“What’s that?” he asked, his liquid blue eyes intently focused on mine.
“She said to stay away from men. Apparently, you’re all bad news.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t take her advice,” he said, not missing a beat. “It was a nice surprise to see you and Jen this morning. I wasn’t sure you’d show.”
I’d been thinking the same thing about him. Despite the sales job Carter had done for Vang Vieng, I wasn’t sure he’d actually meet us at the Northern Bus Station at the time he’d suggested. Backpackers are notorious for making—then bailing—on the best-laid plans, but he’d been right on time. He braved the ticket kiosk on our behalf and helped us load our heavy backpacks into the belly of the bus.
Despite the unscheduled stops we made at roadside rice stands (a compulsory part of bus travel in Southeast Asia), it was still early when we rolled into Vang Vieng. It was a postage stamp of a town, just a few dusty streets crosshatched by even smaller alleys, hemmed in by the Nam Song River to the west. The entire area was nestled within a ring of emerald peaks that folded into one another like the haunches of sleeping dragons with clouds draped across their backs.
Most of the guesthouses and restaurants lining the main drag looked freshly built, the sharp metallic ping of hammers slamming against nail heads confirming that construction was still under way. This place had only recently come into its own as a backpacker destination, and the locals were doing all they could to meet the demand for cheap beds, food, and booze.
As we walked through the center of town toward our guesthouse, I could see into ground-level cafés where groups of slick-haired backpackers were curled up on cushions underneath wooden tables, mindlessly depositing French fries and crepes and glistening forkfuls of noodles into their mouths. Their eyes glazed over as they stared up at large projection screens playing endless episodes of Friends, Family Guy, or The Simpsons. All over the tiny town, American sitcoms and bootleg first-run movies were shown on a high-pitched loop, hypnotizing anyone who passed like a strong gust from a poppy field. Linger long enough to order a beer or pile of banana pancakes, and you’d be flat out until someone pulled the plug on the TV for the night.
We resisted the sitcom siren song in order to pursue the second, but no less addictive, reason to alight in Vang Vieng: extreme river tubing. During the previous few years, the locals had built a full-blown water park along a meandering stretch of the Nam Song, a cat’s cradle of zip lines, rope swings, and makeshift bamboo bars that clung precipitously to the riverbanks.
For just 30,000 kip (about $3), you could rent a giant inner tube and waterproof bag, take a tuk-tuk or van ride a few kilometers upriver, and play bumper boats with other travelers as you floated slowly back in the direction of town. During the journey, you’d hear an endless mix of rock music pouring through invisible speakers and the constant cry of “Beer-Lao-Beer-Lao-Beer-Lao!” Just motion with your hand or bat an eyelash, and one of the men standing along the riverbank would hook you with a pole and reel you in. Whether you were buying your first fifty-cent brew or your sixth, you’d be given unlimited access to the zip line or rope swing rigged up at that particular outpost.
The only real no-no here? Lighting up a joint. As Jen, Carter, and I rented our gear along with the other newbie tubers, we passed a sign that read TO SAVE MONEY, NO SMOKE MARIJUANA ON THE RIVER. THANKS!
“Get it?” said Jen, as proud as if she’d unlocked the riddle of the sphinx. “The sign doesn’t say ‘Stay out of jail!’ or ‘Avoid arrest!’ It means you’d have to bribe the police to get out of trouble, so don’t smoke.”
“Gotta love the Lao,” said Carter. “Always watching out for our wallets.”
Depending upon how long we lingered at the riverside pubs, the ride ahead of us could take two hours—or five. We wasted no time in plopping our tubes into the river.
“Hey, everybody! Last one in buys the first round!” shouted the boisterous Danish guy who’d shared our van upriver. Taking a running leap, he let loose his best Tarzan yodel before crash-landing into his tube and flipping it over, a feat that elicited cheers and wolf whistles from the other backpackers. We were on our way.
Our floating caravan hadn’t made it a hundred yards down river when the first Beer Laos outpost lured us, dripping and thirsty, back out of the water again. After taking turns braving the zip line, we set off on our way again—only to get held up at yet another overwater pub with a longer, steeper zip line. The process of drink-climb-jump-dunk repeated itself at another shore bar two hundred yards down, and then another.
