I Grew My Boobs in China (23 page)

“This is taking kind of long. Wasn’t it supposed to be a short cut?” She said, not daring to mention the more obvious reality that the path had virtually vanished. Our neat quartet had spread out slightly, like confused hounds that had lost the scent. Ammon slowly stopped and turned around. Bree and I slowly peeled our earphones out and stopped singing.

“This stupid map is impossible to read! I don’t know where we are anymore,” Ammon was furious with it and with himself.

“Well, we know the river is down that way,” Mom said, pointing to the right down the hill. The landscape we were walking through was initially dry and relatively flat, but it had become increasingly steep. Before we knew it, we were on a rough mountain side.

“Bree, run down there and check. See if you can see a boat or a ferry port or something,” Ammon said, waving her off in the same direction Mom had pointed.

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Well, we’ve gotta know if we’re on the right track or not. Maybe we just
think
we’re going the wrong way. You never know with these things. I mean, this
is
the less popular trail. That’s why it’s called the OLD Ferry. Just see if there’s a ferry,” he told her.

“What would you guys do without me?” she asked, placing her daypack on the ground and taking the second earpiece from me. She plugged herself into some “pumped” music, as she called it, and ventured off to complete her assignment. Her athletic figure disappeared slowly behind some dry, lifeless bushes down the hill.

This detour had already cost us four hours and the rest of our water. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The only thing worse than having no water was having only two sips left at the bottom. I considered taking it for myself and claiming it was already empty, but I didn’t dare. I didn’t think I could live with the guilt, so I just told myself the bottle was already empty.

“I have no idea anymore.” Ammon continued spinning in circles with his map held out in front of him. “This is obviously just an old goat trail!!” he finally admitted.

“Well, where the heck are the goats that made the darned trail in the first place??” I demanded. “They
would
have the nerve to disappear! Cowards! Getting us into this mess with their trompy old hooves!” The trail clearly led nowhere.
Even the goats probably never made it
, I thought, subconsciously scouting for any tell-tale remains of goat skulls and bones as my impulsive condemnation haunted me.

“It’s not me, it’s the map,” Ammon kept insisting.

“You know, that’s really comforting. I feel
lots
better now,” I said.

“You’re not helping, so shut up,” he retaliated, and I did. About ten minutes passed.

“Where is she? Why is she taking so long? Can you see her, Ammon?” Mom nagged, as if his single foot of extra height somehow gave him super vision.

“She’ll be fine,” Ammon said.

“Well, what if she slipped and fell off or something,” she continued to fret.

“If she’s stupid enough to walk off the bloody---” he began.

“Oh Ammon, stop it!”

“I’m just saying, don’t worry about her.”

Bree and I had learned how to make a strange but very loud and accurate screech using our bottom lips from a Venezuelan guy we’d once hosted. Only we two could do this, so I whistled for her using our secret signal. Nothing. Again, and no response. Again, again, again. Popping out from behind a nearby bush, she whistled back piercingly loud right next to me and said “WHAT?” as in, “Ow, my ears! What the heck is all the racket about?” Her face was beet red, but she was hardly puffing at all.

“See? Stop fretting,” Ammon said as if he had been in control the whole time. “Well?” he continued.

“And?” I added with a squeak that was a little less cool than intended. I inched over beside her and squeezed her by the arm, clenching my teeth so as not to show her I had been worried.

“There is nothing down there. It’s just this humungous cliff that drops into the river. That’s not the way to go,” she said again confidently. “What time is it at home anyway? I’m sensing Full House might be on right now!”

This was horrible news. Knowing what was ahead of us, I lifted the water bottle to eye level and shook it, acknowledging for the second time that it was virtually empty.

“Is that all there is?” Mom looked round at us, trying to remember who’d had it last.

“Yah, only a tiny bit,” I confessed, holding it up again for her to see. We shared the last drips of warm water to wet our lips. It was a lot less pleasurable than I had imagined. I found myself unable to feel it slip down my throat.

