Destination Anywhere Read online

  In those earliest days, what I wanted was for Flick and Eric to break up so I could break up with Travis, and then Flick and I could be friends on our own. Maybe with Casey, too, if I could figure out if she liked me or not. But of course they never did break up, and the truth was Flick never seemed as interested in me as she was in those moments after a flight.

  That was okay, though. It was still all worth it. Since Travis and I had become official, a big part of my anxiety had finally calmed itself down. I stopped worrying I was going to walk into the common room one day and be ignored by them all or that they wouldn’t invite me for lunch. At weekends, I was with them, and even afternoons and evenings during the week, too.

  We usually went to Flick’s because she often had the house to herself, her mum seemingly constantly on shift. If we weren’t at Flick’s, we were at Eric’s—he had a bigger house but more-present parents, so swings and roundabouts, as he’d say—but never anyone else’s.

  Mine was never an option, mostly because of my parents usually being around, but also because of what happened the first time I brought Flick round to my house, a couple of weeks after I first got with Travis, when I felt how she bristled as we walked up my driveway, saw the small frown on her face, heard the way her voice changed when she spoke.

  When we got to my room I showed her the art studio my dad had made for me, converting what would have been an en suite into my cozy, white-washed haven, thinking she’d like to see the kind of drawing I did in there. But she just got very quiet, looking around. It got awkward, the two of us side by side as we walked back into my bedroom. Finally, she said, “I didn’t realize you had money.”

  Had money. It was a phrase I didn’t really understand, because I’d never thought of myself as “having money.” We weren’t rich, my family. Not in any definition of the word I’d understood before. Our house was nice and we went on holidays and both my parents had good jobs, but we weren’t rich. I get now that having money and being rich aren’t the same thing, and it’s a distinction that requires the kind of perspective I didn’t have yet. Claridge had been a grammar school and, in terms of socioeconomics, most of the kids there were like me. Or they were actually rich, like Amber Monroe.

  “Not really,” I said to Flick at the time, which was the wrong thing to say, though I don’t think I realized that for a while.

  She frowned at me. “I mean, yeah, you do.” She gestured around my room, which as far as I was concerned was just my room. “You’re lucky.” She didn’t say it in a way that made me feel very lucky. Besides, I was still fresh out of a five-year school experience that saw me essentially tormented. I wasn’t lucky.

  I could have told her that, but I didn’t. I just shrugged and she shrugged back.

  Friendship, I was discovering, didn’t look like I’d expected it would. I’d imagined adventures together interspersed with emotional bonding, shared secrets and dreams, endless jokes. I thought they’d know me in a way no one else had before—especially Flick—and I’d know them in return.

  But that’s not how it was. For one thing, we never seemed to actually do anything or go anywhere together except each other’s houses, and all they seemed to do was get drunk or high and play video games. They never really talked, either, except when the alcohol or drugs loosened their tongues, and then the conversations were rambling and ridiculous. An entire hour on why Flakes existed when Twirls were better in every way. Two on whether an afterlife existed and, if so, which scenario was most likely and, of those, where we’d all end up. (“Hell,” Eric said confidently. “Every one of us.” “Even me?” Flick asked. “Especially you,” he said.) No one seemed to talk about their feelings or problems. No one asked about each other’s lives.

  A lot of the time, they didn’t even seem to like each other very much. Especially Casey, who seemed to keep herself at a distance even when we were in the same room. It made me wonder if maybe I’d just been fooled all these years. Maybe friendship is just one giant con. Or maybe I really had just read too many books.

  “I’m so glad college is going better for you than Claridge,” Mum said to me once, the two of us watching University Challenge together on the sofa.

  “Were you worried?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. I’d rather she’d lied. “But there was no need. You’ve got your friends now, and they’re nice. They are nice?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “They’re nice.”

  It wasn’t a word I would have chosen myself, but I told myself I wouldn’t have said they weren’t nice, so it was accurate. What word would I have used? I wasn’t sure. “Funny,” maybe. “Friendly,” in their way. “Mine.” That was what mattered.

  I didn’t mind, that was the thing. It didn’t matter that what I had didn’t live up to my expectations; what mattered was that I had it. I would take fuggy evenings in Flick’s living room, broken up by trips into the garden with Travis or runs to the off-licence that would serve us even though we were underage, so long as I was with them and not alone. I would have been whoever they wanted me to be. I didn’t care what clothes I wore, what music I listened to, what drugs we took, how inexplicably sad I sometimes felt when I was back on my own.

  And I didn’t mind because of the moments. Moments like the earliest hours of Sunday morning, all of us together in Flick’s living room. We’d reached the silly, shrieky part of our nights together, when everything was hilarious and no one in the world was having a better time.

  “What kind of name is Peyton, anyway?” Flick asked. She got louder when she was high; more performative.

  “A great name,” I replied. I got so much more confident; smoother. I loved myself when I was high. In the warm fog of it all, I was convinced that my stoned self was the real me, the me I would have been if it wasn’t for Amber Monroe and her merry band of twats.

