Destination Anywhere Read online

  “Sure,” he says. “That’s how we met; it’s not why we’re friends.”

  “Why are you friends, then?”

  He manages to both frown and smile at the same time. “God, I don’t know. That’s such a big question. It’s history, yeah. We’ve been through a shitload together. We like a lot of the same stuff. We have a lot of shared values, even though we disagree about a lot of things, which is important. I guess we just… Look, I’m trying to think of this in relation to this specific conversation and to you, and how I feel about my other friends, and I think the main thing is connection. Sometimes you connect with people, and it all goes from there. I think that’s the most important part of any friendship. It’s why sometimes people can meet and have nothing in common on the surface but become great friends. So even when we were eleven, Khalil and me were like, Yep. You’re my kind of person.”

  “And so I just didn’t connect to anyone?”

  “Or they didn’t connect with you,” he says. “Because of a load of weird school politics that goes on; because they thought for some bizarre reason that they shouldn’t. And you did have friends at college. Clearly they weren’t great friends, but that can happen. Friends aren’t always good.”

  I think about that first time I spoke to Flick, the way I’d been able to joke with Travis so quickly. Was that connection? Or was it just my all-consuming need? How could I tell the difference? Did it even matter?

  “I just want to say,” Beasey adds, his grin reappearing, “that I’m not an expert. I’m hearing myself and it’s like I think I’m some kind of friendship guru?” He laughs. “Totally not. I’ve literally never thought about this subject this much, ever.”

  “It’s good, though,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Makes sense. Connection.”

  He nods enthusiastically. “You can connect with people from all over, you know. They don’t have to be the same age or from the same place. And family, too. I’ve got cousins who are like my mates. Am I helping? You can tell me to shut up.”

  “You’re helping a lot,” I say. “Sorry, I know I’m weird about this stuff. It’s just such a big thing for me.”

  “I get that,” he says. “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “What did you think when you first met me?” I ask.

  Beasey considers this, and I know it’s because he’s wondering how honest to be, how to phrase what he’s thinking. “You seemed… lost,” he says. “And you had such sad eyes.”

  “I mean apart from that,” I say.

  He laughs. “I don’t think you can ‘apart from’ if it’s being lost and sad. Those are pretty fundamental things.”

  “Don’t say that,” I say. “That’s shit, isn’t it? You’re basically saying I was pathetic.”

  “I’m obviously not,” he says.

  “You are. If there was nothing else to me except those two things, I’m basically a stray dog.”

  He laughs again, even though I hadn’t been making a joke. “Peyton.”

  “What?” It comes out combative, even though he’s been being so nice to me and the last thing he deserves is a snap.

  “You’re obviously not a stray dog,” he says.

  I look away. He is not trying to hurt me, I remind myself. He is on my side.

  “This is hard for you—I get that,” he says. “I shouldn’t be flippant. Look, what can I say except I like you and I’m your friend? I can’t speak for any of those people, just me. Okay? Can that be enough?”

  “Of course that’s enough,” I say, because it’s more than enough, and I’d be an idiot to risk the best friendship I’ve ever had because I’m still burned by the crap ones. But my heart still hurts at how easily he recalls me being lost and sad, that it was that obvious. Maybe it still is? I could ask him, but I decide I’ve been needy enough for one conversation.

  I tell him I’m starting to get cold, and we head back to the RV, where we find that the others have set up a campfire and are waiting for us, bag of marshmallows at the ready, mid-conversation about the Canadian Rockies. I’d told Maja it would be okay for her to tell the rest of them the gist of why I’d been so upset, and I’m a little nervous of how they’ll react, but all that happens is that Stefan says, “You okay, Peyton?” and I say, “Yes, thanks.” And that’s it—we move on.

