The Great Ex-Scape

by Jo Watson

  “We’re leaving the hotel and getting back onto the list.” He waved the magazine at me. I’d almost forgotten about the list. We’d had such an action-packed day that I hadn’t even thought about it. “But first we are going to hike up a volcano,” he said.

  “A what?” I climbed off the bed and stood up this time. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “It’s not erupting. Besides,” he reached into my bedside drawer and pulled out a travel brochure. He flipped it open and held it up to my face. “Hiking the Piton de la Fournaise is one of the must do things here in Réunion. I found this in my room too.”

  “Just because everyone else is climbing volcanoes doesn’t mean we should too. It’s the same principle that applies to things like jumping off cliffs.”

  “Well, it’s too late to pull out, I’ve hired us a car, booked us into some other hotels and planned our road trip.” Alex laid a handwritten note down on the bed.

  “Road trip? Since when was this decided?”

  “Since Bethany looked at me seductively while peeling the skin back on a big banana at breakfast.”

  “Eeeww,” I cringed. I looked down at his piece of paper and picked it up. I scanned the words on the page and stopped when I saw it.

  “SKYDIVING!” I shouted. “You’ve written skydiving here, which must be a mistake, right?”

  “But look.” He grabbed another brochure from the drawer.

  “God, I’m kind of wishing that you didn’t have access to brochures, or magazines for that matter,” I said, sitting back down on the bed.

  “Extreme Réunion; paragliding, skydiving, microlight. Everyone is doing it.”

  “Again,” I pointed out, “just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean we should.”

  Alex cleared his throat and started reading, “ ‘Number Six. Get The Adrenalin Pumping. Do something that you are completely scared of. Whatever that is; there’s nothing like feeling the rush of adrenalin in your veins to make you forget your ex. Be brave and take that leap, whether it be off the top of a cliff or out of a plane—’ ”

  “Now you’re just making that up,” I cut him off.

  Alex looked up at me, unimpressed. He then passed the magazine over and folded his arms, waiting. I looked down at the magazine and continued to read.

  “ ‘Be brave and take that leap, whether it be off the top of a cliff or out of a plane—’ ” I paused. “I see, well, I’m not doing any such thing. I’ve had enough adrenalin to last me a lifetime, what with narrowly escaping latex-covered gimps and wild threesomes.” I walked over to the mirror and grabbed a hair band, twisting my hair into a bun and tying it up.

  Alex walked up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. He looked at me in the mirror seriously. “It’s already booked for later this afternoon, after we hike up the volcano.”

  “Mmmmm . . .” I mumbled, “we’ll see about that.” I put my most serious, stern face on and Alex just laughed. And then his hand slid around the front of my neck and my breath got caught in the back of my throat. He traced his finger over the bruise on my neck which was a bright violet color today.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked softly.

  I shook my head, locking eyes with him.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, looking somewhat concerned.

  “It’s okay,” I said softly, as if something had stolen my voice. We held each other’s gaze for a while and then my eyes drifted down to the green ribbon on his finger. I’d almost forgotten about them. Alex moved his hand away and then suddenly walked over to my cupboard. He pulled my suitcase out and placed it on the bed.

  “You should pack, the rental car is already here.”

  “I see.” I turned and faced him.

  “Are we taking her?” He pointed at the blow-up doll in my bed.

  I smiled. “Well, we can’t leave her here, can we?”

  “I’ll deflate her then?” Alex said, picking her up. Suddenly this was all so funny again.

  I nodded and laughed as I watched him trying to squeeze the air out of her by any means necessary. Once she was completely flat, Alex looked up from her and asked, “By the way, you can drive, can’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’m from London. Don’t think I’ve driven in years, thought it would be safer if you drove.”

  “Sure.” I gave him a very noncommittal nod, which soon turned into a very committed shake when I saw what it was that I was meant to be driving.

  “You want me to drive that?” I asked, looking at the car in horror. “It’s huge.”

  “It was either that or a tiny Renault,” he said.

  “I don’t think I can.” I walked around the thing—truly, it was massive.

  “Sure you can. I believe in you, Val.”

  “You know how cheesy that sounded?” I shot him a doubtful look.

  Alex smiled at me and put our bags in the car, a huge grin plastered across his face.

  “Hey!” I scolded him. “You are way, way too excited about this.” I walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in. Alex climbed in too.

  “I am,” he said, happily. “I really am.”

  “Why?” I slipped the keys into the ignition and turned it on.

  He shrugged and looked over at me. “I’m having so much fun with you,” he said seriously.

  I looked at him and started to smile. “Me too,” I said and that’s when I realized I hadn’t thought about Matt once in the last twenty-four hours.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Steer it!” Alex shouted.

  “I am, I am!” I shouted back.

  “Watch the sides!”

  “I am. I am!” I shrieked. “Oh my God!”

  I could see out of the corner of my eye that Alex had put his face in his hands and was covering his eyes.

  “HEY! I wasn’t the one who told you to hire the biggest vehicle that has ever been built!” I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tried to navigate my way down the long driveway. We weren’t even out on the open road yet and I was having this much trouble. “You should have got the small one!”