As we continued downriver, I felt a slight bump on my right and smiled, knowing without looking who’d brushed up, accidentally on purpose, against my inner tube.
“Hey, buddy, stay in your own lane,” I joked, turning around to playfully push Carter away. But at the last second, just as our tubes were starting to drift apart, he caught my hand and pulled me back toward him. My gut immediately started doing its own version of the somersaults I’d just been practicing on the rope swing.
Squeezing my hand, Carter lay back in the tube and gave me the kind of half wink, half grin that only a sexy, scruffy dude can pull off so well. Taking his cue, I lay back too, turning my face toward the sky to catch the sunshine that flickered in strands of amber and honey through the trees above us.
It was turning out to be a languid, practically perfect afternoon, the kind I thought only existed in Country Time Lemonade and fabric softener commercials. We drifted hand in hand, lagging behind the rest of the group in the slowest part of the river. In the near stillness, I let my eyes fall shut and allowed my other senses to filter through. The layered sounds of splashing and laughter around me. The goose bumps that cropped up whenever the breeze picked up slightly. The points where Carter’s palm pressed against mine.
I’d fallen into such a deep state of relaxation that when we reached our final stop—a granddaddy, multistory bamboo bar with blaring rock music, several barbecue grills, and a ginormous five-story rope swing—I almost didn’t get out of my tube. But Carter and Jen insisted, so we all climbed ashore to grab paper cups filled with French fries and took a spot on the viewing log. We watched as other tubers ascended a ladder into the upper branches of a vertiginous tree. One bikini-clad girl leaned way out to grab a wooden crossbar and flung herself over the side of the platform.
Just imagining myself in her shoes (or rather, bare feet) made my heart pummel in my chest and my palms start to sweat. What if you slipped off the ladder or the platform and hit the roots at the base of the tree? Or landed badly in the river? I’d read that some travelers had perforated their eardrums by falling the wrong way, and the nearest modern hospital was a plane flight away in Bangkok.
There’s no way in hell I’m going up there.
When I shared this thought with Carter, he interpreted my statement as a thrown gauntlet and pulled out all the stops—flattery, bargaining, and even bribery—to get me to change my mind. Finally, just to shut him up (or maybe to impress him), I begrudgingly agreed to make the leap.
My limbs were shaking as I ascended but had turned into gelatinous goo by the time I reached the platform at the top and looked down. Holy shit. Why had I agreed to do this? A man to my right used a hook to grab the crossbar and pulled it in toward me. I held on to a beam behind me as I reached, chest vibrating, for the wooden dowel in front of me. As my left hand jerked up to meet it, my weight dragged forward and I found myself moving toward the edge and flying over the water in a huge arc, my fingers desperately gripping the lifeline that suspended me above it.
Ahhhhhhhhh!
“Drop! Amanda, drop! Let go!” Carter called from the shore while Jen screamed her encouragement. Looking down past my feet to find the water, I did as instructed and landed with a forceful splash.
Yes…I made it! Popping up to the surface, I swam to the riverbank and climbed out, a goofy grin plastered to my face.
“That. Was. Awesome!” Jen high-fived me she walked by and towar
d the ladder.
“Killer jump!” Carter said, grinning as I approached. “Ready to do it again?”
I stopped in my tracks, water cascading down my ponytail and down my spine. “What? Are you nuts? There’s no way I’d even think about—”
I didn’t get the chance to finish my thought. Carter reached out to put his hand on the back of my wet head and pulled me in for an unexpected kiss.
“Sorry…I just couldn’t wait any longer,” he said before kissing me all over again.
I’d all but forgotten that we weren’t alone when I heard clapping and whistling coming from the river. I opened my eyes and turned to see the remaining members of our floating wagon train drifting past us, offering their appreciation for our little show. Carter flashed them a thumbs-up and a smile before turning around to give me one last kiss—and this one, he definitely didn’t act sorry about.
Later that night, after our group had gone to dinner at one of the Friends’ cafés and attended a themed “astronaut space party” thrown by one of the bars (complete with tinfoil cone hats, plastic capes, and other impromptu costumes), I pulled Jen aside and asked her if she cared that I might go back to the guesthouse early with Carter.
