A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter five

f i v e

*

San Diego is beautiful. Almost painfully so, knowing that we'll hardly be here any time at all. On the way to the beach, Sam drove us up to the Mount Soledad cross and we all walked around in virtual silence. Part sleepy; part awestruck. Arjun didn't say a word as we walked around the base of the huge cross and he crouched down to take a photo, and I felt no need to break the silence.

Not until we pull up at the beach, and we tip out into what has to be a photograph. White sands and palm trees; a calm blue ocean. The stuff of daydreams. Except ... not. This is real. The sand between my bare toes is soft and white and real. The cloudless sky is really there; so is the ridiculously picturesque sea.

After I've taken five hundred thousand photos and sent a few to my family chat, I let out a quiet, "Holy fuck."

"Bit late for that," Arjun says. "The cross was way back there."

His joke sails over my head at first, and I'm too distracted to appreciate it anyway. Ogling the perfection before me, I idly follow the rest of the group to an undisturbed patch of beach.

Young-mi sidles over, utter awe on her face. She almost walks straight into me, she's so transfixed on the sea, and her hand flies up to her mouth. "Oh! I'm so sorry, March!" she says. She pronounces my name like mash. Scooping jet black hair off her face and tying it away from her neck, she beams at the beach and says, "I've never been to the ocean."

"Really? Never?"

"I never left Chongqing. Until now," she says. Her eyes are bright and full of life and she tears her gaze away from the sea to look at me. "Not that I remember, anyway."

"Oh?" I look at her, but she's staring at the sea with a childish grin.

"I was born in Gangneung, in South Korea," she says. "So close to sea. But we move when I was small, to the middle of China. Long, long way to the sea." She lets out a heavy sigh and shakes her head. "You're from England, yes? You have the beach there."

"Yeah. It's not like this though," I say. "It's usually cold and grey. Pretty sad. This is, like, a whole new meaning to the idea of a beach."

"This is amazing." Young-mi sheds her flip-flops where Sam has laid down his towel and she runs to the sea, and I can hear her laugh when she splashes into the water. The twins join her and I'm not sure where everyone else is, but suddenly Sam and I are alone together.

"Hey, man," Sam says, shading his eyes to look up at me. He's sitting on a towel, elbows on his knees and his feet in the sand. "How's it going?"

I sit, mimicking his position. The whiteness of the sand makes my feet look even browner. The Californian sun seems stronger than whatever pathetic British iteration I've grown up with, because I look more and more like my mother with every day. I wiggle my toes and say, "It's going well. This is ... I don't have the words. It's amazing."

"Right?" Sam lets out a happy sigh and leans back on his elbows, stretching out his legs and crossing his ankles. He seems right at home here, and he has the look of a surfer dude to match. Long hair tied in a shaggy bun, and baggy clothes, but well-maintained stubble.

"So," he continues, "I like to get to know all of my trekkers – especially as we're gonna be together for the next, like, twelve days – and you've escaped me so far. I hope you're up to being DJ at some point. Everyone's gotta take a turn as co-pilot."

"Sure," I say, "if you don't mind being subjected to a mix of early-noughties UK top forty hits and American country."

"Oh man, that is my jam," he says with a grin. He pulls on a cap, tilting it to shade his eyes from the powerful sun. "So, how're you holding up? What brings you to the golden state? You're my youngest trekker, man!"