He stops folding and looks up. He pushes his glasses closer to his eyes, like he needs to see me more clearly. His eyes still look a bit red. Whenever my mind goes back to those hours up on the mountain and how scared I was that Christopher would never agree to come back down with me. Panic rises up my throat. I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t come back with me.
‘Will you teach me?’ I ask Christopher.
‘Teach you?’
‘To make something – out of paper?’
He frowns. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to know. The things you make are amazing.’
And I want to take a bit of you with me, I think. But I don’t say it out loud because I know it will sound cheesy and will probably freak him out. And me. It’s not the kind of thing I say. Not to boys who aren’t my brother.
‘The life of an astronaut can be pretty boring,’ I say. ‘It will be good to have an activity to pass the time.’
‘The life of an astronaut – boring?’
‘I once heard someone say that the most exciting jobs are ninety per cent boring and ten per cent exhilarating. That you need all the boring to get to the exciting.’
‘I suppose I get that.’
‘So, will you show me?’
‘Sure.’
He shifts Leda off his lap and puts her on the floor. She moans a little but then goes back to sleep. Then he comes around and sits beside me in the booth. His thighs brush my bare legs.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘It’ll be easier to show you if I’m sitting next to you – that way you don’t have to watch me folding upside down.’
‘Oh, right, of course.’
‘So, first things first. You need to choose your material.’ His voice is strong and confident – like he’s enjoying being in charge for once.
‘My material?’
‘I only ever work with found paper. Airline tickets. Receipts. Napkins – though I wouldn’t advise those, they’re a bit floppy. Flyers. Posters. That kind of thing. Something that speaks to you.’
‘I don’t have any paper with me.’
‘Then you need to find something.’
‘Here?’ I ask, looking around.
‘Yep, here. It’s part of the challenge.’
I look around the restaurant and then I see a noticeboard by the restroom. There’s a poster that catches my eye. It has an acoustic guitar on the front.
‘Okay,’ I say and walk over to the noticeboard.
The poster is out of date so I don’t feel bad taking it. It’s advertising a concert – this old guy who’s known for having this really amazing technique when he plays the guitar: he uses it as several instruments. The side as a drum. The chords to makes sounds like a cello or a harp. Blake’s talked about him loads. Says he’d love to get some lessons from him one day.
I bring the poster back to the table.
‘Perfect,’ Christopher says.
Then he pulls out a piece of printed paper from his backpack. I notice that it has all the booking details for the flight he was meant to take to Oregon with his dad.
‘So, what are we going to make?’ he asks.
‘I have to choose that too?’
‘Yep. You’re in charge of the material and the subject.’
I look past him again at the highway and above it, at the sky. There’s a haze of orange from the light pollution but above it, I can see a smattering of stars. But no moon. Not the night before an eclipse.
‘Can we make the moon?’ I ask.
‘Wow, you don’t make it easy, do you?’
‘The moon’s hard?’
‘The moon doesn’t have any edges. We’re going to have to fold our papers into a globe. That’s pretty advanced.’
‘Oh.’
‘But you chose your subject – so we’ll go with it.’ He looks at me and winks. ‘Plus, you don’t strike me as the kind of girl who likes the easy option. So, the moon it is.’
I bite my lip, feeling weirdly nervous. ‘Okay.’
‘Right, follow me,’ Christopher says. ‘One step at a time.’
At first, it’s not too difficult. He folds his paper down the middle and I copy him. Then he folds another side in and I copy that. My poster paper is a bit stiffer than his, which makes it harder, but I try to get the folds smooth and accurate. As our papers get smaller – as his folds get more intricate – I start losing my hold on the model I’m making. Folds keep bouncing back up and my corners aren’t nearly as sharp as his. And that’s when I see it. How making things really small and strong is way more challenging than making big models. It’s more intricate. It’s more beautiful. And it’s damn hard.
I can feel my cheeks flushing as I concentrate, but the harder I try the more it falls apart.
‘I’m crap at this.’ I push my model away to the middle of the table.
‘Hey, we’ve only just got started.’
‘No, we haven’t. We’ve been folding for ages. And I can’t do it. Not like you.’
I look over at his model – all those sharp corners, the paper forming a beautiful white globe. And then I look at mine, this misshapen blob with bits sticking out of it. Even the colour of the paper looks wrong because one side of the paper was black so my moon’s this weird monochrome.
‘Hey – you nearly got it,’ he says.
He leans past me and picks up my paper moon. I can feel his breath on my neck as he gently pulls and pushes at the folds in my model with his delicate fingers. It makes me feel a bit like when I watch Jude playing the piano or Blake finding the chords on his guitar: it’s beautiful and effortless and totally out of my reach.
‘There,’ he says, handing it to me.
It does look better – at least it’s vaguely spherical. But it’s not a patch on his.
The backs of my eyes sting.
‘It’s pretty pathetic, right? I want to study engineering – I want to fly to the moon – and I can’t even make a paper model.’
