Mom said, “Maybe we should find Stesha now?”
“Let’s try Ruben. Who’s got a phone?” Christopher asked, but Quattro didn’t own a cell phone, and all of us except Helen had lost ours in the mudslide. Luckily, she had programmed Ruben’s number, but there was no answer. Not from him or from Stesha, Grace, Hank, or our hotel.
“Maybe we should go straight to the hotel then? Make sure Hank got us our rooms?” Helen suggested, glancing around uneasily. Half the people near us looked drunk, messy drunk. “We may be here for a while.”
Christopher studied the throngs and started going all militia on us. “I think we should buy as much water and food as we can carry first. Grab anything packaged.”
Nobody argued with his logic. Most of our provisions had gone with the porters. So we fanned out in three groups, me teaming up with Quattro. Fifteen minutes was more than enough time. Five would have been fine. The stores had been mostly cleaned out, leaving us with few choices.
“Beef jerky?” Quattro asked me. Then with a vestige of his old self, he held up a package of Twinkies. “America at its finest.”
“Hey,” I said, “you know, if we can find maple syrup, we can make our own—”
“Do-it-yourself bacon maple bars?” he guessed. His eyes glittered as he laughed. “I knew you’d see the light.”
I did.
Who would have known that his wide, easy grin could have hurt in the best and worst way? As thrilled as I was to see its reemergence, I wanted it to mean more than an inside joke between friends. Get it together, Wilde Child. So I wrinkled my nose. “I still think bacon and doughnuts are two food groups that should never be combined.”
“See? I knew you secretly agreed.”
“About what?”
“Bacon is its own food group.”
As I sputtered, Quattro grabbed the bottles of water I was holding and brought them to the cashier.
Between all of us, we had managed to assemble a small stockpile of water, crackers, and peanuts. Christopher asked for directions to our hotel from a backpacker wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. The reaction we received was one I didn’t expect: total antagonism.
“Good luck with that,” the backpacker said, mouth puckering like he was preparing to spit at us.
What had we done to him? We must have looked confused because, disgusted, the backpacker said, “Your embassy airlifted some people out yesterday. But they would only take Americans.” With a last disdainful look, he turned his back on us, but not before one parting shot: “All the hotels have jacked up their prices.”
Worriedly, Mom asked Dad, “What if our rooms have been given away?” Her hand fluttered toward the plaza. “I mean, look at all these people.”
Dad had no solution, just more problems. He pointed out, “Just think about all the other groups who are still coming down from the trail.”
At last, after a few wrong turns and a helpful shopkeeper, we reached the modest hotel where we were supposed to spend the night, only to discover that it was overbooked and no one at the front desk remembered seeing Hank or Grace. But then again, everything was a blur to them, considering the fifty tourists who’d dropped in that morning alone in hopes of finding available rooms.
“But we have reservations,” Christopher protested firmly. The receptionist gave a helpless shrug, explaining that guests were refusing to vacate.
“Well, we can’t exactly boot people out,” Mom said, shaking her head. Still, she leaned forward as if she might hurdle over the reception desk and commandeer the computer. But the electricity had gone out. The computer was useless. “Are there any rooms in other hotels? What about the hostels?”
The receptionist shook her head regretfully. “Even the train seats are being used as beds. You can try Inkaterra.”
Mom glanced at Dad. “That’s the spendy one.”
If the hotel had been expensive before the floods, I hated to guess how much a room would cost now that beds were hot commodities. An anxious expression calcified on Mom’s face.
The sound of a chopper sent us scrambling outside, all of us craning our necks to spot where it would land. We followed the exodus of tourists to the makeshift helipad that some volunteers must have cleared earlier. People actually pushed and shoved each other to climb aboard until two soldiers disembarked, each gripping a machine gun. Did the Peruvian government really think automatic weapons were necessary?
Without thinking, I began photographing the scene, starting with the unlucky soldier who got the job of announcing that the first helicopter would evacuate only the elderly and infirm.