The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Baggett

  “What should we do?” Amanda asked. “Maybe go buy a tarp or something?”

  “Well, the storm is moving north, so I suggest you let us try to tape up the cracks and then head south straightaway. Hey, Aaron!” he called over to another of the employees. “Do we have anything in the office that might work?”

  “You know what, don’t we have duct tape?” Holly asked.

  “Yes, you’re right. I put my roll under the sink,” Amanda replied, diving into the van to look under our mini–dishwashing station. “See, I told you this would come in handy.”

  Before we knew it, all three Balloon Aloft employees had sprung into action. Bringing a stepladder over for the out-of-reach areas, they formed an assembly line around the van, ripping and passing long pieces of tape off the roll and meticulously waterproofing the entire vehicle. My favorite patch by far was the jagged horseshoe strip that pointed down to the KEEP TRAVELLING SAFELY decal below the rear window.

  “You’re our heroes, seriously,” I gushed, giving them all hugs. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been here.”

  “Aw, don’t be silly, we’re happy to help. We’ve got a national reputation to uphold anyway, you know?” Aaron said.

  With the rain fortunately still at bay, we headed out of town in pursuit of the perfect campsite.

  Hours later, we pulled into a peaceful valley fringed by dense forest and rocky mountain peaks. Racing against nightfall, we immediately went to work building a campfire in the national park–provided sand pit.

  Before long, a blazing inferno shot sparks into the midnight sky, crackling against the sound of the swaying trees. Uncorking a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, we formed a semicircle around the perimeter, dangling marshmallows over the center until they’d roasted to a golden brown. With the soft flames licking our faces, we sat there for hours, reminiscing about all the incredible adventures we’d shared and pondering what lies ahead on the other side of our journey.

  It’s strange, but back when the trip was still just a pipe dream, a crazy notion that Amanda, Holly, and I had tossed out during our vacation in Argentina, I could envision us together on the road as clearly as if it had already happened. And suddenly it was just as easy to imagine us getting together to discuss new jobs, boyfriends, and thoughts about our lives over brunch back in New York. Giving toasts at each other’s weddings. Group getaways with our husbands and kids. Taking vacations together, just the three of us. Maybe someday we’d even write a book about the trip, as we’d occasionally fantasized about doing. Who knew?

  But though I couldn’t predict the specifics of our future any more today than I could have before, I saw now how fast it could all fly by. Soon we would be returning to the States and the last chapter of this story would be complete. Although we’d hit some unexpected bumps during our final weeks in Australia, in a way it seemed befitting. Because it wasn’t during those picture-perfect moments when I learned the most about myself; rather, it was during the most challenging portions of the trip, when the three of us stood side by side refusing to let one another fall. I certainly hadn’t received all the answers I’d been seeking when I left, but as I looked across the fire at Amanda and Holly, I knew I’d found something even better.

  Toward the start of the trip, I’d confessed to the girls that one of my greatest fears was that something would happen to my parents and I’d be left an orphan, with no siblings to shoulder the sadness. And though I’d been blessed with the most amazing friends I could ever hope for, deep down I would always feel alone until I had started a family of my own, people who put me as their number one priority above all else and vice versa.

  But after everything the three of us had been through together, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of that anymore. I knew I would never have to walk this earth on my own. Come what may, whether it was something as minor as a fender bender or as major as losing a loved one, Amanda, Holly, and I would always be there for one another.

  Truthfully, I felt in many ways just as lost now as I had when we’d first set off on this adventure, but I wasn’t lost alone. And I was going to sit there with my sisters until the last embers flickered out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Holly

  AUSTRALIA

  MAY

  Careening through the sleek sports cars that were gliding over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, our van was like a fat man at a beauty pageant—totally out of place. It wasn’t just the splashes of paint splattered across it as if a rainbow had vomited or its hefty bulk. No, it was the lopsided crater on the roof and the gleaming silver duct tape holding it all together.

  I’d gotten into so many fender benders myself that my father once asked if I’d mistaken the highway for a bumper car arena. I was actually surprised that it was Jen—rather than me—who had crashed the van.

  Jen was sitting in the passenger seat beside me, looking totally stricken. “I can’t walk into Auto Barn and face Chris after I mangled the van. And World Nomads is definitely going to fire us.”

  “Jen, accidents happen. If this is the worst trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into after a year on the road, then we’re blessed,” I said, trying to reassure her. “And don’t worry about the deductible. Whatever it costs, we’re in this together and we’re splitting the money.”

  “Hol, you don’t even have enough money left for a plane ticket home,” she said.

  “Details, details,” I said before Amanda popped her head up from the back.

  “Merge here! Auto Barn is up on the right,” she ordered. I automatically jerked the wheel to the right, causing a few cars to swerve with an angry scream of their horns. Jen gripped the seat belt strap, her knuckles white.

  “It should be up here on the left,” Amanda directed.

  As we pulled into the garage, Jen slid lower in her seat, her cheeks red from mortification. I have to admit, my stomach felt as if I’d ingested gasoline. We were supposed to be spreading goodwill, not demolishing the van.

