Читать книгу As Far as the Stars - Virginia Macgregor - Страница 17

Chapter Seven

16.14 EST

I don’t know how long I sit there on the sidewalk, staring at the tarmac, willing my brain to work out some kind of plan to make all of this okay. But by the time I look up again, the sun’s so low, it blinds me.

Which is why I don’t notice him, not at first.

I put my hand over my brow to block out the sun, which lights up his hair – the tangled strands look like comets.

The sun reflects off his glasses too, so hard that I can’t see his eyes.

Leda gets up and runs around him, which makes him look nervous so I pat the space beside me to get her to sit down again.

For a second, I let myself believe that the fact that he’s standing there – the fact that he’s coming out of the airport – means that they’ve released new information. That the plane made it after all.

‘Is there any news?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I needed to get out of there for a bit.’

My heart slumps.

‘I thought you were leaving?’ he says.

‘So did I.’

‘You changed your mind?’

I shake my head, too tired to explain. And too pissed about the car.

He sits down beside me but keeps a space between us like he’s scared to get too close. But then he holds out his hand, which feels weirdly formal, but I take it anyway. His skin’s cool. It feels nice.

‘I’m Christopher,’ he says. ‘As in Columbus. I can’t believe that I just said that.’

‘As in Columbus?’ I laugh and, for a second, it feels like a bit of my body comes back to life.

‘My dad has a thing about explorers.’

With his tangled blond hair and his pale skin and his rosy cheeks, he looks more like Christopher Robin out of Winnie The Pooh than the rugged coloniser of the New World.

‘Parents dump you with a whole load of shit when they give you a name, hey?’

He blushes. Maybe I offended him. Maybe he likes being associated with Christopher Columbus.

‘I’m Air. As in, Ariadne.’

It’s Blake who nicknamed me Air – as soon as I was born. Because he thought it was a totally cool name. As opposed to the totally nerdy name Dad picked out for me. For my baptism, when I was seven, Blake even wrote a song for me, using all these clever metaphors about breath and air and being in the world.

He looks up at me. ‘Ariadne. The goddess of mazes and labyrinths.’

‘You know?’

Nobody knows. Nobody except my geeky parents who fell in love over Greek myths at Oxford. My geeky parents who were totally pissed at Blake for changing my name basically as soon as they’d given it to me.

‘Home-schooled,’ he says.

‘Sorry?’

‘I was home-schooled until I was sixteen. Dad made me study all the old stuff. Latin, Greek, the myths. He got tutors for me. And when he had the time, he took me to museums. Anyway, that’s how I know.’

‘You were home-schooled in England?’

‘Not really in England. Not really at home, either.’

‘You weren’t home-schooled at home? How does that work?’

He blushes again, which makes his pale grey eyes stand out even more.

‘My dad travels so much that it was either take me with him or put me in a boarding school. I’m in a boarding school now, but I was home-schooled until last year.’ He pauses. ‘Well, away-schooled – I had some tutoring whenever we were in London but most of the time Dad taught me when we were travelling.’ The corners of his mouth go up. ‘Dad and the internet.’

‘Why boarding school now?’

‘So I can get my A-levels and go to university. Dad said it would be easier having the structure of a school to help me through that rather than figuring it out on our own.’

He hasn’t mentioned his mom, which probably means she’s not around in some way and I don’t want to upset him by asking.

‘I’m from England too,’ I say. ‘Was. Lived there until I was four. Which is why Americans think I’m English and English people think I’m American.’

‘I like it – your accent.’

‘It makes me sound like I don’t belong anywhere.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’ He gives me a small, sideways smile.

I hadn’t ever thought of it being a good thing. But perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it’s kind of cool not being locked into one particular place. ‘I guess not.’

‘So how come you lived in England?’ he asks.

‘Mom’s English – well Scottish-English. Dad went to do a semester at Oxford, which is where they met.’

‘Where they fell in love over Greek myths?’ he says.

‘Yeah. Mom was meant to be doing international law but she kept taking all these other classes too. Anyway, Dad ended up loving Oxford so much he stayed for years. They got married. Had kids.’

‘And then you moved to the US?’

‘Mom got a gig at the White House. As an international human rights lawyer.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah. She’s a high achiever.’

‘And your dad?’

‘Classics professor at Georgetown. He still misses Oxford but he’d go anywhere for Mom.’

He looks at me, curious, like my friends sometimes do when I talk about Mom and Dad and how close they are.

He leans back and closes his eyes. Behind his glasses, he’s got these crazily long, light eyelashes. ‘It’s warm out here,’ he says.

‘Yeah.’

