As Far as the Stars

I get my phone out to text him again but then realise how stupid it is when I don’t even know what number to call, so I put it away.

Blake probably lost his cell on purpose. He gave up his smart phone a few years ago, claiming that it interfered with his creativity. The one he’s got now only texts and calls and rarely has much connectivity. Mom makes him have it for safety reasons – and so we can stay in touch with each other as a family. But if he had a choice, he’d toss it in the trash.

We get weird looks from the people who come to collect the passengers from the other planes: they’re wondering why we’re all hanging out here in the arrivals lounge. But then they find whoever it is they came for and walk off and we get left behind again.

I sit with my back against the wall.

My phone buzzes. I grab it out of my pocket thinking that, at last, Blake’s getting in touch.

But it’s a message from Mom.

Has Blake landed? Tried to call him, no answer.

I get that stomach-acid taste at the back of my throat again.

I texted her when I left DC – the first time. Before I got halfway to Nashville and had to turn around again because my brother messed up his travel plans. Which I haven’t told her about. What Mom thinks is happening is that I’m standing in Nashville International Airport waiting to pick Blake up and that we’re going to drive to the hotel together and that we’ll be showing up anytime now.

Not yet

I text back.

What’s going on?

She texts back, almost as soon as I’ve sent my message.

Plane’s late

I write back.

And then my phone starts ringing. It’s Mom. Obviously. She wants more information.

I don’t answer.

Because I’m a coward.

Because I can’t face having to explain it all to her: Blake getting on the wrong plane and me having to drive all the way back to DC and that there’s a chance we might not make it for the family breakfast. That if I don’t get some answer soon, we might not make it for the wedding itself.

All the saliva in my mouth dries up. I can’t let myself go there. He’s going to make it. He has to.

Can’t talk

I text back.

She’ll think I’m driving. That will buy me some time.

She sends another message:

Remember we’re having breakfast at Louis’s.

Okay.

I text back.

I’m really feeling sick now.

I should tell her what’s going on but she’ll implode. And then she’ll tell Jude and Jude will fall apart. And Dad will have to deal with it and Dad’s a crisis-avoider so he’ll panic and then go into hiding somewhere, which will make Mom even more mad.

Telling them that it’s even worse than me and Blake being late for the wedding stuff – that his plane’s gone off radar, that no one knows where he is – isn’t even an option.

I screw my eyes shut to block out the world.

This is the last time I’m covering for you, Blake, I say to myself. The last damn time.

I was nine the first time Blake disappeared. The first time I had to lie for him.

He snuck into my room in the middle of the night, his guitar case and a holdall slung over his shoulder.

‘Tell them to let me sleep in.’

I was still asleep myself – it was three in the morning – so I wasn’t registering what he was telling me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Tomorrow morning. Tell them not to disturb me. Tell them I’m sleeping.’

I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

‘Mom and Dad?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Not sure yet.’

Blake’s words didn’t make sense. At age nine this was how the world worked: when you left one place you did so with the express intention of going to another specific location.

So I changed my line of questioning.

‘Why are you going?’

‘To play.’ He tapped his guitar case.

‘Why can’t you play here?’

‘I need inspiration.’

Blake was always going off to find inspiration. He was always going off period.

I have a restless soul, Air, he’d say, sounding like he was thirty rather than thirteen.

That didn’t make sense to me either, not then.

‘Why can’t you find inspiration here?’ I asked.

He raised his big black eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

‘I need some space, Air.’

He’d said it before. That the music – and the lyrics – wouldn’t come here, at home. I thought that it was a mean thing to say. Like being with us was stopping him from doing what he loved most.

‘When are you coming back?’ I asked.

He shrugged.

‘You can’t sleep in for ever.’

He grinned in that goofy way he had that made me feel warm and happy and like everything was good with the world.

‘For ever? It won’t be for ever, Air.’

‘So why are you taking a holdall?’

‘In case.’

‘In case what?’

‘In case I need some of my stuff.’

I sat up taller. ‘People don’t need their stuff if they’re coming back quickly.’