“Don’t be silly! Of course it’s fine,” she said. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I saw this coming before you did.”
“But are you sure you’ll be okay? I just don’t want you to feel stranded if I leave.”
“Amanda, the guesthouse is, like, a block and a half from here. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll walk back with one of the girls from the group. And remember,” she added, “I want all the details in the morning.”
Carter was waiting for me near the entrance to the party. As he and I walked together, stopping every few feet to sneak another kiss, my brain rewound to my meeting with the nun a few days earlier. Her words, so startling at the time, seemed downright silly to me now. Stay away from men? How could I have taken that seriously, even for a second?
I looked up at Carter, the first guy I’d felt really drawn to in a long time, and allowed myself to be pulled into his arms. He wanted me to be here, and I wanted to be with him. As we walked back to the guesthouse hand in hand, I could feel my pulse racing. Carter let me into the darkened room before him, and I instantly tripped on the backpack he’d left at the foot of the bed. I vaulted through the air and came down, in a less-than-alluring fashion, on a brick-hard mattress. Carter, who noticed only that I’d assumed a somewhat horizontal position, rained down after me, swallowing me up in his athletic bulk and immediately pressing fast-forward on the seduction he’d started on the river earlier that day.
This is the part where I’m supposed to explain, or at least obliquely reference, how we sealed the deal, but to my own surprise—we didn’t. Even as our clothes were rapidly evaporating, I found myself nervously yammering on about my “no sex with backpackers” rule and inquiring as to the recency of his last STD test. The latter was a standard question I always asked back in New York, but here, in a riverside hut in the middle of nowhere in Laos, it seemed a tad compulsive. As the words ejected from my mouth like bullets from a loaded handgun, I kicked myself for being such a neurotic freak. Shut up! Shut up! No wonder I hadn’t gotten naked with a guy in so long!
Carter fielded my questions, then carried on as if I hadn’t said anything at all, pressing me, but not too aggressively, to change my mind. When I didn’t, we both fell asleep.
I figured that after that night, Carter might hop the next bus out of town, but the following morning, not long after I’d done the flip-flop walk of shame, he came by my room to see if he could take Jen and me to breakfast. And then later he suggested that we hit up the river for more tubing. And then he proposed we take a field trip to the caves north of town. That night, after Jen and I went off in search of a place that sold pancakes for dinner, Carter tracked us down and asked if he could pull up a floor pillow.
Jen hardly said a word when Carter decided that we’d be traveling as a trio to Luang Prabang. “Hey, as long as you’re having fun,” she’d said as we rerolled our clothes and wedged them into our packing cubes. “But just wondering…does he remind you of anyone?”
“Hmm…I guess he looks kinda like that actor from Varsity Blues.” I knew that’s not what Jen was thinking, but I pretended to be oblivious.
There was something about Carter—his quarterback build, his sexy smile, the way he seemed right at home in any social setting—that reminded me of Baker. Once I’d realized it, my knee-jerk reaction had been to brush the comparison aside. After all, Carter was an entirely different person, and no way was I going to let the ghost of some relationship past prevent me from enjoying my present.
Before Jen could respond, or maybe shock me with her revelation, Carter arrived to hustle us to the bus stop. I glanced at his profile, and he turned to catch me staring.
Long before the three of us made the dizzying ride through the mountains to reach the ancient royal city of Luang Prabang, we’d heard extensive accounts of its charms. Travelers spoke of the place as a kind of Shangri-la, a modern-day utopia where locals lived in perfect harmony in the cradle of the Khan and Mekong rivers, surrounded by ripples of velvety green mountains under a smudged pink sky. The townspeople walked through their day unhurried and somehow never seemed to age. Even the children spoke in melodic whispers.
In light of this effusive praise, I’d assumed that the town would be a total letdown, like an independent film that everyone’s hyped so much that watching it can only disappoint. That wasn’t the case. Few places I’ve ever visited, before or since, have been imbued with such a sense of exoticism and intrigue, mystery, and romance as Luang Prabang.
