Rowan pushes the arm of his T-shirt over his shoulder, displaying the entire piece. I hobble over on my knees to get a closer look, leaving my towel behind. It’s quality art, thank God. Shitty tattoos make me stabby.
“So why a dragon?”
“Why do you have to say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“With a sneer.”
“Sorry,” I say, trying not to giggle. “It’s just … it’s part of the stereotype, isn’t it? A dragon’s such a tough-guy tattoo. It could be worse—like a lopsided tribal armband. Or something written in Chinese with an entirely different meaning than what you thought.”
“Like ‘helicopter’? Or ‘mock duck’?”
“Or worse. Example: my friend Olivia wanted the word free in Chinese tattooed right here.” I touch my hip above the hem of my shorts. “So she went to this glammy Chinese restaurant in North Hollywood and asked the host to write it down for her. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell him why. Turns out there are two different Chinese characters for free, with different definitions: One means, like, liberated. The other one—the one she got—means free of charge.” I pause. “Kind of fitting, though, if you know Olivia.”
“Ouch,” Rowan says. “My tattoo’s not like that. I promise.”
He extends his arm, holding it aloft until I catch it in my hands.
“Look close.”
With my eyes, I trace the dragon as if I’m drawing it: the scallops of its scales, its slanted eyes and trailing whiskers, it claws, splayed out like talons. Rowan’s skin shows through a gleam of light left inkless along the dragon’s torso. Underneath its belly scampers a row of tiny human feet.
“I don’t get it,” I say.
“It’s not just any dragon. It’s the one they use to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Specifically, in San Francisco’s Chinatown.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“I lived there at one point. The city, not Chinatown. But my dad took me to the New Year’s parade when I was six. I thought we were having father-son time.… Really, it was just an excuse for my dad to meet with some woman. So naturally, he lost track of me.”
I’m still cradling Rowan’s arm. I try not to move or do anything that might suppress his story.
“You can’t imagine how terrified I was,” he says. “Everything was commotion. Clanging bells and firecrackers bursting in my face. I didn’t recognize anything. I wasn’t much of a reader then, but it wouldn’t have mattered—all the signs were in these wicked-looking Chinese letters. At first I panicked, sobbing and pushing through the knees, but no one noticed me. There were just too many people. I even searched the shops. I remember this one place, some sort of pharmacy, with one wall covered in ugly withered things like shrunken heads.”
I discover I’m squeezing Rowan’s arm, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Then, all of a sudden, it was like the smoke dissipated. I can’t really explain it … but somehow, I realized my father wasn’t going to find me, and it was up to me to get un-lost. It was up to me to take care of myself. And so I swallowed my tears, and quietly, calmly, I made my way through the crowd until I came to an intersection. And when I turned the corner, I recognized the street. I knew where I was.
“My dad didn’t find me—I found myself. So that’s when I figured out that the only person who could take care of me was me.”
I wait to make sure he’s finished. Then I release his arm and wrap myself in my towel again. “But you were just a little boy,” I say, sitting back against the wall.
Rowan nods. “I was. But I’m glad I learned it so young. To depend on myself, and no one else.”
“What about Starling?”
“Starling?” He shrugs. “Like I said, Starling means well. But she doesn’t always know what’s best for me, even though she thinks she does.”
I think of my conversation with her at the Río Dulce café. How protective she is. How much she obviously cares about her brother. And despite myself, I feel an unwanted surge of loyalty for her. “Still, it must be nice to have someone in your corner.”
“Believe me, I’m not ungrateful. I know what it’s like not to have anyone.”
I’m not sure if I believe him. Rowan’s always had Starling; when was he ever on his own? Even if they lived in different places, they must have exchanged phone calls or emails or something. I hug myself under my towel cape. “I need to take lessons from you, Rowan.”
“You don’t trust yourself?”
“Not really. I haven’t been very … trustworthy in the past.” I fold up our off-limits list and stick it in the pocket of my shorts, where I plan to forget about it. “Anyway. I’m sorry I called your tattoo Nessie. And thank you for your memory.”
“The Giver,” Rowan says.
“The what?”
