“Sorry, I’m sorry!” He pulls the headphones all the way off and gestures with them. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
I hold on to the stair rail, breathing and willing my heart to not pound itself to death. I could have fallen down the stairs and killed myself. I shoot eyeball daggers at him.
He is still so beautiful. Jerk.
“What are you doing? Where’s Luke?”
“In his room. He’s on the phone with Lucas human resources. Social Security, tax stuff. I’m just waiting.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then we’re going to get coffee.”
I nod.
“Hey,” he says. “Come with!”
“No. Thank you.”
His smile fades. “Really?”
I’m suddenly aware how half-naked (leotard, tights, and boots) and how very sweaty I am. Even after walking home through the fog, my face is certainly still bright pink from class, hair coming undone. I tuck some loose strands behind my ear and cross my arms over my flat chest.
I turn and start up the steps.
“Then maybe another time? Coffee? Or tea. Water. With lemon? Alone. I mean, without Luke? With me?”
Oh my God, why is everything in the world happening at once, and what exactly is happening?
Too much.
“Thank you,” I call. “I can’t. Ballet.”
“Well, yeah, I meant after class. Or before.”
“Sorry.” At the top of the steps, I grab my bag, run to my room, and shut the door.
My phone buzzes. Kate.
Oh, nothing, just turning down an invitation to have coffee with the guy you’re in love with. What’re you up to?
My heart clenches.
No one would understand more, no one would be able to tell me to Screw Simone! She’s insane! Don’t listen to her! better than Kate.
I let it go to voice mail. She’s given up texting; I never respond. She’s stopped coming over; I’m never home. I can’t burden her with this. We can’t both be jacked for the audition.
There is a knock on my door, The Jedi sticks his head in.
“Hey. Would you please answer Kate’s calls?” Luke says.
“What?”
“I’m trying to talk to my new boss, and she’s texting and calling the whole time! I’m, like, ‘Hold on a sec’ to my new boss, so I can switch over and tell her to cool it!”
“Sorry.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Sorry! Phone was off for class, I’ll call her right back. I swear.”
“Fine.” He stands in my doorway. Leans in it.
“What? I will!”
He frowns. “Sad the show’s over?”
I shrug. “Job definitely happening, then?”
He nods. “Are they mad?”
“Who?”
“Mom and Dad. Are they mad I’m leaving?”
“What?”
His head drops back against the door. “They’re so pissed.”
“Oh my God, of course they’re not! You got a job—you didn’t get caught running a meth lab. What is wrong with you?”
He bends and messes with his shoelace. “I feel bad. Maybe I shouldn’t move out.”
“They’ll survive.”
“They cried!” he says, miserable.
“When don’t they? They’re tenderhearted. We’re supposed to grow up and have a life—they want that. It’s just…Dad’s Dad, and Mom’s been a mom longer than she hasn’t.”
“What about the bakery?”
“What about it?”
“Will he be okay?”
“Luke. You’re for real worried everyone’s lives are going to fall apart if you move six miles away?”
“Oh, man…” He puts his head in his hands.
“Luke.”
“What?”
“Knock it off,” I tell him.
He shakes his head.
“They were just surprised. They’ll live.”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Me moving out.”
“Besides that my ultimate fantasy in life has just come true?” He looks so sad. “Luke, I’m kidding—I’ll miss you being down the hall. But I think, on a clear day, if we stand on the roof, we’ll be able to see your house. We can wave to each other.”
He steps in and sits on the edge of the bed, all serious. “If I could make up a job, I mean, like, my dream job—this would be pretty close.”
I sit in the blue chair Mom bought at the Salvation Army and helped me reupholster last year when I said I had no place to sit and tie my shoes. “I know.”
“I mean, the ultimate would be making, not just testing….Owen designs levels, I can’t even imagine…” He’s all misty in the euphoric picture of it: sitting all day in front of a computer, typing code.