There was absolutely nothing around us. There weren’t any little huts, let alone a village or a place to buy water. Even the goats didn’t show their faces, and the gorge was a million and a half miles down a sheer cliff, so that was a dead end if I ever saw one. There was nothing for it but to start out again. We were headed inland, which meant upland, which meant straight back to the road we’d originally abandoned, if we could
find it. We might not even recognize it, since we had left that road over four hours ago, and it probably would not look the same wherever we intersected with it. But then, it didn’t matter so much if it was
the
road. Any road would do, for that matter, as long as it led to water.

We were in this together, and we had our music game to keep our minds off the heat burning our flesh. I never liked hiking or pushing myself to those kinds of limits, and luckily, I’d never had to. I was more like Mom, who hated exercise, and very unlike Bree, who got high from the exertion of spending hours on end doing gymnastics and working out. She removed one of her earpieces and held it out to me so we could again share tunes. I was still looking up at the obstacle ahead.

“C’mon, Savannah. C’mon! We can do this! Imagine you’re part of a secret CIA mission.” For the first time, I felt I could relate to her and Rocky Balboa’s obsession with sweating to the “Eye of the Tiger” song that she listened to as she did sit ups and push ups in her room. My singular contribution to her fitness regime was to sit on her bed and shake my head in general disapproval.

“Rising up to the challenge of our rivals.” The lyrics inspired me, and the beat pounded in my chest as I became one with the music. Cresting the summit, I envisioned myself triumphing at the top, raising my hands above my head to celebrate my victory. I was almost there! Two more steps, one more, and then, and then---

My arms dropped before I got a chance to do my “Rocky on the steps of the courthouse” impression when I saw yet another hill. I felt like crying.
Now I remember why I never cared for work-out music. It makes you feel like crap!
I became a good deal less enthusiastic from that point on.

Not knowing how or when our blind route would end was torturous. My mind began to drift and imagine the worst, because over analyzing is what the developed mind does (at least mine does). The sun would get hotter and hotter before it inevitably, and too soon, started sinking. We would be left in total darkness, with no shelter and no light. We’d get turned around and lose our way completely. Who knew what animals would come out at night to nip at us as we lay terrified though the cold night, in a fetal position in the prickly dirt.

I had never hiked, nor had I experienced 35°C (95°F) degree weather, and now I was being challenged by both. There was no escape from the harsh sun. Nothing was tall enough to provide us with shade or shelter, and despite my 30SPF sun block, my skin was burning. The rasping wind worked together with the sun to suck all the moisture from my body and gave me chills, despite my sweaty skin. I felt so defenceless. The swooping breeze felt like a bodiless vulture circling overhead and slowly sucking the life out of me. I could not touch its ghoulish presence and was unable to bat it away. We were exposed to whatever harsh conditions this strange land cared to mete out.

After what seemed an eternity, a big fat pipe gushing water miraculously appeared in the middle of the plateau at the top of the next hill.
Oh, no. That is mean!
Now I’m hallucinating? What next?!
But as we drew closer, I began to hear splashing from the cement platform it stood on, and that wasn’t all! A shallow valley with a few cottages was tucked away below the water source. It was a fair bit down the hill, still quite some distance away, but it lifted our spirits immeasurably.

Not knowing the source of the water and unsure whether it was safe, we all kept our distance – well, almost all of us. Bree dashed into it before anyone could stop her. There was no holding her back, and she was soon sopping wet from head to toe. Filling up the water bottle she still carried, she offered it to us. “Anybody want some? Yum, yum!! This water is amazing!” It certainly looked like nothing less.

“No, Bree, you go ahead,” Ammon told her, knowing she’d already had half a stomach full anyway, but not wanting the rest of us to risk contracting Giardia. “You can be our official guinea pig,” he added. Newly refreshed, she was now joyously doing cartwheels and other gymnastic tricks.

“So now we’ll know, if you die, we shouldn’t have drunk it,” Ammon smirked.
She better die,
I thought,
’cause not drinking it is going to kill me anyway.
I was jealously grumbling under my breath. I wasn’t brave enough to drink it, but
I sure was going to get my hands wet. When I felt its icy chill, it was even harder to hold back. It was like caressing temptation itself. I was furiously envious of Bree and her lack of fear.
Maybe dying would be worth it just to take a few sips.
Instead, I
stepped in and felt the ice cascade over me, thoroughly soaking the minimal clothing I wore.

