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I flip her off and do a twirl.
I will send it to her. Eventually.
Chapter 40
Over The Hill And Through The Woods
KAT
Dhaka
From: [email protected]
Subject: Things I hope I’m brave enough to say someday
We’re falling at an alarming rate into a familiarity that is perplexing.
I think about telling you about my trip, but I’m afraid you’ll think it’s stupid and pathetic and then it will be less of what I need. I’m afraid you’ll want me to get my own idea. I certainly don’t want to be someone else’s idea. I’m a whiny mess. I’m hoping Bangladesh quiets the whiny. I won’t nag again but seriously, what is wrong with calling your damn mother?
K
I’m dangerously weaving Zane’s words into fact but I want to find tangible proof the path exists. He exists. Before dawn, Courtney and I are walking toward the park.
“Can we see Dhakeshwari Temple? After we find the damn tree.” Courtney pleads.
I take a bite of a pastry and spit it out. “Tastes like a foot.”
“How do you know what a foot tastes like?”
“I’m kinkier than you.”
“Oh, sure, Chad was foot kinky,” she says tossing out her vile pastry before she even tastes it.
I look around and sigh. “I know. I guess I used to be kinky and then well, you know…Chad.”
We walk on and I snap some mist rising off the side of the road. “This is thick. It’s like you could cut the air.” We trudge on and there are puddles everywhere. It rained the day before we got here and apparently I’m not familiar with this kind of rain. There are clouds looming but the app says we’re clear for a minute.
“You know if you tell him what you’re doing, it doesn’t demean it.”
“I think it might. I can’t afford to let myself be...”
Court interrupts with perfect catty timing. “Happy?”
“...compromised. I’m a game, a new shiny thing. He needs something, not me. And all I’m concerned with is what can I leverage from him.”
I take a selfie. We huddle together in an instant, like all girls do when a phone is raised up in the air. We’re a generation that knows their best angles and light because we’ve taken thousands of photos of ourselves. I send it to the girls and then to my dad.
DAD: What in the wide world is this? Both my girls in some foreign city? That’s crazy. Courtney - how the hell did you get there?
DAD: Thanks for checking in. Please keep doing it.
“Tell me they’re not on the finder app?”
Court shakes her head. My baby sister is like a dog with a bone. “All that leveraging sounds wise except we’re trekking through a foreign park at dawn looking for a tree with a fucking Z on it.”
“It’s not him. It’s the path.”