“Sounds dreamy.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “I’d feel like I’d be using my degree already.”
“Well. Sure. Comparative Religion is all about shooting guys and leveling up.”
“Dude, the stories…Lucas is all about the hero myth; religion’s all about it, too….I could use all that to make games.”
“Good.”
“I feel like you guys now.”
“What guys?”
“You. Mom. Dad…you. Doing what you love for your life. Dad loves food; he bakes in his sleep. Mom knew her whole life she was Jacques Cousteau. You and Kate have known since you were babies you’re ballerinas, and you’re about to go off and do it for real, and I figured I’d spend my whole life decorating cupcakes and wishing I’d majored in something useful that I also liked doing, but all I’ve ever really loved is video games. And Star Wars.”
“You don’t love the bakery?”
He thinks. “I mean, I’m good at it. Without trying. So I like it that way. I like that it’s helping Dad. But…”
“It’s a luxury.”
“What is?”
“Doing what you love for your job. It’s just random chance.”
I cannot believe the words coming out of my Antarctic-explorer-do-or-die mouth.
Simone has planted doubt. My Scott blood is infected with doubt.
Luke frowns. “I don’t know. I used to hate going to all your recitals, but I think I get it now. It’s sort of…your only option. What you are. What you put all your energy, your whole life into. No backup, so how can you fail? Right?”
Two weeks ago these words would have made my heart soar. Now I’m squirming.
He gets up, hangs on the door, and says, “I’ll say this once, and if you ever tell anyone, I’ll deny it. But I applied to Lucas because of you. You don’t take no for an answer. You work harder than anyone I know.”
I drop, miserable, onto my unmade bed, face buried in a pillow.
“Harp!”
“What?”
“I mean it. You’re my Yoda.”
He closes the door behind him.
I sit up and find my phone.
“Kitty-Kat,” I say when she picks up, “we’re going to the beach. Rehearsal in the sand till even the water can’t knock us off balance. Put on a sweater and look out your window. I’m coming up the steps.”
Do or do not. There is no try.
The McMurdo doctor puts me on a scale first thing and tsks.
“Did you weigh this much when you had your application physical?”
I shrug.
She looks at my chart again. “Ohhh, I see. Scott,” she says, and tosses my file on her desk. “Those irresponsible, bloodline-obsessed…Climb up.”
I hop onto the table in my cotton gown. She listens to my heart, shines a light in my eyes, looks at my teeth, and pulls her wheeled stool to sit before me.
“Harper, I’m a little confused. You’ve got an incredibly athletic build. The muscles in your legs and arms are quite”—my calf tenses in her warm hand—“ropy. But then you’re also pretty skeletal. What�
��s going on?”
I shrug.
“Okay. Well, here’s the thing. Even inside this building, your core temperature is going to be ten to fifteen degrees lower on The Ice in the winter. You’ve got the gaze, you’re lethargic, you’re not eating. Either you’re depressed, or it’s T3. What do you think?”
“I think…” I’m trying to be honest. I don’t want to feel this way. “Could it be both?”
“For sure. One piggybacking on the other. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
She puts her hand on my bony knee, snatches it back. “Ugh, see?” she says. “That’s not—your poor joints. Yikes.” She shakes her head. “I’m writing you two prescriptions. You follow the instructions for the next two weeks. Come back then, and we’ll see what’s what. Do we have a deal?”
I like her. No lecture. Not bad. She gives me her card.
“Clinic hours are on there. Mine are in blue. Don’t forget—two weeks from today. There are two hundred people here. If you don’t show up, I’ll know where to find you. Got it?”
I trudge off to breakfast, where Aiden sticks his head eagerly out the porthole in the kitchen door. “How was it?”
I hand him the two prescriptions.
