Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard

rock at the water and it skips four times.
    “You don’t think I’m serious,” she continues. “But I am.
    Listen: you’ve made it to Central America—hooray! But now that you’re here, why don’t you use this opportunity to travel?
    Like, to really travel? With people who know the right places to go?”
    I glance at Rowan, who is busy examining his stack of string ankle bracelets. I’m starting to feel nervous. “Ha,” I say.
    “You guys are crazy.”
    Starling chuckles. “It’s not like we’re inviting you to an orgy! Although I hope you haven’t taken a vow of chastity or anything—that might be a problem for my brother here.” Rowan shoves Starling’s shoulder. “Hey! Who said I was even interested?”
    “You’re always interested.”
    “You know that’s not true—”
    “I have a boyfriend, anyway,” I blurt out.
    Where the hell did that come from? My face catches fire.
    Silently, I thank the darkness for hiding my burning cheeks.
    It’s like something out of a bad romantic comedy. I hate that kind of movie; The liar always gets caught. But it’s too late. I can’t take it back. Oh no, really, I was kidding. I’m single and ready to mingle! Kill me now.
    Starling, however, is grinning. “Perfect! You’ll be our other sister. Entirely platonic. So there’s nothing stopping you. Come on, Bria . . . be impulsive for once!” I stare at the stone in my hands—and discover it’s not a stone; it’s an avocado pit. I roll it down the slope into the lake.
    I want to argue that they know nothing about me—I am impulsive. Didn’t I steal away to Santa Lucía? Sprint off in Chichicastenango? Journey to Central America in the first place? I even almost ate a street cart tamale!
    I have the feeling Starling won’t be impressed.
    Toby liked to say he chose not to be impulsive. As if being impulsive were something you consciously decide. When I look at Starling, with her turquoise turban and wet knot of hair, and at Rowan, with his stack of cheap string anklets, I think: Impulsive isn’t something you choose. It’s something you are. Like gay, or freckled, or bipolar.
    Something I pretend to be but am not. Not really. Not deep down.
    I try to find an easy out. “But I’ve got no money.”
    “None at all?”
    “Very, very little.”
    “We’re not talking like twenty dollars here, right?”
    “Just a couple hundred . . .”
    Starling waves her hand dismissively. “That’s more than enough when you travel like us. When’s your flight home?”
    “I leave from Guatemala City in eighteen days.”
    “It’ll be hard to get her back in time,” Rowan says quietly.
    “I need to be in Belize for a whole week.”
    “But that leaves, like, eleven extra days,” I say. “Doesn’t it take just a couple days to get there? Why are you allowing so much time to travel?”
    “Because it’s the whole point—”
    Before he can finish, the rest of the skinny-dippers—some of whom haven’t even bothered to put on clothes—mob us, and in the resulting anarchy of wet limbs and dreadlocks, the moment’s lost.

    Day 4, Morning
    My Walk of Shame
    I wake the next morning to roosters screeching. My first sensation is surprise: so I managed to fall asleep after all.
    My bed at La Casa Azul turned out to be a second-level bunk in a filthy dorm room shared with seven backpackers stinking of lake water and armpits and worse. All night the bedsprings gouged my back. A chill wind moaned faintly through the fissures in the walls: La Llorona, sensing my distress, seeping in to offer me her place. I tried to avoid using the bed’s gray sheet out of pure disgust. But too soon I was shivering beneath it, my eyes on the ceiling rafters, searching for moving things.
    What’s worse, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d overheard last night on my way back from the shared bathroom—Starling and Rowan, talking about me.
    “What the hell were you thinking?” Rowan said. “She’s never even traveled