What Scotland Taught Me

by Molly Ringle

  “Depends what you have to say when I get back. I want you to think on it a while.”

  “You want me to suffer.”

  “Yeah, some of that might be good for you.”

  “Laurence...” I caught his arm and hung my weight from it, dragging him to a stop on the sidewalk. We stumbled sideways into the muddy grass. “Don’t leave. Please. I’m so, so sorry. You can’t run off like this. Please.” I rested my forehead on his shoulder. His overcoat felt cool and impartial against my skin.

  He pried my fingers loose, and held me at arm’s length. “Evangeline. Get a grip. It’s a few weeks. What, are you going to have a new boyfriend by the time I get back?”

  Agony pricked my lungs. Each breath hurt. “How can you say that?”

  “Well, prove me wrong.” We stared at each other as the cold breeze whipped through our hair. Laughing tourists streamed past us.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  “Tell me about it later.” He let go and walked toward the hostel. I took a step after him, but he looked back and said, “Don’t follow me.” He pointed at me with a pale finger. God, I even loved his hands, large and nimble and faintly freckled. Then he slipped his hand into his pocket and left.

  I stood immobile, a castle above me, flower sprouts emerging at my feet, happy visitors and placid Scottish citizens flowing past. Bowing my head, I was surprised not to see pieces of my heart scattered in the mud below.

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Wandering Waif

  Dear Lord. Unnumbered days without him.

  The anguish pierced me. I lurched toward the shops on Princes Street. Coffee, I needed coffee. No, better yet, chocolate. Chocolate might put my calendar in perspective.

  In a bookstore’s in-house café I ordered a mug of hot chocolate and a chocolate-stuffed croissant. While counting out my change I spilled half the drink on the counter, the floor, and my left shoe. After apologizing to the clerk and the people behind me, and distributing napkins to all involved, I slunk to a table.

  While I nibbled my croissant and felt the stickiness of hot chocolate drying inside my sock, I replayed all of Laurence’s cutting accusations in my head. Each one made me want to scream in denial, but now, with no one to scream at, I had to admit the validity of his claims. In fewer than ten days in Scotland, I had met Gil and started fantasizing about what he might whisper in my ear with his sexy burr. And when my romance with Gil fell through, in under a month I plummeted into hopeless love for Laurence. Then five minutes after getting naked with Laurence, I tried to pretend I was still Tony’s faithful girlfriend.

  Laurence was right. I clung to the nearest convenient romance, and dodged any unpleasant scene to the degree of absurdity and insult. He had every right to doubt my future faithfulness, even though I fully intended to stay loyal.

  I slurped the gritty remains of my hot chocolate. I hadn’t told him about Berkeley yet. My last hope still hung there in the stars, a happy surprise I could spring upon him if they accepted me. If they didn’t--well, I couldn’t think about that. I’d jinx it if I dwelled on it.

  The more immediate question was what would I say to Amber and Tony? I had to wait weeks to say anything to Laurence, but the others would probably want a word with me by the end of today, or at least tomorrow. And what would my parents say when they learned I had lost Tony, whom they all adored, due to my own sluttiness and a bit of divine influence?

  I dumped my cup and napkin into the trash bin, and spent my sugar buzz browsing the bookstore’s stacks. My mind raced repeatedly through the morning’s weird events, ignoring the book spines my fingers touched. Father Anthony? Amber the ex-ghost-seer? Good for them, if the sunbeam oracle proved right, but would they let me into their new and improved lives? Still, those thoughts only lasted mere seconds before flying back to my tormented refrain: oh, Laurence, Laurence, Laurence.

  I found myself in the Shakespeare section, and pulled down a copy of Much Ado About Nothing, the play Shannon and Thomas had worked on. Benedick and Beatrice’s sniping, I now noticed as I flipped pages, resembled the squabbling between Laurence and me before we tumbled into each other’s arms. My whole chest hurt as I scanned the Bard’s pretty poetry. I prayed our story, too, would end up among the comedies and not the tragedies.