“It’s a good thing we got an early start,” Mom said, aware that there was still a long road ahead. And somehow, the rest of the day became a steady, draining series of “just a bit furthers.” First it was the water spout, but we didn’t indulge because we saw the village, but before we could get to the village, we saw a tiny sign to the ferry and trudged on, and somehow we STILL had no dang water!

Winding down in the direction the sign indicated, we finally reached the river. “Whoa, where the heck is it,” Bree said, leaning a hand on a rocky wall as we approached the dusty trail beside the river bank. We couldn’t see any dock, shelter, or ticket booth.

“Just keep going,” Ammon said, sure he was on the right track this time.

“I’m not sure I have all that much faith in this guy anymore,” I whispered to Bree just before I tripped and fell into her back. Bits of rocks blended with the cracked dirt. The trail became so narrow I had to hold onto the rock face of the canyon towering over us while the river rushed past at my feet.

“What kind of mission did that woman send us on?!” Mom exclaimed. Around yet another bend, a couple of men were standing around, but we saw nothing else aside from a tiny wooden raft secured to the shore with some woven rope.

“See!” Ammon announced triumphantly as they approached us.

“Really?!” I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Ok, let’s go,” Ammon urged us after an effective round of communication charades with the fellows. “Well, here’s the good news,” he began once we were all cautiously standing on the raft, “after all that trouble, the lady was right about at least one thing. It only cost ten yuan, so we saved twenty-five cents.”

“That’s all!!??”

“That’s twenty-five cents EACH,” he said, to clarify that we’d saved the princely sum of one dollar at the expense of an extra six hours of walking, not to mention our discomfort or my fear of expiring along the way.

“Yip-frikkin-pee,” I said, with the most uninterested, unenthusiastic face I could muster.
I could’ve sold a lemonade for more than that!!!!
I wanted to strangle him in that moment. Had I been able to find the strength to lift my arms, I might have done just that, but then I realized how exhausted Mom must’ve felt when she didn’t even correct my language.

Despite recent events, I couldn’t turn against them. We were all suffering.
Except Ammon
, I thought.
He loves torturing us!
Why would we ever think there would be a shortcut that was cheaper too? There had to be a catch! Shortcut and discount just don’t go together!!

I let my fingers trickle in the cold water and soaked the back of my neck as we crossed. The ferry ride only lasted a minute, and Ammon was still talking as we stepped off. A dust cloud formed around our ankles immediately. Ammon tilted his head back and stared at the monstrous cliff we now faced. “The bad news, like, the really bad news, is ...” No further words were needed, but he continued anyway, “I have no idea what’s at the top or where we are.”

Fortunately there were horses for hire.
Or maybe they were donkeys. No, they weren’t even donkeys; they were mules.
Two of them, to be exact, so they had to make two trips to get us all to the top. I was now glad we didn’t have water, or Ammon would surely have made us hoof it up that steep mountainside to save the three dollars it cost to rent the mules. Seeing how exhausted and dehydrated we were, though, he had the grace to cough up the price of a ride, despite Mom’s nagging reminders that we’d now spent far more than the
dollar we’d almost killed ourselves to save in the first place!

Ammon and I waited at the bottom, and it took almost half-an-hour for the mules to make the return trip, much longer than I had expected, but the mules eventually came back and we were saddled up. We are both afraid of heights, Ammon more than I, but I think our level of fear was the same during that fifteen-minute walk. It was literally a narrow switchback forming a “Wild Mouse” rollercoaster-type path just wide enough for the mules’ dainty ankles. Every sharp turn made me close my eyes and pray sincerely to the heavens. One missed step and we were done for. I positioned myself very loosely in my seat so I could jump off the second the mule slipped on one of the many loose rocks along the path.

“Oooh, I don’t like this. This is terrible,” Ammon grumbled from behind me. His audible discomfort brought a short, but deeply satisfying smirk to my face. Thankfully, there was a dusty little village at the top.