‘It’s your first try, Air. And it’s not really a big deal. It’s just paper.’
‘It’s not just paper.’ I poke at my model. ‘It was meant to be the moon. A beautiful moon.’
He puts his hand over mine to stop me from poking at my model.
‘You’re the first person who’s ever asked me to teach them how to fold paper – you know that, Air?’
I look up at him. ‘I am?’
‘Yep.’
‘Your dad never asked?’
‘My Dad?’ He laughs. ‘No. Never.’ He places my moon in the palm of his hand and holds it up, inspecting it like it’s some kind of special jewel rather than a scrunched up old poster.
‘Can I have this?’ he asks.
‘Seriously?’
‘As a memento.’
‘A memento of what?’
‘My first student.’
‘Oh, so I’m your student now?’
He blushes. ‘My friend.’
I nod. ‘A misshapen paper moon from your friend. Okay.’
He takes the small moon and puts it on the table next to his perfect white moon. Then he takes both of them and places them in a small pocket in the front of his backpack.
I let out a long yawn. Suddenly, every part of my body feels tired. My limbs and eyes are heavy.
‘You look really tired,’ he says.
I nod. ‘Long day.’
‘Long days,’ he says.
He’s right. We’ve been on the road together for nearly two days now.
I nod and yawn again. I try to stretch to snap out of the tiredness but it doesn’t work. I slump back down in my seat.
‘You should get some rest,’ he says, turning back to me. ‘Some proper sleep. You’ve got a long drive tomorrow to Nashville and you haven’t stopped.’
‘I slept a bit in the car this afternoon.’
‘Not long enough. And car sleeping isn’t proper sleeping. We
drove past a motel on the way here. Why don’t we get a room?’
‘Why don’t we get a room?’
His whole faces flushes pink. He pushes up his glasses.
‘That’s not what I meant – I was thinking that it would be good to have a place to crash. Somewhere with a proper bed.’ He gulps and his eyes water. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the couch or the floor or whatever. I can even sleep in the car if you like. I think you should get some proper rest. Especially before the wedding.’
Staying in a roadside motel with an English guy I hardly know. It’s probably the last scenario I had in mind when I pictured the eve of my sister’s wedding.
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘Good.’
I look up at him. ‘And thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘For looking out for me.’
He blinks at nods and then smiles. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
He stands up, hitches his backpack on, gives Leda a little nudge, scoops her up into his arms and then holds out his hands.
‘Ready?’
I nod and take his hand.
DAY 3
MONDAY 21ST AUGUST, 2017
Chapter Thirty-Two
03.00 CDT Roadway Inn Motel, I-81, TN
I lift Leda’s small body from where it’s resting against my arm and swing my legs out of bed. She nestles in closer to Christopher. Yes, we ended up sharing a bed – with a wall of pillows and Leda between us. It was the only room left in this crummy motel. There wasn’t a couch and although Christopher valiantly offered to sleep on the floor, I didn’t want to be responsible for him contracting any diseases from his contact with a carpet which, I’m pretty certain, hasn’t been cleaned properly since the last solar eclipse.
The walls are yellow with cigarette stains. I can hear people talking in the room to the left of us and the TV blaring to the right of us, and everything smells. The sheets. The carpet. The walls. But we needed to sleep. So, after we’d eaten our fries and burgers from the Burger King down the road, we crashed here.
And I did sleep, for a few hours. Like the dead. But then I had a dream about Mom banging on the door and finding me in here with this guy she’s never met rather than showing up at the rehearsal dinner and totally flipping out. Which I guess she’d have a right to do.
Everything about the last two days has been totally screwed up.
Before going to sleep last night, I left a voicemail for Dad, apologizing that Blake and I hadn’t made it to the rehearsal dinner. I knew Dad’s cell would go straight to voicemail; he hates talking on the phone. I also know that he checks his messages and that he’d pass it on to Mom. And that, somehow, a voicemail would go down better than a text – and would definitely go down better than me trying to explain to Mom, who probably hadn’t got over the fact that we’d missed the breakfast at Louis’s. Plus, I was banking on Dad picking up on the fact that I needed his help. He knows I come to him when I feel I can’t go straight to Mom. And he doesn’t mind being the punching bag instead of me. Taking her flipping out and shouting and stomping around so that she gets it out of her system and she’s calmed down a bit before talking to me. He doesn’t mind because he totally loves Mom and he gets that the only reason she reacts like that is because she cares so much.
As I sit on the edge of the bed, I whisper, ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ hoping that wherever he is and whatever he’s doing right now – sleeping hopefully – he knows how much I love him and that I’m grateful for all the crap I know he’ll have taken from Mom.
The curtains of the motel room don’t close. It’s still dark out there. I look over at Christopher, sleeping. Leda’s rearranged her body since I got out of bed and is now totally nestled into him. Yeah, Mom would totally flip if she found me sleeping in a bed with Christopher but she doesn’t know how I couldn’t have got through all this without him. How, with Blake missing and her, Dad and Jude in Nashville, he’s been family.
