Fiction by Stephanie Buesinger
Bronwyn set out to conquer the world by the ripe old age of twenty-five. Our boarding school crowd knew we had advantages few others possessed. Still, among us, Bronwyn sparkled most brightly. When I heard she set out to visit every country on Earth, I recognized it was within her grasp. Each destination earned a spot in her Instagram grid or a full story, if it was an especially picturesque sight. Bronwyn’s followers could receive real-time updates from her social media channels; they would seldom go a few minutes without a live feed. Rumor had it that Bronwyn was in talks with an up-and-coming Hollywood director who promised to turn her around-the-world voyage into a feature film, one that would premiere at Sundance, Toronto, even Tribeca.
We met at boarding school- me, the Nick to her Gatsby. I was ever the observer, aspiring to a literary life, while Bronwyn became the famous author, the narrator to her own fairy tale. Bronwyn scored visas to the most challenging locales with ease. She performed a downward dog in ballet flats atop the Great Wall of China, and sported designer sunglasses at Machu Picchu. It helped that Daddy was a celebrated hedge fund titan and her mother a former model-turned-reality star. Like a character from a Fitzgerald novel, Bronwyn led a charmed existence. Well, she did until now.
They crowned her the top “influencer” of the year, the girl everyone wanted to be. Meanwhile I toiled at a substitute teaching job in my midwestern hometown, trying to impress the merits of Faulkner and Nabokov upon snickering middle schoolers. Bronwyn seemed destined for social media. She had both the classic good looks for fingernail-sized selfies and the vanity to go with it, sharing photos of herself multiple times a day in skimpy ensembles. Yet for all Bronwyn revealed, she kept us guessing.
Who took that picture of Bronwyn bartering the four carat Asscher cut diamond solitaire given to her by her ex before he ran off with that magenta-haired hipster chick? We heard the new couple opened a microbrewery slash small-batch sausage factory in Williamsburg. Did Bronwyn just trade the ring at a makeshift stall in downtown Kathmandu for a Sherpa guide up Mount Everest? Indeed. And just how was she able to climb while transporting the Wi-Fi receiver, several vintage Penguins, a wheel-thrown artisanal coffee mug and a French press, not to mention the micro-roasted beans custom blended by a former Google executive in Portland?
We never considered Bronwyn to be sporty, but her sponsors outfitted her in high style. Elite outfitters jumped at the advertising bonanza Bronwyn’s twenty million followers represented. Even I could not resist the mesmerizing loveliness of her silhouette outfitted in the close-fitting black parka that retailed for two grand, her blowout still fresh after an application of dry shampoo. Her emerald eyes flashed like the light on Daisy’s pier, calling us to look. Funny, I didn’t remember her eyes being green.
When I spotted Bronwyn’s snapshot of the colorful Nepalese flags surrounding her flat lay photo of a traditional stew, homemade granola and matcha chai latte at 19,000 feet, I realized she was near her destination. At 26,000 feet at the South Col, the air was so thin, most climbers require oxygen tanks. Not Bronwyn. She had the lung capacity of an Olympian, a legacy of her grandfather who had skied for the 1964 Norwegian team at Innsbrook. She had that magic, if not the fortitude, that flip of the coin that determined who was blessed and who was condemned to a life of mediocrity.
As Bronwyn made her approach to the summit, she reached up for that most elusive selfie of all, the one atop this planet’s highest peak. As she shimmied off her elegant parka, as she held her iPhone aloft to attain that ideal angle of her cheekbones, cut like glass against the clear azure sky, as she fiddled with the smartphone to get a better connection, difficult at 29,000 feet, we reached with her. I thought of the ancient mountain, called Sagarmatha by the people of Nepal, and Chomolungma in Tibetan, and considered sacred by both cultures. I thought of how it would have looked to the first explorers, those who dared to face its perils—infinite crevasses, shifting ice, avalanches, frostbite, altitude sickness. I considered the slow dripping passage of the ages, continents colliding, mountain ranges rising, pushing aside all in their way. And as Bronwyn aimed her iPhone toward the golden heavens for the perfect backlighting, she fell.
And we streamed the Netflix series when it came out.
Stephanie Buesinger writes fiction and children’s literature and enjoys illustration and photography. Current projects include a middle grade novel and a picture book. Stephanie has degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in corporate finance and economic consulting. Stephanie is the Blog Editor at Literary Mama. She lives in Florida with her husband, teenagers, and rescue pets.
