Girls Who Travel (7 page)

“Brilliant. Just brilliant,” Elsbeth drilled into the phone.

Elsbeth had certainly altered her way of speaking since she moved. She sounded like a one-dimensional caricature from an American-produced period drama.

“Damn, Elsbeth, you're really getting into this British thing. You sound just like Madonna with that accent.”

“How dare you! I
at least
sound like Gwyneth Paltrow.”

It was good to know that Elsbeth wasn't above making fun of herself—even with her new overdone inflections.

“I have to give notice at my job first,” I (white) lied.

“That's expected. So you can be here in two weeks? By the middle of February?”

I agreed and hung up the phone after promising to follow up with Mr. Darling's assistant to solidify all the details.

“Madison!” I barked.

Madison froze and stared up at me with a lemon-scented yellow marker buried halfway up her left nostril.

“Do you realize what this means?”

“No . . .” Madison said, slowly removing the marker and looking abashed.

“It means”—I swiped her up—“that I'm moving to London!”

“Wike ‘Wondon Bwidge Is Fawwing Down'?” Madison asked eagerly, picking up on my excitement.

“
Exactly
like ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down.'” I was moving to London where people said, “Cheers, love,” where the alphabet ended in “zed,” and where there were Cadbury Creme Eggs all year round—not just for Easter. I swirled Madison around the kitchen.

“Faster, faster!” she yelled, and I obliged until we collapsed on the honeycomb-tiled kitchen floor.

“Chwist on a bicycle.” Madison sighed, holding her spinning head.

“Oh shit. Madison, please don't say that in front of your mother.” I winced. “And you may want to avoid saying ‘shit' in front of her as well,” I added for good measure.

12

E
ARLY
THE
NEXT
morning, I wrote Lochlon an email about the latest developments in my life:

“I got a new job in London,” I wrote like it was no big deal. “Hopefully I'll get to travel all over Europe while I'm there. I feel like my life is moving in the right direction again—I can't believe I'm getting this opportunity.”

In my mind, I could see my mother rolling her eyes about the “travel all over Europe” remark, and I deleted it before clicking “send” with determination.

A band of early-February sunshine slowly made its way across my face, and I leaped from my desk with unnatural morning energy. Now
this
was how my life was supposed to be.

My backpack, as well-worn with love as the Velveteen Rabbit, slumped in the corner of my room.

“Cheer up, buttercup,” I told it. “We're busting out of this joint in two weeks.”

Long ago, I learned to pack light, using only my backpack and collecting goods along the way. Rolling luggage is all well and good for packaged group tours on shiny buses pumped with recycled air, but nothing beats a well-packed backpack for the stair-filled metro stations and the cobbled lanes of Europe. I prided myself on my portability.

Growing up, I used to have a lot more stuff around. I was one of those girls who was the contents of her closet. My friends and I spoke about shopping in a language that was insisting and self-defending—we
had
to have new, pricey things because we thought we
needed
them.

But I couldn't keep up with these girls, and once I started traveling, I stopped wanting to. Instead, I found my own course to be passionate about. I strove to form a collection of once-in-a-lifetime experiences instead of designer attire.

Even now, my life didn't run in alignment with theirs. I wanted none of the things they wanted: not the clothes, the McMansions, the 401(k)s, the husbands, or the silver gadgets named after fruit. I had no interest in the swag of adulthood, of normalcy.

I looked around my childhood bedroom with my outdated furniture and ratty bedspread. After college and my year abroad, I didn't bother buying new stuff. Acquiring more things just meant more stuff to leave behind.

“Hi, Kika. Want some coffee?” my mother asked through my closed door, interrupting my manifesto.

“Yes, please,” I called.

She entered my room and set a swilling cup of coffee (free-
trade Guatemalan) onto my desk. “I wasn't sure if you fancied a spot of tea instead,” she said in a laughable English accent.

“Coffee is brilliant, Mumsy,” I responded with an equally offensive twitter.

“Kika, I'm so excited for your next soul journey.”

“Mom, I'm so excited, too.” I didn't give her a hard time for her yoga-teacher speech and even spewed out some of my own. “I feel like the world is opening up for me in a positive way, like I'm getting a second chance. I couldn't handle job searching for another three months.”

“Good. Remember that when you're with the Darlings.”

“I'm going to be Mary freakin' Poppins. I'm going to give it my all. If I fail at a job again, I want it to be because of real reasons, not because I was too lazy.”

“That's exactly what I was getting at.” My mom seemed relieved that I got there myself.

“Besides, it's the Darlings. Mina and Gwen love me. How hard could it be?”

“Famous last words, Kika,” she warned before escorting herself to the door. “And maybe you'll actually make some money this time,” she added. I knew she wasn't being malicious, only honest. Somehow that made the comment land harder.

“I'm off to teach downstairs,” she said.