  “I thought you said size didn’t matter as much as we thought?” Alex looked up at me and smiled now.

  “Ha, ha funny,” I said sarcastically, trying desperately to maneuver the thing onto the road without causing a major international incident.

  “But you did, didn’t you?” Alex’s tone changed. “In fact, didn’t you say you could handle them all? Big, medium or small?”

  At this, I burst out laughing.

  “What are you doing?” Alex suddenly shouted and I jumped in fright.

  “What?” I asked frantically.

  “You’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”

  “Really?” I looked around at all the signs and the lights and the markings on the road. He was right! “Shit.” I put the massive thing into reverse and readjusted.

  Alex started laughing again as I managed to get the car facing in the right direction once more.

  “It probably would have been safer if I drove,” he said.

  “Are you trying to insinuate I’m a bad driver?” I didn’t tell him that a few days ago I’d smashed into two parked cars.

  “No. Of course not,” Alex said, keying the destination into his phone. A friendly British voice filled the car and started telling me where to drive.

  After about ten minutes of driving, I finally got the hang of it all. It helped that we were on a very wide road. The road was high, running along a hill. On our right, the sea was far below us and from this vantage point you could see all its different colors swirling together beautifully.

  And then the direction of our drive changed. We moved inland, away from the sea. The landscape changed dramatically and quickly. Suddenly, I felt like I was driving in a totally different country. The tropical vegetation was gone and it felt like we were in the English countryside. Rolling hills, cows grazing on the side of the road, haystacks lying in open fields. But as soon
as I’d gotten used to these new surroundings, it changed again.

  We were no longer driving through open fields, rather a dense wooded area closed in on us. Massive pine trees, so thick and high that they blocked out the sun. The trees surrounded us on all sides, and seemed to go on forever. The road also started getting steeper and narrower.

  “Route du Volcan,” I read the sign out loud when I saw it on the road.

  “I don’t need to translate that, do I?” Alex asked facetiously.

  “Nope. I’ve got it.” I smiled at him and continued to drive. And then the landscape changed once more. We popped out of the forest and back into the sun. There were no longer any trees, instead, the ground was covered with low, thin shrubs. The road got steeper, and the more we drove the rockier and less shrubbier it became until, nothing.

  No trees. No grass. Just red sand and black rock as far as the eye could see. This landscape was like nothing I’d ever seen before, it was almost Martian. The road beneath us was no longer tarred either, instead, it was red and sandy. Up ahead of us was a car park. We pulled in and climbed out.

  “I guess this is where the walk starts,” I said, looking around.

  We strolled through the car park and followed a group of people who were already walking. The ground beneath our feet was strange so I bent down to look at it. It was obvious that the lava flow had created rocks that looked rippled, almost as though piles of black satin ribbons had fallen to the floor. I ran my hand over them—they were smooth and strange to the touch.

  We continued to walk along the path until we heard someone shouting.

  “It’s erupting!”

  “What?” I looked at Alex.

  “It’s started erupting,” someone else said.

  I turned around and was just about to start running in the opposite direction, when out of nowhere, people began running up the path. Where had they all come from?

  “Shouldn’t we be running away from an erupting volcano?” I said to Alex. “Not towards it.”

  The man next to me obviously overheard and pointed out that this was a very common occurrence and that we would be perfectly safe to watch the eruption from the designated lookout spot.

  “A common occurrence?” I hissed at Alex. “I thought you said the thing didn’t erupt.”

  “Whoops,” Alex said, his eyes lighting up like a child at Christmas. “Come on.” He started moving towards it.

  “Not a chance.” I stood still as more and more people started coming down the path. People with cameras, what looked like a news crew, old people, people with children . . . Maybe it was safe?

  “Come on.” Alex took me by the hand and soon we were swept up in the crowd of people all racing towards the volcano. We picked up pace, jogging now, down the path, along the dusty road, climbing down the steps, up another set of steps until finally we arrived at the vantage point.

  It wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting Krakatoa, tons of red liquid exploding into the sky, rocks and dust in the air like mushroom clouds. But this was nothing like that. It was the PG version. But still, spectacular. I was in absolute awe as I watched the glowing red lava shooting up a few meters like a fountain might. It looked even redder and more brilliant against the black background. In fact, I’d never seen such a bright red color before, a color that was just so alive.

  I was awestruck by the magnificence of it all, this theatre of nature playing out an age-old dramatic scene for us. I gazed over at Alex, who looked equally swept up in this moment. Small trickles of molten rock began to form, sliding down the side the hill. The trickles grew, until they were small red streams. The lava didn’t move like a liquid though. It moved like a slow, strange alien creature. It crawled its way across the land instead of flowing. It seemed to take its time too, it was in no rush. And why would it be? It was ancient. It had been here for millions of years and had done this thousands of times before, creating, shaping and sculpting the landscape each time. I felt humbled by this great thing. There was something so special about seeing it and, suddenly, I felt strangely emotional. I was watching something so incredibly beautiful, yet destructive. Something that both created, and destroyed.

  “I know,” Alex said softly to me.

  It was only then that I realized I was biting down on my lip to stop the tears that I could feel in my eyes. I looked up at him and he draped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.