  NOW

  JASPER

  We spend our time together over the next few days in and out of the RV, exploring what we can in Jasper, which is a bit limited by it being off-season. On our second day, Lars, Stefan, Beasey, and I all go to the planetarium together. “Why would I go to look at a screen of the night sky when I can just look up?” Khalil asks, but I love it because it feels like the kind of thing I would do back home in my ordinary life, with normal, permanent friends, instead of my temporary gang of travelers in the kind of setting that demands your attention every single day. I like the splash of ordinary in the adventure.

  There are a couple of art galleries still open, and Beasey and I spend some time mooching through them—that’s the word he uses, “mooching”—while he asks me more about my own art, what I’d display if I had a gallery of my own. I feel closer to him—to all of them—since my mini breakdown and their understanding. Like they watched my emotional baggage explode all over the highway, but instead of leaving me to pick it all up myself, they’ve shared it between them. I feel so much lighter. I’ve been smiling all day.

  “I’d rather work with paper,” I say. “Illustrate children’s books.” It’s a dream I’ve never shared with anyone. “Or graphic novels, even.”

  “So, storytelling art rather than…” He pauses, searching for the word in his own head. “Aesthetic art?”

  I know what he means, so I nod. “I guess so.”

  “That’ll be amazing,” he says.

  “If it happens, yeah,” I say. “But that’s a big if.”

  “Nope,” he says confidently. “It’s a when.”

  I try to roll my eyes, but I’m smiling. I give his arm a little shove and he laughs, leaning over to put his arm around my shoulder. When he squeezes me playfully against his side, I have to stop myself snuggling in and staying there.

  That night, the sky is cloudless, so we head out on a mini hike, wrapped up in our coats with extra blankets, to stargaze. Jasper is a dark-sky preserve, so I’d been expecting to see more stars than I’m used to, even for Canada, but the reality of it—an impossible number of stars spread out above us, making the night sky look less like pinpricks of light through a dark blanket but a living sea of stars—is something else. There’s depth I’ve never even known was there. It makes me feel a bit weird, to be honest. It’s so eerie, and I’ve never felt so small.

  “I’ve never seen stars like this,” I say. “Not ever.”

  “In the Highlands—” Beasey begins.

  “Oh, are you from the Highlands?” Khalil asks.

  “Fuck you,” Beasey says good-naturedly. “I was just going to say that there are some good dark-sky places in the Highlands, too.”

  “Didn’t you go to the same school?” I ask, confused. “Isn’t that how you met?” I turn to Khalil. “Aren’t you also from the Highlands?”

  Khalil looks lazily over at Beasey. “Do you want to try to explain your complicated family life?”

  “I’m from the Highlands,” Beasey says. “Parents divorced when I was eleven; I had to move with my mum to Aberdeen.”

  “Where he met me,” Khalil interjects.

  “Where I met Khalil,” Beasey agrees. “When I left school, I went back to live with my dad to work at the hotel he runs.”

  “That doesn’t sound that complicated,” I say.

  “Let’s just say neither of my parents liked me wanting to be with the other one,” Beasey says. He shrugs and looks away, then says, “Weird how you can sum up something in one sentence that just strips out all the emotional shit, right?”

  I’m not sure what to say. I glance at Khalil, who says, “I worked a
t Beasey’s dad’s hotel too, for a while. It’s true; the Highlands are beautiful.” He gives Beasey’s shoulder a small, affectionate nudge, then smiles at me. “Hey, one day, when the three of us are back in the UK, everyone should visit.”

  “Amazing,” I say.

  “That should be the reunion,” Beasey says, brightening.

  “Sounds perfect,” Seva says.

  “I’ll be there,” Stefan says, nodding. “Let’s make it a plan.”

  “Speaking of plans,” Lars says. “Have you figured out what’s next for you yet, Peyton?”

  Instantly I tense, like the words themselves are a test I haven’t prepared for. Because of course I haven’t figured it out. I haven’t even really thought about it. Why would I, when everything here is so good, beyond good? I have Canada and friends and an RV. And, more than that, I have myself. The person I’d always hoped I’d one day be, given the right circumstances, the right people.

