Jessica had always wanted to travel.

When she was little, she kept locations taped to her bedroom mirror; postcards from all over the world were her map.

Jessica had always wanted to travel simply for the sake of traveling.

Ambition was never exactly her strong point, and maybe, deep down, that’s why she wanted to travel in the first place-to find ambition.

Books and tv and movies all championed the allure of it. The foreign setting, the lingual barriers, the sometimes subpar conditions… Such chaos somehow always seemed to enlighten people, bring about a sincere change to them.

And Jessica wanted that change very badly, desperately even.

She saw herself as a sad vase that needed to be filled. A question dying to be answered.

And whereas all her friends and relatives went off to get technical degrees, she lived in an unknown land with no map to guide her. So in her desperation, she hoped a sudden decision to go backpacking around the world would help her find the map.

Maybe it would lead her to something magical, an adventure she always dreamed of... Or maybe it'd lead her as a disillusioned husk into some conglomerate's office cubicle...

Either way, she decided not think about it, and  she did not regret it when she took all of her postcards down and put her locations into her pocket.

She did not falter at all when her parents looked at her mournfully, somewhat disappointed that she wasn’t going to college, yet wishing her luck all the same as she planned to jet off to faraway countries with names much harder to pronounce than what was comfortable to them.

They let her be because in a strange way, they understood.

Jessica wanted to travel simply for the sake of traveling, and if she somehow found the magical solution to her mystery of life along the way, than that’d be wonderful also.

---

But of course, as all things naively plotted go, traveling the world wouldn't end up all that it was cracked up to be.

"Hey, Gringa!."

Lacking plumbing and constantly being targeted by pick-pocketers wasn’t exactly what Jessica was looking for. But she at least liked the scenery, the food, the culture aside from those trying to scam her.

"You're off-key."

And Luckily, she somewhat found her solution to her dull life along the way.

"You sound horrible."

Granted, it wasn’t all too magical or profound, and she really had no idea what her mother would think about it when she finally decides to bring it home, but some red haired girl in Brazil named Tiffany Hwang, remarking all too kindly that her Portuguese was horrible and her singing voice off tune turned out to be exactly what Jessica needed.

"Can you lend me money?"

Because in the end, Tiffany Hwang turned out to be the embodiment of all the places Jessica had ever wanted to go and places she hadn't even dreamed of yet.

"Stay with me at my hotel. It's much cheaper, I promise!"

And after disasters in Venezuela and food poisoning somewhere along the Ivory Coast, Jessica knew that without this ridiculous girl, there was no destination.

"Dá-me dez minutos, por favor."

Tiffany Hwang was definitely not her grandest adventure. But the girl definitely beat the cubicle job.

“Que no peito dos desafinados também bate um coração.”

The End