“Hi.”
His expression shifts from ease to worry at the sight of my tear-streaked face. “What is it?”
A breeze rustles the leaves of the trees around me. I stare at them, letting their green patterns mesmerize me. “Did you have to leave a meeting? It’s eight thirty, right? At home. I’m eight hours ahead of you. Scotland is eight hours ahead. Can you believe I’m in Scotland? Too bad I can’t fly back through time and get a do-over on these last few hours.”
Now he looks even more concerned. “What happened?”
The fear in his voice snaps me back to the screen. “It’s Riya.” A last tear slides down my cheek. “She’s not coming home.”
“Has something happened to Riya?”
“She graduated from high school, Dad. She’s moving to London in August. To be an actress. London, England!”
“I know where London is, Bee.”
“She’s not coming back to Yuba Ridge for senior year. We won’t graduate together. We won’t even be in the same time zone.” I stare at a leaf on the ground in front of me.
Dad is silent for a moment, and then says, “But she’s not hurt? No one has lost a limb? Gone missing?”
“No.”
He sends a relieved sigh across the miles. “Okay, maybe lead with that next time?”
“Sorry.” I pause. “Except, I am.”
He frowns. “You’re what?”
“Missing, I guess.”
He frowns, confused. “Abigail, I’m going to need you to make just the slightest bit of sense right now, okay? You’re being cryptic.”
I fill him in on the high tea at the Queen Anne, on my flight from the table, on wandering the cobbled streets of the Royal Mile in a daze until I hit Holyrood Palace at the opposite end from the castle and decided to go in, even though I couldn’t really focus on anything during the tour, couldn’t retain any of the history facts about the opulent rooms. I wandered through it, blank.
Like I feel right now. “Is this what it’s like to be an adult?” I ask Dad. “Because it seems like people just leave, change the plans. It seems like that is what mostly happens.” I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, and I study his face for signs of evasion, that thing parents do with their eyes when they are about to dole out a euphemism. “Tell me the truth. Because if this is how it works, I would like to go back to being eleven if that’s all right with the universe.”
He smiles into the screen, the sweet smile he gets when I’m being amusing but he doesn’t want to be patronizing so it just plays at the corners of his mouth. “I wish it worked like that. I wish we could have time machines to take us back to the good stuff.” I know he does. If I’m honest, he has more to complain about on the adult front than I do right now. He clears his throat. “You need to text Riya and tell her where you are, okay?” When I shake my head, he presses. “You have every right to want to be alone or not see her or even come home. But you need to connect with her. She’s probably worried sick.”
“I know.”
“Welcome to growing up.”
“Thanks.”
“It sucks sometimes.”
I miss my dad. I miss my bed and our living room and the front yard where the old oak has grown and shed its leaves across the seasons of my childhood. I miss the narrow street where I learned to ride my bike and the trails by our house where we’ve taken a thousand walks with Henry. I miss Henry. I miss seeing the regular customers come in and out of the Blue Market, miss how the market slows on Friday nights and we waste time playing paper towel hockey with tubes of wrapping paper up and down the frozen foods aisle.
I don’t want to be here anymore. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to come home.”
“What can I do?”
“Check flights, okay? And get back to me as soon as you know my options.”
He promises. “Hold tight.”
We hang up. My head foggy, I sit on the bench, staring at the tourists moving by me as they come and go from the palace, like a miserable teen guard dog.
Then, suddenly, I am eye level with our tour guide from the castle, who is squatting down in front of me. There is a girl standing next to him who looks like a younger, female version of him. With cuter shoes.
“Those are really cute boots,” I say flatly to her.
“Oh, thanks.” She glances down at them, then exchanges a concerned look with Ryan.
Ryan stands to wave at Neel and Riya, who are across the courtyard. I see them sprint toward us, Riya calling, “You found her!” and then she’s sliding onto the bench next to me, her energy frantic, her arms around my neck. “Abby, I’m so sorry—” she starts.