“I'll be down in a minute,” I called behind her.

I did yoga on occasion, too, but mainly because it made my mom happy. As far as I was concerned, the greatest benefit of yoga was being bendy enough to tie your shoelaces without crouching all the way down, but I never told her this.

Even though I didn't do yoga daily, my mom and I were
more alike than not. She passed on her free-spirited penchant for swearwords, Scandinavian features, and impossibly long femurs to me. I secretly hoped that I wouldn't become the heir of her bad luck with men as well.

As far as I knew, the only thing I inherited from my dad was my Mediterranean first name, Francisca (which strangely got shortened to Kika), and my dark eyes and eyebrows, which somehow still worked on my otherwise Nordic coloring and frame.

I've never been a “Francisca” with her Italian sensibilities, sky-high stilettos, killing-it red lipsticks, and knowledge of fine wine.

I was always a “Kika”—foulmouthed and sweet toothed. (No matter how much quinoa my mom fed me, I always wanted what was never around—pure sucrose.) I was raised to rock a bohemian wardrobe and a pair of secondhand Dr. Martens while listening to folk music.

A normal mother would be a bit nervous about my move to London, but my mom was used to it. She no longer said to me, “I am confused about your life,” like my well-meaning high school friends, or, “But what do you want to do when you grow up?” as my grandparents asked.

And thankfully she didn't ask me (like a presumptuous stranger once did): “What are you running away from?” (Short answer: Nothing. Long answer: Nothing, asshole.) Instead, my mother let me be myself. And even before I had a self to be, she let me figure it out on my own.

At sixteen, I spent the summer in Panama building houses with Habitat for Humanity. In high school, I suffered through a year of finicky Latin just so I could
veni, vidi, vici
and
vino
my way through Florence during the senior trip. In college, I studied abroad every other semester. But I only started to get a sense of who I wanted to be when I traveled alone.

There are many reasons why girls should not travel alone, and I won't list them, because none of them are original reasons. Besides, there are more reasons why girls
should
.

I have the utmost respect for girls who travel alone, because it's hard work sometimes. But girls, we just want adventures. We want international best friends and hold-your-breath vistas out of crappy hostel windows. We want to discover moving works of art, sometimes in museums and sometimes in side-street graffiti. We want to hear soul-restoring jam sessions at beach bonfires and to watch celestial dawns spill over villages that haven't changed since the Middle Ages.

We want to fall in love with boys with say-that-again accents. We want sore feet from stay-up-all-night dance parties at just-one-more-drink bars.

We want to be on our own even as we sketch and photograph the Piazza San Marco covered in pigeons and beautiful Italian lovers intertwined so that we'll never forget what it feels like to be twenty-three and absolutely purposeless and single, but in love with every city we visit next.

We want to be struck dumb by the baritone echoes of church bells in Vatican City and the rich, heaven-bound calls to prayer in Istanbul and to know that no matter what, there just has to be some greater power or holy magic responsible for all this bursting, delirious, overwhelming beauty in the great, wide, sprawling world.

I tucked my passport into my bag. Girls, we don't just want to have fun; we want a whole lot more out of life than that.

13

I
F
THIS
WERE
a movie, I'd jet off to England in one of those highly stylized, jump-cut montages set to the rhythm of an upbeat sound track.

At the airport, I'd hug my mom good-bye—good-bye for now. Because it's always “good-bye for now” with me.

And we're clear for takeoff. The camera would do a long-tracking shot framing the plane, all silver and glossy, bisecting woozy heights at impossible velocities. (Or maybe there'd be one of those cartoon planes puttering across a map.) Then the lens would zoom in for a close-up inside the egg-shaped plane window, where I'd rest my head back on the airline seat. And the audience would think: “There she goes, Wendy en route to Neverland.”

•   •   •

O
F
COURSE
IT
wasn't as refined and cool as all that. In real life the trip was fraught with first-world problems including the standard-issue flight delays; a KGB-grade interrogation by UK border control; and the realization that I may or may not have forgotten to pack clean underwear. But still, I had arrived!

The Darlings arranged for their personal driver, Clive, to pick me up from Heathrow in a “British racing green Audi” (as described by Mr. Darling in the email). I watched England whiz by through the open window, the wind gusting my hair in a cinematic way. Once we were on the motorway, I felt my eyelids getting heavy, as if hypnotized by the BBC radio host's charming accent.

“We're nearly there, love.” Clive startled me awake. The purring car braked in Stanhope Gardens, a leafy, manicured block of residential town houses that were impossibly big and white. The houses, crafted for another, more regal era, were set in a square shape with a large fenced-in garden in the middle.

Clive opened the car door for me.

“Thanks, but I've got it,” I said as I wrestled my backpack out of his grip only to plop it on the footpath. “I just want a second to compose myself before going in,” I explained.