  (It wasn’t even true. Generally speaking, I didn’t like my name, because I was convinced that it had been part of the problem at Claridge. I was the only Peyton in the school, which made me stand out when it would have been so much easier to blend in.)

  “Is it?” Flick said. “Is it really?”

  “Your name is literally Flick,” I said. “Flick! Like, flick away an ant.”

  “It’s literally not literally Flick!” She was way too animated, bouncing up onto her knees, eyes wide. “It’s literally Felicity.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I mock gasped. I reached out and flicked her forehead. “Felicity.”

  Everyone was in pieces by this point, including the two of us, flicking at each other and shrieking our names in increasingly ridiculous posh voices.

  These were the moments when I was so happy, when it all felt so good and right, like I’d always imagined friendship would feel. When we laughed like idiots and teased each other and shared cheap frozen pizzas and took photos of Flick and me with our hair held up like mustaches and Casey played Elvis songs and we all danced to the JXL edit of “A Little Less Conversation” like nothing was wrong or could ever be wrong in the world.

  Just moments, though. And that’s all they were, in the end.

  NOW

  TOFINO

  Tofino is my favorite place in Canada so far, and maybe that’s because of who I’m with, but it’s also because it feels exactly how you’d imagine a small beach town surrounded by wilderness, stuck right on the outer edge of the west coast of North America, with nothing ahead of it but the Pacific, would feel. Like time moves slower, that the right things matter more, and the wrong things matter less.

  “I didn’t know places like this existed in Canada,” I say to Heather on my first morning in Tofino, when she and the boys have come into town with me to show me around.

  “Oh yeah?” she says, smiling. “I know what you mean. It’s meant to be all ice and snow, right?”

  I look out across the autumnal color of Tofino, the thick green of the tree canopies. “Right.”

  Wilderness and sea aside, in the town itself there aren’t any chains, not
even a Tim Hortons. In among the clothing stores and gift shops, there are multiple art galleries, so many that I take a trip by myself out later that same day to explore them properly, taking my time, soaking it all in. I have a conversation with one of the artists, an illustrator named Patrice, who has the kind of life I can only dream of. Art, the forest and the sea. A Labrador called Salvador curled in the corner of the studio. One day, I think dreamily, as I walk back toward the Airbnb and my friends. One day, maybe.

  My time in Tofino passes in a blur of bicycles and beaches, exploration and adventure. And, most importantly, other people. Other people who are funny and nice and don’t seem to think I’m weird or annoying. We spend most of our time without a plan, cycling on rented bikes from one beach to the next to stay for a couple of hours, scattered. Some of us lying on the sand, paddling in the Pacific, looking at rock pools. At Chesterman Beach, Lars, Khalil, and Heather go surfing. Stefan buys a kite and we take turns running down the beach with it, trying to catch the wind, while Beasey takes pictures.

  That evening, my second in Tofino, we light a small bonfire on Tonquin Beach as the sun goes down. Everything feels softer in the muted light, and it’s so nice I want time to fold in around us, keeping us safe in the moment forever. Beasey gives me his hoodie as it starts to get cold, even though I haven’t asked and I don’t really need it. Of course I put it on anyway. It smells like him.

  When we all get back to the Airbnb, it’s late and I’m tired, but I stay up anyway to watch them all play drinking games with a pack of cards and a bottle of sambuca. I shake my head when Heather starts pouring shots.

  “We won’t tell anyone you’re underage,” she says, laughing.

  “I’m not much of a drinker,” I say, which is true now. But I don’t say what the real truth is, which is that I don’t want to be who I was before, drinking just because my friends were, numbing myself to my own unhappiness. The alcohol, the weed, the drugs that came later, they were all tricks I played on myself, masking my growing misery in imagined fun. None of it was real. None of it.

  This is real, though. And Heather doesn’t push me to drink, or make me feel stupid for not doing it, and neither does anyone else. I stay up for a couple of hours with them, refereeing their game of Ring of Fire, before I get too tired and the novelty of being the only sober one in the group wears off. They wave as I say goodnight, singing a discordant mix of goodbye songs—I think one of them might be that song from The Sound of Music in a deep, Scottish voice that could be either Beasey or Khalil—until they dissolve into laughter, way too pleased with themselves. I roll my eyes, smiling, shaking my head.

  When I’m in bed, I lie there for a while listening to them in the living room, their attempts to stay quiet for my benefit and the inevitable failure. It makes me think of my non-friends back home, of course it does, though I would never have willingly walked away from them, even to go to sleep, because that would have meant trusting that there would still be a place for me in the morning. I would never have been willingly sober, either.

  Maybe I conjure it with these thoughts, or maybe it’s just coincidence, but when I look at my phone to check the time, I see a notification that makes me sit straight up, my whole body tensing. An email from Casey. Casey. My heart starts pounding just from seeing her name. The last time I saw her she was rolling joints. The last time I heard her voice she was saying my name over and over, panicked. She hasn’t said a word to me since then—it’s just been silence. And now, when I’m safe and happy in Canada, an email.

