Page 16 of Every Step She Takes

Sadie

The facts are these: I’m starfished atop a scratchy blanket, wearing one of my ratty UW T-shirts and no pants, hair half-wet, with absolutely no idea where I am.

My brain searches for something familiar. The blue glow of my alarm clock or the yellow tinge of Queen Anne streetlamps coming through the blinds, the soft feeling of my plush duvet and five-hundred-thread-count sheets, the hum of my air purifier. But there’s nothing.

The world outside is mostly dark.

I fling out an arm for my phone. My elbow knocks it onto the floor, and then I knock myself onto the floor when I lean over to reach it.

It’s as my face hits the cold laminate flooring that I remember I’m in a sparsely furnished, depressingly monochromatic hostel in Matosinhos, Portugal.

I slowly recall the events that led to my current half-naked, half-wet state of semiconsciousness.

An excruciating eighteen hours of travel; another three hours of walking with a thirty-pound pack; arriving at this hostel and feeling so exhausted, I could barely keep my eyes open.

I remember cramming my body into the smallest shower I’ve ever seen.

The warm water felt divine at first as I hunched under the short shower head, but then my neck started to hurt, and I had to skip my conditioner treatment when the hot water ran out.

After the shower, I laid on top of my scratchy duvet and zero-thread-count sheets in only my underwear and forced myself to write a draft post for Vi’s blog as my heavy eyes kept sliding shut.

I remember telling myself to blow dry my hair before falling asleep, but based on the current state of said hair, that did not happen.

I pick up my phone and clamber back onto the bed. It’s not even 5 a.m. yet, but I feel wide awake. I open Google and try to find the closest place to get coffee and breakfast, but nothing seems to open before 7 a.m.

On cue, my stomach rumbles deeply. Across the room, there’s a gurgle, followed by a cough. And fucking hell. That is when I remember I’m not alone.

I fall onto the floor again in a misguided attempt to conceal my half-nakedness from Mal before I realize that the room is completely dark, and Mal is still very asleep.

Everything else from yesterday comes rushing back in, and the shame isn’t too far behind it.

In the dark, I reach for my backpack and drag my belongings into the world’s tiniest bathroom.

I click on the light and after blinking a few times, I catch sight of the woman in the mirror.

Her hair looks like an abandoned bird’s nest, and her face is washed out by the sallow light of the bathroom.

Her eyes are some combination of wild and exhausted, and she looks frightened, nervous, and entirely unsure of herself.

I splash cold water on my face and then whip out my phone.

“How could you not tell me?” I hiss as soon as my sister answers my call.

“Huh?” Vi sounds groggy even though it’s only 9 p.m. back in Seattle, and Vi has never gone to bed before midnight.

“How could you neglect to mention this is a gay tour?” I whisper-scream as loudly as I can without waking Mal on the other side of the thin pocket door.

Vi yawns. “I dunno. I didn’t think it mattered.”

Of course she didn’t.

“Well, it… it does matter, Victoria.”

“I told Inez you’re straight, and she said it was fine for the promotional trip.”

I wish I had the right words to explain to my sister why it does matter. I wish I could tell her that I’m not straight without feeling like a massive fraud. How can I have such intense imposture syndrome over the feelings in my own heart?

“If anyone should be mad, it’s me.” Vi sounds fully awake now and extremely indignant. “How could you not tell me how hard it is to work in the store?”

“I think it might be something I’ve mentioned once or twice… a day. For the last twenty years.”

Vi makes a languishing noise, and I can imagine her dramatically throwing herself onto the pile of decorative pillows I bought for her bed. “Jane had me working the register for twelve hours straight, and it was nonstop mean old people and mean rich people!”

“That sounds like our clientele.”

“It’s only been two days, and I’m so tired. And Jane yelled at me every time I was on my phone.”

Good for Jane. If my assistant manager can handle Vi, she can definitely handle running the store until I get back.

“You’re tired?” I practically yell. “You didn’t remotely prepare me for this trek! I’m already sore, and we’re supposed to walk thirteen miles today!”

Vi sighs wistfully. “I would give anything to switch places with you.”

I almost agree with her on instinct, but I catch myself.

I’m currently sitting on a closed toilet seat at five in the morning so I don’t wake my roommate.

My lower back, neck, and shoulders hurt the way they do after a long day of rearranging the sales floor.

I’m starving, and I have no idea how to procure food in a foreign country, and I’m already out of L?rabars.