‘Just cover for me, Air – will you do that?’

‘What if Mom goes into your room and finds out that you’re not there?’

He tilted his head to one side. The gel in his hair had worn off, so long dark strands fell into his eyes.

‘You’re the smart one in the family, Air, you’ll find a way to cover for me.’

Then he kissed the top of my head and walked off to my window – the one that had access to the street below.

‘You are coming back, aren’t you?’ I asked.

I was worried that one day Blake would go so far that he’d get lost – or decide that coming back was too much hassle. He loved Mom and Dad and Jude and me but that didn’t mean he was going to live with us for ever. And he didn’t like DC. Blake was always going on about how he couldn’t wait to be eighteen, how then he could do anything he wanted.

When his body was halfway out of the window, he turned around and smiled:

‘For you little sis?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll always come back.’

He blew me a kiss then pulled his guitar case and holdall through the window.

‘And even if I don’t –’ he went on.

I leapt out of bed, ran up to the window and leant out. ‘Even if you don’t? What’s that’s supposed to mean?’

He put his fingers under my chin and tilted my face up to the sky.

‘They’re always there, right?’

It was a clear night so although the light pollution in DC was bad, the sky still looked amazing: like someone had pierced a thousand holes in the black canopy of the sky letting the light that lived behind it shine through.

‘Yeah, they’re always there.’

‘Well, so am I – like your stars.’

‘My stars?’

He nodded.

Blake knew how much I loved them, even then.

When I was nine years old, I’d thought that was a wonderful thing to say: that he’d always be with me, because the stars were always with us too. But when I got older and understood about how old the stars were and the whole light years–distance thing – and the fact that it’s basically impossible to measure the distance between us and the stars – I realised that what he told me that night wasn’t anywhere close to wonderful. He was basically telling me that even if I could still see him, he might be millions of light years away.

Nothing’s been confirmed yet.

Any moment now I might get a text from Blake saying that he got a flight to Nashville after all. Which means that he’ll make it for the family breakfast – that it’ll just be me who misses it. Which won’t be a big deal.

Or that he was late for the flight and got onto one that’s arriving later. Which, depending on his arrival time, will at least give us enough time to get to Nashville for the rehearsal dinner.

Whatever happens, we’d be there for the wedding. And, in the end, that’s all that matters.

Or that bald UKFlyer guy who’s in charge of keeping us up to date will tell us that the plane’s back on radar, that air traffic control got it wrong, and that the UKFlyer0217 has landed. That the passengers are coming through passport control and that, in a few minutes, they’ll be with us.

‘Can I borrow your phone?’

Leda’s head shoots up from my lap. She thumps her tail against my thigh so hard that I put my hand on it to press it down.

I look up too. He’s standing there, the pale, tangle-haired, paper-folding guy. And he’s staring at me, his eyes wide behind his tortoiseshell glasses.

‘My mobile’s out of charge,’ he explains.

Yeah, he definitely sounds English, like Mom and our relatives back in the UK. Mom’s got a bit of a Scottish lilt because that’s where she lived until she was ten and all her family come from there, but mostly she sounds English.

The guy adjusts his glasses and keeps staring at me.

‘Sure.’ I hand him my cell, relieved that I don’t have to keep looking at Mom’s messages popping up.

When he starts swiping at the screen, I notice that his fingers are shaking.

I’ve been so swept up with thinking about my family and the wedding and what’s going to happen in the next forty-eight hours if Blake doesn’t show up, that I kind of forgot that all these people around me are also waiting for news about those they came to collect. Blake could be anywhere right now, but they know that their loved ones are on the plane. And maybe they don’t have families like ours – or moms like our mom – to hold them all together.

While he’s using my phone, I look past him at a TV screen on the far side of the room. And then I notice some of the people who’ve been waiting with us, getting to their feet and turning to look at it too.

Which makes the guy look up from my cell and turn to the TV screen as well.

It’s the ABC news feed that’s been on this whole time with weather reports and the latest from the Yankees– Red Sox game and details about tomorrow’s eclipse.