“It’s another kids’ book. Dystopias, memory sharing—it’s epic. You should read it.” He reaches out and gently taps my shoulder with his flashlight. “It’s your turn. Though I’d rather see the book you keep hiding from me.”
“My sketchbook? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s a sketchbook?”
I make a face. “Well, I write things in it too. But it’s for Bria’s eyes only.”
“Okay, okay. Just your hand.” He reaches for me.
I turn my face as he examines the butterfly I drew on the back of my hand, in the crook between my index finger and thumb. By now, it’s almost entirely faded. Nothing much left but a ghost of wings. I wait for him to call me out, since I gave him such a hard time about the dragon tattoo. Aren’t butterflies even more cliché than dragons?
But all he says is “It’s beautiful.” For a second, he laces his fingers through mine.
13
Day 9, Morning
Go Slow
We can actually see the storm moving toward our boat: a wall of water agitating the sea in a perfect line, surging in our direction. As the first fat drops strike our faces, Rowan kicks a tarp out from under the seat.
“Grab that side!” he shouts to the man sitting in front of us. “Tome ese lado.”
We’re swallowed in blue plastic, huddling so close we’re practically on each other’s laps. The wind yanks at the tarp, and I seize a flailing edge before it flips into the storm. There must be a gap somewhere, because the rain’s streaming down my neck and into my shirt. At least I’m not wearing white. For someone who shuns water, I do an awfully good job attracting it. In just one week, I’ve voyaged through a lake, down a river, and now across the stormy sea.
It’s just past eight in the morning. We barely made our boat, which is heading to Punta Gorda in Belize. If we’d missed it, Rowan said, we’d have had to proposition a fisherman.
There’s a boom so loud I bite my tongue. Then a flash, way too close. I grip the tarp so tightly my hand cramps. As if a sheath of plastic could keep us safe from the fire gods.
“Can it hit us?” I yell over the roar.
“What?” Rowan yells back.
“I said, can it hit us? Can the lightning hit us?”
“No! Don’t worry.”
Another peal of thunder shudders the air. I close my eyes, thankful for the solidity of Rowan’s body pressed against mine. I know I’m trying to act all brave and independent on this trip, but lightning’s scary. I’m certain we’ve blown off course and are approaching Jamaica when the boat engine finally slows. The rain splatters vertically instead of sideways through the gap, which is a relief. I brave a peek, clutching the tarp around my shoulders like a poncho. Through the haze, I gl
impse the dim, gray shore of Belize, along with the outline of several boxy houses. I reach under the tarp and pinch Rowan’s side.
“We’re here! Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
He tickles me back. I double up, spilling more water down my shirt as Rowan emerges from the tarp. The boat chugs through the colorless water toward a gloomy pier, sort of what I’d imagine the dock on the banks of the river Styx to look like.
“So this is your Caribbean?” I ask.
“Wow,” he replies. “I’m starting to feel like a fraud.”
“I could be on my way to Mexico right now. Sipping mimosas on a white-sand beach. All of it prepaid, I should add.”
“If it’s raining here, it’s probably raining there, you know.”
A man in a yellow slicker hoists our backpacks as we climb out onto the pier. Earlier we tied garbage bags around them to keep out the rain, and it appears to have worked for mine. But when Rowan lifts his, water gushes from a rip in the plastic.
“There’s karma for you,” I tell him.
He stares at me for a second. Then he shakes his backpack in my direction. An arc of water slaps me in the legs. I’m already drenched, but I chase him down the dock anyway. I don’t notice the pair of uniformed soldiers until I crash into one of them.
He grabs me by the arm. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
I forgot Belizeans speak English. Rowan turns and jogs back toward us, and I swallow nervously, wondering if I’ve just gotten us deported. “We’re just …,” I begin.
“Happy,” Rowan shouts, “to be in Belize!”
After a moment of silence, both soldiers begin to chuckle. The first releases me, and the other wipes his eyes. “Welcome,” he says. “Customs is that way.”
“And slow down,” the other adds. “This is Belize. We go slow here.”
“Belize smells like Christmas,” I tell Rowan as we stroll down the wet road, trying to find an Internet café. Our bus to Belize City doesn’t leave for an hour, and Rowan has some phone calls to make.
He stares at me, mystified. “How’s that?”
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