“Just don’t.” I wriggle out of her grip. “Just don’t say anything right now.”
“Okay, but—”
I hold up a hand. “Please. Don’t. Talk.”
When I get back to the hotel, I open the curtains to let in the metallic light of Edinburgh. The bright day has grown overcast with oily evening clouds, and I take a moment to memorize my slim view of this old city. I like Edinburgh. Of all the cities so far, it might be my favorite—its size suits me, as does its history, its castle, its friendly people. When I go to college, maybe I’ll apply somewhere that will let me study here for a semester. Maybe Future College Student Me won’t be as distracted when I walk its cobbled streets.
Because time is supposed to do that to things. Heal them. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.
I check my phone to see if Dad has located a flight for me yet. No news. I toss my phone onto the plush amethyst-toned bedspread and turn back to my packing, taking everything out of my bag.
I spend the next twenty minutes refolding and sorting and picking through the items I’ve collected along the way. The fist-size gold-and-fuchsia mask I bought in Florence tumbles out onto the bed from where I had it rolled into Kate’s yellow sundress for safekeeping. I pick it up, studying its empty eyes. Riya bought its match, and we’d giggled about hanging them in dorm rooms someday. Anger boils in me. She could have told me then. She could have said, Oh, speaking of dorm rooms, mine will be in London! But she didn’t. She let me believe that her dorm room might even be the same one as mine someday. I guess, in hindsight, it fits that we were buying masks. Masks have long had a place in history, in myth, in theater. They are used to conceal. I wrap the mask in the Edinburgh sweatshirt I bought last night and jam it into a corner of my bag.
“So, you’ll just leave, then?” I start at the sound of Neel’s voice behind me. He comes in through the connecting door between our rooms and sinks into the brocade armchair near the window. “Is it me? Because I seem to have this effect on women.” He tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell him, folding a pair of jeans.
“Well, that’s hardly true.”
I pause, the jeans a denim block held against my stomach. “Did you know? About London?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect.” I cram the jeans into my bag. “Speaking of your partner in crime, where is she?”
He runs his hands through his disheveled hair. “Downstairs. Talking to Aji in the restaurant. They’re scheming about ways to convince you to stay. She’s trying to give you some space. Thinks you might be too mad at her right now to really talk.”
“She would be right about that.” I swallow hard. “But I feel terrible that I ran out on your grandma at the tearoom. I just … had to get out of there.”
“She’s not angry, Abby. Just sad. Sad that your tour might end this way.”
I rummage through the pile of my things, searching for the black sweats I want to wear home on the plane. I find the glossy platter of gummies Will bought me in Zurich. Sighing, I tuck it between some T-shirts. “She should have just told me in the first place.”
“She knows that now, doesn’t she?” His eyes search my things strewn about the bed. “But maybe she had hoped to avoid this.” He motions to the clothes
and souvenirs.
I blink at him incredulously through the dim light; outside the sky has turned dark again, and I don’t have any lights on in the room. “You’re defending her?”
“That’s not what I’m doing.” He shakes his head, running his hand absently over the silvery brocade fabric on the arm of the chair. “I just wonder—” He hesitates.
“What?” I stare hard at him.
He ducks his head, as if expecting a punch. “How much of this is about Riya’s news and how much of this is about your parents?”
“Oh, so you’re a psychology major now?” He starts to answer, but I snap, “It’s pretty ironic that you’re taking Riya’s side. You don’t even like her!”
“I love my cousin,” he insists, rubbing the pads of his fingers across his closed eyes. “Even if I don’t always understand her.” He drops his hand, watching me fold and sort, fold and sort, until he adds, “I thought perhaps we had that in common.”
The main door clicks with the sound of the key and then swings open. Riya stands there, hovering in the doorway, her eyes wide. “Abby?” She has clearly given me as much space as she can stand.
