As Far as the Stars

by Virginia MacGregor

  So, we all did what we do when we’re worried about Blake.

  Mom called the cops.

  Jude went into her supporting and there-thereing Mom mode (whilst mumbling her I told-you-so-Blake’s-always-doing-this refrain reserved for these occasions).

  Dad tried to help for a bit and then got swatted away by Mom for being annoying and ended up hiding upstairs in the library with a book.

  As for me? My job was to come up with an actual plan to get Blake back. A logical one. So I did what I always did when Blake went missing: I retraced his steps by trying to work out where – if I were living in Blake’s body with his particular personality and interests and blood chemistry – I’d be right now.

  If I don’t make it as an astronaut I’m seriously considering becoming a personal investigator.

  But Blake was harder to trace on holiday. In DC, I knew most of the places where he hung out and which girlfriends or ex-girlfriends or any music friends he might have decided to crash with. In the middle of the Scottish countryside, there weren’t that many options. And Mom was right: if he wasn’t at the pub and if he wasn’t on the road walking to or from the pub, where the hell was he?

  I went up to the attic where the B&B owners had set up a small library, and found Dad reading a book on Scottish mythology, but his reading glasses were on his head rather than on his nose so he obviously wasn’t actually reading.

  He looked up at me and his eyes said it all: Find Blake, Air.

  Every part of me wanted to bolt the door to the library and slump down in the armchair next to Dad and pull out a book and let my big brother sort out his own mess for once. He was eighteen, for goodness sake. Four whole years older than me. An adult. Why did I have to go out and find him?

  But I knew it was my job.

  I went over and kissed the top of Dad’s head, because I knew that Mom would have given him a hard time, and then I walked back to the room I shared with Blake to do some thinking. Jude liked to have her space and Blake and I liked to share, so it all worked out. Kind of.

  Anyway, it took me a few minutes to notice that some of the stuff in the room didn’t quite add up to the current state of play.

  Like that the black sweatshirt – the one Blake had gone to the pub wearing when he set off at lunchtime – was hanging on the back of a chair. As soon as I picked it up I could smell the beer and cigarettes.

  Blake had gone to the pub and come back and then left again – without anyone seeing. Which wasn’t hard. Mom would have been sleeping. Jude would have found an old piano so she could practise her scales: she was preparing for this really tough exam coming up in the fall at Julliard. Blake just played. Jude practised. Dad would have been reading in the attic and I was out exploring Loch Leven with my flat tyre.

  The weird thing was that he’d taken off again, rather than stopping for one of his middle of the day catch-up-on-being-awake-all-night naps.

  I looked around the room and noticed that his guitar was here too, tucked into the corner by his bed. Yeah, Blake had definitely been back. And gone again without his guitar. Which was strange. His guitar was basically like one of his limbs: wherever he went, it went too.

  I kept looking. Nothing else seemed strange: an unmade bed, bits of music manuscript paper in a pile on the floor, clothes crumpled on top of his suitcase.

  And then I noticed the heated towel rail in the en-suite bathroom. This morning, we’d taken it in turns to have a shower. And we’d both left our towels on the rail. And now his wasn’t there.

  I went into the bathroom and looked around in case he’d had another shower or something and left his towel on the floor but it was definitely gone. And it wasn’t anywhere in our bedroom either.

  Someone must have come to clean the room and taken the towel but forgotten to replace it. But neither the bathroom nor our room looked like it had been cleaned. The trash can was still full and the sink was slick with soap grime.

  I walked to the window, pulled it open, and looked out. For a moment, I let it all soak in – the warm night air, the water so still it reflected the moon perfectly.

  And then I felt a jolt.

  And I began to panic.

  Blake liked to swim. Especially in random bodies of water. Ponds. Lakes. Rivers. Other people’s swimming pools. The open sea, even in the middle of winter.

  And swimming and alcohol don’t mix.

  I tore out of the room, down the stairs and through the front door.

  ‘What is it?’ Mom yelled after me.

  But I kept running, images flashing in front of my eyes: Blake floating, drowned, face down in the lake. Blake caught in reeds, unable to scramble back to the shore. Blake knocked unconscious after tripping and hitting his head on one of the sharp rocks on the shore.

  I pushed the images away. Blake is going to be fine. Blake is always fine.

  It took me a while to find him.

  He’d walked to a patch of beach from where he could wade into the lake.

  But he’d never made it into the water itself.

  He’d fallen asleep. Fully dressed. On the B&B towel.

  When I found him, curled up like a kid, I nearly laughed I was so relieved.

  And then I wanted to yell at him for being so stupid and so selfish and for stressing Mom out and for wrecking our parents’ wedding anniversary.

  Instead, I lay beside him and looked up at the sky with its millions of stars. And then I slipped my hand into his and closed my eyes and waited for my heart to stop hammering.

  After a few seconds, he stirred.

  I opened my eyes. The moon shone down so strong it felt like it was falling towards us.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ I whispered.

  He groaned. Hungover. Stiff.

  God he’s infuriating, I remember thinking.

