Destination Anywhere Read online

  And then three thoughts trickled in, one after the other. The first was, I wish I could leave, though. The second was, Cornwall isn’t far enough away. The third was, Who cares if it’s the middle of the school year?

  They were great, those thoughts. They warmed me right up, made my nerves dance. I smiled at them as they circled around me. I imagined myself packing a bag and walking out of the house, closing the front door behind me, getting on a bus that would drive me right past college, out of town, across Surrey and to the airport. I’d get on a flight somewhere. Where? Anywhere. Just… anywhere. I’d cross time zones to get there and I’d leave everything hateful and sad and painful behind. I would finally—finally—escape.

  I sat up and leaned over to look at the globe Dad kept by his desk, the ridiculous ornate one he bought himself for his fortieth birthday. I spun it slowly, closing my eyes like I used to when I was a kid, and let my finger drop. Wherever it lands, I will go. I opened my eyes. My finger was resting somewhere in the middle of the South Atlantic.

  I drank some more whiskey. I thought, Fuck you, then.

  Where would I want to go? I sat back on the chair, tucking my knees up under my chin, crossing my arms around me. Far. That was the first thing. The most important thing. Thailand, like Dillon did the summer after his first year at uni. Argentina, right on the lowermost tip. Nepal. Somewhere in the Arctic, or Antarctica; whichever is the one you can visit. The world was so full of places that weren’t where I was. I pulled out my phone and opened a browser, typing, Where would I be if I was furthest from home? The website I clicked on asked for my country, my city. It told me the furthest I could be, some twelve thousand miles away, was a town in New Zealand.

  New Zealand, that would be all right. I could go to New Zealand. I could go and never come back. A few more taps and I was looking at flights. Almost a grand for a one-way ticket, leaving in eight hours. For a moment I was so full of longing, so desperate with it, that time suspended around me and I just… ached. I needed to be on that plane. I wanted to walk onto the tarmac of an airport in a city on the other side of the world and know that no one, no one, was going to laugh at me or misunderstand me or hate me or hurt me or even fucking know me.

  I looked back at the globe and put my finger on the small, shriveled island I lived on, then leaned around and put my other hand on the other side—New Zealand. Also a small island. I wondered if I’d have the same problems if I lived there. I ran my finger back over the globe, over oceans and continents and borders, until my fingertips touched again over Europe. So much world. So many countries. So many people.

  God, imagine being that far from everything wrong. Wouldn’t it all seem so small? I could send postcards to everyone that wouldn’t miss me. Look, I’d say. I made it.

  My eyes were wet and burning. I went back to Google. Where do people go to get lost? Bali. Iceland. South Africa. The Alps.

  Where are people happy? Finland. Norway. Denmark. (The Scandinavians are clearly onto something.) The first non-European country on the list was Canada.

  Where do the nice people live? Another list. Canada.

  Of course. Canada’s known for being nice. It’s like its thing. I gave the globe another spin and traced my finger across the length of the country. That would be a good place to get lost. That giant country where people were nice.

  One flight, that’s what I should do. A one-way flight to Vancouver. That, Google told me, was nearly five thousand miles away. Far enough, not quite as scary-far as New Zealand. English-speaking, apart from Quebec. Safe.

  Fuck it, I could do it. I could do anything I wanted. I could pack a rucksack with nothing but clothes and my sketch pad and just go. I could do some old-school backpacking. That was still a thing, right? Make my way from one end of the country to the other, like a challenge. I could start in Vancouver and end up in… I looked at the globe again. St. John’s, Newfoundland.

  And at some point, and I really don’t know when or how it happened, I stopped thinking “I could” and started thinking “I will.” And then it was “I am.” And there I was on the British Airways website, looking at flights, mentally packing my bag.

