The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand over my carefully printed résumés, which are regarded with the same level of scrutiny one might a coaster.
    â€œCome back in three weeks,” they say, or “Try next door.”
    The sun emerges only in weak spurts, but it stops drizzling by late afternoon. Turns out it doesn’t rain all day long in Ireland, as I had imagined initially, but it does rain for a portion great or small of each day, leaving one to conclude that being a weatherman in Ireland is about the biggest scam going. It’s chilly, more like early spring back home than summer, and I wrap myself in my heaviest wool sweater. When my stomach begins growling, I follow the delicious fish smell near my hostel to its source, McDonaghs, and order fish and chips to go. I douse my meal in vinegar, which, unlike the miniature packets of ketchup and tartar sauce, is plentiful and free. I’ve never had to calculate my portions so precisely, have never had to worry about how spending a measly euro on condiments will strain my meager budget.
    Tucked away once again in my still thankfully empty room, I drag a chair up to the small square window. I unwrap my dinnerand balance the contents on my lap. Already grease is starting to seep through the newspaper wrapping. Inside a deep, rich batter hides a piece of light, flaky cod. Thick potato wedges are getting deliciously soggy in the vinegar. The meal sinks like a stone in my stomach, just the thing after a long day wandering around a damp city. It’s the end of my first whole day truly alone in Ireland, and even though I can tell already that I fit better in Galway than in Dublin, I’m lonely. Again I consider what exactly I’m doing here.
    Over the next week, I meet other travelers staying in the hostel, and some of my loneliness dissipates. First there’s Jeff. When I open my eyes the next morning, he is on his stomach reading in the bunk bed across from me, apparently having just exited an Abercrombie & Fitch billboard—chiseled arms, thick hair, freckles on his tanned neck.
    We run into each other in the common room later in the day. I’ve been watching TV for an hour with two girls I don’t know. They didn’t say anything more than “hey” when I entered the room, but they didn’t tell me to leave, either. I had this idea in my head that some guests in the hostel “owned” certain rooms, like the really popular girls in middle school owned certain lunch tables, but it’s not true. Anyone can sit on the beat-up couch and watch TV. Nobody stays in hostels long enough to lay claim to anything, nor is it something anyone is interested in. There are hostels I’ll encounter later on in my travels where people hole up for weeks and months at a time, but this one, like most of them, is simply a brief stop on the way to somewhere else.
    â€œYou’re in my room, right?” Jeff asks.
    I nod.
    â€œIf you’re not doing anything, I’m going out for drinks with my friends. Do you want to come?”
    I don’t know how long you have to be celibate before peopleassume you’re doing it on purpose, but whatever the threshold is, I have surely passed it. I haven’t so much as kissed anyone in over a year, since I shouted “Good riddance!” as my ex-boyfriend stomped away from our fifth tequila-fueled breakup. All of that changes my first night out in Galway. Jeff and I make out enthusiastically in the hostel’s hallway, in that pawing, slurred way that seems so sexy when you’re hammered, until we get caught by security cameras. A cryptic Big Brother voice rasps through an intercom: “Guys, we can see you down here.”
    In the morning Abercrombie & Fitch, like Matt the Canadian before him, is gone before I can say goodbye. This is fine by me, because I’m pitifully hungover. And embarrassed. I wait until all of my roommates leave before sheepishly sneaking out of the room.
    The days begin to drift