DC Trip

by Sara Benincasa

  “I dunno, man,” Brock said. “He reads a lot. You read a lot, right, man?”

  “Yeah,” Carter said cautiously.

  “He showed me that book I was reading last night,” Brock said.

  “The one that made you upset?” one of his friends said. He eyed Carter suspiciously.

  “It’s real sad,” Brock said. “I told you, you gotta read it when I’m done.”

  “I will,” his friend said obediently, nodding his head.

  “So why’s it look like that?” Brock asked Carter again, pointing at the museum.

  “Well, a bunch of Native American tribes had input on how it should look,” Carter said. “They all have different cultural traditions and some have different languages and religious practices, so everybody had different ideas. They finally decided they should incorporate as many native plants and grasses as possible so that the site would look like how D.C. would’ve looked hundreds of years ago, when only Native Americans lived here. And the building has a dome that opens up to the sky, and it’s got four stones that mark the four cardinal directions.”

  “How’d you know all that?” Brock asked, impressed.

  “It was on the info sheet they gave us this morning,” Carter said.

  “You actually read that?” Brock said.

  “Yeah,” Carter said.

  Brock appeared to think for a moment.

  “That’s pretty cool, bro,” he said. Then he walked off, and his buddies followed him.

  Mr. Kenner and Ms. Deats herded the students inside, where their cultural interpreter was waiting for them. She was a beautiful young woman with long black hair that hung down her back in a single braid.

  “Hi,” she said to the group. “I’m Karen Begay. I’ll be your guide today.”

  “She’s so thin and pretty,” Brooklynn said approvingly. “It makes me want to pay attention to everything she says.”

  “You know what?” Kaylee said. “I feel the same way. Like sometimes I just can’t listen to ugly people for too long. They bum me out.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Peighton said.

  The group moved through the exhibitions slowly, learning more from Karen than they could possibly hope to remember (well, Sivan would probably remember all of it, because she had that kind of brain). They learned about the Algonquian peoples of the Chesapeake Bay, and about the Lenni-Lenape who had lived in their own part of New Jersey. Karen taught them about the Navajo culture in which she had been raised; about the diversity of native art and handicraft; about genocide of Native Americans when Europeans colonized the Americas; about ongoing prejudice and economic hardship; about forced relocation and assimilation; and about the living Native American communities in the Americas today. There was a special exhibition on cultural appropriation, which led Ms. Deats to hide behind a totem pole and guiltily remove her dreamcatcher earrings and Tibetan prayer bead bracelet.

  Eventually, it was time for the Mitsitam Café, where Karen explained they would find some of the best museum café food in the entire world, from a diverse array of native cultures found in the Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Mesoamerica, and the Great Plains.

  “If you want goose sausage, we’ve got that,” she said, smiling. “Goat stew? No problem. And if you want some things that don’t sound so unfamiliar, you’ll find burgers and things like that too. But no matter what you eat, you must promise me you’ll try the fry bread. It is the best.”

  Gertie, Sivan, and Rachel wandered around the café as a unit, looking at each of the five stations in awe.

  “This whole place is so cool,” Gertie said. “Everything about it.”

  “I think this is the best school trip I’ve ever been on,” Sivan said. “Except for the part when we got caught. But like the actual school stuff has been great.”

  “I know what you mean,” Rachel said. “I’ve learned so much. It makes me wish I paid more attention in social studies. And everything else, actually.”

  Gertie had always been an adventurous eater. Her parents couldn’t afford to take her around the world, but they made sure to try different types of cooking in their home. One of the things they loved to do as a family was watch travel shows and see the kinds of foods the hosts would sample on their trips. Gertie loved photography in general but food photography in particular, and she enjoyed leafing through cookbooks and coffee table books about food. She was one of those people who Instagrams nearly everything they eat (on her real Instagram account, not her secret creeper one), but Sivan and Rachel often poked loving fun at her for how she did it. She always had to “style” the photos just so, and arrange everything perfectly.