  And in the back of my head, the steady beat of I have to get out of here or I will die. Honestly, it was like a drumbeat. A warning and a promise, and it didn’t even scare me, that was the thing, because it was so true. I felt how true it was. I had to get out of there or I wouldn’t survive. That’s the real answer of how I got here. Everything that had happened—all the bullying, and college, and Travis and the drugs and being so fucking lonely for so long—all led to that moment and that thought.

  So I know that it sounds like I did it on a whim, that I didn’t think it through, and I’m only seventeen and it was a stupid thing to do and at some point I’ll have to go home and face the consequences and all the same problems will still be there waiting for me when I get back, yes. But all of that? It doesn’t matter. Because I had to get out of there or I would die.

  NOW

  THE ICEFIELDS PARKWAY

  The next afternoon, it snows. I’m nervous about how it will affect the roads, but Seva shakes his head. “This is nothing,” he says. “Barely a flurry. If it was a snowstorm, I would be concerned. But this will melt quickly at this low level. Not a problem.”

  When the snow stops we go on a walk together because I want to see Jasper in the snow, and Seva wants sweet treats from Tim Hortons. We’ve been walking for less than five minutes when I slip on a hidden patch of ice and stumble, very gracefully, toward the ground. Luckily, Seva catches me before my head collides with the concrete. He lifts me to my feet, muttering something in Russian.

  “I’m fine!” I say, brushing down my legs.

  “You are so reckless,” Seva says, smiling affectionately, shaking his head. “You should watch how you walk in these conditions. I can drive the RV, but I cannot steer you.”

  I laugh. “You don’t need to protect me. I can take care of myself.”

  “We all feel protective over you,” Seva says. “You are like the group’s baby sister.”

  “Baby?” I repeat.

  “Younger,” he amends.

  “Hmmmm,” I say. “This isn’t fair, anyway. I didn’t grow up in wintery conditions. I’m still learning. You know how often we get proper snow like this where I live? Like, never.” I turn to look across our small section of Jasper, covered in white. “Not like you,” I say. “You must have had this all the time. Right?” When he doesn’t answer, I add, “Does this remind you of home?”

  Seva’s forehead crinkles and he shakes his head, unsmiling. “You mean Russia?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I do not think of Russia as home,” he says. “Not for some time.”

  “Oh,” I say awkwardly. “Um. Sorry. Where… where is home, then?”

  Seva is looking out across the snowscape, the soft frown still on his face. “I do not know yet,” he says. “I’m still looking.”

  Can I ask? Is there any way to ask without being rude? I’d had a vague idea that Seva’s backstory was going to be exciting. A spy, maybe. A political exile. The kind of thing you don’t bring up, so I’d been careful not to pry.

  “How long have you been traveling?” I ask.

  “Seven years,” he says. “I have not been traveling the way Beasey and Khalil have; it has not been an adventure. I have been finding work and staying where I can to earn money, then moving on when a visa demands it. I have been back to Russia a few times when I had no choice, worked there for a while, and then left again for the first place I could.”

  Carefully, I say, “So you can go back?”

  A smile twitches on his face. “Ah, you are thinking I am some sort of exile? Of course.”

  I flush an immediate, guilty red. “Well, I…”

  “Too many films,” he says, teasing. “Too many books. No, nothing exciting like that. I can return whenever I please. I just do not please.”

  “Why not?” Quickly, I add, “You
don’t have to tell me.”

  He looks at me, then away. “It is a sad story.”

  “Oh.” I feel like I’ve wandered into a territory I don’t belong in. “You don’t have to tell me,” I say again.

  “My mother and sister were killed,” he says, and my heart lurches. “Not in an exciting way. A car accident. The kind that happens every day.” He flicks his hand in the air as he says this, like a shrug, though there’s a deep pain in his face that makes me hurt just to see it. “My father and I were not close, and their deaths made that worse. He remarried and made another family, and I left.” He glances back to me. “You see, it is very mundane. The kind of story that happens everywhere, all over the world.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Has it helped, being away?”

  He nods. “Yes, very much. My sister, she wanted to travel. I used to tease her for that.”