Except none of those things are on the screen.

Instead, there’s a grainy picture. It keeps wobbling out of focus: a large piece of metal, floating on the sea.

Chapter Five

15.37 EST

It’s when I see that bit of grainy footage on ABC News that I know for sure.

Blake wasn’t on that plane.

He can’t have been.

He didn’t know what he was texting: he’s probably in Nashville, wondering where the hell I am. I shouldn’t have turned around so fast. I should have kept going to Nashville, stuck to our plans.

And if he’s not in Nashville, then he’s probably somewhere else altogether. Like still in London, playing in a hip bar somewhere.

‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ I say, taking my phone back.

I swing my telescope onto my back, grab Leda and head towards the terminal doors. She makes her body go limp so I have drag her along the floor.

‘Get up,’ I say to her, yanking harder.

As I walk, I send Mom a text.

Blake messed up. We’re not going to make it for the family breakfast. Please don’t worry, Mom, we’ll be there soon.

I put my phone in the pocket of my shorts and try not to think about the bomb I’ve just landed on Mom.

I yank Leda again but she won’t move. Her head is twisted back towards the group of people we’ve been waiting with, the ones who came to meet the UKFlyer0217. That’s when I notice the guy again and suddenly, I feel bad for walking away like that and even though I totally don’t have the time for this, I walk back to him.

Leda follows, suddenly cooperative.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say to him. My eyes well up. ‘For whoever…’ I look back at the screen. The bit of metal floating on the sea. Then I look at my watch. ‘But I’ve got to go.’

I don’t know what’s going on. With the plane. With where Blake is. But I’ve made a decision: I’ve got to get to the wedding. Whatever it takes. I have to be there for Mom and Dad and Jude. If Blake doesn’t show, I’ll find an excuse for him.

Jude needs this: her perfect wedding, getting married to Stephen.

Mom needs it.

We all do.

And if Blake doesn’t show up on time, I’ll sing the damn song.

I can’t play the guitar and my voice is totally average and I get shit scared of standing in front of even one person and performing. But I’ve been practising it with Blake ever since Jude announced she was engaged, so I know the words. Yeah, I’ll sing it. And it won’t be great. And Jude will be sulky as hell about it. But hopefully all the other wedding stuff will distract her and everything will sort of be okay.

And when Blake does turn up – like he always does – he’s going to owe me, big time. More than he’s ever owed me.

For a beat, the guy keeps staring at me, and then he says:

‘Don’t you think you should stay?’ He shifts nervously from foot to foot. ‘I mean, there could be more information. We’ve been told to wait.’ He blushes like saying even these few words to me is painful. ‘It’s better to stay together at times like this,’ he adds.

‘At times like this?’

‘Yeah.’

He makes it sound like this is the kind of situation that people find themselves in more than once in their lives. And like he’s some kind of expert.

‘I’ll keep checking my phone,’ I say – because I can’t tell him the truth: that I don’t need to stay because that bit of metal floating in the sea has nothing to do with my brother.

I feel bad for leaving him. He looks like he could do with having someone stay with him, but I’ve got to get on the road.

Chapter Six

15.48 EST

Except, when I get to the car, it’s not there.

Blake’s car.

The mustard yellow 1973 Buick convertible that he loves like it’s a living thing.

The car which has my rehearsal dinner dress in it, and my bridesmaid’s dress and Blake’s suit and Leda’s food.

The car Dad was going to drive Jude and Stephen to the airport in after the wedding, to catch the flight to Florence for their honeymoon.

The car that was my one chance of getting to the wedding on time.

Leda barks at the empty space where I parked it, like she’s seeing a ghost.

My head spins.

I look around and then spot a parking notice taped to a post next to where I left the Buick.

I peel it off but I already know what’s happened.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

It’s been impounded. Obviously, it’s been impounded – it’s what happens when you leave a car illegally parked in the pick-up zone for close to three hours. I’ve given Blake this lecture before. Blake who parks anywhere, anyhow, thinking he’ll get away with it because he’s Blake Shaw and that somehow makes him untouchable.

