A Blind Spot for Boys (16 page)

Our choices were to follow the longer asphalt road with steep switchbacks or to take our chances on the trail, which cut a sheer vertical path down the mountain to the town. Naturally, what remained of our group chose the mud chute of a trail, especially when Quattro reconfirmed that what he had seen looked fine. But where there weren’t stairs, there was mud. Every gloppy footstep through the thick jungle felt like a prelude to a fall. My quads trembled on the steep, slick path.

“Be. Careful. Be. Careful,” I chanted to myself, then gasped when my right foot slipped on a slick rock step. I fell hard on my tailbone.

In front of me, Dad’s shoulders hunched in defeat as he grasped an overhead branch for balance. He yanked off the headlamp Quattro had given him earlier that morning. “I’ve got to walk on the road. It’s so dark here, I can’t see where I’m stepping.”

That rare admission about his failing eyesight shocked me.
Mom edged around me on the narrow trail and asked him softly, “Is it getting worse?”

Dad flushed, shrugged, then conceded, “I don’t know. Probably, yes.” Finally, he admitted, “There’s a black dot in my good eye now.”

I wanted to scream at the unjustness. The ophthalmologist had warned us that Dad could begin to lose vision in his good eye during our trip, but the reality of Dad going blind was still hard to accept, especially when he was so stubbornly mobile.

“I’ll walk with you,” I told him.

“No, I’ll just meet you guys down in town.” He started rifling through his pockets.

“What’re you doing?” Mom asked, annoyed.

“Getting the cash. You two might need it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mom said at the same time that I protested, “We’re sticking together, remember?”

By now, the rest of the group had stopped to check what was causing the delay. Dad explained, “I’m walking on the road.”

“Shana’s right,” said Christopher firmly. “We’ll stick together. I’m pretty sure this trail intersects with the road up ahead, and it might be faster and safer if we continue instead of backtracking. Quattro, take the lead.”

While Quattro cast an annoyed look at his father, he did what he was told. Dad’s jaw was equally tight, but he didn’t protest either. In fact, no one spoke. A few more minutes of tough downhill, and we made it to the slick asphalt on the narrow, zigzagging road, just as Christopher had predicted. I couldn’t imagine how two buses heading in opposite directions could
pass each other safely. Backing up would be suicidal; the road was so steep and without any guardrails that I could see.

Almost two hours later, the road leveled out. The entire walk had been devoid of conversation. Our silence only accentuated the thunder of the whitecapped and muddy river running alongside the road now.

The river.

I’d never told anybody about the dream I had the night Dom broke up with me. I was inside a log cabin that smelled like the forest and wild growing things. Standing in front of a mirror, I stared, horrified, as sheets of skin peeled from my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. The roar of a river drew me away from my reflection and out to the ironwood deck. Water rose around the cabin, turning it into a houseboat. Or an island. All I knew was that I had to cross the churning waters. Had to reach Dom on the opposite shore. Scared, I started wading. The river was waist deep, unforgiving and cold. Thousands of silvery fish darted around me. I was convinced I was going to drown. And just as I finally, finally staggered onto the shore, Dom climbed into a pickup truck and drove off without me.

Nobody could survive this violent river, churning wild and angry, if they fell in. But I wasn’t trapped in a dream, stranded and alone at a riverbank. Quattro stood next to me. Over the river’s raging, he said loud enough so I could hear: “You were practically running back there. You okay?”

“I was just remembering a stupid nightmare.”

“What about?”

“I thought I was going to drown in a river.” Sheepishly, I admitted, “I’m a little freaked out.”

“I won’t let anything happen,” Quattro said flatly.

No, I knew he wouldn’t, whether he was boyfriend or friend. Wistfulness tightened my throat, as I thought about how much I wanted him to be my guy. The one who would think about me as constantly as I thought about him. Who would want to be with me. So much for my Boy Moratorium. That self-imposed no-boy diet didn’t do a darn thing to stop me from falling for Quattro, much less stop me from feeling hurt.

Why did I have to fall for the one guy on a well-enforced Girl Moratorium? A guy who seemed pretty much impervious to me?

Why?

Anything was better than beating myself up with these thoughts. So as we approached the stone footbridge, I asked Quattro, “Everything okay with you and your dad?”

“Sometimes Dad can be so by the book. I mean, life is just going to pass him by if he doesn’t watch out.” Quattro took a deep breath. On his exhale, he gestured to the river and asked, “What’s going to calm this down, do you think?”