  She had just paid for a big tray overflowing with foods from all the represented regions when she looked up and promptly dropped it on the floor, because there, once again, was Danny Bryan. With his arm slung casually around a girl.

  “Gertie!” Rachel exclaimed. “What happened?” She and Sivan rushed to help clean up the mess Gertie had made, but a café worker got there first and started collecting the broken dishware and utensils.

  “I am so, so sorry,” Gertie said, trying to help without taking her eyes off Danny Bryan, who had dropped his arm and was chatting with some other friend.

  “Don’t worry about it, honey,” said another café worker. “Let’s get you loaded up with food again. You won’t have to pay twice.”

  “That’s okay,” Gertie said faintly. “I’m, um, not hungry anymore.” And she wasn’t, because there he was. Again. He was just sitting down to eat with a bunch of kids from Lindbergh, and that teacher they’d seen the other day.

  Sivan looked in the same direction Gertie was staring.

  “It’s him again,” Sivan said to Rachel. “Danny Bryan.”

  “Again?” Rachel exclaimed. “Ooh, this is great! Let’s go talk to him!”

  “No!” Gertie said. “No. I don’t want to talk to him. He just had his arm around that girl. Look—that girl, right there.” She pointed to a pretty brunette who was talking to the teacher, along with a redheaded friend. The teacher nodded, and the two girls walked off together and into the women’s bathroom.

  “Let’s follow them!” Rachel said. “We can ask if she’s his girlfriend.”

  “No way,” Gertie said. “No freaking way.”

  “Gertie,” Rachel said. “I like for real love you. You know this. But you’ve got to grow a pair.”

  “I don’t like the way she said it, but I agree with Rachel,” Sivan said.

  “Oh my God, fine,” Gertie said, throwing up her hands. “Fine. Fine! But no one is allowed to ask her if she’s Danny Bryan’s girlfriend. That’s too weird. You just—I don’t know, you have to find out somehow.”

  “Because that makes sense,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes and laughing. The three girls took off after the older girls.

  As it turned out, they didn’t have to work too hard to get their answer. The two girls were just fixing their hair when Gertie, Rachel, and Sivan walked in.

  “Oh my God,” Rachel said brightly. “This is so weird, but aren’t you the group from Lindbergh that was at the Holocaust Museum yesterday?”

  “Yes, that’s us,” said the pretty brunette.

  “We’re from Jersey too,” Rachel said.

  “No shit!” said the redhead. “That’s so cool. What high school are you at?”

  “We’re at FHS,” Rachel said.

  “What a coincidence,” said the brunette.

  “Yeah,” Rachel said, thinking fast. “The lame part is my boyfriend is sick so he couldn’t come.”

  “Oh, that is lame,” the redhead said.

  There was a pause.

  “So, do you guys have boyfriends on the trip?” Rachel asked. “That must be so fun, I mean, if you do.”

  The brunette and the redhead looked a little taken aback by the oddness of the question. Gertie felt her face burning up.

  “Or maybe, like, somebody you just like,” Rachel added, making it weirder.
“Because it’d be fun to even have a crush on somebody on a trip like this. But I totally don’t. And neither do they.” She gestured to her companions, who nodded mutely.

  “Uh, I gotta pee,” Sivan said. She fled into a stall and hid before realizing she had to actually produce pee to make this excuse sound realistic.

  “I have a girlfriend,” said the brunette. “But we’re seniors and she’s a junior, so she’s not here. But I have a lot of good friends here, so it’s cool.”

  Sivan left the stall just as soon as she’d entered it.

  “Wait, you have a girlfriend?” she said excitedly.

  “You have a girlfriend!” Gertie said, just as excitedly.

  “Yeah,” the brunette said.

  “At Lindbergh?” Sivan said. “And people are like cool with it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the brunette said. “It’s a cool school. We’re trying to start a gay-straight alliance. I think it’s gonna happen too.” She looked at Sivan sympathetically. “Is your school weird about that stuff?”

  “Nah,” Rachel said quickly, jumping in. “It’s very accepting. So, how’s your trip going?”