But do I really wish I was back in Seattle, equally exhausted after a day of work? Alone in my room rewatching House Hunters because I’m so burnt-out, I can’t do anything but dissociate?

Part of me does. Part of me wants to tell Vi I can’t do this, part of me wants to book the next flight home, burn my pack and hiking boots in effigy.

But there’s another part of me—quiet but getting louder by the minute—that sort of wants to see where this road might take me.

“I think I made a huge mistake in coming here,” I whisper into the phone.

“Good,” Vi says. “It’s time for you to start making some mistakes.”

There’s more free bread at breakfast.

I distracted myself from my empty stomach all morning by revising my first blog for Vi and posting to her Instagram. I wrangled my tangled hair into a single French braid, did my makeup, and tried slapping Band-Aids over the blisters forming on my feet.

By the time Mal woke up, I was already heading out the door with all my stuff in search of food.

At the hostel’s continental breakfast, I load my plate with bread, weird cheese slices, and ham that seems to be of the lunch meat instead of breakfast variety.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to make a sandwich with it at eight in the morning, but I watch the woman with the camera—Vera, I think her name is—eat them separately at her table with Ari, so I intend to do the same.

I find some fresh fruit, grab a pack of Muesli to shove in my pocket for the next time I’m stuck without food, and find the coffee carafe off to the side of the banquet table.

Then I awkwardly hover with my heap of food as I try to navigate the social situation of choosing where to sit.

The lobby is full of people wearing hiking clothes and eating together in small groups.

Ari and Vera are at one table. Inez is at another with Ro and Rebecca, listening politely as Ro complains about the difference between American and Portuguese continental breakfast. Stefano is wearing another pair of shorts that are basically a Speedo and doing squats next to the table while he eats yogurt.

And then there’s an empty table tucked into the corner…

As soon as I make moves toward my own slice of quiet paradise, Septum-Piercing Ari calls out my name. “Hey, Sadie!” she waves. “Come sit with us!” I begrudgingly oblige.

“How did you sleep?” Vera asks just as I take a giant bite of my bread.

I chew quickly and when that fails, I cover my mouth with my hand. “Hard,” I answer.

“Same.”

“More importantly,” Ari interrupts, using a rolled-up piece of ham to point at me. “How could you sleep at all with your fine-ass roommate five feet away?”

“Oh, uh… Jet lag?”

Vera tsks. “You do realize that not everyone experiences sexual attraction, right? And Sadie said she’s straight.”

I didn’t, actually. Everyone else has said it for me.

“Mal’s hotness transcends sexuality,” Ari declares, brandishing her ham slice scepter. She swivels back to me. “Don’t you agree, Straight Sadie?”

“Is Mal hot?” I ask, as if the thought hasn’t occurred to me.

“She is.”

“She really is,” Vera agrees. “Even I can appreciate her aesthetic beauty.”

“Sì, sì,” Stefano adds, appearing at our table like a jack-in-the-box with zero-percent body fat.

Ari shakes out her hair in a distinctly sultry fashion.

The platinum streaks in her black hair conjure hipster Cruella de Vil vibes, but her overall aesthetic is cooky high school art teacher from the nineties.

But the art teacher you secretly had a massive crush on.

“Sadie, as the token straight of this tour,” Ari says, “figure out what Mal’s deal is for me. ”

“Her… deal?”

“Yeah. Like, is she seeing someone? Are they monogamous? Would she be down for something casual? How does she feel about butt stuff?”

Vera smacks Ari’s arm. “Don’t make her ask that!”

“I will ask her about butt stuff for you,” Stefano volunteers as he sinks into another squat.

My face is hot, and I’m sure the hives are springing up on my cheeks in red splotches. It’s how I react every time people talk about sex around me.

I’ve always had a small group of female friends, but sometime in my mid-twenties, it became anxiety-inducing to meet up with the girls from business school for happy hour, because all they talked about was sex.

They’d exchange horror stories about awkward one-night stands and ask for advice about boyfriends that never went down on them, and I would sit in petrified silence the whole time, praying no one would ask me any direct questions about my sex life.

The more time I spent with them, the more alienated I felt. The more behind I felt. So, eventually, I stopped hanging out with them at all. I stopped hanging out with anyone outside my immediate family, really.

“I swear I recognize her from somewhere,” Vera says to her banana.

“Who?”

“Mal. Like, maybe she’s European famous or something…”