Fearful adventures

After some indecision, I decide at the last minute to join Grant on a short vacation to Budapest. I'm at a track just about to jockey a horse race and the plane leaves in a hour. I leave to pack a few things and come back to give them to my mother for safekeeping. The announcer is encouraging the jockeys to walk along the track. He wants us to observe its slippery texture due to last night's rain, in order to better guide our horses along it. Instead, Jade picks me up in a monster SUV and we drive along the track so I can see all of it. It is a straight path through some woods with a yellow dirt surface. You have to turn your horse around and go back every time you reach the end, as the entire race consists of 10 laps. I admire how Jade carelessly takes out a few small trees with her wide U-turn. The road's shape and slope are a combination of a street leading to my childhood house and a path to my dad's place in Maine.

I'm afraid to race my horse (whom I don't meet) because I haven't ridden in well over a decade, and I can't remember ever having galloped a horse. I imagine myself falling as soon as we reach top speed and being trampled. I struggle with my anxiety for a bit, and then realize that I can't both run the race and go to Hungary. I ask a stranger to give the person in a charge a message: I'm not going to race.

I urge my mom to drive me to the airport in a hurry.

Arriving in Budapest, I'm surprised to learn Grant knows his way around. He treats me with a certain standoffishness, and I can usually only see his back. We walk dark alleys, slither through clammy crawlspaces, and take rickety metal stairs on our nighttime hike from the airport to where we're staying. Upon arrival, the apartment we've rented is instantly familiar and cozy, despite its dilapidation.

I leave alone to join some friends for dinner, including Cynthia, Charles, and Shuvo. The friends will morph into others several times throughout the event, but there are almost always four of us. We ordered meals and waited. When Cerina appears, I thank her for some previous gifts, and feel as though I need to come up with something to give her. After an extremely long, hungry period, our food arrives. Mine looks appetizing to me. It's eggs and maybe some meat, a biscuit and a churro, all covered in gravy. Rather than eat we all stand up to take a walk across a long wooden footbridge over a beautiful lake. It's a warm, sunny afternoon. As we're walking I think sadly about the food I didn't touch, but I no longer feel hungry.

On the walk, the cast is Sobby, Jen, and Shuvo. Sobby is proclaiming how happy he is that he's finally in love, and how happy we should be for him. We assure him that we are, we're just in mellow moods. Sobby breaks out his snowboard and I remember that this, after all, is a snowboarding retreat. He starts flying around on his, and I take out my snowboard and tell him that I'm not good enough on mine to be able to fly yet. In his fit of love he grabs me and one of the others and tows us on a ride above the treetops over the far side of the lake. I'm thrilled but as he flies more wildly I imagine my likely death among the trees and rocks below.

As we're riding we continue to talk about his new relationship, and one of us remarks that she seems like a very nice, safe girl. He explains that she may seem safe but she has a crazy, dark side. He sees it fit to exemplify this by whipping us into an upside-down loop. He takes the loop too slow, and I start to feel gravity pulling my head earthward. I manage to move my snowboard back under my bare feet, but it's difficult to control because I haven't installed my bindings yet. After that, he takes us speeding toward a huge building, and I knew he's planning to go in through a wide, open door.

Even though I'm begging him not to, we enter and fly over the heads of a zillion young people up some stairs. I start to lose my balance and see that in a moment I will have a chance to disembark without dying. I do, and land straddling a railing. Looking down I realize I'm wearing a little girl's one-piece swimsuit. I tuck my snowboard under my arm and walk past the staring people.