Glitter and Glue Read Free Page B

know, Mom,” I said, putting my arms around her. We patted each other, and then she released.
    When my dad stepped forward, my mom looked away.“Lovey, go get ’em, kid!” I bear-hugged my dad. We rocked back and forth.
    “Here, girls,” my mom said, handing Tracy and me each a neon-green pack of gum from her extra-valu pak. “For your ears, on the descent.”
    “Thanks,” we said.
    “What a pair!” my dad said as we headed to the gate.
    We turned around one more time before we disappeared into our whale of a future. My mom had her arms crossed and her lips pursed as if she’d just lost an argument and couldn’t quite believe it, but then my dad put his arm around her, and I heard his booming voice say, “Aw, Mare, she’s gonna be fine,” and I thought,
Greenie, you’ve got it all wrong. She never once said anything about being
worried.
    I assumed the whole trip would be like Bangkok, where even crossing the street was an adventure. Seven or eight lanes of cars pushing around on a highway built for four, the sidewalks jammed with fruit sellers and fish stands, sacks of spices, nuts, and dried meats. Even the alphabet was overflowing: forty-four consonants and fourteen vowels. Plus, they didn’t have toilets. We had to squat over holes. My mom would have died.
    After a couple of days getting organized, Tracy and I took an all-night bus to a ferry to an island. Onshore, we were mauled by bungalow operators waving photos and calling,
Lady, lady, this way, come this way
. Along with a couple from Stockholm and a boy from Crete, we picked a place called Bungalow Bill’s because the guy said,
Plumbing, good plumbing
. As soon as we got in his tuk-tuk, a makeshift motor cart, I started taking pictures even though it wasn’t safe or convenient. I had to have proof.
    At Bungalow Bill’s, we had beers with this guy Joe, who was much older, like thirty. He’d been all over—Burma, Sri Lanka, Bhutan. He had no idea where he was going next or for how long.
I just go
, he said, establishing himself as Person of Interest #1.
    When we told him we were going from Thailand to Australia, he said we were crazy to miss Indonesia. He said we could spend months traveling from island to island, seeing temples and volcanoes, estuaries and coral reefs. We told him our flight wasn’t flexible like that; we couldn’t fly to Jakarta without paying some kind of penalty. He said we’d never be this close to so many places, and we needed to be awake to the possibilities, which instantly became my mantra.
    Tracy and I went back and forth about Indonesia. We called the airlines and looked at guidebooks and talked to other travelers. In the end, we couldn’t stomach the rerouting fee, so we boarded the plane, as planned, to Australia, settling in for six hours of Merit Ultra Lights and backgammon on the tiny magnetized board that Tracy’s mom had given us as a bon voyage gift. After dinner and three mini-bottles of Chardonnay, totally free, Tracy went to sleep, her legs folded up against the seat in front of her like a giraffe in a phone booth, while I wrote in my journal about how, when we got to Australia, we needed to totally Go for It at every crossroad, by which I did not ever mean that we should become nannies.
    But here I am, saving up, trying to somehow Be Awake to the Possibilities in a neighborhood that’s basically indistinguishable from the one where I grew up. Three- and four-bedroom houses with bikes on the lawn and potted plants by the front door. Dads jumping in cars by eight A.M. , moms in bathrobes dashing out to grab the newspaper to see what the rest of theworld did yesterday, and kids on swing sets, oblivious to it all. Some exotic vista.
    A month ago, I was the curious American in the Thai hostel, confabbing with Greeks and Swedes and Buddhists fresh from the ashram. Now I’m the weird new appendage hanging off the sagging mobile that is the Tanner family.

 

    That first afternoon, before we sit down for