  “I know,” he said again, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. How did that always seem to happen?

  I put my arm around him and we stood there, side by side, arm in arm, watching in total silence as it continued. No one around us spoke either, and there was something so magical about this moment, a moment that we were all sharing in together. I’m not sure how long we stood and watched, but finally Alex whispered in my ear.

  “We need to go, we have a helicopter to catch.”

  “A wh—” and then I remembered. “You still think it’s a good idea to go skydiving?” I asked. “Can’t we just tick adrenalin off the list thanks to erupting volcano?”

  Alex turned and smiled at me. “Oh, Valeria.”

  “Valeria? God, only my mother calls me that. And only when I’m in trouble. Am I in trouble?” I asked, turning to look at Alex now. The sun was behind him and I shielded my eyes to see his face.

  The bright daylight sun was doing something incredible to his eyes now and I found myself quite transfixed by them again. By the way they seemed to change in such a mercurial manner. He blinked and when he opened them again, I swear they looked a little different once more.

  “The helicopter is waiting for us,” Alex said, and started walking away.

  I snapped myself out of the gray daze I’d suddenly found myself in. “You know there’s no way I’m doing this, right?”

  “We’ll see,” he said smugly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “I hate you right now, I hate you right now, did I mention that I HATE YOU. Right. NOW!” I screamed over the roar of the blades and the raging winds flying past the open door. I’d never heard such loud, violent gusts of wind before, and I was sure I wasn’t meant to either, not unless I was taking a stroll through a hurricane—and who the hell does that? No one!

  Everything about this moment was completely unnatural. One never expects to be in a helicopter with the door open. Let alone sitting at said open door with legs hanging out! Nothing about this moment was even vaguely acceptable, normal or natural.

  Alex looked at me with wide eyes now, all his previous smug smiles gone. “I think I hate myself too, now.” He grimaced at me, and the terror that washed over his face did little to soothe me; if anything it totally set me off. How dare he feel terrified! This had been his bright idea!

  “I told you this was a bad idea!” I shouted over at him. “I knew it. This is officially the worst idea ever and it’s all your fault, Alex. Your fault!” I continued my panicked rant.

  “Are you ready?” The instructor who was tightly strapped to my back asked me.

  “NO! No, no, no, no, nooooooo.” I shook my head violently from side to side and shut my eyes tightly. “I don’t want to die, “I wailed frantically.

  I heard a chuckle behind me from the instructor and I wanted to turn around and slap him. How dare he laugh in the face of danger like this? “You won’t die. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “SAFE!” I scoffed loudly. “Safe is not throwing yourselves out of a helicooooo—”

  He jumped. I screamed. I clenched my jaw and my fingers tightened into balls of anxiety. The cold wind assaulted my face, like thousands of tiny cold needles poking into my skin all at once. The winds howled against my ears, roaring into them so loudly that it was all I could hear. My cheeks burned, my mouth felt like it was being forcibly pulled open and my nose was about to be ripped from my face. For a second I couldn’t catch my breath, as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. I was totally disorientated as we flipped over and over. Once, twice, three times . . . I loo
ked up at the helicopter, it seemed so far away now and like Dorothy I wished I could click my heels together and magic myself back into it.

  I quickly closed my eyes again and let out a long, loud scream. As loud as I could as we continued to fall further and faster. My brain was having such trouble trying to figure out what was going on right now. It was as if it couldn’t process all the information I was getting, and why should it? I’d never done anything even vaguely like this before. All my senses were overloaded all at once. From every conceivable angle, all screaming different things. I heard the instructor scream something in my ear, it sounded like not fighting it, just going with it and accepting it!

  Accept it? Accept that I was falling from a helicopter? Plummeting towards the Earth with nothing but some flimsy piece of fabric to stop me from smashing into the ground at a million miles an hour. My heart was beating against my chest and I could feel the thump of my frightened pulse in my neck and face and ears.

  But then suddenly . . . something happened. I’m not sure why, or what it was exactly, but everything seemed to slow down. My heart got into a slower, steady rhythm, the winds didn’t feel as violent and downright abusive, my ability to breathe deeply returned. I opened my eyes again and looked around.

  And I had to admit that it was beautiful up here. I felt like I was in some kind of strange no-man’s land. A secret place that existed somewhere between the sky and the Earth. Where I was free-falling completely out of my own control. I surrendered myself to it all.

  I untightened my fingers, opened my hands and slowly held my arms out, giving myself over completely to the feeling of falling. The feeling of absolute freedom. All of a sudden I felt like some kind of powerful, kickass superhero, soaring through the skies. I smiled, and out of the corner of my eye saw Alex approaching. We looked at each other and our eyes locked. He was also smiling and I could see he was experiencing the same thing I was. The empowering feeling of total freedom.

  All my problems seemed so far away from me now. All those pesky earthly problems like deadlines and meetings and rent and Matt. The things that kept you locked down and trapped, disappeared. Up here, they just didn’t exist. There was nothing here except me, Alex and the big wide-open skies. I reached my hands out towards him and he did the same. We grabbed onto each other so tightly and held on as if our lives depended on it.