I put Leda down. She pees against the post where the parking notice was taped and then starts whimpering.

I feel like screaming. At the sky and the sun and all the planes flying overhead. At whoever it is who decided to land me in this shit storm of a situation.

I think of Blake’s car on the back of some horrible truck being carted to an impounding lot miles and miles from here.

I think about how much money it will cost to get it back – money I don’t have.

And I think about how long all this is going to take.

But instead of screaming, I take my telescope off my back and sit down on the sidewalk. I slump my shoulders and all the oxygen goes out of my body.

Leda lies down beside me and rests her head on my lap.

I stroke the spot she likes to have rubbed behind her ears: a soft, silky bit, the colour of gold, amongst all the rough, straggly fur.

‘What are we going to do?’ I ask her.

She looks up at me with her dark, glassy eyes like she’s asking me the exact same question.

I wrap my arms around her and close my eyes.

Chapter Seven

16.14 EST

I don’t know how long I sit there on the sidewalk, staring at the tarmac, willing my brain to work out some kind of plan to make all of this okay. But by the time I look up again, the sun’s so low, it blinds me.

Which is why I don’t notice him, not at first.

I put my hand over my brow to block out the sun, which lights up his hair – the tangled strands look like comets.

The sun reflects off his glasses too, so hard that I can’t see his eyes.

Leda gets up and runs around him, which makes him look nervous so I pat the space beside me to get her to sit down again.

For a second, I let myself believe that the fact that he’s standing there – the fact that he’s coming out of the airport – means that they’ve released new information. That the plane made it after all.

‘Is there any news?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I needed to get out of there for a bit.’

My heart slumps.

‘I thought you were leaving?’ he says.

‘So did I.’

‘You changed your mind?’

I shake my head, too tired to explain. And too pissed about the car.

He sits down beside me but keeps a space between us like he’s scared to get too close. But then he holds out his hand, which feels weirdly formal, but I take it anyway. His skin’s cool. It feels nice.

‘I’m Christopher,’ he says. ‘As in Columbus. I can’t believe that I just said that.’

‘As in Columbus?’ I laugh and, for a second, it feels like a bit of my body comes back to life.

‘My dad has a thing about explorers.’

With his tangled blond hair and his pale skin and his rosy cheeks, he looks more like Christopher Robin out of Winnie The Pooh than the rugged coloniser of the New World.

‘Parents dump you with a whole load of shit when they give you a name, hey?’

He blushes. Maybe I offended him. Maybe he likes being associated with Christopher Columbus.

‘I’m Air. As in, Ariadne.’

It’s Blake who nicknamed me Air – as soon as I was born. Because he thought it was a totally cool name. As opposed to the totally nerdy name Dad picked out for me. For my baptism, when I was seven, Blake even wrote a song for me, using all these clever metaphors about breath and air and being in the world.

He looks up at me. ‘Ariadne. The goddess of mazes and labyrinths.’

‘You know?’

Nobody knows. Nobody except my geeky parents who fell in love over Greek myths at Oxford. My geeky parents who were totally pissed at Blake for changing my name basically as soon as they’d given it to me.

‘Home-schooled,’ he says.

‘Sorry?’

‘I was home-schooled until I was sixteen. Dad made me study all the old stuff. Latin, Greek, the myths. He got tutors for me. And when he had the time, he took me to museums. Anyway, that’s how I know.’

‘You were home-schooled in England?’

‘Not really in England. Not really at home, either.’

‘You weren’t home-schooled at home? How does that work?’

He blushes again, which makes his pale grey eyes stand out even more.

‘My dad travels so much that it was either take me with him or put me in a boarding school. I’m in a boarding school now, but I was home-schooled until last year.’ He pauses. ‘Well, away-schooled – I had some tutoring whenever we were in London but most of the time Dad taught me when we were travelling.’ The corners of his mouth go up. ‘Dad and the internet.’

‘Why boarding school now?’

‘So I can get my A-levels and go to university. Dad said it would be easier having the structure of a school to help me through that rather than figuring it out on our own.’

