The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club by Jessica Morrison Read Free Book Online Page A

donkey, all right. No doubt about it, I am in Argentina. Cassie Moore is in Argentina. There are so many things wrong with this picture I can’t even wrap my head around it. My eyes latch on to every detail of the airplane, my safe cocoon for the past twenty hours. The mysterious stain on the headrest in front of me, the dog-eared in-flight magazine, the small TV screen hanging from the ceiling two rows up, even the lit sign for the washroom—it’s all comfortingly familiar, and I soak it up as long as I can, desperate to ignore the flurry of excited activity around me as passengers prepare to disembark. One by one, they file out, orderly but impatient to get off.
    I am studying the intricacies of the complimentary headset when my friendly drug dealer returns from a final trip to the bathroom freshly brushed, powdered, and lipsticked. “
Chica,
you are excited now, yes?” We are the last two people on the plane, and I want to tell her not to go yet, because once she does, I will have no choice but to get up, grab my bag from the overhead compartment, and step out that exit. But her smile is so kindly hopeful, I have no choice but to nod and smile back. She reaches down and squeezes my forearm, leaving little moons in my skin from her flawless red nails. “I knew! Good. Have a wonderful trip.” She collects a small case from under the seat, and I watch her glide down the aisle. My turn.
    Exiting the plane, I brace myself for the worst. The flight attendants smile and nod, oblivious to anything beyond upright trays and seatbacks. But I know. According to the six guidebooks I’ve read in the past two weeks, Buenos Aires is miles and miles of concrete teeming with over thirteen million people, many of them jobless, most of them penniless, all of whom will surely see me as pure U.S.A.-grade evil. I’m not quite sure what the worst would be, though the image of being splashed with red paint comes to mind. At the very least, I’m sure to be harassed at customs. I would shrug my shoulders, but I don’t have the energy to lift them. Let the worst begin.
    To my surprise, the airport is fairly modern, clean, and free of chickens. In fact, it looks a lot like the airport where this journey began. There is no strip search, no drug dogs. No one even looks inside my luggage. The fact that I don’t speak Spanish doesn’t matter, since Argentine customs officers communicate in that universal language of dismissive grunts and hand gestures. My passport is swiped and stamped. I am waved here, then there. As I pass each checkpoint without issue, a fresh wave of relief rushes over me. Nothing is ever as awful as you imagine it, I remind myself. Bit by bit, I might just be able to get through this.
    And then I leave the airport.
    I find a cab outside. The night is clear, the sky tar-black. I roll down the window for air but am immediately chastised. “
Por favor, chica.
No safe,” the driver says, shaking his head. “Late,
entiende
?” I roll it back up and stare through the smudged glass. The driver, well intentioned, I’m sure, takes it upon himself to give me a security rundown in broken English. In half an hour, I learn which neighborhoods I should not live in (most), which neighborhoods I can safely walk around in after dark (none), and which cabs are fake and, thus, dangerous (these instructions are vague and only serve to make me scared to be in any cab, present company included). I try to absorb both his warnings and the city whirring past me in the night, a blur of neon and headlights. Hundreds of cars, my cab included, weave around each other with no regard to lanes, and the whole extraordinary scene seems a choreographed dance to the familiar Beach Boys tune coming from the car radio. Together, everything is strange and different and awful and too much. I am not home. I am not a cell phone away from meeting Sam and Trish at Jimmy’s. I am not a fifteen-minute cab ride from everyone and everything I know and love. I am