grainy mush, water, and something putrid yellow, the colour of a warning. Thandi wiped her mouth, closed the lid on the mess, and turned it to lock it.
‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ The girl stroked Thandi’s back. ‘I used to get car sick all the time growing up—’
‘Just hungover,’ Thandi croaked but the girl was already recounting her childhood and how and when and why she had vomited so much back then. The coach heaved and humped along. To stave off her nausea, Thandi fixed her eyes on the girl’s nose, the smattering of freckles like make-up she hadn’t rubbed in. What would happen if those spots grew in number, merged, crowded her skin with melanin? How different this girl’s life would be, the one she was still stitching into a threadbare story with her patchy memories of a small town in California. When the coach finally turned onto the smooth Great North Road, it felt like an exhalation. It gave Thandi an excuse to look out of the window. After a pause, she heard the rustle of the girl opening her stiff copy of Out of Africa.
Thandi closed her eyes and rested her head on the window, her plaits squeaking against the glass. She hated that this girl felt so free to talk to her and touch her. But wasn’t that why Thandi had come to Livingstone? To meet new people? To befriend them in the name of that African mantra: opportunity-opportunity-opportunity? No. She had just wanted to flee Lee’s cowardly eyes, to get out of that damned spot. But then she’d met charming Scholie, and so she’d stayed on, letting him charm her. And now, of course, she was leaving again, this time to get away from Scholie, so that when he pitched up at JollyBoys and said, ‘Hey, man, where’s TandyCandy?’ they’d say, ‘Ah, sorry, man, she’s bounced.’
* * *
When Thandi woke up from her nap, the coach was climbing a road, old car crash sites on the banks marked with white crosses. The sun made the scratches on the window glow and as her gaze receded from that bright cross-hatching, Thandi noticed her reflection: big eyes, small nose, big lips, small chin. She kissed her lips inward to spread her lipstick and saw the American girl’s face behind her, looking not at the world outside the window but at Thandi. Their glances touched in the glass and the girl spoke.
‘Are you feeling any better, you poor thing?’
Thandi felt obliged to turn. She nodded with a close-mouthed smile.
‘I’m telling you, it’s totally car sickness. I don’t know if it’s worse on a bus. This is my first bus ride in Africa, actually. We drove down from Lusaka to see the Falls.’
Thandi breathed. ‘And what did you think of the Victoria Falls?’
‘Oh-my-god. So. Fucking. Beautiful. I’ve seen a lot of waterfalls, like the one up in Impala and this incredible one in Cambodia. But this was, like – the perfect circle rainbow? So amazing. Lemme show you.’ The girl reached down for her bag and her head bounced against the seatback in front of her. ‘Oops,’ she giggled. ‘Good thing it’s so soft,’ she said, stroking the fuzz on the seat.
She was right. The whole coach was furry: the ceiling, the aisle, even the walls were coated with a coarse grey fur flecked with primary colours. An inside-out animal. Thandi’s eye hit a mirror, a large disc above the driver. Rows of heads danced in its reflection and she felt another surge of nausea. The girl had pulled out a sheaf of photos – glossy and unbent – from an envelope and was scrunching closer, bringing the smell of her hair with her. She rifled through the pictures quickly, flashing a montage. Monkeys dangling and reaching for nuts. Livingstone’s bulky, cartoonish statue. Another bloody sunset. A shoeless boy. Arms and oars spoking from rapids. A girl in cargo shorts and a pink shirt floating upside down, arms extended like Christ, a cord scribbling across the sky above her ankles.
‘Is that you?’
The girl turned to Thandi with a solemn look in her eyes.
‘Oh-my-god, bungee jumping? It’s a spiritual experience. I saw death coming straight at me, and then the bungee caught, and honestly, I felt truly alive for the first time in my life.’
She shook her head, moving through photos of the Falls now, all nearly identical – white clusters of chaos against a black-rock backdrop, with that lovely twisting torque that they get during the dry season