Destination Anywhere Page 15

  “Well, I told border control so they’d let me through and wouldn’t think I was just trying to get into the country to… I don’t know, do whatever it is they think people without legit reasons to enter do. And I mentioned it to you guys because you were all so freaked out that I didn’t have a plan.”

  Beasey looks at me for a long moment, his expression part confused, part incredulous. “Jesus,” he says eventually. “You really have no fucking clue what you’re doing, do you?”

  This is clearly true, but I’m immediately defensive anyway, especially because of the unBeaseylike use of “fucking.” “I’m traveling,” I say.

  “No, we’re traveling,” he says. “You just turned up in a foreign country completely unprepared and got lucky.”

  Also true. “That’s not fair.”

  “What are you going to do when we’ve all moved on?” he asks. “How are you going to look after yourself?”

  “I can look after myself,” I say, stung. “I’m not incompetent. This whole trip with all of you has been amazing, but that’s because I like you all, not because I need you.”

  He looks dubious.

  “You think I should go home, too?”

  “No!” he says. “Of course not. But maybe have a clearer idea of what you’re going to do, yeah.”

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll make a plan. But not right now. I just want to live in the moment.” I hesitate, then let myself say, “With you. And everyone else. That’s enough for now, isn’t it?”

  His expression softens into a smile. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s enough for now.”

  * * *

  When everyone gets back, I can tell by the way that they smile at us that they’re expecting something to have happened between Beasey and me. I’m embarrassed, and it makes me wonder if Beasey had had some expectations of his own when he offered to stay with me tonight. But he didn’t try anything, not even the hint of a move, so I decide to not worry about it. He can’t be my boyfriend, because we’d have no future, and we couldn’t be anything casual, because we’re in an RV with other people. So it doesn’t matter that when he stands close to me my skin tingles and I get little electric flashes of what it would be like to kiss him. In another life, maybe the two of us could have been something, but this is this life, and that can’t be.

  Besides, the last time I had a boyfriend, that boyfriend was Travis, and now that’s all I can think about, lying in the dark in the RV, unable to sleep. Travis and our relationship. Trying to trace a line from the me I was with him to the person I am now—the imaginary me I could be with someone like Beasey. The problem is that I still don’t really understand any of it, even in hindsight.

  For one thing, our relationship covered almost none of the bases I’d read about and seen in films. We didn’t have the honeymoon phase of being all over each other, not being able to get enough of each other, starry-eyed and smiley. We didn’t dance around “I love you” until a big emotional moment brought it to the surface. We didn’t date, or even go on dates. I never met his parents. He didn’t write me love letters or kiss me under the stars.

  So what did we have? We were a couple, after all, for an entire year, and it can’t just have been about sex (for him) and his friends (for me). I think about how I drew little comic strips for us, The Adventures of Peyton and Travis, which he loved, his cheeks and ears pinkening when he smiled down at the cartoon versions of us. (Who were definitely having more fun than we were, safe in the pencil lines of their cartoon lives.) Sometimes he could be sweet; even soft. He called me Pey instead of Pey-Pey, which I liked because it felt like something that was just ours.

  But I didn’t love him, and he didn’t love me, and I knew that even as we said the words to each other. And, honestly, I still don’t understand how I could have spent a year with someone I didn’t love, didn’t particularly even like that much. Now that it’s all blurred into memory, I find myself thinking, But what did we talk about? We must have talked sometimes. What did we do the times we were alone, when we weren’t having sex? But I guess the truth is that we weren’t really alone all that much, and when we were, we had sex.

  God, sex with Travis. My memories aren’t exactly golden, but more than anything I think I feel sorry for him; for both of us. He didn’t know what he was doing, did he? And I never told him, just let him talk to me how he thought he was supposed to, touch me like he’d seen men touch women in videos online. I should have tried to tell him or show him, and I didn’t, because I didn’t really care, did I? Not about him or how good he was as a boyfriend, because I thought it didn’t matter. It wasn’t ever really about him, and maybe on some level—if I believed that Travis had levels—he knew that.