  “It’s going great, actually,” the redhead said. “I worried it’d be boring but the museum yesterday was great and this museum is good too. And last night, we sneaked out of the hotel with our friends Danny and Joe and Tamra and we watched the sun rise at the Lincoln Memorial. It was fucking rad.”

  “Wow,” Rachel said, impressed. “And you didn’t get caught?”

  “Nah,” the redhead said. “Plus our teacher is super chill. He doesn’t really care what we do as long as we don’t get hurt. So even if he’d caught us, I don’t think we would’ve gotten in big trouble. Like tonight we’re partying at the hotel pool, and a couple kids brought some flasks, and I know as long as we don’t make noise he’s not gonna, like, stand around and watch us. He’s great.”

  “Our hotel is sick too,” the brunette said. “The Henry. The pool’s open till two in the morning. Last night a bunch of us got served at the bar. It was awesome.”

  “Wow,” Rachel said wistfully. “That’s so cool. They don’t tape your doors or anything?”

  “What?” the redhead said. “That sounds, like, medieval.”

  “Okay, well, thanks for the info,” Gertie said, rushing to the sink to wash her hands. “C’mon Rachel, Sivan, let’s wash our hands like we came in here to do. I can’t wait to try that fry bread!”

  “Hey, have a good trip,” the brunette said as she as the redhead walked out. “Gotta represent Jersey, right?”

  “Right,” Sivan said, looking at her and grinning. “Jersey strong.”

  The door swung shut behind the girls, and Rachel looked at Sivan.

  “Did you just say ‘Jersey strong’?” Rachel said. “Is that a thing I just heard come out of your mouth?”

  “Shut up,” Sivan said, washing her hands.

  “I didn’t hear you pee,” Rachel said.

  “I didn’t actually have to pee,” Sivan said. “It was just getting awkward.”

  “And then you found out that chick was a lesbian, and it got un-awkward.”

  “Whatever, Rachel,” Sivan said, a little testily. “You don’t know what it’s like to go to school and spend all day in a place where there’s no one for you to go out with even if you wanted to go out with somebody.”

  “Whoa, okay,” Rachel said. “I didn’t mean to piss you off.”

  “You didn’t piss me off,” Sivan said. “You just don’t get certain things sometimes.”

  “I get things!” Rachel protested.

  “Let’s focus on the important thing,” Gertie interrupted them. “Danny Bryan is single!”

  “Well, he could still have a girlfriend,” Sivan said.

  “Sivan!” Rachel said. “Don’t say that! Now who’s being insensitive?”

  “It’s fine,” Gertie said hurriedly. “It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s no problem. Anyway, that was really good news.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “Now you can go talk to him!”

  “Oh, God, no,” Gertie said. “Oh, no, I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Sivan asked.

  “Because I don’t look good,” Gertie said. “I’m just wearing these dumb shorts and this T-shirt and I didn’t do anything special with my hair.”

  “So?” Sivan said.

  “Gertie, you look beautiful,” Rachel said. “I can lend you some lip gloss right now if you need it.”

  “No,” Gertie said, trying to quell the panicky feelings rising within her. “No, I just—I better not.”

  “You have to!” Rachel said. “You’re going to talk to him, and that’s it.” She made for the door, and Gertie grabbed her arm.

  “No, please don’t make me talk to him,” she said.

  “Gertie, no one’s gonna make you talk to him,” Sivan said.

  “I am!” Rachel declared. “Maybe last night got fucked up, but this is going to happen. We are going to achieve at least one goal on this stupid trip. I mean, besides learning.”

  “I don’t want to,” Gertie said. “Really, Rachel. I don’t want to.”

  Rachel looked at Gertie for a moment. Then she sighed loudly and walked out of the restroom by herself.

  Gertie felt very small.

  “Don’t worry, Gertie,” Sivan said, giving her a little hug. “She’s just pissed because she got us in trouble last night. It was a dumb plan, anyway.”

