“Good thing we got food first,” Travis says on the bus.
“Yeah, you mentioned that.”
Actually, Travis has mentioned that seven times, once every ten minutes that we’ve been on this bus ride.
“But it is a good thing. Otherwise, we’d be starving. In fact, I’m thinking about breaking out one of the sandwiches now.”
Travis brought enough sandwiches and beer (the legal drinking age here is sixteen!) for a family of four for a week. He also ate a four-egg omelet, a stack of pancakes, and ten strips of bacon (the waitress called it the “American breakfast”). Plus, since he got it to go, he actually just finished eating about twenty minutes ago.
“Forget food for a minute. Doesn’t this bus ride seem a little long to you? I mean, this is a small country. I brought my passport, but I wasn’t planning on using it.”
“It’s long,” Travis agrees, eyeing the bag with the sandwiches.
I pick it up and hold it shut so he has to listen to me.
“And isn’t it going—I don’t know—sort of in the opposite direction of the way you’d think the beach would be?”
“The guy said it was a different beach, but maybe he lied.”
“I think that guy messed us up on purpose.”
“You did say his country was lame.”
“It is lame. So you think we’re going the wrong way, too?”
“Maybe.” Trav’s looking at the bag with the sandwiches. “It’s hard to think straight when you’re hungry.”
I’m about to give him a sandwich just so I can think when the bus driver announces that we’ve reached Jacques’s stop.
“Finally. Time to get off.”
“Does that mean I can’t have a sandwich?”
“Think how good it will taste when we’re sitting on the beach.”
Twenty minutes later, not only have we not found the beach, we haven’t even found the first street Jacques wrote on his map.
“It says go three blocks, then turn on St. Germain,” Travis says. “But it’s been more than three blocks. It’s been, like, six. Maybe we should turn back.”
I’m about to agree when I see a street called St. Germain. “This must be it.”
But the next street isn’t where it’s supposed to be, either, even when we’ve walked three times as far as the map says. “Maybe you’re right,” I say.
When we turn back, nothing looks the way it did the first time. The first time, there were houses and stores and bicycles. Now there’s nothing but trees and, well…nature everywhere I look. “What happened?” I say.
“To what?” Travis is munching on a sandwich.
“To everything—the town, the people?”
Travis wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “I didn’t notice.”
I see a little dirt road I hadn’t seen before. I turn down it, gesturing to Travis to follow me. “Come on.”
But this isn’t where we were before, either. It’s like everything just disappeared into a fog. Travis isn’t noticing, since he’s in a fog of his own, created by the sandwich. But then we run into something he can’t ignore.
It’s a solid wall of brambles.
“Now what?” I say.
“Go back.”
“Back where? We’re lost. This isn’t where we were before. Besides, look.” I gesture around me. “All this natural stuff. Back in Miami, if you had all this nature around, you’d definitely be near the beach.”
In fact, the hedge looks a lot like bramble bushes in Miami. It has fuchsia flowers a little like the bougainvillea that grows there. The weird thing is that it must be three or four stories high.
“So where’s the beach?” Travis asks.
I shrug. “Not back there.”
“But this road’s a dead end.”
“I know. But listen.” I cup my hand to my ear. “What do you hear?”
“Chewing,” Travis says.
“Well, stop chewing.”
Travis finishes the last bite. “Okay.”
“Now, what do you hear?”
Travis listens real carefully. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. Which means there must be nothing on the other side of that hedge—no city, no cars, just nothing. The beach.”
“So you’re saying you want to go through the hedge?”
“What have we got to lose?”
“How about blood? Those bushes look prickly.”
It’s true. But I say, “Don’t be a wuss.”
“Can I have another sandwich at least?”
I grab the bag from him. “After the hedge.”
Fifteen minutes later, there’s nothing on any side of us except brambles.
“I bet I look like the victim in a slasher movie,” Travis says. “What’s the French word for ‘chain saw’?”
“It’s not that bad. The flowers sort of smell nice.” I inhale.
“Right. You stay and smell the flowers. I’m going back.”
I grab his wrist. “Please, Trav. I want to go to the beach. I can’t handle another day of the tour.”
He pulls away. “What’s the big deal? My parents are going to ask me what I did today.”
“That’s the thing. My parents won’t. They won’t ask me what I did the past week. They don’t care what I’m doing. And I hate going to all those stupid museums. Looking at all that boring art makes my mind wander, and when my mind wanders, all I can think of is Amber kissing that frat boy.”
Travis stops pulling. “Wow. That really hit you hard, huh?”
“Yeah.” I thought I was just making stuff up to get Trav to do what I want, but I have this sort of sick feeling in my stomach. I’m telling the truth. My parents haven’t called in two weeks, except once to ask me if I signed up for AP Government next year for school, and this trip is doing nothing to make me forget about Amber. I see her face in every painting in every museum—especially that Degas guy, who painted girls with no faces at all. I can’t get away from her. “Yeah. I just want to go to the beach for one day. I need to be outside.”
“Okay, buddy. Only you go in front.”
So I go up front, taking the full scratchy brunt of the brambles for another twenty minutes—twenty minutes during which I don’t think about my parents or Amber but only about the fact that if I lose too much blood, there’ll be no one here to help. When we finally reach the other side, I stop.
“Wow,” I say.
“What is it?” Travis is still behind me.
“Definitely not the beach.”