  This is when I can’t help myself from trying to be fair. To remember that there were moments when he was good; sweet, even. The time he brought me a little Tupperware box, lined with a tea towel, full of brownies that his mum had made, because he thought I might like them. When he dried the rain off a bench I was about to sit on with the hoodie he’d been wearing moments earlier. How he stroked my hair when I dozed with my head in his lap, stoned and sleepy, while he played video games. How he shut Eric down that time he made a joke about how they could “share” or “swap” Flick and me for a night. He could have played along, been part of the joke from the inside and left me on the other side, but he didn’t, and I appreciated that. My point is, there were moments. But they were just that: moments. And a tiny number, really, over almost a year. Like sprinkling a handful of hundreds and thousands over a giant bowl of shit.

  Besides, let’s be honest, I could easily come up with plenty of moments when he wasn’t good, or sweet, or soft. Like how he’d say, when I was annoying him, “Don’t be a needy little bitch,” and I’d stutter and apologize and shake my head because if there was anything—anything—I truly did not want to be, it was a needy little bitch. How sometimes, when we were with our friends, he’d roll his eyes at me if I said something he thought was stupid, or—worse—roll his eyes at Eric. When I’d message him and he wouldn’t message back for hours. How on four different occasions we’d arranged for him to pick me up before school and he just forgot, so I had to get the bus and just be late. How he’d look at me with such bored disdain when I’d lose it and yell at him and I’d end up crying, all that buried frustration and disappointment rising to the surface and leaking out of my face. (Then he’d sigh and apologize, wrap me up into a hug, kiss me until I gave in, his tongue in my mouth and my head going, Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Boy. Friend.)

  I try to remember if it felt as depressing at the time as it feels in retrospect. I was high for a lot of it, for one thing, so a lot of the time it just didn’t matter. I think for most of it I was just grateful. So fucking grateful that these people were willing to be my friends, even if that friendship didn’t much look like the kind of friendship I’d actually wanted or imagined. If I broke up with him, I’d lose them; that was clear. It was what had happened with his last girlfriend. Maybe if I hadn’t kissed him in the kitchen that first night at Flick’s and chosen him as my route in instead of trusting they’d be my friends regardless, things would have been different, but I did, and they weren’t. So I had to believe he was worth it. What other choice did I have?

  I stay awake for a long time in the RV, letting the thoughts run and run through my head. When sleep finally comes, I dream of him. He’s squinting at me through a window; I’m sitting on a bus. “Pey?” he says, voice muffled, and I shake my head, say, “No—that’s not me.” I turn away to see that the bus is empty, rows and rows of empty seats, and when I look back he’s gone too. I’m alone.

  * * *

  Maja has planned a proper hike for the following day, and she’s enthusiastic when we all wake up in the morning, asking who wants to come.

  “You can’t come to Whistler and not hike,” she says. “God made this place for hiking.”

  “I thought he made it for skiing,” Stefan says, drooped over the table, eyes still half c
losed.

  “Not in October,” she says. “This is hiking weather.”

  “What’s the hike?” Khalil asks. “We were thinking of kayaking today.” He gestures at Lars and Stefan and Beasey, who all nod.

  “Hiking later,” Lars says. “We’re saving our hiking energy for Jasper and Banff.”

  “You can build up the energy again,” Maja says. “But okay.” She rolls her eyes, then smiles at me and Seva. “You two?”

  “I will be sleeping,” Seva says. “I need more sleep.”

  Maja’s face has dropped a little in disappointment.

  “What’s the hike?” I ask. “I’ll come.”

  She shows me the route she’s chosen, which is a hiking trail to Rainbow Lake. “I did some research,” she says. “This seems the best one for us at this time of year. It’s a decent hike.”

  This turns out to mean, I find out once we’ve started walking, that it will take about six or seven hours. I’ve never spent that much time one-on-one with anyone who wasn’t family, except maybe Travis, who doesn’t count. Despite my low-key concern, though, I’m excited. The pictures she’s shown me look gorgeous, the weather is crisp and fresh, and if nothing else it will be nice to spend some time away from the RV and the boys.