I turn my back, picking up the pace of my packing. “I’m going home.” Neel uses this as his cue to slip back through the connecting doors. On his way out, he tries to catch my eye, but I keep folding and refolding the same shirt and refuse to look at him.
Riya perches on the bed next to my bag, her eyes tracking my progress. She tries to help fold a pair of socks, but I grab them from her and stuff them into my hiking shoes. She licks her lips. “I’m sorry, Abby. I should have told you. I should have told you when I found out.”
I let out an ugly snort. “You think?” It goes to show how angry I am and how freaked out she is that we don’t comment on the snort.
“I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t come.” Her eyes brim, turning into glossy dark pools. “Please don’t leave.”
I slam my hiking shoes into the bag so hard that the force bounces several items onto the floor. “Why shouldn’t I? Maybe I’m not interested in being a spectator in Riya’s Awesome Future Life Tour anymore. A future life, by the way, that doesn’t seem to include me at all.”
“That’s not true! You will always be in my life. Maybe not in the same way, but you will. I never meant for you to feel like my future didn’t include our friendship.” She leans to catch a travel blow-dryer that threatens to fall off the bed.
I snatch it from her, the cord whipping dangerously near my head. “It might not be what you meant, but it’s what it feels like.”
“I see how you could feel that way,” she says diplomatically, smoothing her hand across the bedspread.
Her particular brand of diplomacy, though, comes off as placating. “Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not!”
“Whatever.” Anger surges through my limbs, a terrible singed feeling in the layer right beneath my skin. Like reverse, fiery goose bumps. I head to the bathroom, stuffing my toiletries into my pyramid zipper bag. I point my toothbrush at her, telling her, “And for the record, today was definitely not wonderful. And you ruined the Harry Potter castle for me!”
I slam the door to the bathroom and sit on the edge of the white claw-foot tub, gulping at the stale hotel bathroom air, my heart hammering in my chest, my hands shaking. I study the forest-green wallpaper, the white sink with my toothbrush resting in the hotel glass, the plush white towels, until my breathing calms and I feel a bit better. I hate losing control; it just makes things worse. I need to go back out there, finish packing, and go home. I go to the sink, splash water on my face, and pat it dry with a hand towel before moving to open the door.
The doorknob spins in my hand.
You have got to be kidding me. I fiddle with the lock but it’s frozen and won’t turn. Seriously? This is not funny, universe. Not. Now.
I try turning it again, quietly, hoping Riya can’t hear it rotating. Of all days to add Scotland Bathroom to my catalog of stuck places.
After a few minutes, Riya knocks lightly. “Please come out.”
I hesitate. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t, Abby?” she asks from the other side of the door. “You can’t stay in there forever.”
“Well, I might have to.”
“What? No—” She rattles the doorknob. “Turn the lock.”
“I did!”
She tries again, and I can hear her try to hide a giggle.
“Do not laugh at me. Not now.”
“I’m not, I swear!”
I hear her walking away from the other side of the door, picking up the phone, calling the front desk. In a moment, she’s back. “They’re sending someone up.”
I sit back down on the tub. Through the door, I hear my phone beep. “Is that my dad?”
“He can’t get you a flight until tomorrow.”
“Oh.” I stare at my shoes. Somehow, this deflates the last of the surge moving through me. It’s tough to storm off in anger when you have to wait around to do it while locked in a bathroom.
“He wants to know if he should book it.” I can feel her waiting on the other side of the door. “Please come with me to Iceland. That’s our next stop. Tomorrow.”
My stomach flips. Iceland. When Riya and I were five years old, we built an elaborate fairyland in the yard to the side of her house out of sticks and river rock and moss, and named it Iceland. This was of course before we knew there was a country of the same name. Our Iceland was a land of magic and snow and elves where we ruled over the entire kingdom. There, we pretended to eat sweets all day and care for the majestic unicorns that lived in a nearby forest. Sometimes, they would let us weave ice flowers through their manes, but they mostly kept their distance and refused to let us ride them. Some of them could sprout gossamer, delicate wings and fly into the white sky. We had names for all of them. Chalk. Jasper. Lizzie. I especially loved one named Mirabelle who would not let us touch her no matter how hard we tried or how many carrots or apples we left out for her. We spent many childhood hours in our Iceland by the river.