  The sugar wore off. I dropped into a cushy armchair in a corner, still reading the play. My exhausted brain adapted Balthasar’s song to my own purposes:

  Sigh no more, laddies, sigh no more,

  Eva deceives us ever -

  One foot in sea and one on shore,

  To one thing constant never.

  I’ll change, I thought, my head throbbing and my eyes aching. They’ll see.

  * * *

  A bookstore employee shook my shoulder to wake me. “Hey. ’Scuse me.”

  Drool dribbled down my chin, leaving it slippery and cool. Wiping it off with my sleeve, I apologized and hauled myself to my feet.

  The employee was a shaggy-haired, olive-skinned fellow, beautiful enough to star in a cologne ad. He gazed at me, eyes crinkling in distaste. “Right, well, just can’t sleep here, is all.”

  My head felt like a helium balloon, bobbing about with the lightest attachment to the rest of me. I grinned at his accent. “Another Australian. Cool.”

  “Yeah. Erm...” He winced at the book, which I had mashed open in my sleep and decorated with a wet drool spot.

  “I’ll buy this,” I said.

  With no dignity remaining, and an unneeded copy of Much Ado About Nothing beneath my arm, I trudged back to the hostel. According to my watch, I had slept for two hours. The nap did me no tangible good; my throat scraped when I swallowed, my eyeballs throbbed, and my brain operated from within a wrapping of thick Scottish wool. Coming down with a cold, no question. Marvelous.

  I stopped at the front desk, where a South African girl clicked through computer screens. “Hi,” I said. “Um, Laurence, is he...”

  She lifted her brown eyes, ringed in two shades of eyeliner, reminding me of a lemur. “He is gone.” Her accent parceled out the words with cruel precision, though sympathy softened her mouth. “He left about an hour ago.”

  An hour. Maybe his train for the Highlands hadn’t left yet. Maybe he still waited at Waverley Station, and if I ran there I could catch him.

  Yeah, except he expressly told me not to, and with this illness dragging me toward the floor I would faint if I tried to run. I thanked the girl and hobbled up the stairs.

  I looked into the room Tony and Shannon had been assigned to. Tony’s suitcase, with its Saint Mary’s sticker, still resided in the corner, as did Shannon’s gray canvas carry-on, but Tony and Shannon themselves weren’t around.

  I pushed myself up to the fourth floor.

  Laurence’s attic door stood open. The lights were off; only the midday sun lit the space, at a shallow angle. The bareness of the mattress, the emptiness of the chairs where he used to stack his clothes, punched me like an insult. I lay on the bed, staring at the same slanted ceiling I had viewed while in his naked arms and tangled blankets less than twelve hours ago. I stared as if wishing and concentration could turn the clock backward.

  When Canadian tourists entered the hall, fresh arrivals off the airplane not a week ago, chattering about the fun of exploring ancient buildings, I got up and returned to my own bed.

  A few weeks, tops. Eternity really, especially as I felt likely to die from sickness before then.

  I must have fallen asleep, for I woke with a phlegm-filled snort when someone said, “Eva,” five or six times in my ear.

  As I turned on my pillow, the contents of my head seemed to slosh from my right to my left. It was dark outside, but the lights were on in the room, and a couple of travelers sat texting on the floor in their street clothes. Probably evening.

  Tony gazed at me, eyes grave, black ski coat on.

  “Hi,” I croaked.

  “I just wanted to tell you I’m leaving in about an hour. Catching an overnight bus to London. Shannon goes
back tomorrow and her flight should arrive about the same time as my bus. She and Thomas are going to put me up.”

  “Oh.” I sat up. The fluid in my head settled downward, clogging my sinuses. I fumbled for a tissue in my jeans pocket, and blew my nose. “Where is she?”

  “In our room, with Amber.” He glanced at the tissue. “You have a cold?”

  My nose started running for no evident reason. I jammed the tissue against my nostrils. “Uh-huh.”

  “Take some time off work. Rest. All that.”

  Not one whole day ago, he would have cooed silly pet names, cuddled me, brought me tea. Now he didn’t even touch me.

  I sank back onto my pillow. “How’s Amber?”