  Hey Peyton,

  Hope it’s okay to email out of the blue. I wasn’t sure if you’d answer if I tried to WhatsApp, and I’ve got too much to say for that, anyway.

  Obviously the first thing is that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what happened. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. This isn’t an excuse, but we were all just scared.

  I was hoping you’d come back to college and we could maybe talk about it, but you didn’t. I went to your house in the end and I spoke to your mum. She told me how you left and how you’re in Canada now. Do you have friends there? Is that why you went? Have you been to Niagara Falls? Was it cool? Will you send me a postcard? I’ve never been to any other country before. You’re so brave to just go like that. (Mum said if I try anything like it, she’ll drag me back by my ear.)

  If you don’t want to reply because you don’t forgive me, that’s okay. I don’t think I’d forgive me.

  Sorry again.

  Casey xx

  Meanly, unfairly, I’m disappointed that the email isn’t from Flick. Even with the hindsight I’ve been developing since I first landed in Vancouver, my Flick instinct is still rose-tinted. So stupid. Flick probably doesn’t even think about me.

  I don’t reply, because I’m not sure what to say. It doesn’t matter if Casey’s sorry; it doesn’t change anything. What’s done is done and there’s no point upsetting myself over it again.

  Already my memories of my time at college are saturated with a murky dark filter. Everything just seems dull and flat and gloomy, like looking into a room with the light off.

  Here, it’s full color and bright light. Some time off in the future, when I think back on this adventure, I already know that’s how I will remember it. Colorful. If anything, the filter in my head will probably make it even brighter.

  I close my eyes and anchor myself in this moment, thinking hard about where I am. I am in a bed in an Airbnb on a Canadian island as far west as I can go. The past is the past, banished to a different time, a different land mass. I am finding my way, and I’ll get there.

  I lock my phone, put it upside down on the bedside table, and go to sleep.

  BEFORE

  aka

  The one where Amber Monroe is still a bitch

  aka

  The advice I should have listened to

  aka

  NO ONE LIKES A PUSHOVER, PEYTON

  We’d all been friends for maybe two or three months—Travis and me settled into our relationship, and everything going pretty okay—when I went into town with Casey and Flick. This was the kind of thing I was doing more often by then, but it still felt new and exciting, something I was lucky to be a part of.

  The plan was to wander around town for a while and then go back to Flick’s house before heading on to Eric’s for the evening, where the boys were spending a “girl-free” day hanging out. (As far as I could gather, this involved them doing the same things they did when we were around, namely, playing video games and smoking weed.) Casey, Flick, and I had spent almost half an hour in Paperchase helping Casey choose a birthday card for her dad and then moved on to Superdrug, where Flick was bouncy happy about looking at the makeup displays. She’d disappeared off, like she did sometimes, leaving Casey and me standing in the haircare aisle in companionable silence. (I say it was companionable—who knows with Casey.)

  I was staring at a display of vibrant hair dyes, wondering idly, contentedly, if I should ask Flick if she wanted to dye her hair a ridiculous color with me—something I’d daydreamed about doing with a friend for years—when I realized that someone had come up behind me and started to speak.

  “Oh my God.” The voice was a drawl. A loud, affected, familiar drawl that made my entire body turn to ice. “Peyton King?”

  I could have ignored it, but I knew too well that there was no ignoring Amber Monroe. I half turned.

  “Oh my God,” Amber said again. She looked just the same, flanked in that moment by two boys I didn’t recognize, who looked confused. The same smirk, the same mean eyes. “It is you!”

  I hadn’t said a word. She’d rendered me mute, like she always had, like nothing had changed since I’d last seen her.

  “Not going to say hi?” Amber said. “So rude.” She tutted twice, shaking her head. “Still walking around wasting oxygen, then? Why haven’t you jumped off a bridge yet?”

  “What the fuck?” Casey was suddenly beside me, spun around from where she’d been standing as distant as
ever. But there she was, and her presence was huge, bigger even than Amber’s. Her “what the fuck” was pitched so perfectly: incredulous but assured. “What the hell did you just say to her?”

  Amber looked momentarily startled. Her eyes moved from my stricken face to Casey’s glare. I saw her gather herself before she spoke again. I’d never seen her gather herself before. “Aw, Duckie, you made a friend?”

  “Oh my God,” Casey said, disgusted. “Fuck off, you little turd.”

  If I’d known beforehand that that moment was going to happen, I would have thought that Casey would be no match for Amber. But somehow, next to Casey, Amber looked smaller. And confused. She coughed out a laugh. “Wow.”

  “Do you actually think it’s okay to talk to someone like that?” Casey asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Fuck this,” one of the boys muttered. “Come on, Amber.”

  Amber rolled her eyes at us, but I could see that she was still confused by what had just happened, why Casey hadn’t been as instinctively cowed by her as I was. She sauntered off after the two boys, flipping us off when she was far enough away.