  “What was her name?” I ask.

  He smiles and looks properly at me. “Yana. You remind me of her. I was not sure if I should say, but you do. She was seventeen. Bold, like you.”

  I’m about to say, automatically, I’m not bold! But I stop myself. This isn’t for me; it’s for him.

  “I feel protective,” Seva continues. “Like a brother. For you.”

  “That’s why you came up with this plan?” I ask gently. “The motor home, and driving us all this way?”

  “The world is not always safe,” he says very quietly. “Not even somewhere like this. You seemed as though you felt lost, and that can be a dangerous thing. I saw a way to help, and so did everybody else.”

  I’m not sure how to feel. I’d sensed, on some level, that Seva saw me as a little sister, like most of them did, but I hadn’t realized quite how deep that went. It’s a nice thing to be cared for, of course, but I’d hoped we’d all been having this adventure together because we liked each other. Not because they thought I needed protecting.

  But I have needed protecting, haven’t I? Who knows where I would have been without them.

  “I have upset you?” he asks.

  “No!” I say quickly. He just told me about his tragic life and I’m going to be upset because they’ve all been so nice to me? No. “I was just processing.” I smile at him and make robot hands. “Meep morp.”

  He laughs.

  “Beasey said that too,” I say, putting my hands back down to my sides. “That I looked lost. I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”

  “Perhaps if you had had a plan,” Seva says, quite drily. “But there you were, seventeen, on the other side of the world from where you should be, looking at us with such bafflement when we asked where you were going. In Canada! In October!”

  I feel my face start to redden again. “Okay, don’t rub it in.”

  “One day, you will see someone like that and you will help them,” he says. “You will be glad to do it, as we have been for you.”

  “You must think I’m really silly.”

  “Silly? No, not at all. Why do you say that?”

  “For coming here for, like, nothing. Running away from my easy life just because I fell out with some friends.”

  Seva shakes his head. “That is not what you really think,” he says. “And it is not what I think. You are dismissing your own unhappiness, and there is no reason to do that. I know you must have been deeply unhappy to feel you had to leave. That is not a small thing. I understand. It is how I felt.”

  “God, Seva, yours was so much worse—”

  “No,” he interrupts me. “That is a pointless game to play. Pain is not a hierarchy. It is like…” He considers. “A reservoir. It all comes from the same place. Sometimes the volume changes, but people can drown in three inches of water. You and me, we have had very different lives, but we have this in common—the unhappiness and the leaving. There is a whole world. You do not have to stay where you are unhappy.”

  I look at him, taking in his familiar face, so serious and soft at the same time. I’m struck by a sudden gratitude that he has shared his story with me, that he’s opened up. There’s so much trust in it; a depth of friendship I had once only imagined and never dared attempt with anyone at home. I want to hug him. Instead, I say, “You’re a really good brother.”

  “Better now than I was,” he says. “As soon as I was no longer a brother, I became the best one I could be.”

  “You’re still a brother,” I say.

  NOW

  JASPER—BANFF THE ICEFIELDS PARKWAY

  The Icefields Parkway—or Highway 93, technically—is 144 miles of epic, connecting the two national parks, Jasper and Banff. As a straight drive, it would take about three hours, but we’ve allowed ourselves two full days to make all the stops we want, plus a third day for Lake Louise before we finish our trip in the town of Banff and everyone goes their separate ways. Aka the breaking of my heart.

  The highway is a wide, smooth road framed by mountains from basically every angle. Everywhere you look, there are mountains, trees, lakes, glaciers. We stop a bunch of times just for gawping/photo purposes, but our first actual stop is at Athabasca Falls and canyon. A little farther on there’s a lookout, apparently known as Goat Lick, over the glacial blue of the Athabasca River, winding beside a sea of trees stretching all the way to the mountains in the distance.

  “Imagine if you lived in Banff and worked in Jasper,” Lars says dreamily. “You could make this drive every day. It would be your commute.”