  “Do we have enough cash for a taxi?” I asked, fully prepared to unload our bags and find our own way back to Simone’s apartment. Jen covered her face, and Amanda just nodded.

  Narrowly making it through the garage door opening—all we needed was for me to dent the van even more upon returning it—I slowed to a stop. Awaiting us was a small crowd. Chris was there, as were Christy from World Nomads and the owner of Auto Barn and a few mechanics.

  “Oh, man, they called for backup,” Amanda whispered, looking nervous.

  I turned off the engine, and the three of us climbed out of the van, preparing for an angry onslaught.

  After the group took a few seconds to silently survey the van in all its mangled glory, they broke into applause. Chris pretended to jump out of the way, dramatically shielding his face from the imaginary crash. The three of us looked at one another, not knowing what to make of it.

  “Well, you’re not the first World Nomads ambassadors to get into an accident, but you certainly did the best at it!” Chris said, laughing.

  “Is that…duct tape?” one of the mechanics asked incredulously.

  “Um, yes?” Jen said. The group broke into another round of applause.

  “How on earth did you manage to shave off the entire roof? Were you distracted by some strapping young man at the roadside?” Chris joked.

  Jen immediately stepped in to apologize, saying that it was her fault and she alone would pay for the damage. As the mechanics poked around the vehicle, peeling back tape and running their fingers over the splintered fiberglass to estimate the damage, Chris enveloped us in a bear hug.

  “I’m glad you ladies are all right!” he said. I looked over at Amanda. She just shrugged her shoulders. This was not the reception we’d expected.

  Then Phil, Auto Barn’s owner, who had kind brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled, broke in. “It looks like there’s about eight thousand dollars’ worth of damage,” he said solemnly.

  Jen froze, and I worried she mi
ght pass out. I squeezed her arm to comfort her. Eight thousand dollars was almost half her trip budget. With Australia being our last stop, that money had long since been spent.

  Just as I was contemplating how I’d be able to increase my credit card limit, Phil added, “But all you’ll have to pay is the four-hundred-dollar deductible.”

  “What?” Jen asked. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard right either. Was this guy really letting us off the hook?

  “If you pay the minimum deductible, we’ll take care of the rest,” Phil said. Now Jen appeared as though she’d been given a second lease on life.

  Christy stepped in next and added, “We’ve already discussed the logistics. Chris will look into getting you another vehicle. One that’s smaller—and an automatic.”

  I’d been prepared to grab my backpack and hail a taxi, but instead our “employers” were rewarding us for ruining their vehicle? It didn’t seem to make sense.

  “You’d really do that for us?” Jen asked.

  “So we’re not fired?” Amanda asked at the same time, probably having flashbacks to her editorial assistant days.

  “Yes, and of course not! We’ll give you the car, but you’ll have to keep blogging for us,” Christy grinned. “You can’t let a little accident stop you from exploring Australia. You just got here, and there’s so much you have to see.”

  Aussies had a reputation for their laid-back, “no worries” attitude, and this was one stereotype that struck us as being true for the most part. Of course our saviors had their own motives for giving us another vehicle—they wanted us to promote their blog. But the humor with which they handled the situation, and the kindness they showered us with, showed that life can sometimes be as hard—or as easy—as one chooses to make it.

  “I have a friend who runs a surf camp a few hours up the coast. I can call him if you’d be interested in staying there for a few nights,” Chris offered. All three of us answered yes in the same breath. Our road trip was definitely taking a turn for the better.

  “Okay, on one condition,” Chris said. I knew there had to be a disclaimer, I thought. I looked at him suspiciously.

  “You have to record a video of the wrecked van so we can put it up on the site.”

  It was a task that Amanda took on with zeal. As Phil positioned the camera to zoom in on the cracks crisscrossing the roof like the roots of a tree, Amanda joked, “If you’re a foreigner and you can’t drive, then call Auto Barn!”

  So it wasn’t literary skills or inspiring adventures that gave us our claim to fame on the World Nomads site. Rather, it was a photo of the van, captioned “The Ambassador van survived a crash by The Lost Girls.”

  The sun was melting into the ocean, and Amanda and Jen were floating on their surfboards beside me. Squinting my eyes to scan the horizon, I couldn’t spot a single resort—let alone person—on the wide crescent of sand that curved around the rugged coastline into what appeared to be infinity. Besides the blue heron acting as a sentry on shore, it was only the three of us.

  Chris hadn’t revealed the surf camp’s exact location at “Secret Spot X,” which was somewhere north of Coffs Harbour and south of Byron Bay, until he called our loaned cell with directions when we were only a few miles away. I figured it was fitting for us not to know where we were going, given that the trip was almost over and, well, we didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know what would happen with Elan, with our apartment, and with finding work when I returned home. It’d all unfold itself to me in time, and there was nothing that I could do about those things from across the ocean.

  We were all grateful that the van collision had unexpectedly led us to surf camp rather than bankruptcy. My younger sister, Kate, had taken the twenty-plus-hour flight from Syracuse, New York, to meet me in our final destination. Though I sometimes felt like the little sister with Jen and Amanda’s willful ways, with Kate I was the protective older one.