He hasn’t mentioned his mom, which probably means she’s not around in some way and I don’t want to upset him by asking.

‘I’m from England too,’ I say. ‘Was. Lived there until I was four. Which is why Americans think I’m English and English people think I’m American.’

‘I like it – your accent.’

‘It makes me sound like I don’t belong anywhere.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’ He gives me a small, sideways smile.

I hadn’t ever thought of it being a good thing. But perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it’s kind of cool not being locked into one particular place. ‘I guess not.’

‘So how come you lived in England?’ he asks.

‘Mom’s English – well Scottish-English. Dad went to do a semester at Oxford, which is where they met.’

‘Where they fell in love over Greek myths?’ he says.

‘Yeah. Mom was meant to be doing international law but she kept taking all these other classes too. Anyway, Dad ended up loving Oxford so much he stayed for years. They got married. Had kids.’

‘And then you moved to the US?’

‘Mom got a gig at the White House. As an international human rights lawyer.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah. She’s a high achiever.’

‘And your dad?’

‘Classics professor at Georgetown. He still misses Oxford but he’d go anywhere for Mom.’

He looks at me, curious, like my friends sometimes do when I talk about Mom and Dad and how close they are.

He leans back and closes his eyes. Behind his glasses, he’s got these crazily long, light eyelashes. ‘It’s warm out here,’ he says.

‘Yeah.’

A beautiful warm afternoon.

I think about Mom, Jude and Dad working really hard to get things ready for the wedding. And how Mom must be coping with the news that we’re not going to make the breakfast. I picture them sitting there tomorrow morning, staring at two empty chairs and how Mom will be totally freaking out and how Dad will be trying to calm her down and how Jude will be thinking that it’s typical that we’re both off somewhere else without her. She feels left out when it comes to the three of us. All those birth order theories don’t apply to us. Blake’s the middle child but he gets all the attention. Jude’s the eldest but that doesn’t make her feel special – she’s the one who feels like she’s being overlooked. As for me, I’m the opposite of the spoilt and indulged youngest child – I’m the one whose job it is to sort out my brother and sister’s problems and fights.

My eyeballs sting like I’m going to cry, because I know that it’s totally not fair. There are times when Jude’s sulkiness about not getting enough attention has annoyed the hell out of me but if there’s one time that Jude shouldn’t feel left out, it’s at her wedding.

I sniff back the tears.

Leda nestles in closer to Christopher. He sits up and pats her head gently.

‘She yours?’ he asks.

‘My brother’s. I’m babysitting.’

He puts out his hand and Leda puts her head into it like she’s looking for a treat.

‘I love dogs – all animals really,’ Christopher says.

He keeps stroking her. Leda’s tilting her head back so far now it’s like she’s in some kind of trance. He’s totally good with her.

‘Do you have any pets?’

Christopher shakes his head. ‘I was never allowed. Too much moving around.’

He keeps stroking her and I can tell, from how his shoulders drop and his body sinks into itself, that Leda’s making him feel more relaxed too.

‘So, what happened?’ Christopher asks. ‘I thought you needed to be somewhere.’

‘I did.’ I look back at the space where I parked the Buick. ‘They took my brother’s car.’

‘Your brother?’ He frowns and knits his eyebrows together: they’re blond and tangled, like his hair. ‘The one who owns the dog?’

‘The very same.’

‘He’s the one you came to pick up?’

‘Yeah. Sort of. It’s a long story. I think I got it wrong. Or he got it wrong. Anyway, he’s not here.’

‘Right.’

I hand him the parking notice. ‘They took the car.’

‘From the car park?’

I shake my head. ‘From here.’

‘Here?’

I nod.

‘Right here?’

‘I was in a hurry – we were already late.’ My throat goes thick. ‘I know it was a stupid thing to do but I texted Blake to come straight out; I thought it would only take a few minutes before we’d be back in the car.’ Tears prick the back of my eyes; I blink hard to make them go away. ‘I didn’t know all this would happen.’