It wasn’t me who answered but his father, who had caught up to us: “Time.”

Had Christopher overheard Quattro? His face, impassive as always, didn’t show it.

“Time.” The word came out as a derisive scoff from Quattro. He looked dangerously remote.

I understood. In all these months after Dom, I had retreated into my own fortress, refusing to let anyone get close to me, even my best friends. But now I wanted to echo Christopher and reassure Quattro: Time hadn’t just dulled my heartache over Dom. It had allowed me to see clearly. I’d never had a real relationship with Dom: We flirted, I chased, he showed me off when it suited him. For the first time in weeks, months, I actually felt at peace.

As soon as my parents neared us at the river’s edge, Christopher urged, “We better keep going.” As if to second that motion, the river swelled over the banks, spraying our hiking boots. I took a quick step back. “Looks like once we get across, we’ll have to follow the train tracks.”

“But what if a train comes?” Mom asked, worried.

“The trains aren’t running,” Dad answered.

“According to the rumors,” Mom said. “And there’s a tunnel I read about in some woman’s blog…”

The truth was, if the trains were running, we’d be roadkill, and we all knew it.

“We’ll have to make a run for it then,” said Helen. I saw her sidelong glance at Christopher, who nodded back at her confidently. He said, “We’ll just have to have a little faith.”

“Whoa, you sounded like Stesha there for a second,” I teased him, hoping to ease Mom’s anxiety.

“Yeah, I did,” Christopher said, grinning, looking exactly like his son at his mischievous best. I missed that Quattro.

“You sure this is safe?” Mom asked suspiciously as she studied
the bridge. Frankly, the bridge’s stones and concrete looked fragile and insubstantial against the ruthless current.

“Nothing in life is ever a hundred percent safe,” Christopher said softly, his gaze flickering to Quattro. Without another word, Christopher accompanied Helen across the bridge, holding out his arm for her to take as water spattered them. Dad followed them and held Mom’s hand. He stopped to shoot a look at me. “Wait right there. I’ll help you across.”

“I got it,” I told him confidently even though I had my doubts, reinforced when another wave swamped the bridge.

Give it time, and a wild thought just might sweep away the last pangs of falling for the wrong boy. I took Quattro’s camera out and snapped a photo of this threatening river and whispered, “Good-bye, Dom.” Quattro’s eyes were trained on me when I lowered the camera.

The next best thing to having Quattro as a boyfriend was claiming him as a friend. So while my every girl instinct told me to flip my hair (which probably wouldn’t have moved, given how greasy it was) and challenge him with a coy “Afraid?,” I didn’t.

Instead, I said, “Our turn.” I held my hand out to him, waiting patiently as he hesitated before clasping mine in his.

A
t the end of our slog back to civilization, I was alarmed by the teeming crowds of bedraggled trekkers in Machu Picchu Pueblo. Every square inch in the town plaza had been turned into a homeless encampment and garbage dump. Whatever charm the square had was lost in the mess of tents, trash, and unwashed bodies. I stepped over a couple of discarded beer bottles on our way to the main street. A snaking line of frustrated people waited at an ATM, but after Christopher made an inquiry, we learned that all the cash had been withdrawn. What everyone was waiting for, I don’t know. Even worse, tourist after tourist confirmed that every single train had been canceled. A state of emergency had been declared. There was no way out.

Mom said, “Maybe we should find Stesha now?”

“Let’s try Ruben. Who’s got a phone?” Christopher asked,
but Quattro didn’t own a cell phone, and all of us except Helen had lost ours in the mudslide. Luckily, she had programmed Ruben’s number, but there was no answer. Not from him or from Stesha, Grace, Hank, or our hotel.

“Maybe we should go straight to the hotel then? Make sure Hank got us our rooms?” Helen suggested, glancing around uneasily. Half the people near us looked drunk, messy drunk. “We may be here for a while.”

Christopher studied the throngs and started going all militia on us. “I think we should buy as much water and food as we can carry first. Grab anything packaged.”

Nobody argued with his logic. Most of our provisions had gone with the porters. So we fanned out in three groups, me teaming up with Quattro. Fifteen minutes was more than enough time. Five would have been fine. The stores had been mostly cleaned out, leaving us with few choices.

“Beef jerky?” Quattro asked me. Then with a vestige of his old self, he held up a package of Twinkies. “America at its finest.”