  Gertie nodded, and the two girls left to rejoin their group. Rachel was nowhere to be seen, so they sat down by themselves and chatted awkwardly, pretending they weren’t both worried about their friend’s nearly unprecedented mini temper tantrum. Rachel never showed anger. Well, almost never.

  Then Rachel appeared with a giant plate piled high with fry bread.

  “This seriously is the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life,” she said through a mouthful of fried dough and honey. “You need to eat this right the fuck now.”

  And then, just like that, everything was okay again.

  For now.

  The afternoon was to be spent at the National Air and Space Museum, which was right next door to the National Museum of the American Indian. There was a moment of confusion when they were short one student in the head count, but then Peighton came hurrying after them.

  “I was just asking Karen a few extra questions,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize everybody had gone.”

  “Keep up with us, Peighton,” Mr. Kenner said excitedly. “This next place is going to blow your mind.”

  All the students looked at each other, then back at Mr. Kenner. He never looked this cheerful and enthusiastic about anything, except maybe when he really got going on a lecture. But even then, he didn’t look like this, all lit up and thrilled like a little kid.

  “Dude is stoked,” Brock observed.

  “Yes, Brock,” Mr. Kenner said. “This dude is stoked.” He didn’t even look mad to have been referred to as “dude.”

  Even Ms. Deats looked surprised.

  “Wow, students,” she said. “I guess Mr. Kenner is a fan of the Air and Space Museum.”

  “This is my favorite museum in the world,” he said. “I’ve been to the Louvre in Paris. I’ve been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I’ve been to the Getty in Los Angeles. I’ve even been to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain. But the Air and Space Museum has been my favorite place to visit since I was a little kid.” He paused and grinned. “Just like you little guys.”

  The students laughed a little, which was, like, fully unprecedented because Mr. Kenner never playfully teased them. He sometimes praised them when they did a good job, but that was rare. And he hardly ever cracked jokes.

  They entered the south lobby, where they reached the welcome center.

  “No tour guide for this visit, gang,” Mr. Kenner said. “Instead, you get this guy.” He pointed to himself. “There is so much math in this building, and it’s glorious. That’s the best way to describe it.
It is glorious.”

  “It is pretty great,” Sivan whispered to Rachel and Gertie. “But he sounds like he’s high.” Rachel stifled a giggle, and Gertie coughed to hide a smile.

  “In this building you’ll find some of the most important examples of human accomplishment,” Mr. Kenner said. “You’ll see the 1903 Wright Flyer, which flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, spent four years working out a prototype. And that day in December, they brought into being a dream humans had cherished since they first looked up at the sky and saw birds soaring up above. You get to see that plane, right here, today.”

  “Shit,” Brock said excitedly, punching Carter Bump in the arm. He nearly sent the kid flying, but it was obviously a friendly gesture, and Carter seemed to take it as such.

  “And then, a mere sixty-six years later, humanity made its first trip to the Moon,” Mr. Kenner said. You could tell he was really wound up now. “Three men—Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins—braved death to go on an adventure that would’ve been impossible if not for the flight at Kitty Hawk. You’ll see their living quarters, the command module, the only part of the Apollo 11 to return to earth. You get to see that, today. You get to connect to that moment.”

  Mr. Kenner went on and on, growing increasingly more impassioned as he described other elements of the museum. But Gertie found her attention drifting as she looked at Ms. Deats, who seemed rapt with attention. The social studies teacher’s face was shining, aglow with something Gertie recognized immediately.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, almost without realizing it. “He’s her Danny Bryan.”

  Sivan looked at her quizzically.

  “Really?” Sivan said.

  “Yes,” Gertie said with a wistful sigh. “She’s totally in love with him. I know exactly how she feels. It’s like you just want to hear everything he has to say because he’s so cute and smart and interesting, and you wouldn’t even care if he were just, like, reciting the alphabet, because you know it would be just so awesome, and you just know the two of you were totally meant to be together.”

  “Fuck. That.”

  Sivan and Gertie turned, surprised, and looked at Rachel. She had a dark expression on her face.