  “All right. Hurt, about you and Laurence. Confused. Betrayed.”

  I closed my eyes. We weren’t just talking about Amber anymore, were we?

  “But the ghosts haven’t come back,” he added. “We spent the whole day sitting in haunted places, even that same tomb in Canongate Cemetery. Not a single tremor, she said.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at our ugly fluorescent lights. “That’s good. I assume.”

  He stayed quiet for a beat. “Where’s Laurence?”

  I chuckled in a “wanting to die” kind of way. “Off looking for Nessie.”

  “What?”

  “Left town. The Highlands, evidently. He wants nothing to do with me for a while.”

  “Oh.” Tony fell quiet. No offer of sympathy here, not that he owed it to me.

  I sighed and crumpled up my tissue. “Have a nice trip, okay? Call when you get to England.”

  He slid his palm back and forth against the bunk bed’s ladder. “Is there really anything to say?”

  My heart shriveled like a raisin. This was it. Everyone hated me. “I hope we can talk later, at least. When things settle down.” I sounded, and felt, as small and worthless as a sewer rat. Sewer Rat--that would have been a good nickname between Tony and me. Too late now.

  He nodded, already turning toward the door. “I’ll call or write someday. It may be a while.”

  “I understand.”

  “Bye, Eve.”

  He left me without a final fond nickname--unless that “Eve” was meant as one. Biblical female ditz who gave in to temptation and brought about the ruin of everyone’s world? Yeah, that did sound like me, actually.

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Coming Clean To Amber

  At about 11 P.M., after Tony left to catch his bus, I tiptoed into the second-floor room where Shannon was staying. It looked just like Room 17, except the tattered curtains were olive instead of brown. She and Amber sat on the floor next to a radiator, talking quietly. An open bag of chips, two paper tea cups, and the remains of chocolate wrappers lay scattered around them.

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

  Amber looked at me and looked away.

  Shannon jumped up and came over. “Hey.” She frowned when she viewed me up close. “Are you okay?”

  “Got a cold. Better not touch me. I just came to say I’m sorry, again. And to make sure she’s all right.” I glanced past at Amber, who twiddled a Crunchie wrapper between her fingers.

  “Well...I’ll tell her, but I don’t know if she’s up to the big talk yet.”

  Apparently we weren’t speaking as quietly as we thought. Amber dropped the wrapper and answered, without looking up, “No, it’s okay. I’ll talk.”

  She got up and shuffled across the room to me. She’d unraveled her braid, and her hair rippled in uncharacteristic kinks from its confinement. Still, she looked a damn sight better than me.

  She stopped in front of me and gazed upon me like I was a stranger. A stranger with leprosy. “Okay,” she prompted.

  I sniffled. “Can we walk to the kitchen? I could use some tea with honey.”

  “Should I wait here?” Shannon asked.

  I shrugged. Amber’s call.

  “Yeah, take a break and call your boy.” Amber pushed open the door. “Come on.”

  I walked down the hall with her, keeping a few feet away. “So. Almost midnight.”

  She nodded. “I think I’ll live.”

  “Good. That’s good. Look, I’m so sorry we screwed this day up for you.”

  She didn’t answer, only took a breath in and out, steady and sad. Her arms swung loose beside her.

  “If it’s any consolation,” I added, “karma came down pretty hard on me. Laurence and Tony both hate me, and I have the worst cold ever.”

  “These things pass.”

  “But the important thing is you’re okay.” Ugh. Repeating myself now.

  We descended the stairs in silence and entered the empty kitchen. Amber dropped onto the windowsill, and I busied myself microwaving some water and adding honey and a teabag.

  With my mug, I approached her. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I’ll leave you alone, and check in tomorrow. Okay?”

  Tipping her head back to look at the ceiling, she drew another long breath, then expelled it with a wail of words. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me find out like that?”

  I winced. “I’m sorry. I’m the hugest loser.”

  “All those times you tried to get me to stop liking him.” She emitted a false laugh. “I should’ve seen why.”

  “I didn’t know why. Honest.”

  “You really seemed to hate him. Or at least, you did not seem likely to put him on your Must Shag list.”