  “Aren’t you going to see your grandad?” Stefan adds, when I don’t say anything.

  “Peyton doesn’t need to think about that now,” Beasey says.

  “Time’s running out, though,” Khalil says.

  “You should stay in Banff with Lars and me,” Stefan says. “Work at the ski resort, like us.”

  “I wish,” I say. I wish hard. “I don’t have a work visa.”

  “What about you, Seva?” Khalil asks. “Do you know what you’re going to do when this is over?”

  “Toronto,” Seva says, yawning. “My new job starts next week. I will fly from Calgary the day I drop off the RV.”

  “See?” Khalil says to me, pointing at Seva. “A plan.”

  He’s teasing in a warm way, but I still shrug and look away, because I think if I talk I might do something embarrassing like cry. Why are we suddenly all talking about what’s next when now is so good? I don’t want to think about everyone scattering across the continent, how little time we have left together.

  Seva calls it a night after ten more minutes, and we all head back to the RV together. Beasey and I hang back, walking behind everyone else. He drops his voice low.

  “Sorry about them getting at you about your plans,” he says. “They’re just worrying for you.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’ll be fine, though. I’ve actually been thinking about the stuff you said before about my grandad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Maybe I should go and see him. I’ve never been this close to him before. And he’s an artist—did I tell you that?”

  “No.” He looks baffled. “If he’s an artist, why wouldn’t you want to see him?”

  “It’s just not a thing in my family. I’ve never even met him. We barely talk about him, except if my grandma’s complaining about him, or my dad is telling us not to turn out like him. But now I’m thinking that it doesn’t have to be like that? Maybe I should meet him; find out his side of the story.”

  “What’s the side that you know?”

  “Basically that he walked out,” I say. “When my dad was a kid.”

  “And he moved to Canada?” Beasey says. “You have a family member that ran away from their life to Canada?”

  I roll my eyes. “No—calm down. This isn’t a parallel-lives story. He ended up in Canada. Settled here about twenty or thirty years ago, maybe? Before I was born, anyway. But he moved around a bit before then, I think.”

  “Maybe not parallel lives, but I’m seeing some similarities here.”

  I shake my head. “Imaginary ones.”

  “But that must be why you came here, right?” he asks. “Because he’s here? I was going to ask you why you chose Canada, of all the places in the world. It makes more sense now I know about him.”

  “It wasn’t him,” I say. “He barely featured. I guess maybe him living here made the whole country seem less… I don’t know, abstract, than other places. But I would have chosen here anyway.”

  “Why, though?” he asks. “And actually, as I’m asking, why did you leave at all?”

  “You know why,” I say, surprised. “I told you about what happened.”

  “Yeah, but how did that turn into getting on a plane and running away?” I open my mouth to protest, and he laughs and says, “Or whatever phrasing you want to use.”

  I think about those days after I’d gotten back from the hospital, how lost I’d felt, how pointless everything seemed. Pretending to go to college and then just going to the library instead. The night before I’d left, sitting in Dad’s office, staring at the globe. It’s like remembering someone I don’t recognize.

  “It’s kind of hard to explain,” I say.

  He smiles. “Try me.”

  BEFORE

  The leaving

  The first thing was the hairdresser.

  It was a Friday, six days after I’d left hospital, and I was spending another afternoon when I should have been at college just wandering around town. The sign outside said they were taking walk-ins.

  Fancy a change? 20% off first appointments.

  “What can I do for you?” the hairdresser, whose name was Chloe, asked me, meeting my eye in the mirror.

  “I actually don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t want this.”

  When I was a kid, I had blond curls. I was cute then, all big brown eyes and wide smile. The blond grew out, the cuteness faded, and my smile got smaller and smaller until secondary school killed it. I wanted that Peyton back. The happy, hopeful Peyton.