  “Don’t you think the magic would wear off, though?” I ask. “If you were doing it twice a day, every day?”

  “Not for me,” Lars says. “Every day, I would stop right here, and I would say, Wow! I would see it in all colors, all seasons.”

  Stefan is smiling affectionately, nodding. “I will say Wow! with you,” he says.

  Lars grins at him—the kind of grin that is just for the two of them—and takes his hand.

  “You should do it,” I say. “And set up an Instagram for it. You can call it ‘The Daily Goat Lick.’ Oh! Or make one of those a-second-a-day videos.”

  Lars groans. “God, now I want to do it even more, but I can’t, and now I’m sad.”

  Later we stop at the Columbia Icefield where, if we’d only come a few weeks earlier, we’d have been able to do the Glacier Skywalk, which is a glass-floored walkway built into a cliff edge hundreds of feet above the valleys and waterfalls below. But it’s closed for the season—Beasey fails to hide his relief—and I’m disappointed until Khalil suggests we pool the money we would have each spent and use it to go out for dinner in Banff.

  “I’m going to have to come back one day a bit earlier in the year, aren’t I?” I say.

  “Yes,” Stefan says.

  “We all are,” Khalil says.

  I try to imagine myself in a few years’ time, when I’ll be old enough to come back without anyone yelling at me to come home. Maybe I’ll have a boyfriend with me or, better still, a friend. A best friend, a permanent one. I’ll tell them all about this trip, the things we saw, how loads of stuff was closed because I’d accidentally come in the off-season. They’ll say, But was it still worth it? and I’ll say, Yes, yes, yes.

  There’s never a moment on our journey when there isn’t a view that wouldn’t look out of place on a postcard, but there are also specified places on the route to stop to experience The Awe in full. At the Stutfield Glacier Viewpoint, we sit around a picnic bench together in almost total silence, all of us trying to take just one picture that captures even a slice of The Awe. We all fail, and one by one we give up and just sit.

  We spend the last couple of hours of daylight walking up to Parker Ridge, hoping for a good sunset. We don’t get much of one—too many mountain peaks in the way, though there are some nice colors sweeping across the sky—but the view is worth it anyway, right over the Saskatchewan Glacier.

  “If someone came by with a gun and said, Spell ‘Saskatchewan’ or you’re dead,” Beasey says, conversationally, “how many of us do you think would survive?”

&nb
sp; “What a way to go, though,” Khalil says. “A spelling test.”

  We take our time before we head back to the RV, a few of us lagging behind to take in the view for longer. I end up at the back of the group beside Lars, who had sat beside me as I sketched, his attention on his phone. As we walk, slow and companionable even though the two of us haven’t spent much—if any—one-on-one time together, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I say in surprise.

  Lars takes a hold of the cigarette between his teeth and quirks a smile at me. “Lots you don’t know about me.”

  “Seriously, how can we have spent the last couple of weeks in an RV and I didn’t realize you smoked?”

  “I keep it away from the RV,” he says. “I try to be a considerate smoker. Do you mind? I can save it for later.”

  “No, go ahead,” I say.

  “You want one?”

  I surprise myself by wanting to say yes, to feel that camaraderie again of smoking with a friend. “No, but thanks.” I watch as he lights, closes his eyes, inhales. “So what else don’t I know?”

  He smiles again and opens his eyes, exhaling. “I can play the drums.”

  “Really?”

  “At home, I’m in a band.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I also box.”

  “You box?”

  He’s laughing. “See how people can surprise you?”

  “Your life is so cool,” I say. “A boxer in a band traveling with your boyfriend to the most beautiful place in the world to ski for a while. That’s amazing. I wish that was my life.”

  He shrugs, looking away from me as he inhales again.

  “Didn’t you say you lived in the UK for a while?” I ask, trying to remember a conversation from early on in the RV. “Was that because of the band?”

  “No, the band came after that,” he says. “I was in the UK to work for a while. I like to be away from home.”