The Senior Trip

Chapter 46

Asher

Harper's palm holds the coin against her chest and I watch it rise and fall as she contemplates her wish. It makes me chuckle that she takes this task so seriously. It reminds me of the energy she had taking the sex quiz. It feels like so long ago now, but it's only been a few days. Finally, she tosses the coin into the fountain and turns to me with a smile from ear to ear.

"I'm starving," she reminds me.

There is no hint as to what her wish is, and I am dying to know but will not ask. Everyone knows that telling a wish will make it not come true. My hand finds her easily at our sides and I tug her softly in the direction of the street vendors. The town is waking up and more and more residents and tourists fill the streets.

"This is not the vacation I had in mind when I signed up for this trip," I tell her.

She laughs softly, "No, me either. I thoughts I would be drunk all weekend swimming in the pool and eating all the best food I could find."

"Well, I think we can check off the last item," I say as we find a nice patio area with a man cooking up breakfast on a large grill.

"I'm so glad we didn't lose our money with our phones."

We point to the largest breakfast burrito the vendor makes and hand over some of our dwindling cash. I motion to the cooler beside him and hold up two fingers. It's a risk; I have no idea what's in there but I'm very thirst. He gives us a long look as if he is trying to read us somehow. After a moment, he reaches in and hands us two glass bottles of Coke. With the sun coming up and the air around us warming by the minute, I feel like we've won and grab our ice-cold prizes.

"What do you want to do for the rest of the day?" Harper asks as she watches me use the edge of our table to pop off the cap of the Coke bottle.

"Find an adventure to kill time," I answer.

The second cap gives me a little trouble, but I finally manage to free it. We lean back in the hard wire chairs and stare out at the beautiful landscape just beyond the town square.

"What do you think everyone is doing back at the hotel? Do you think they've noticed we're gone?" Harper askes as she sips her soda.

"I bet everyone is doing what we thought we'd be doing," I say, giving her a knowingly look over my own soda. "I don't know if anyone is paying attention to where we went. Would Ezra tell on you?"

She's already shaking her head. "No. He would never do anything to get me into any kind of trouble. He was super into the other girl and I doubt he even noticed I haven't been around. If he thought I was in serious trouble he'd get help, but I think that's a big conclusion to jump to with everyone scattering and doing their own thing. What about Jess?"

"No, she wouldn't want anyone thinking she cared. At least that's my guess. Right now she's trying to play it cool and separate from me on the trip. I think if she noticed me not being around, it would be risky for her to mention it out of fear that someone might think she's still hung up on me and caring where I'm at." I shake my head slowly before pulling another cold sip of soda from the bottle at my lips.

"It would be so easy to disappear from here. Now I get how other girls have gone missing in the past. None of their friends want to rat them out for being with boys and they all hope they'll come back," Harper notes. She practically bounces in her chair when the vendor brings us our breakfast.

Our breakfast gets our full attention for a while as we enjoy the local flavors. Harper wipes at her mouth with a napkin and then leans back in her chair. "Do you wish we hadn't got lost that first night? Maybe things would be different by now with Jess."

There's no way to know how things would be now of course, but I give myself a minute to think about it. Do I wish I'd never gotten lost with Harper? Would my heart feel at peace the way it did now if I were still around the girl who broke it? The truth is I have no idea. But I don't regret my time with Harper and this side adventure I never signed up for.

"Are you trying to get me to spill my wish?" I ask in hopes of buying a little more time to word my answer correctly.

"Never," she says seriously. "Then it wouldn't come true."

"That's right," I tell her. "And no." I lean back in my chair, my belly full and take a deep breath. "Things happen how they are supposed to happen. There's no way to know what would have happened if we stayed close, but I do know what's happened since we separated from the group and I have no regrets."

She smiles and her face relaxes with what I imagine is relief. "I don't regret it either," she admits. "I wanted an adventure and an adventure is what I got."

"Aventuras!" A man calls to us from the table beside ours. He's dressed in olive green pants and a bright red shirt. There's a chaotic image on the front and I can't make out much but I believe there's a zip-liner, a paraglider and a man in a canoe.

Harper and I watch as the man gestures to his t-shirt. He finds the image he is looking for—the zip-line—and points to it. Then he looks up to us again and holds up two fingers.

"I think he wants us to go zip-lining," Harper says with a bit of intrigue.

"Well we wouldn't want to disappoint a local," I say jokingly.

"What's an adventure without the risk of death?" she returns flatly. It's as if she has no fear—no caution that we are in a different country with very little idea of where we are and if we are going to make it back. And I kind of love that about her.