I grab my telescope and head to the door. I need to get some air.
As I press down the handle, Leda lifts her head and looks up at me, her eyes dark pools in the half-light of the room.
I pat my thigh lightly, hoping she might join me. I could do with company. But she nestles back into Christopher’s body.
‘Wow, so that’s where your loyalties lie, hey buddy?’ I whisper.
She lifts her head again for a second and then snuggles in even closer to Christopher.
The thing is, I don’t mind that Leda loves Christopher. That she’s got someone now too. And that she understands, in that way that dogs do, that he’s a good guy.
My throat goes tight. In a few hours, we’re both going to have to say goodbye to him. And I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
I sit on the concrete steps outside the door to our motel room and look up at the strange, moonless night. There are a few stars but the sky’s getting lighter already. I get out my telescope and point it at the sky, at any old where, at a patch of dark blue far enough away to make me feel calm again.
And then my phone buzzes.
I turn it over. It’s Jude.
Up until now, Jude hasn’t interfered. I guess Mom’s told her that she’s got it in hand. That, whatever happens, Blake and I will be at the wedding.
I’m not sure I can handle her right now.
I read her words.
Why are you doing this?
She really thinks we’re doing this on purpose?
I check the time. It’s 3 a.m. If she’s up at this time, the morning before her wedding, it’s not a good sign. Jude needs her sleep she’s all over the place.
I close my eyes for a second to prepare myself for what’s coming next and then dial her number.
She picks up on the first ring.
I expect her to yell. She’s a yeller, like Mom. Needs to get her whole body involved in communicating her anger. But there’s no yelling. There’s no sound at all.
‘Jude?’
Still nothing.
‘Jude – are you there?’
‘You’re not coming, are you?’
‘Not coming? Of course I’m coming. I’m a couple of hours away. I’ll be there.’
‘Don’t lie, Air.’
‘Why would I lie about this?’
‘I know you never wanted to come to the wedding. How you and Blake joked about it behind my back. How you thought it was a waste of time and money’
‘What? No. Of course it’s not a waste of time. It’s your wedding, Jude, we wouldn’t miss it, not for anything. This isn’t like—’
‘All the other times you two have blown me off?’
I think back to how often Blake and I have let Jude down. How we’ve gone off and done things on our own – mainly because she wasn’t interested in coming with us or because we knew she wouldn’t approve. And I guess I knew that she felt it, and that it must have hurt her, being left out like that. And I think about all the complaining I’ve done over the past few months, about having to wear a dress and be this cheesy out-of-a-catalogue bridesmaid and how I haven’t done anything to hide my views on marriage being totally old-fashioned and unnecessary and, in fact, damaging to the advancement of women in the twenty-first century. Worse: damaging to Jude and what she could be.
‘We’ll be there, Jude.’
‘Did you plan all this?’ Jude asks, like she didn’t hear what I said.
‘Plan what?’
‘Messing up the wedding. Missing the family breakfast. Not showing at the rehearsal dinner.’
‘No – of course not. Why would we want to do that?’
‘Because you wanted to make some kind of statement.’ Her voice is hard and cold.
‘A statement? No. Jude, you’re getting this all wrong. Blake’s messed up his flights. He messes up, you know that. He can’t help it. And I’ve been trying to sort it out. Because we both want to be there.’ I pause. ‘We love you Jude – and we get what a big deal this day is.’
‘You don’t want me to get marr
ied.’
‘We want you to be happy, you know that.’
‘But you still don’t want me to get married.’
I pause for a second. What am I meant to say?
‘We like Stephen,’ I say. ‘He’s a great guy.’
‘But you still don’t want me to get married.’
It feels wrong having this conversation now, at 3 a.m., a few hours before her wedding.
‘You need to get some sleep, Jude.’
‘You think I’m throwing my life away,’ she says over me. ‘You think I’m making a mistake.’
We’ve never spoken this openly about her getting married before. Blake and I have made our views clear but more in the abstract – in passing comments. Indirectly, when we’ve tried to persuade her to keep up with her piano. In family debates about the place of marriage in the twenty-first century. Jude held her own against us, argued as hard as we did. But we’ve never sat down and actually thrashed it out; as siblings, on a personal level: why Blake and I don’t think Jude should be getting married and planning to have babies at twenty-two.
‘You’re so talented, Jude. You could do anything. You went to Julliard for Christ’s sake. Do you know how few people manage that? I guess we – I guess I – can’t get my head around it, why you’d give all that up.’
For a long time, Jude doesn’t answer. For so long that I think she might have hung up on me.
‘Jude?’
‘I’m still here.’ She pauses. ‘You don’t understand me, Air. Neither you nor Blake ever have.’
‘That’s not true—’
‘It is. Competing. Trying to be the best. Performing in front of all those people. It wears me out. It’s never made me happy.’
‘But you love to play the piano – and you’re so good at it, Jude.’
As Far as the Stars Page 19