  The trail takes us through deep forest, over bridges, past gigantic trees and waterfalls. My feet begin to blister after a couple of hours, but Maja is prepared with a mini first aid kit, handing over plasters when we stop for a drink of water. I close my eyes as we sit so I can listen to the sound of the forest, the birds, the wind.

  “Do you do this kind of thing a lot?” I ask when we start walking again.

  “Hiking?”

  I nod.

  “Yes, when I can. I want to do the Pacific Crest Trail next year, if I can get myself ready and save enough money.”

  “Is that a long one?”

  She laughs. “Yes, it’s long. Over two and a half thousand miles. It’s several months’ worth of walking.”

  “Wow!” I say, instead of what I’m thinking, which is, Why?

  “It’s a dream of mine,” she says. “But we shall see. Have you done much hiking before?”

  I shake my head. “Not really. We used to do big family walks when I was younger. My dad is big on walking. We did Snowdonia—you know, in Wales?—a couple of times when I was a kid, but we haven’t done anything like that for years.”

  It makes me feel guilty thinking about Dad and how we used to go on those family walks. I haven’t even thought of them for years. Maybe, when I get home, I can suggest we try hiking together again. Maybe all of us, as a family. We could do Ben Nevis or something.

  “My boyfriend and I did Snowdonia,” Maja says. “We did each of the UK peaks.”

  “You have a boyfriend?” I ask in surprise, wondering why she hasn’t mentioned him before, and thinking about how well I’d thought she and Seva were getting along.

  “Not anymore,” she says. “My boyfriend at the time. Ex now.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “We were together for a while,” she says. “Happily, I thought. But he found somebody else. Sometimes, that happens.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, inadequately.

  She shrugs but doesn’t reply. I wonder if it’s okay to call her ex a dickhead.

  “Is that why you came to Canada?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “We always talked about doing a big hiking trip here. We have friends near Banff that we planned to see. I was feeling very lost in the life that was left without him back home, so I decided to take the trip myself. My friends are waiting for me in Banff and I think it will help a lot to see them.” She smiles at me. “Good people make bad things survivable.”

  I nod.

  “So tell me, Peyton. What brought you all the way out here?”

  Something about where we are, how peaceful it all is, how casually open she just was, how unobtrusively friendly she’s been to me this whole time—it loosens me, and I talk. I tell her slowly as we make our way through the forest about the bullies at Claridge; the loneliness; Travis and Flick, and how having them hadn’t made the loneliness go away. That’s as much as I say, though; I can’t bring myself to tell her just how bad it got, how I changed, what I did. I just focus on the bullying, how deeply and profoundly it hurt me, in a way I worry I will always carry.

  “There should be a different word for it,” I say. “Bullied. It makes it sound so trivial.”

  “It doesn’t,” Maja says.

  “It does, though. It’s such a soft word, like the kind of thing you should just laugh off and get over. When I said to my parents, Some kids are bullying me, I think they just thought it was normal. Like, just something that everyone goes through at school at some point. There are so many words for this kind of thing in adulthood, you know? Like ‘harassment’ and ‘abuse.’ But because it’s kids hurting other kids, it’s all called bullying. I don’t get why that’s okay. They… they destroyed me. Day by day, over the years.”

  I’m just at the point where I feel like I might start crying when we arrive at Rainbow Lake, and I stop talking, gasping out a laugh instead.

  “Oh, wow,” I say.

  Maja lets out a happy sigh. “Worth the walk, yes?”

  We find a spot by the side of the lake and take out the lunches we’d packed that morning. For a couple of minutes, we eat in companionable silence, until Maja says, “I’m sorry you were bullied. That’s a terrible thing to experience at such a young age, when you’re finding out who you are. It’s like…” She considers. “Like taking a cake out while it’s mid-bake and punching it.”