  “Agreed. I know.”

  “So, what the fuck?” She hopped off the windowsill and paced. “That’s about what it comes down to, Eve. I’d like to know, what the fuck?”

  I sat in the nearest chair, collecting my courage with a deep breath that rattled the fluid in my sinuses. “I didn’t realize how I felt until you left for Israel. Then Laurence and I were always hanging out, and I got to know him better, and...”

  “And you shagged him. How? How did you do it when I couldn’t? Yes, I know how conceited that sounds, but I’m in a bad mood, okay?”

  I decided to overlook the insult, though it raised my fever another degree. Maybe letting her slag me off would even the score between us. “Well, whatever drew him in, I guess he regrets it now. He took off. He’s somewhere in the Highlands and doesn’t want to see me for a while.”

  “Oh.” She sounded mollified, as if the news pleased her a bit. “Tony mentioned he’d left, but I didn’t get the whole story.”

  “There you go. Enjoy.”

  She shook her head. “So. God. How long was this going on?”

  “Only a couple days. But...” I swallowed, and threw myself into the next sentence. “If you want me to tell you things, here’s something else you didn’t know, something nobody knew except him. I was afraid to tell you guys, but he found out.”

  “What?” Now she sounded suspicious, as if I might be about to tell her I had shagged all her high school ex-boyfriends too.

  My fever and anxiety sent me into shivers. “I...fooled around with Gil, too. Like, a lot more than kissing. Once. Back in the fall.”

  “Wow. Busy woman, aren’t you?”

  “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have done it. But Laurence caught on, and became the only person I could talk to about it, and...I think that’s how it happened. Ultimately.”

  She exhaled a breath that broke and skipped into a soft, tired laugh. She dropped back onto the windowsill. “Okay. You and Laurence are both more messed up than I ever was.”

  “Please don’t tell Tony. About Gil, I mean.”

  “We’re not exactly best buds. He’s been nice to me, but I wouldn’t tell him now, and I wouldn’t have told him back then either. If you’d been generous enough to let me in on it.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I couldn’t stand it if you hated me. Please, Amber. I know this is the lamest of cliches, but I never meant to hurt you.”

  She wriggled into the corner between wall and window, arms folded tight. “Try a little harder not to, next time.”

  “Ther
e shouldn’t even be a next time. This...” I sniffled, my nose and temples throbbing. “This is the lowest of my lows. I hope to God I never get myself down here again.”

  She lifted a lock of her hair, and brushed its ends back and forth against her sweater sleeve. “I need some sleep. And time to think.”

  “Yes.” I got up, sensing a dismissal. “Those are good.”

  She kept her gaze turned to the clump of hair between her fingers. “You can go back to bed. Send Shannon down.”

  “Right. Okay.” With nothing left to say tonight, I did as requested.

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Left Alone

  I wasn’t dead when I awoke the next morning, which came as a surprise. Death did feel likely to overtake me sometime soon, however, so I called in sick to work. The housekeeper groused at me, but from the croak of my voice she apparently guessed I wasn’t lying.

  “That hostel, it’s no good for you,” she snapped.

  Couldn’t argue with that.

  While I made garlic toast for breakfast, figuring it might boost my immune system even if it sounded gross, Shannon came in, dragging her carry-on and dressed for travel.

  “I’m about to catch my flight. I’d hug you, but...”

  “Yeah, don’t. These microbes don’t need to go any farther.”

  “Well. Amber’s fine. She’s sleeping.”

  “Good.”

  “The nineteenth’s over. Whew.”

  I sniffed at my toast, and couldn’t smell anything. Just as well. “So, you guys are putting up Tony today?” I took a bite of the tasteless toast.

  “Yeah. It’ll be interesting.”

  I nodded.

  She rested her hand on the counter, scooting a crumb back and forth.

  “Listen,” she finally said. “You have to sort this out, all right?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You. You’re the common denominator in all the fallout. I’m not blaming you, but you have to be the one to set it right again, okay?”

  I put down my toast. “Wow. Uh. I’ll try, but...”