“Hey,” I said, “you know, if we can find maple syrup, we can make our own—”

“Do-it-yourself bacon maple bars?” he guessed. His eyes glittered as he laughed. “I knew you’d see the light.”

I did.

Who would have known that his wide, easy grin could have hurt in the best and worst way? As thrilled as I was to see its reemergence, I wanted it to mean more than an inside joke between friends.
Get it together, Wilde Child.
So I wrinkled my
nose. “I still think bacon and doughnuts are two food groups that should never be combined.”

“See? I knew you secretly agreed.”

“About what?”

“Bacon is its own food group.”

As I sputtered, Quattro grabbed the bottles of water I was holding and brought them to the cashier.

Between all of us, we had managed to assemble a small stockpile of water, crackers, and peanuts. Christopher asked for directions to our hotel from a backpacker wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. The reaction we received was one I didn’t expect: total antagonism.

“Good luck with that,” the backpacker said, mouth puckering like he was preparing to spit at us.

What had we done to him? We must have looked confused because, disgusted, the backpacker said, “Your embassy airlifted some people out yesterday. But they would only take
Americans
.” With a last disdainful look, he turned his back on us, but not before one parting shot: “All the hotels have jacked up their prices.”

Worriedly, Mom asked Dad, “What if our rooms have been given away?” Her hand fluttered toward the plaza. “I mean, look at all these people.”

Dad had no solution, just more problems. He pointed out, “Just think about all the other groups who are still coming down from the trail.”

At last, after a few wrong turns and a helpful shopkeeper, we reached the modest hotel where we were supposed to spend the night, only to discover that it was overbooked and no one at the front desk remembered seeing Hank or Grace. But then again, everything was a blur to them, considering the fifty tourists who’d dropped in that morning alone in hopes of finding available rooms.

“But we have reservations,” Christopher protested firmly. The receptionist gave a helpless shrug, explaining that guests were refusing to vacate.

“Well, we can’t exactly boot people out,” Mom said, shaking her head. Still, she leaned forward as if she might hurdle over the reception desk and commandeer the computer. But the electricity had gone out. The computer was useless. “Are there any rooms in other hotels? What about the hostels?”

The receptionist shook her head regretfully. “Even the train seats are being used as beds. You can try Inkaterra.”

Mom glanced at Dad. “That’s the spendy one.”

If the hotel had been expensive before the floods, I hated to guess how much a room would cost now that beds were hot commodities. An anxious expression calcified on Mom’s face.

The sound of a chopper sent us scrambling outside, all of us craning our necks to spot where it would land. We followed the exodus of tourists to the makeshift helipad that some volunteers must have cleared earlier. People actually pushed and shoved each other to climb aboard until two soldiers disembarked, each gripping a machine gun. Did the Peruvian government really think automatic weapons were necessary?

Without thinking, I began photographing the scene, starting with the unlucky soldier who got the job of announcing that the first helicopter would evacuate only the elderly and infirm.

“This place looks like it’s going to blow,” said Quattro softly in my ear.

When had he moved to stand close to me like he’d appointed himself my personal bodyguard? Before I could spend more than a nanosecond processing that thought, Grace’s distinct objection—“I am not elderly!”—cut through the crowd’s mutterings. I scanned the area until I spotted her, then shot her with Hank, who was holding a visibly pale Stesha near the front of the line. Ruben was gesturing emphatically to one of the impassive soldiers, universal sign language for “She’s getting evacuated. Now.”

Grace hurried over, intercepting us as we walked toward them. “You made it!” she said, hugging me tightly. “I was so worried about you all.”

“What’d the doctor say?” Mom asked, bending her head down to Grace as they walked side by side back to Stesha.

Grace shook her head. “No doctor. She’s worse, but she’s refusing to leave.”

Overhearing Grace, Stesha cracked her eyes open and said, “I’m the captain, and I’m not leaving until you’re all safe.” That spot of defiance sapped her energy. Stesha sagged into Hank’s arms.

“Come on, Stesha. You might have a concussion,” said Quattro, glancing at me with a slight nod to tag-team with him.

So I added, “Reb’s going to kill me if your chin gets infected. You’ve got to have that taken care of.”

“It’s just a little cut,” Stesha protested feebly, but she didn’t even bother opening her eyes this time. Yet with some kind of finely tuned internal radar for trouble, they opened just as a soldier approached her with Ruben trailing close behind.

“Traitor,” she said softly to him.

“You have to go,” I told her.