  And then I remember feeling relieved. Because a part of me was scared, like Mom, that something bad had happened to him. That even Blake, my loved-by-the-gods big brother, might run out of his four-leaf clover luck one day.

  I got up and yanked his arm until he was standing, wobbly, in front of me. He looked pale and his eyes were bloodshot and his hair fell into his eyes – but he still managed a smile.

  ‘Yeah, a grade A idiot,’ I said. Then I took his hand. ‘Come on, Blake, time to go home.’

  ‘Do you really think that they might be all right? The passengers on the plane?’ I ask Christopher. ‘Like you said back at the gas station?’

  He goes still.

  ‘Christopher?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He’s definitely shifted his thinking. Somewhere between the Mobil station and Leda Falls, the penny’s begun to drop that the plane crash is real.

  My shoulders slump. The thing is that, right now, I needed him to say that everything was going to be fine, to repeat that stuff about the crew being prepared to deal with this kind of thing.

  ‘But you said—’

  He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes and shakes his head.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  He threads his fingers through his knotty hair and he grabs at it, like he’s trying to pull the thoughts out of his head.

  ‘I should have told you,’ he mutters.

  ‘Told me what?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  I get a sick feeling in my stomach.

  ‘Just say it. It’s not like it can be any more shit than anything that’s happening right now.’

  He puts his glasses back on.

  ‘It’s about Dad.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘His name’s Edward Ellis.’

  He says it like I should recognise the name. Like his dad’s famous or something.

  Christopher looks at me, his eyes wide through his thick glasses. His Adam’s apple slides up and down his throat. He takes a breath and says, ‘He’s a UKFlyer pilot.’

  His words hit me in the chest. My head swims. The road blurs in and out of focus. And I can’t push the thoughts away anymore
. About the fact that Blake should have been in touch by now. About how he might have been on that plane that crashed after all.

  I hit the brakes.

  The car skids and then I swerve onto the hard shoulder.

  The car hums and clicks from the sudden stop.

  ‘He’s what?’ my voice comes out shaky.

  ‘He’s a pilot.’ His voice is jagged, like the words are struggling to come up out of his throat. ‘He was the pilot – of the plane.’

  As I watch his lips forming the words, it feels like he’s speaking in a different language, one that I can just about get the gist of but without being totally sure whether how it translates in my brain is accurate.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say slowly.

  ‘I tried to tell you.’

  ‘You tried to tell me? How? When?’

  He gulps.

  ‘I said I travelled a lot, with Dad. That I spent time in airports.’

  ‘You thought I’d pick it up from that? You know how many people fly around the world for their jobs and aren’t pilots?’

  I grip the steering wheel and breathe in and out as steadily as I can. I need to keep it together.

  ‘You said your brother wasn’t on the plane,’ he stutters. ‘I didn’t think it mattered who Dad was—’

  ‘You thought it didn’t matter?!’ I yell.

  My words get sucked into the dark night.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  I look over at him and, for a second, I feel sorry for him – like I’ve felt sorry for him ever since I saw him sitting on the airport floor back in DC. But I push that feeling away. He doesn’t get my pity, not after this.

  I yank open the door and get out of the car.

  I’m going to be sick.

  ‘Air—’ I hear him call after me.

  The way he says my name, makes my breath catch in my throat. He says it like we’re close. Like we’ve known each other for years rather than the truth: which is that we only met a few hours ago. That we basically don’t know each other at all.

  ‘Air!’ he calls again.

  But I don’t turn around. Instead, I start running.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  01.17 CDT 1-81

  When I’ve run so hard that my lungs feel like they’re going to explode, I realise how stupid I’m being: running away from my own car. From Blake’s car. In the middle of the night.

  My brain yells at me:

  What the hell are you doing, Air?

  So, I turn around and run back.

  I should never have taken Christopher with me. A total stranger. As if things weren’t complicated enough already.

  When I get back to the car, I rap my knuckles on the window next to him.

  ‘Open up!’

  He tries to roll down the window but it takes ages because the window’s stiff and it sticks to the hood of the car. But I’m too pissed to care. He should be able to open a window for Christ’s sake.

  I keep banging at the glass, using my fist now.

  He still doesn’t manage to roll it down.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ I yank open the door beside him.

  He looks up at me, blinking and I can’t tell whether he’s relieved – or terrified – that I’ve come back.

  You’ve got to tone down that fierce, Blake told me once, like he was composing the line of a song. Or you’ll end up lonesome.

  But lonesome is better than hanging out with someone you can’t trust.

  I close my eyes to still the arguing in my head.

  And then I feel stupid – really stupid – standing there, in Christopher’s T-shirt and boxers.

  And I know Christopher feels stupid too, sitting in my car, not knowing what to do.

  But I’m done with worrying about his feelings.

  He lied to me. Period.

  I look him right in the eye and say:

  ‘You get out. It’s my car.’

  ‘I – I don’t know where we are.’

  It didn’t seem to bother him earlier. When he ran away from the Mobil station. And then it clicks. The reason why he left like that, so suddenly. A hard lump, like a stone, sticks in my throat. They were criticising the pilot – on the TV screen, on the news – they were blaming Christopher’s dad for what went wrong up there.