He frowns. “I could have told you this,” he says, and hands me back the paper that reads, Gain at least ten to fifteen pounds. But the other note makes his face light up. “The greenhouse! Oh, Harper, you’re my connection! Get me some lettuce and cherry tomatoes, and I’ll propose marriage on the spot!” He folds the paper, hands it back, and says, “Wait—I’ve got something for you.” Foil-wrapped cinnamon rolls.
“Take them to work,” he says. “And don’t share.”
- - -
The lab is warm, the New Age massage music is going, and Charlotte nearly tackles me when I open the door.
“What did she say? T3? I could be a doctor; I should have made you bet me cash. T3, right?”
“What would you do with cash?” I sigh, handing her the prescriptions and sliding onto a lab stool. The McMurdo stores sell only cigarettes, booze, McMurdo T-shirts, and postcards. For about fifty million dollars each.
“Ha! I was right! Oh, Harp.” She kneels at my feet and takes my cold hands. “You’ll be okay. I promise.” She reads the prescriptions. “Oh my gosh—greenhouse! I wish I could go with you.”
At her table, Vivian looks up.
“I don’t even get what that has to do with anything,” I grumble.
“It’s amazing. It’s the light and the warmth. They’ve got a hydroponic garden because, you know, no soil. They grow a few lettuces and things between flights with freshies. Allison’s running it this year. She’s really smart and nice—biologist from the East Coast somewhere, I think? Total hippie. You’ll die.” Says the woman wearing the macramé hemp belt and Birkenstocks. “What’s in the foil?”
I unwrap three huge cinnamon rolls. Vivian shocks me by accepting the one I offer. Charlotte plucks one from the foil and attacks it.
“You getting emails to your mom on a good schedule?”
I roll the foil into a ball.
“Harper.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Oh my gosh. How long has it been?”
“You mean since the first one I sent? Which was a really good one?”
“Yes.”
“Um. Six weeks?”
“Harper!”
“I haven’t felt good! And I can only email from your office or in here, and once I’m in my room, I just want to go to sleep….”
She gets up and rummages through a metal cabinet, tosses wires and empty boxes over her shoulder until she retrieves a laptop, a kind of old one. “It’ll get Wi-Fi. You need to be sending them mail daily. Did the doctor talk about that?”
“No.”
“Okay, listen to me. You too, Vivian. It was nearly impossible to persuade the NSF to let underage people on The Ice, everyone drunk and crazy and especially in winter. I understand it’s ridiculous, but I would have died to be here at your age, and I think it’s an amazing program, and we have to prove it’s possible by having you people learn some stuff and also not die. Viv, you write your family, don’t you?”
“Every Sunday.”
Kiss-ass.
“I send both your parents my dorky Daily Update, but, Harp, they need to hear from you. And hearing from them will help with this.” She puts the prescriptions on the table before me. I fold them into little triangles.
“Have they mentioned me not writing?”
“Not yet.”
I nod.
“Okay. So. Communicating with family. Eating. Let’s not die. In the name of our brave forefathers, in the name of the Adélies, let’s not lose our minds here, okay?”
I smile. “I love the Adélies.”
She sits in her chair. “They’re so beautiful, aren’t they?”
Across the room, Vivian huffs.
I can see the ice, their little faces, as if they’re three feet from me now. The waves on the ice, the rocks…
“Harper.”
I snap to attention, my gaze fixed on the middle distance. Good grief.
Charlotte sighs. “Oh, babe—you’ve really got it. When do you start the greenhouse?”
I unfold the prescription. “Um…this afternoon.”
“Okay. Take the laptop. It’s a thousand years old, but it works. Use it. And, Vivian, if the office and lab are locked, you can use it, too….You know where Harper’s room is, right—Oh my God, I have the answer!”
Vivian and I exchange an uneasy glance.
“You two are sharing a room. This is perfect.”
“What?” Vivian practically chokes.
“Help each other out! You’ll get to know one another, I’ll feel better knowing you’re never alone, and, Harp—this’ll pull you out of T3 for sure. Ooh, and you can share the laptop!”
“I have a laptop,” Vivian says darkly.