  I showed her a photo of child-me on my phone that I’d found on Mum’s Facebook account. “Can you do a seventeen-year-old version of that?” I asked. It sounded like a pretty stupid request, but she understood.

  “Sure,” she said. While she worked she asked me, “Why the big change?” and I told her about Travis and my friends who weren’t my friends, how everything had turned out so wrong.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  “Sounds like you need a change,” she said. In the mirror, she smiled at me for the first time. “People always start with their hair.”

  “Do they?” I imagined all the people she must have had in that chair, wanting to be transformed.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s the quickest way to feel—or, at least, look—like a different person. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s only temporary.”

  I nodded.

  “But,” she added. “It’s only surface. That’s the thing. It’s not real change. If you want things to be different, you’ve got to go deeper.”

  Chloe was right, of course. Hadn’t I done this exact thing before college? Changed my hair and expected everything else to change as a result? If I wanted more, I needed to do more. Go deeper. Find the root of the problem and rip it right out.

  “How?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, love. It’s your life.”

  That wasn’t my moment of epiphany, but I think it started there. Someone telling me that my life was my own, which is so obvious, yet so easy to forget. My life wasn’t the college my parents made me go to or the subjects they chose for me. It wasn’t the friends I’d latched on to out of panic and loneliness. The boyfriend I loathed but thought I needed. My life was me, and I was the only constant thing in it I could depend on.

  Chloe made me close my eyes while she finished and blow-dried my hair so she could give me her “reveal moment.” When I opened my eyes I saw myself transformed, as I’d hoped. My hair blond, bright and cheerful, not tempered by lowlights, framing my face in wide, confident curls.

  “Is this what you had in mind?” she asked me.

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  * * *

  I went home to an empty house, my parents out for an anniversary dinner they’d considered canceling before I’d convinced them to go. My happiness at my transformation lasted for about an hour, then faded, like all highs do. I missed my friends. Or, more accurately, having friends. I didn’t want to, but I did.

  I went into Dad’s s
tudy and slunk around the room for a while, walking so close to the bookshelves that my elbow rubbed along the spines of the books. When I’d done the full circuit twice, I slumped into Dad’s ridiculous OTT leather chair—the one I hadn’t been allowed to sit on as a kid and that was probably still technically off limits—slouching low so my legs dangled over one arm of the chair, my head crooked against the other, eyes gazing up to the ceiling. I stayed like that for a while, trying to summon a feeling, an emotion I could latch on to. But there was nothing, just a blank space. Was this it? Had I finally lost the last part of me that felt? That cared enough to feel?

  I kicked myself up into a proper sitting position and reached forward to open one of the desk drawers. I opened another, and then another, until I found what I’d only been half expecting to find: a bottle of whiskey, three-quarters full. I uncapped the bottle and took a slow sip, closing my eyes against the burn. Thanks, Dad.

  It helped, that whiskey. It made time slow and my skin warm. When I thought about Travis, he seemed smaller somehow, so distant from this room and me in this chair and the bottle in my hand. I am real. I am here. I flipped through the jotter on Dad’s desk, eyes scanning vaguely for my own name. I finally found it in the top corner of one page, an idle scrawl.

  Peyton—Bude? ASK.

  I squinted at the scribble for a while, assuming at first that I was misreading Dad’s handwriting. The whiskey had slowed my usual thought streams, so it took me probably longer than it should have done to realize that Bude was the name of a town in Cornwall, the very-far-away home of my grandmother. Ask who? Me, if I’d go? Grandma, if I could stay? He wanted to send me away. Banish me to the far corner of Cornwall, make me somewhere else’s problem.

  But no, I was going off the deep end. I was in the middle of the school year; I couldn’t leave college. My parents wouldn’t really send me away, however disappointed in and confused by me they were. The note was probably old anyway, and nothing to do with what was happening right now. No one was going to make me leave. My heart calmed. I drank some more whiskey.