  On the drive to surf camp, I’d looked in the rearview mirror at Kate in the backseat, a pile of guidebooks between her and Jen as they fortified themselves with Weetabix cereal. Though Kate’s face had lost its childlike roundness now that she was almost twenty-four years old, I could still picture her as a little girl with coal-black eyes, rosy cheeks, and dark ringlets.

  Even as a kid she’d been a spitfire, dancing for hours around the house and waving her arms dramatically to impersonate Bette Midler in the movie Beaches. She’d hated schoolwork, so I’d made a game out of it by pretending to be her “teacher,” giving her spelling tests with rewards of M&M’s for each word she got correct. As a child, she liked to follow me wherever I went, so I’d carry her on my back through the fields behind our house, our yellow Labrador retriever, Corby, running in circles behind us. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her until I saw her step off the plane in Australia.

  Being near one of my real sisters, and the two women who’d come as close to being my sisters as I’d ever find, made me feel stronger. Besides Sara and Kate, I knew that Jen and Amanda would always be there. I laughed thinking about how I’d probably meet Amanda’s real eighty-year-old self, whom I’d heard a lot about this past year, and Jen’s, too.

  At surf camp, the four of us fell into a cozy routine. As the sun made its way back to our side of the world, we’d wake to wash up in the communal bathrooms, join the other surf students in line for a breakfast of fried eggs and toast, and then hit the waves for our morning surf lessons. We learned about riptides and practiced jumping up on our boards on the beach before doing so atop the crest of a wave. In the afternoon, we’d play cards on towels in the sand or read in one of the hammocks hung beneath the teak trees. Kate and I would run barefoot on the beach, with Amanda and Jen walking behind us and talking the whole way. Time seemed heavy and moved slowly, like syrup. And we felt light.

  When the air got cool, we’d grab our sweatshirts and line up for an al fresco barbecue, eating our burgers and coleslaw together at a picnic table under an A-frame awning. Then we’d gather around the bonfire, swapping stories with other travelers.

  It wouldn’t be long—maybe until the moon was halfway up in the sky—before the girls and I would slip away, content to burrow in our sleeping bags and keep talking. No childhood story was left untold, and I secretly marveled that a year had gone by in which Amanda, Jen, and I had seen each other at our best and at our worst, and we were still in it together—and had so much left to talk about. The days when Jen had been only an acquaintance and Amanda only a coworker seemed like memories from another time.

  We were in front of the bonfire on our last evening, and the sun was just beginning its downward descent. As it sank, the shadows from the fire grew taller, kind of resembling Aboriginal rock art. Kate was playing cards with some of the other surfers, and I’d plopped myself on the ground in front of two chairs where Amanda and Jen sat.

  “Remember when we were camping on the Inca Trail in Peru? Australia seemed like a world away this time last year,” I said.

  “Uh-oh, Hol, don’t go getting all sentimental on us on our last night here,” Amanda said. As hard-nosed as she acted sometimes, I now knew she was really a softie underneath.

  “Hey, guys?” Jen asked, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the fire. “I want to try to ride a wave one more time before we leave. Do you want to go?”

  I hesitated for a minute, wondering if we should stay put where it was comfortable and warm. But the ocean was right there, and there was still enough light left to hit the water.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said, standing up and brushing the sand off my jeans. Amanda and Jen pushed back their chairs, leaving trails in the sand, and we went to put on the wet suits we’d already hung out to dry on a line outside the cabin’s windows.

  Then we tucked our boards under our arms and walked down to the beach to paddle out together. Our feet padded on powdery sand, then rock-hard sand, and then into the surf. The water and the air were almost the same temperature, and I waited for the cool liquid to fill my wet
suit before my body heat would warm it up.

  The three of us floated on our boards and stared at the water stretching toward the setting sun. It felt peaceful to be doing nothing but bobbing up and down on the waves there with Jen and Amanda. I’d always dreamed of surfing in Australia, but I’d never really believed I’d actually do it.

  Dreams and memories. Memories and dreams. I was awash in a sea of them. The trip was over. After all my searching for something to believe in, what if taking the journey itself were the highest act of faith? Traveling anywhere that was foreign inevitably meant I’d have to rely on the kindness of strangers. To venture out into the world, I had to have faith in the goodness of people—and to be open to the lessons that every new person might bring. There was the Quechua woman again on the Inca Trail, handing Amanda back her lost wallet. The Brazilian woman taking my hand to show me the sunset. Esther waving good-bye from Sister Freda’s lap. Chloe bringing me food when I was sick at the ashram. The street kids turned waiters in the Cambodian restaurant. And there were always Jen and Amanda, ready to share with me their beds, their clothes, their encouragement.

  Floating there, I held on to faith. Because you can’t know who might cross your path or who will take your breath away. You can’t know what friends might actually become sisters because they stayed by your side. You can’t know when there’ll be an unexpected detour that’ll take you to the place where you were always meant to be.

  I glanced at Jen and Amanda, leaning back on their boards as the swells rolled on by. We lingered for a moment, soaking up that split second of silence that comes before the next wave breaks. Then the waves began to roll in higher and stronger. I looked behind me to see a swell rising and felt the momentum of it push my board forward. Time to go.