Now she wants to take me for real.
“We were pretty mad at Iceland when we found out it was a real place,” I mumble through the door.
But even with this barrier, she senses me softening. “We just have to agree it will only ever be second best to our Iceland.”
I will probably never get another chance to take a trip like this again.
I hear Riya answering a knock at the hotel door, and a moment later, the doorknob gives a shudder, twists, and the door pops open. I grin sheepishly at the serviceman. “That probably happens all the time, right?” He shakes his head, gathering up a few tools at his feet.
Avoiding Riya’s anxious eyes, I take my phone from her and move to the chair by the window.
I text Dad: i might stay?
Dad: Haven’t booked flight yet. Stay. Once in a lifetime and all that.
Me: true.
Dad: Love you, Bee. For the record, I think you should stay.
Me: okay.
“I’m still mad at you,” I say to Riya.
Silently, we get dressed for dinner and meet Neel and their grandma in the lobby. Everyone speaks in the fake, cheerful voices people use with children after they’ve thrown a fit, and I try not to feel ashamed of today.
“I’m glad you’re staying,” Neel says, opening the heavy door of the hotel for me.
“It’s expensive to switch flights. It’s better if I stay.” I study the sidewalk dotted with rain, but none is falling.
“It is better for many reasons.” Nani, wrapped in a pale blue pashmina, reaches out and rubs my arm. She turns to Riya. “Neel is going to take me out to dinner. I’ve made reservations for you both. Please, enjoy.”
Riya and I walk to dinner past the Georgian buildings near our hotel without talking. I know how hard it must be for Riya to keep silent. Her unsaid words burn in the space between us. Finally, she stops in front of a wide glass win
dow and checks her phone. “This is it. Nani says it’s delicious. Modern Scottish.” Inside, I take in the restaurant’s dark walls and leather booths with rich brass detailing, glancing uncertainly at my plain black skirt and the jean shirt knotted at my waist. “I’m underdressed,” I whisper to Riya, who shakes her head at me, and then smiles widely at the tall hostess, who’s wearing a simple black dress with plaid details and glossy patent heels. Riya gives her name and the hostess nods, collecting two leather-bound menus and motioning for us to follow her to a raised booth in the window.
Riya slides into the seat across from me. “You look great. I love that shirt on you.” Glamorous in her loose dress of dark teal and a cropped metallic leather jacket, Riya twists the chunky bracelet on her wrist as she studies the menu. “Mmmm, I’ve heard that bridie pies are yummy. I bet they’re good here.” Her voice is breezy, light.
For now, both of us are trying to avoid the glass shards of the last few days lodged in our skin.
“Mmmm,” I echo, reading the description. A bridie seems like a Cornish pasty but without the potatoes. Of course, the potatoes are my favorite part, and I feel a stab of homesickness settle back in. Yuba Ridge was founded by Cornish miners during the gold rush, and one of the things that stuck was the handheld pies in their flaky crusts, stuffed with potatoes and chicken or beef or veggies. Since about sixth grade at Cornish Christmas downtown each year, Riya and I would order a pasty and then walk around to the vendor booths, munching our dinner and trying to find the lady who dresses up like a Christmas tree. I catch Riya watching me over her menu. “I was just thinking about the Christmas tree lady.”
“I miss Cornish Christmas. It was the best!” She’s trying too hard, and I’m glad when our waitress comes over and we order drinks, salads, and bridies.
Then, silence. Louder than on our walk over, the kind of silence that hisses what now? what next?
Riya sips her water and stares at the passing people on the street outside. I fiddle with my silverware, working up the nerve to ask her what I’ve been thinking for so much of this trip. “Do you think from now on, we’ll only ever have the past in common?”
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