“I know.” Still trying to take care of us, Stesha dug a last PowerBar from her pocket and pushed it on Ruben. “But I’m not leaving Cusco until you’re all there.” Even as she was led to the helicopter, we could hear her calling back to us, “I’m not leaving Cusco.”

“Where’s Grace?” Ruben asked, glancing around increasingly worried. There was no sign of her.

“Figures,” said Dad, rubbing his temples.

What possible reason could compel Grace to remain in an overcrowded town with no promise of a bed, hot meal, or shower? I knew what would make me stay. My gaze shifted over to the remainder of our ragtag group, lingering on Quattro.

“At thirty-five people per helicopter,” said Dad, now eyeing the growing crowd, “this evacuation is going to take an eternity.”

“But you’re lucky. You’re going blind,” said Hank, who then ducked his head, embarrassed. “I mean, you and your family can be evacuated now.”

“I’m not an invalid,” Dad answered, and he straightened himself to his full height. I was so glad to hear him say those words aloud, and wondered if he was listening to himself.

Twenty minutes later, my eyes filled with tears as the helicopter
door slammed shut and the rotor whirred loud. Our group was fragmenting. None of us had been able to say a proper good-bye to Stesha. I hadn’t even hugged her. Everything had happened so fast once she was trundled off with a soldier. The lump in my throat grew larger as the helicopter rose. Selfishly, I didn’t want to see Stesha go. My eyes caught on Quattro, who nodded in understanding at me.

As soon as we left the perimeter of the helipad, Grace magically reappeared, smiling innocently. I could feel Dad fuming, but any scene I was afraid he might cause was trumped by a more urgent problem.

“We don’t have a room at our hotel,” Helen told Hank, concern creasing her forehead.

“We’ll figure it out,” Hank said confidently, and with a homing instinct for the only five-star hotel in the town, he steered us to Inkaterra.

The boutique inn could be reached only by crossing a private wood bridge. On the other side, we found ourselves in a lush oasis that couldn’t have been farther from the fear, filth, and garbage back in town. Elegant, understated casitas dripped with vibrant bougainvillea. The fountain in the central courtyard burbled sweetly, nothing like the bellow of the river. A discreet wood sign pointed to the spa, gift shop, and restaurants.

I could hear my parents murmuring as we approached the reception building, worrying about the cost of the rooms. Having
to admit to everyone—including Quattro—that we couldn’t afford this place was going to be sheer awkwardness.

Hank strode in as though he’d stayed in places this luxurious hundreds of times before. Of course, he had. The woman at the front desk had her hair pulled into a sleek updo, not a strand out of place, as if this sanctuary made her immune to the disaster beyond the bridge. After Hank inquired about a room, she informed us that there was, in fact, one ultradeluxe casita available, complete with its own plunge pool and private garden.

And then she named the price.

I’m not sure who gasped louder, me or Mom. I could have dressed myself for two years, maybe three, with the cost of a single night here; we’d never be able to afford this.

Dad cleared his throat. “We’ll find other accommodations in town and meet up with you all later.”

“Come on. It’s what? Nineteen hundred square feet? We can all fit in,” said Hank, plunking down his platinum card. When the receptionist mumbled something about an extra fee per guest, Hank waved her off. “No problem.”

“We can pay—” started Christopher.

“This is on me,” Hank said with finality, glancing at Helen. The way he still sought her approval was sad, especially when she just nodded once in agreement. His gushing fangirl was gone. Maybe it wasn’t confidence that made him come off all brash and bold but insecurity. Who was I to talk? Hadn’t I been all I-know-boys to Reb and Ginny when, really, I had been dumped by Dom?

Grace said, “Well, this is so kind of you, Hank, Helen. I know we all appreciate it.”

At last, a real smile spread across Hank’s face. “It’s the least I could do,” he said, no longer fighting to be heard or first or right.

If anyone had told me that a hotel casita could be larger than our home, I’d never have believed them. But here I was, standing in one. Handwoven rugs brightened the terra-cotta tile floor. A couch and two chairs were arranged before a fireplace in a snug sitting area. Another rich tapestry that Mom immediately inspected hung on a wall. If anyone thought I was weird for taking a picture of the king-size bed with blankets made from alpaca, they didn’t mention it. I think we were all overwhelmed. One moment we were escaping tents collapsed in a mudslide, and the next we had stepped into a man-made paradise.

I geared myself up for Dad to jump into his usual bedbug-hunting mode, but he just lowered himself into one of the dining room chairs as though he’d given up. It was futile to fight anymore.