As Far as the Stars

I think about how supportive Mom and Dad have been about my whole wanting to be an astronaut thing and how, even though they’re worried, they’re kind of supportive of Blake and his music, and how they’re letting Jude do her own thing too, even though they’re sad that she gave up her piano. I guess we’re lucky. Not all kids get parents like that.

‘It’s not so bad,’ Christopher says. ‘Dad gets me to see cool places. And once I’d done all the school stuff – tours of the White House, the museums – I got to go to the National Gallery of Art. I loved walking around the Sculpture Garden. Some of those artists are amazing.’

‘I go there too – all the time! To the gallery – and the Sculpture Garden. It’s one of my favourite places in DC.’

‘Really?’

I nod. ‘Who knows, we might have crossed paths.’

The corners of his mouth turn up.

I wonder whether I’d have noticed Christopher walking past me or sitting on the edge of the fountain in the Sculpture Garden. I mean, if we hadn’t been thrown together like this at the airport.

‘So, you’ve been walking around DC on your own for a whole week? Isn’t that kind of lonely?’

He starts folding again, making sharp, tight corners, pressing down with the side of the thumbnail to make the edges smooth.

‘I don’t mind,’ he says after a while. ‘I’ve got used to it. Dad works a lot and it’s kind of fun, getting to know a new city on your own.’

I like to be on my own too, when I’m discovering something for the first time: like identifying a star through my telescope, or researching a planet.

‘I suppose I get that,’ I say. ‘It makes you focus more – when you’re on your own, I mean.’

He nods.

‘What’s the boarding school like?’ I ask. ‘It must have been a bit of a shock, after home-schooling or away-schooling or whatever it is you did.’

‘It’s okay. Mostly. A bit male.’

‘A bit male?’

‘All boys.’

‘Wow.’

‘Which is why I’m nervous.’

‘About what?’

He gulps. I watch his Adam’s apple slide up and down his throat.

‘Talking to you,’ he says.

‘Well, you’re doing a better job than most of the guys at my high school.’

The tops of his cheeks go an even deeper red.

‘There’s a lot of rugby too. I’m not so good at that.’

I look at his long, white fingers folding those bits of paper. No, I can’t imagine he’d like to be in the middle of a rugby scrum.

He goes back to folding the paper over and over into all these tiny, intricate folds. Then he puts it down beside him on the pavement, half-made so I can’t quite work out what it is – whether it’s another bird, because there’s a kind of wing, or whether it’s the sail of a ship.

He looks over at the doors to the airport terminal and then glances at his watch.

‘You worried about the plane?’ I say and then I regret it. Of course he’s worried about the plane. The reason he’s out here, sitting with a random girl with a dog on a sidewalk, is because he’s trying not to think about it.

He shrugs.

‘Dad’s planes aren’t usually late.’

It’s a weird thing to say; as if anyone had the power to decide if their plane is going to be late.

‘There’s probably been a mix up,’ he adds.

I think of that floating bit of metal again and how it didn’t look like a mix up to me.

I swallow to ease the dryness in my throat and then get up and start pacing again, craning my neck in the hope that I’ll see Blake’s yellow Buick rounding the corner.

Christopher goes back to folding his piece of paper.

Then I sit down again – a bit closer to him than I intended. Our legs touch. I don’t know whether I should move to give him more space or whether moving will seem rude like I don’t want to sit close to him.

I check my phone. Just more Where are you? And Call me? messages from Mom. Nothing from Blake. I sigh and start biting the side of my nail. I’m jittery but at the same time my body and my brain feel frozen, like I couldn’t get up off this pavement, not in a million years.

I look back down the road. At least when the Buick shows up I can do something. Get behind the steering wheel, start driving, clock up the miles to Nashville so that I have a chance of getting to the wedding on time.

I look back over at Christopher.

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘For what?’

‘For hanging out with me.’

‘It’s better than being in there,’ he says, looking back at the airport terminal. ‘Much better.’

A taxi pulls up a few yards away from us.

Leda barks.

Three people step out.

A woman in a trouser suit, red hair tumbling down her shoulders; as she stumbles out onto the pavement, she gets out a compact mirror and starts applying lipstick.

Behind her, a guy with one of those fuzzy microphones on the end of a stick.

Behind him, a guy with a camera balancing on his shoulder.