“She’s got a laptop…,” I echo weakly. “And I treasure time alone….”
“That is the last thing either of you needs,” she says. “You’re fading on my watch. You’re my responsibility. Whose room is bigger?”
I raise my hand and sigh. Charlotte is immovable.
“Okay!” She beams. “Now, go get me another two or three cinnamon rolls, and we can get to work.”
- - -
Charlotte is right about one thing: The greenhouse is amazing.
It has rows of tiny sprouts and the misty, clean scent of green leaves and water. It’s warm and humid, and I instantly love it.
“Harper!” Allison calls from behind a mass of vines. “Right?”
I smile and offer her my hand, but she moves in for a full-body hug instead. “Oh—oh gosh,” I stammer. “Okay…”
She’s wearing denim overalls (Antarctic farmer!), and a clip secures her blond hair. She holds me out and gives me a once-over, looks into my eyes.
“I’m starting to feel real self-conscious when people do that,” I say. “Are my eyes doing a cartoon pinwheely thing?”
“Poor thing. No, it’s just your gaze we’re all looking at. If it’s unfocused and, you know, a little all-over, it’s not a great sign.”
“Oh. Okay. So how’s my gaze?”
“Unfocused. A little all-over.”
“Fantastic.”
“The good news is,” she says, brightening, “it’s nothing we can’t fix! Cold’s doing a number on your brain, but with all this warmth and oxygen, it’ll learn to tell the cold to knock it off.” Among the rows of sunlamps and budding green leaves, there are hammocks swinging empty. Five of them.
“Anyone can come in anytime and get a tune-up, but I’ll keep one set aside special for you. Doctor’s orders.”
I smile.
“How are you liking it so far? Having fun?”
I nod. “Except for…” I gesture around my eyeballs.
“Good!” she says. She’s near Mom’s age and reminds me of her. Except blo
nd. And softer in her overalls. And shorter—Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I miss Mom so much, any lady who is nice to me is going to make it worse.
I choose the hammock farthest from the door, ease myself into it, and close my eyes.
This is even better than my millions-of-kittens bed.
I swing a little and breathe the clean, warm, living air. It’s weird to realize it’s been weeks since I’ve seen a plant. Grass. Trees.
“I’ll be in and out. Call out if need me. You mind a little music?”
“I’d love it,” I murmur.
From the speakers mounted in the corners of the ceiling come familiar notes on familiar instruments.
“Vivaldi,” Allison says. “Four Seasons. The lettuce seems to like it. That okay?”
I know it as Music for center floor pointe work. My chest tightens and burns.
“It’s nice,” I say.
I close my eyes and breathe through tears. I push against the floor and swing gently with the orchestra, back and forth. Back and forth.
Where is Kate? Is she rehearsing with the company? Is she in class? I should be beside her at the barre, watching her straight spine, following her lead in giving an arabesque more extension, right up to where it hurts and then a bit more past that, and holding it just a little longer than feels possible. Is Simone mad I’m not in summer intensive classes teaching the kindies?…Oh, my kindies. Willa. Will Lindsay expect as much from their tiny backs and limbs as I do? Or not enough? Will she lose patience and be mean to my babies? How could I leave them for this cold?
“You’re not to think about things that way or you’ll never make it back,” a man’s voice says, close.
My eyes fly open, but I lie still. How much of that did I say out loud?
“Allison?”
I hear her nurse shoes softly clip-clop to me. “You okay?”
“What did you say?”
“I asked, are you okay.”
“No, before that.”
She shakes her head. “You’re half asleep.” She puts her hand on my forehead and smiles. “Warm,” she says. “Good!” And she’s back down the rows of plants.
A man is sitting on a pile of ice at my feet. Beard stiff with icicles, face raw and blackened with soot, layers of wool and canvas outer gear. Old-fashioned.
My breath is shallow.
“Robert,” I whisper. “Robert Scott?”
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