Page 53 of Ex Marks the Spot

First of all, who the hell says “cop a squat”? And second, yes, we do mind.

“Uh, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of extra room,” I say as diplomatically as possible. One of the best parts about our layover at Haneda Airport in Tokyo is that it’s literally the cleanest airport in the world. After we ate (sushi and ramen, for the record), a bunch of us sprawled out on the floor because being horizontal is a luxury when you’re traveling.

And now Big Mike and his big dumb cheeseburger are ruining it.

“What are you talking about? There’s plenty of room.” He kicks my backpack to the side to clear a space for DeAngelo. “Also, we should bet on what we’re gonna see in China.”

“With what money?” Boyd asks.

“Don’t you have leftover leg money?”

“Considering they only give us a little bit and taxis and food aren’t free, not really.”

“You should budget better. Me and D have a hundred and four dollars in our spare pot.” He holds his fist out for DeAngelo to bump.

“I don’t even want to know how you’ve managed that.”

My guess is cheating, but I keep that to myself.

“Anyway, I bet twenty bucks that we’re gonna see that giant wall,” he says, waving his palm through the air to apparently demonstrate the Great Wall of China. “Oh! Or a dragon. A couple of them, probably. Don’t Chinese people love dragons?”

Hartley catches my eye with a look that says,Does it hurt to be this idiotic?

My discreet smile says,Apparently not.

Arriving at a new destination usually goes something like this: The pilot rolls up to the gate, we get off the plane, and we get outside to the taxi queue as fast as possible. If anyone asks about the cameras along the way, we give the standard, “We’re filming a travel documentary.”

This is not what happens when we land in Kunming, China, because this time, Big Mike has the great idea of saying, “We’re famous musicians from America,” when a teenage tourist notices the cameras following us.

Chaos ensues.

We’re talking pictures and autographs and requests to sing our nonexistent songs from at least two hundred travelers. That leaves us with choosing between wasting valuable time to perpetuate a lie or looking like asshole Americans and blowing everyone off while we literally run away from them.

Thankfully, Hartley comes through with a third option.

“Follow my lead.” She clamps a hand over her mouth and holds her stomach, then takes off. I’m two steps behind her when it clicks that she’s doing the universal signal forI’m about to puke, also known as the perfect antidote for crowds. Suddenly, the people closest to us are shuffling back in horror, creating a clear path out of the concourse. She drops her hands as soon as we escape the crowd, but we continue our sprint through the airport.

When we reach the ground transportation area outside, she pulls the clue from her fanny pack and shows it to the first taxi driver we see. “Do you know where this is?”

He studies the close-up picture of colorful writing for five long seconds, then nods. “The stone staircase at Yuantong Temple.”

“Can you take us there?”

He nods again and pops the trunk.

We waste no time offloading our packs and sliding into our assigned positions. We’ve done this so many times now that Hartley knows to lean forward a little while I turn my upper body slightly to the right to maximize the available space and avoid her sitting in my lap.

Along the way, our driver tells us Yuantong is a Buddhist temple that’s about twelve hundred years old.

“Interesting,” I say.

“What is?” Hartley asks.

“It was built around the time the Vikings discovered Iceland. It’s just cool to see how history overlaps.”

Her lips quirk up in an amused smile. “Are you trying out for Jeopardy after the race is over?”

“More like grading projects for a friend’s history class a couple of months ago. It was pretty awesome because the kids had to make a longboat out of a paper towel roll and turn in diary entries as if they were on the boat the day they landed in Iceland.”

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