He gave me a chauffeur-ly head nod, said, “Very good,” and left to park the car.

I stood in front of the still-sleepy square of houses forming and memorizing my first impressions. The Darlings' house was alight in that curious, sallow morning light, and a ghostly fog tiptoed over what was officially known as the Royal
Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. My Southwest London postcode apparently was, like,
posh
. (I only knew what “posh” meant because of the Spice Girls.)

What I wanted (what I really, really wanted) was to observe everything before it got too familiar, too normal, and underappreciated. First impressions were only fun to think about after you knew better. I relished that little wave of pulse-quickening fear and excitement that travel splashes on our faces, as if to wake us up and remind us we're alive.

I exhaled a swell of hot breath into the winter air, ready for whatever was ahead for me, and I walked toward my mysterious destiny.

•   •   •

B
UT
MY
MYSTERIOUS
destiny would have to wait.

Ruining the picturesque morning scene was a homeless guy slumping on the sunlit doorsteps of the house. His body blocked my access to the front door.
Of course.

I coughed conspicuously, but he didn't react. I tried again: “Good morning, sunshine.”

He stirred at my chipper voice but moved leisurely, taking his time untangling his long limbs. Up close, I could see he was actually very nicely dressed in a heavy blazer with an upturned collar and expensive-looking shoes—this guy wasn't homeless, just disheveled. It was like he was on his way home from a bar and just sort of fell asleep here.

“Rough night?” I asked.

He studied me. His expression was that of someone unimpressed.

“Do you need help getting a taxi home?” I asked, undeterred by his unresponsiveness.

He seemed about my age, and hey, we've all been there. Well, not
there
, per se—
I've
never passed out on someone else's stoop—but we've all had
those
nights.

I nodded eagerly. “Taxi? Home?”

“Another bolshie American.” He spoke under his breath. He then gave me a scolding sneer like I interrupted his nap, which I supposed I had.

“Yes,” I said in a loud voice, demonstrating that I heard him perfectly. “I am American. I'll try asking in British: You, good sir, are sleeping on my front stoop. If I could trouble you to move?” I spoke in the politest Queen's English that I could manage this early in the morning.

He made a face but didn't move from my path. Patting his pockets, he looked around himself, first to one side and then the other.

“Um, dude, you're in my way—” I began again, but he interrupted.

“That is not possible, I'm afraid,” he said haughtily. I smelled alcohol on his breath. His light eyes were rimmed pink from the lack of sleep and the night of drinking. He reminded me of one of those albino-white bunnies with the demon-red eyes.

“I'm Aston Hyde Bettencourt,” he said and then paused for dramatic effect, like it meant something to me.

“Ashton? Like Ashton Kutcher? I didn't know real people had names like that,” I said.

“How dare you?” He looked genuinely offended. “It's
As
ton, as in Aston Martin; as in, as in, Aston Hyde Bettencourt,” he
stammered, now rising. He buttoned his blazer and smoothed the lapel.

I stared at him. “Got it.
Ass
ton. Emphasis on the
ass
.”

“Yanks,” he eked out through closed teeth. “I live here. So you, madam, are actually on
my
steps, and I'd kindly request that you sod off and leave me be.”

“Well,
I'm
Kika Shores, and according to my new employers, I live here.” I took out the crumpled printout of the email with my new address on it and flapped it in front of his unshaven face.

He reluctantly took the paper like it was a used tissue. “
Kika?
Your name is Kika, and you're taking the piss out of
my
name? Sounds like the name of a French poodle.”

Before I could retort, he said, exasperated, “You're thirty-four.”

“How dare
you
!” I patted my hair down. Sure, I just got off a transatlantic flight, but I didn't look thirty-four. “I'm twenty-three. How old are you?”

Aston stared at me unblinkingly. I glowered back.

“No,” he mustered with the barest civility. For a moment I thought he was going to add, “stupid.”
No, stupid.

“The house you're looking for is number thirty-four—it's next door.” He tilted his head to the left where the next house sat at an obtuse corner angle. “This is thirty-two. In case you have trouble with the numbers in the future, you'll remember this door is red and yours is blue.” He spoke like a wicked kindergarten teacher, deliberate and patronizing. “Now off you go.”

I snatched the paper back. “Oh, I'm dismissed, am I?”

“I think I bloody well know where I live,” he said more to himself than to me. He began lifting the potted plants to peer underneath. “I did manage to get through Oxford, after all.”
He dragged a key from beneath a planter; the metal scraped against the slate.

I scoffed, hitched my backpack on my shoulder, and hauled it over to the house next door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him scrutinizing me.

“What a snob!” I said loud enough for him to hear as I rung the bell of number thirty-four, the blue door.

From inside, I heard the dead bolts twist. As my door creaked open, he disappeared into his house. I uselessly hoped it would be the last I saw of him, though that seemed highly unlikely.