  I surprise myself with how loudly I laugh. “That’s exactly what it’s like.”

  “The cake will still taste good, though,” she says, pushing the analogy. “It will be an excellent cake.”

  I laugh again. “Well, I hope so. I’m sorry your boyfriend went off with someone else.”

  “Me too,” she says. “It was devastating. But I try not to take it too personally. You can’t set your self-esteem by other people. It is never your fault if people don’t see what’s good in you.” She wipes the crumbs off her hands onto the grass in front of her, like she hasn’t just said something profound that I’m going to file away in my head to bring out every time I remember Amber Monroe and her sneer.

  “It’s hard not to do that, though,” I say. “Listen to what other people think, I mean.”

  “Of course it’s hard,” she says. “Hiking is also hard. But look.” She gestures out toward the vast lake. “The rewards.”

  I smile. “True. I just wish… I just wish it was all a bit easier. Other people, you know?”

  “If everything was always good, no one would ever learn anything.”

  “Doesn’t seem like the lessons are worth it.”

  She shakes her head. “They always are. I believe that. You’re going to have so many wonderful, enriching relationships of all kinds in your life, and they’ll all be better because of what you’ve learned so far.”

  It feels nice to believe this could be true, for there to be a reason for the bad stuff that happened; lessons to be learned rather than just mistakes to regret. Maybe one day it’ll all just be stories I’ll tell, snippets from an unhappy time. Maybe some of them will even be funny rather than tragic. Maybe in a few years I’ll be able to laugh about it. Something like The Punch, that could be funny, if I told it in the right way. I thought it was funny at the time, didn’t I? Or, at least, I told myself I did.

  BEFORE

  The Punch

  aka

  Hey, Peyton, remember that time you got punched in the face?

  aka

  You could make a blanket out of all these red flags

  It must have been about a month or so after my birthday that the punch happened. We were all our usual mix of drunk and/or high. I have a vague memory that we might have been playing Monopoly, or even Risk, though that seems unlikely, requiring way more brain cells than we possessed on t
hose evenings. It was late into the night, probably past two a.m., and we’d reached the loudest point of our time together, the kind of time when Flick and Eric would start either dry-humping on the sofa or screaming at each other across the room.

  That night, they were putting on a show. Eric told Nico that Flick had “the best tits” in the county and she shrieked, smacking him, retorting that, actually, they were the best in the country. It got even louder, her cupping one in each hand, thrusting out her chest, a wide, sloppy grin on her face, Eric asking—yelling—“Who told you that? Who told you?” and then Nico telling her she should show us all so we could judge, and of course, being Flick, specifically being drunk and/or high Flick—she did, whipping up her top and bra in one motion for a short-but-long-enough flash. Eric, groaning: “Fuck’s sake, Flick,” but proudly, a shit-eating smug grin on his face. Nico: “Pretty nice, yeah.” Me, my tone too full of admiration: “Flick!” And then Travis: “Jesus, you’re such a slut.”

  Do you know what kind of hell can break loose when no one is sober in a group, there are no adults of any kind around, and one guy insults another guy’s girlfriend? Well, I’ll tell you: It’s a volley of swears from the boyfriend, swiftly returned by the insulting party, as someone’s glass—impossible to know whose—flies above all our heads to smash, loud and dramatic, against the wall. The insulted—Flick—sitting motionless, her expression betraying her mortification even as she tried, so painfully, to laugh. Callum telling everyone to chill out. Eric lunging at Travis, the flying of fists. Me, out of some bizarre unearned protectiveness, trying to pull Travis to safety.

  So who got a fist in the face? Yep, that would be me. And I mean right in the face. Eric’s entire fist smacking into my cheekbone so hard I stumbled backward, tripped over Flick’s shoulder, and ended up on my back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, which was distorted by a kaleidoscope of stars.

  “Holy fucking shit, Eric!” I remember Casey’s voice, her hand pulling on mine. “You stupid shit!” I was upright but still sitting, her hand touching gingerly at my face. “Peyton? Peyton!”