In the morning, the sun rose just as the monks and their novices had spilled from temple yards into the frangipani-scented dawn, the amber light warming the backs of the almsgivers who tipped rice and other offerings into their bowls. As the town stretched from sleep into waking, wafts of fresh-baked baguettes, chocolatey pastries, and roasted espresso warmed the air. The scent was a subtle reminder, as was the nineteenth-century architecture, that the country was once a French colony. Now an independent nation, Laos has held on to the civilized parts of European culture while cultivating its own traditional one.
As we strolled through town, men lounging against idling taxis suggested they’d be happy to take us anywhere we’d like to go for just a dollar per person. Women rode past on yellow bicycles or bright red motorbikes, their umbrellas held at attention to shield their skin from the light. Later on, they greeted us shyly as we approached to buy one of the mango-, pineapple-, or banana-flavored cakes they sold from pop-up card tables.
After dusk the main road through town transformed into a well-organized night market. Strings of neatly spaced bulbs ran down the length of it like the dips and arcs on a carousel; patches of fabric were placed end to end to form quilted sidewalks. Within their appointed squares, families sold silk scarves, elaborately embroidered robes, slippers with elephants and monkeys marching across them, hand-stitched pillows, duvet covers and throws, star-shaped lanterns punched with tiny geometric patterns, and hanging paper umbrellas that, when you stared at them together, looked like a school of pastel jellyfish floating upward into the night sky.
After shopping stoked our appetites, we filled our stomachs with all manner of delicacies—dumplings, curries, stews, noodles, rice cones, and other unidentifiable dishes—for just 50 cents a bowl. Then later, when the fatigue of the day set in, we collapsed into beds at one of the local spas and got an acupressure massage so powerful and restorative I almost cried from the release of toxins and uncorked emotion.
Once we’d all plunked down $3 apiece to sleep in a guesthouse that reminded me of a Swiss chalet, Carter and I shared dinner at an outdoor café overlooking a firestorm sunset on the Mekong. I decided this place was about as close to backpacker heaven as I might ever get.
And whether it was the spell that the town cast over me, a smoky haze of romance tha
t clouded out my earlier apprehension, or just the patient, unhurried way Carter walked me back to his room later that night, I no longer felt any hesitation as we locked the door behind us. Tipping backward in his arms toward the bed and feeling his kiss on my throat, I knew I was finally ready to break the rules.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Holly
INDIA/SHRADDHA ASHRAM
NOVEMBER
I awoke shivering, drenched in sweat. Inside, the dorm was silent. Outside, the wild dogs were howling as if it were a full moon. My bed felt like a Tilt-a-Whirl ride at the state fair, and every time I closed my eyes I feared I’d fall out and crash to the ground. A kaleidoscope of color bursts exploded in front of my eyes.
The virus that had been spreading through the ashram must have hit me as I slept. I considered waking Chloe or running to find one of the swamis for help. I was suddenly terrified that I’d die there alone in an ashram in India, thousands of miles away from home and everyone I loved. Some part of me knew I was being irrational, that I was just feeling ill and isolated in the darkness in a foreign land. But my mind had its own force. I didn’t want to disappear in the dark on that lumpy mattress. I wanted to matter to something. I wanted to matter to someone. In my feverish haze, a thought surfaced that I’d kept buried deep: I feared I didn’t truly matter to anyone. If I passed right then in the night, would I be just like a ghost who faded quietly away?
Managing to drag myself out from under my mosquito net, I splashed cold water on my face and fumbled around in the shadows for my uniform so I could slip out of my sweat-soaked pajamas. Then I crawled back into bed and lost consciousness.
The next thing I remembered was waking to sunlight streaming through the empty dorm. I’d let my overactive mind go to extremes in the dark, and felt silly in the light of day.
Sitting up in bed slowly to test if the dizziness was gone, I felt my breath stop when I saw a black tarantula—whose body alone was the size of my hand—poised menacingly at the foot of my bed. I didn’t stop to think about whether it was a nightmare but could only react. My eyes were swollen and bloodshot from the virus pumping through my body, but pure fear jolted me with enough energy to jump out of bed and run down the length of the dorm.
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