1.11

Stand­ing on the curb of one of Cammec’s busy streets, Mrs. Berros placed a new­ly pur­chased phone in her hand, wrapped in a pam­phlet she’d grabbed from a near­by greeter. Even through the crin­kled paper, the trader’s touch was firm and well-wish­ing.

“Ok, Car­nelia! I have to run some errands now, but if you need any­thing, any­thing at all, call me and I’ll come run­ning. Day or night.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Berros! But you didn’t have to--”

The woman wagged her fin­ger.

“Ah, ah, ah! You already know it’s the least I could do after what my sons put you through. Besides, you know what they say. ‘A Challenger’s favor is worth its weight in gold…’ ”

“’…best get them in your debt while you have the chance.’”

Car­nelia fin­ished the say­ing with a laugh. Mrs. Berros laughed too and stepped off the curb with a two-fin­ger salute.

Halfway across the street, though, she paused and called out.

“Who knows…”

“…maybe I’ll see you there!”

Car­nelia final­ly stopped wav­ing when she lost sight of Mrs Berros’s back, swal­lowed by the life in the city. She took a deep breath. She was alone, now. Alone, in the City of Bells.

Final­ly.

As the last stamp on every piece of mail sent to Down­town, Cam­mec had always felt odd­ly famil­iar to Car­nelia. It was like a sum­mer cot­tage she’d nev­er had the chance to vis­it… because she lived under­ground. Of course, once she had learned that the Can­di­date’s Chal­lenge was being host­ed in Cam­mec this year, she’d ded­i­cat­ed her­self to learn­ing all she could. She knew how many peo­ple lived here, what its biggest export was, the var­i­ous things that made it famous--but at the moment, with the hot brick pave­ment beneath her feet and a canopy of laun­dry lines over­head, only one sen­ti­ment filled her mind.

The pic­tures hadn’t done it jus­tice.

It was one thing to see Cammec’s tallest build­ing com­pared to the sil­hou­ette of an aver­age human online, and com­plete­ly anoth­er thing to stand in the shad­ow of the real thing and gawk up at its peak. She knew it wasn’t sup­posed to be the largest of cities, and yet more peo­ple were pass­ing through this ran­dom inter­sec­tion she stood in than lived in the entire­ty of her home­town. And the sheer noise of it all. Car­nelia could just stand there and lis­ten, and there was always some­thing dif­fer­ent and new hap­pen­ing. A thou­sand shout­ing con­ver­sa­tions here, a thou­sand revving pieces of machin­ery there--it was enough to make her head spin. In fact, it very much did. Slow­ly, though, Car­nelia began to find a strange peace amongst the hus­tle and bus­tle of city life.

Although the streets were packed with stalled, honk­ing auto­mo­biles, and the side­walks were crammed curb to curb with pedes­tri­ans, every­one seemed to be too busy ges­tic­u­lat­ing at their phones or hur­ry­ing along in slap­ping san­dals to give a ran­dom girl on the side­walk any notice. It was quite the depar­ture from Down­town, where she couldn’t walk a hun­dred feet with­out some­one call­ing out her name. Here, the world moved for­ward with­out any regard for her at all. It was quite nice, actu­al­ly.

Since no one seemed to mind her exis­tence, Car­nelia tucked her­self against a near­by wall and did some set­tling in. The first thing she need­ed to do was to fig­ure out where exact­ly she was.

With the traf­fic as heavy as it was, it was a won­der that Mrs. Berros had man­aged to deliv­er her as far down­town as she had. She had some­how made it here through a maze of wind­ing side streets and alley­ways, half of which were so nar­row they could be passed and missed in the span of a sin­gle blink, drop­ping her off at a spot only a few blocks away from the shore­line. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, since they had­n’t been able to take her planned route, she did­n’t think she was any­where near where she had hoped to be.

Car­nelia took out her note­book and flipped to a page with a map of Cam­mec. From the street signs, she seemed to be about two miles east of where she was sup­posed to be, and a cou­ple more away from the city’s port. Which was naught but peb­bles. It was still a total­ly walk­a­ble dis­tance, which, giv­en that the city was get­ting busier way faster than the rumors online had guessed, was good. This turn of events con­firmed a pat­tern she had noticed dur­ing her online sleuthing; each Chal­lenge was get­ting big­ger and more com­pet­i­tive than the last. Wher­ev­er they hap­pened, the host cities were becom­ing ver­i­ta­ble grid­locks for weeks at a time, long after the event was over.

It was a good thing she had planned for this. How­ev­er, while she did­n’t think the traf­fic was going to cause her prob­lems, it did throw a wrench in a dif­fer­ent part of her plans.

Car­nelia pushed her­self off the wall and joined the flow of pedes­tri­ans walk­ing the street. As she let her­self get car­ried along, she flipped all to the back of her note­book, glanc­ing sur­rep­ti­tious­ly around all the while. She went past the plans and research she had shown her grand­fa­ther, to a sprawl­ing secret list writ­ten in the back. It flopped out, sev­er­al pages taped togeth­er.

Her buck­et list. She read the ‘friv­o­lous’ activ­i­ties she had planned for her­self with a tinge of melan­choly.

     Swim in the Bereat Sea, next to the fishies. The big­ger the bet­ter.
     Vis­it the old stone­folk set­tle­ment across the riv­er. Leave a present.
     Climb to the top of Ten­nin Tow­er and drop a cterl. See if you can hear it land.

She sighed and fold­ed that page close. Again, the roads. She had no way of get­ting to any of the fun touristy stuff. Darn it.

Although…

Car­nelia checked the dig­i­tal clock on her new phone. Anoth­er ben­e­fit of Mrs. Berros’s deliv­ery was that she had dri­ven like the dev­il, even through those wind­ing side streets and alley­ways. There were a num­ber of times Car­nelia had thought they might actu­al­ly run some­one over. But they hadn’t, and as a result, while Mrs. Berros hadn’t man­aged to drop her off in the right place, she had arrived in Cam­mec almost an hour ear­ly.

One hour, on top of the time she had already gel-mark­ered in her sched­ule for ‘activ­i­ties’. Maybe she could fit in a lit­tle fun, as long as it didn’t take her too far out of the way. She deserved that, right?

An extra-heavy breeze flut­tered the pages of her note­book. She glanced up and noticed where the peo­ple had brought her. She smiled wide­ly.

Deserved, shme­served. She was a small-town girl in a big city. Get­ting lost was her birthright.