A beautiful warm afternoon.

I think about Mom, Jude and Dad working really hard to get things ready for the wedding. And how Mom must be coping with the news that we’re not going to make the breakfast. I picture them sitting there tomorrow morning, staring at two empty chairs and how Mom will be totally freaking out and how Dad will be trying to calm her down and how Jude will be thinking that it’s typical that we’re both off somewhere else without her. She feels left out when it comes to the three of us. All those birth order theories don’t apply to us. Blake’s the middle child but he gets all the attention. Jude’s the eldest but that doesn’t make her feel special – she’s the one who feels like she’s being overlooked. As for me, I’m the opposite of the spoilt and indulged youngest child – I’m the one whose job it is to sort out my brother and sister’s problems and fights.

My eyeballs sting like I’m going to cry, because I know that it’s totally not fair. There are times when Jude’s sulkiness about not getting enough attention has annoyed the hell out of me but if there’s one time that Jude shouldn’t feel left out, it’s at her wedding.

I sniff back the tears.

Leda nestles in closer to Christopher. He sits up and pats her head gently.

‘She yours?’ he asks.

‘My brother’s. I’m babysitting.’

He puts out his hand and Leda puts her head into it like she’s looking for a treat.

‘I love dogs – all animals really,’ Christopher says.

He keeps stroking her. Leda’s tilting her head back so far now it’s like she’s in some kind of trance. He’s totally good with her.

‘Do you have any pets?’

Christopher shakes his head. ‘I was never allowed. Too much moving around.’

He keeps stroking her and I can tell, from how his shoulders drop and his body sinks into itself, that Leda’s making him feel more relaxed too.

‘So, what happened?’ Christopher asks. ‘I thought you needed to be somewhere.’

‘I did.’ I look back at the space where I parked the Buick. ‘They took my brother’s car.’

‘Your brother?’ He frowns and knits his eyebrows together: they’re blond and tangled, like his hair. ‘The one who owns the dog?’

‘The very same.’

‘He’s the one you came to pick up?’

‘Yeah. Sort of. It’s a long story. I think I got it wrong. Or he got it wrong. Anyway, he’s not here.’

‘Right.’

I hand him the parking notice. ‘They took the car.’

‘From the car park?’

I shake my head. ‘From here.’

‘Here?’

I nod.

‘Right here?’

‘I was in a hurry – we were already late.’ My throat goes thick. ‘I know it was a stupid thing to do but I texted Blake to come straight out; I thought it would only take a few minutes before we’d be back in the car.’ Tears prick the back of my eyes; I blink hard to make them go away. ‘I didn’t know all this would happen.’

‘Are you okay?’ asks Christopher.

And then it all comes out.

‘My sister’s getting married on Monday, during the eclipse, on this amazing rooftop terrace in a hotel in Nashville. And I should be there already but I thought Blake got on the wrong plane so I came back to collect him and now he’s not here and he’s not answering my texts and I don’t know how to tell my family – and now I don’t have a car anymore.’ I gulp. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ My words tumble over each other so quick I’m pretty sure I don’t make any sense. ‘So no, nothing’s even close to okay.’

I shut my eyes to push the tears back in.

‘Can I help?’ Two perfect pink circles form at the top of his cheeks.

It’s a weird thing to ask. But it’s kind of nice too – to have someone helping me out for a change.

‘Help?’ I ask.

‘To get your car back,’ he says.

He makes it sound so simple. And it makes me feel better – that there’s one thing I might be able to sort out in this whole tangled mess I’m in.

‘I’m fine,’ I say.

‘I’d like to help.’

‘You would?’

He gives a quick nod. ‘Take my mind off things for a bit – you know?’

It hits me again. That someone he knows – someone he cares about – is on the plane that’s gone missing.

His brow is scrunched up and he’s squinting into the sun and I get it, that he needs this.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say.

He studies the parking notice and then says, ‘Have you called the number yet?’

I shake my head.

‘The tow truck might not have got very far. We could explain.’

‘Explain?’

‘What’s going on,’ he says. ‘That these are special circumstances.’

Our eyes catch his and, for a beat, we don’t say anything.

‘You think that would work?’

In my experience, traffic enforcement doesn’t do special circumstances, especially for people our age.

‘We could try,’ he says.

Leda gives out a small bark and thumps her tail against the sidewalk, like she’s agreeing with him.

I bite the side of my thumbnail and notice that my sky-blue nail varnish is chipped. I went to have a manicure before I left DC – on instruction from Mom. To match the bridesmaid’s dress I’m meant to wear tomorrow.

Then I get out my phone and dial the number.