  Don’t feel sorry for him. Don’t feel sorry for him. Don’t feel sorry for him.

  ‘You’ll work it out.’ My voice is shaking. ‘Get out of my car.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbles.

  He’s about to get up when Leda bounds over the bench of the Buick and settles in his lap.

  Stupid dog. I try to lift her off him, but she makes her body go limp. Stupid, stupid dog.

  And then, he just sits there, pinned down by a dog. And I just stand there, in his clothes. On the side of the road. Miles from anywhere either of us are meant to be.

  ‘Let me explain—’ he starts.

  ‘Explain what? That your dad’s responsible for all this and that you didn’t think to tell me?’

  His eyes go dark. ‘Dad? Responsible?’

  ‘That’s how it works, Christopher: when you’re the pilot, it’s your job to keep everyone safe. So yeah, it’s his fault.’ I spit the words out.

  There’s a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I know that what I’m saying isn’t fair. That it’s more complicated than that. That there are all kinds of reasons a plane can crash. But I want him to know how angry I am that he kept this from me.

  He stares at me, his eyes wide and dark as the pool we swam in.

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Whatever happened up there, it won’t have been his fault. You’ve got this wrong – I explained before. What they’re saying doesn’t make sense—’

  ‘He was flying the plane, Christopher!’

  ‘He’s an amazing pilot.’ His voice has gone shrill. ‘He won’t have let anything go wrong. And if something did happen—’

  ‘Like what?’ I snap back.

  I wonder whether he’s even thought it through. All the stuff that can happen up there.

  ‘Even if he didn’t cause it directly—’

  ‘He didn’t cause it!’

  ‘Even if he didn’t, he’s not God, Christopher. What if it was a terrorist attack? Or what if there was a massive mechanical failure, mid-flight? Or an electrical storm?’

  He goes pale.

  ‘The pilot only has so much control,’ I say. ‘And he has plenty of chances to fuck things up.’

  He puts his hand up, like he wants me to stop speaking. But I don’t stop.

  ‘The point is, he was in charge. And you didn’t tell me.’ I’m yelling now.

  Leda starts barking at me. I know she’s upset by my shouting. That she senses that I’m being unfair. But I can’t stop.

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ I say again.

  ‘Whatever happened, Dad would have sorted it.’ His pale, grey eyes go watery. ‘He doesn’t even like his planes to be late.’ He keeps staring right at me. ‘Dad’s smart. He’s good at whatever he does. If he’d had the opportunity, he’d probably have been an astronaut or something – like you. Something really clever and technical.’ He gulps. ‘And he doesn’t fuck things up. Ever.’

  ‘I don’t care if your dad’s the best pilot this side of Mars. He’s still the pilot. And the plane crashed.’ I run out of breath.

  Silence hangs between us for a beat.

  ‘You said your brother wasn’t on the plane.’ He says it quietly this time.

  I bite my bottom lip so hard I taste blood in my mouth.

  ‘He’s not on the plane,’ I say.

  ‘So why are you so angry with me?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t matter,’ I blurt out. ‘He could have been on the plane. And you lied to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me. That’s the same thing as lying.’

  He blinks, like he’s taking it all in. Like he’s never considered that
his words could have implied anything else.

  ‘You knew. And you chose not to tell me.’

  ‘There wasn’t time.’

  ‘We’ve been driving for hours!’

  ‘There wasn’t the right time.’ He looks at me, his brow folded. ‘When was I meant to have told you? At the airport, when everything was going crazy and we didn’t know what had happened to the plane? When you tore off saying you had to get to your sister’s wedding? When we were busy getting your car back? While I was asleep? Or while you were making me jump off the highest rock face in the state of Tennessee?’

  ‘It wasn’t that high.’

  He pauses.

  ‘You should have told me,’ I say.

  ‘I know.’

  Things go quiet between us. And I want to buy what he’s saying – that somehow it never felt right to tell me. But I can’t. Because I can see it in his eyes, how he’s not quite able to look at me when he’s talking – that he chose not to tell me.

  So I stand there, waiting for him to get out. But he doesn’t move.

  I go around to the driver’s side and sit down behind the steering wheel.

  I stay there for a really long time, looking out at the dark, empty road. In any other situation, I’d have tried to listen, given this guy a chance. But this is different. I trusted Christopher. I told him about stuff. I took him to Leda Springs. And what did he do? He kept the most important bit of information he had to share from me.

  ‘Did you lend me the money because you felt guilty?’ I ask.

  ‘The money?’ He’s looking right at me now.

  ‘For the car. To pay the tow guy. You already knew it back then – you’ve known it the whole time. That your dad was the pilot and that bit of information was important and you’ve done all this stuff to cover it up.’

  After what feels like ages, he says:

  ‘I didn’t lend you the money because I felt guilty.’ He swallows. ‘I did it because I wanted to.’

  And I kind of believe him. But that doesn’t make it any better.

  ‘I can’t see you right now,’ I say.

  I grip the steering wheel so tight my knuckles push up, white, under my skin.