by Rachel Cohn
“Yes!” I said, too eager to impress her.
Azra said, “My little sister is obsessed with your dog crafts page. She’s not going to believe I’ve met you. Might I snap a selfie of us?”
“Sure!” I said.
As she snapped our photo, she said, “I bought her the Lily Dogcrafts raincoat for her birthday. It was at the top of her wish list.”
“The raincoat with the interior lining of pockets for treats and poo bags?” It cost twenty dollars more than the regular raincoat but was a worthwhile investment, in my opinion.
“Indeed,” said Azra. “In pink.”
“That’s the best of all the colors! I personally chose the fabric from a wholesaler that specializes in textiles for rainwear. They customized the pink option to my exact specification. I’m really proud of it.”
“My sister loved it,” said Azra. She turned to Dash, looking at him with what I thought might be a newfound respect. “Why didn’t you tell me your girlfriend was famous?”
Olivier said, “To be honest, we didn’t really believe Dash had a girlfriend back in New York.”
Mark said, “To be honest, that’s what her family back in New York would also like to believe.”
Finally, Dash laughed, at ease. Being insulted by Mark or my brother probably feels like home to him. But it was more than that. To see Dash in a bookstore is to see Dash in the most content version of himself. Even being playfully insulted.
I wrapped my arms around Dash, both protective and proud of him. “My family adores you,” I assured him.
Dash said, “Your family is so big that even if only ten percent of them like me, that’s more people who like me than in my own family.”
“I’m a family member that’s rather fond of you,” said Gem to Dash.
“That’s why you’re the one that matters,” Dash told her.
“Americans,” said Olivier contemptuously.
“I have no great affection for Dash,” Mark assured Olivier.
Suddenly Moriarty leapt out of Julia’s arms and sprinted toward the bookstore’s front door. Immediately, I sprang into action, practically mowing down several bookstore browsers as I sped after the cat. Dash knows how to handle bookstores and my relatives. I know how to handle animals taking unauthorized expeditions. Just as Moriarty was about to glide out of the open front door, I whooshed down to pick him up.
“I respect you for trying,” I told Moriarty. He tried to wiggle out of my arms, but no such luck. I make a living out of these situations. I kicked the door shut and said to Julia, “Shall we return Moriarty to the safety of the office? Without his leash on? I mean, his lead?” I didn’t want to scold Julia, but I couldn’t help but tell her, “If you’re not walking him on the lead, the lead really should be taken off, so it doesn’t get caught on something that could hurt him.”
“Of course,” Julia said, not interested at all in my wisdom. She took Moriarty from my arms. “I’ll return him to the office now. Team Strand and Team Brasenose—get to work!”
She left with the cat. Gem said to me, “I don’t think she needs pet advice, my dear. If the cat wants to wander, let him!”
Grrrr.
Dash knows how little I like having my pet care advice challenged, so before I could give Gem a piece of my mind—and some badly needed animal education—he diverted the conversation. “Our first clue! Any ideas?” He read the clue aloud.
Near the heath
Where the bathers find their ponds
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
Mark had said it was too easy so I turned to Mark to decipher the clue, but he shook his head. “I have insider information on this one. I’m going to have to insist that Master Brasenose give it a go. Don’t cheat by using your phone.”
Dash said, “Don’t have to, Master Took-Six-Years-to-Finish-His-Undergraduate-Degree. Here lies one whose name was writ in water. It’s what Keats asked to have carved on his gravestone. As last words go … rather epic.”
“Aren’t you a genius, Dash!” said Gem. A customer passed by her carrying a stack of books toward the cash register. “He goes to Oxford,” she told the disinterested customer. Then she mused aloud. “Keats … Keats … heath … bathers … ponds.” She paused a moment, then: “I’ve got it! The first clue is probably for the Keats House museum, near the Hampstead Heath bathing ponds!”
“You are the genius,” Dash told her.
“And there’s a marvelous Indian restaurant just around the corner from the museum. I’ve been craving a good dosa. You?” said Gem.
“You’re even more of a genius,” Dash said to Gem.
I’d pretty much lost my appetite. I hate Indian food. At least, today I did.
Before we could exit the store, Olivier and Azra breezed past us toward the front door. As Olivier opened the door to leave, he called to Dash. “We’ll wave to you from the winners’ circle, old fellow.”
Dash waved his two middle fingers to Olivier, who laughed and then left.
“Tube or taxi?” Mark asked Team Strand.
“Tube,” Dash said.
“Taxi it is,” said Mark.
We stepped outside. It had started raining but Mark was able to flag down a taxi quickly. My first London taxi! I loved the expanse of the backseat, which sat two rows of passengers facing each other. Mark and I sat next to each other, with Dash and Gem opposite us.
“Where to?” the driver asked. He had a Cockney accent straight out of Mary Poppins. I was so excited.
Mark gave him the address. Then I added, “Pip pip, guvnah,” in my best Mary Poppins imitation accent.
Gem said, “They hate that here, darling Lily. Don’t do an accent.”
I felt my face redden, humiliated. I hadn’t meant to offend.
I hadn’t meant to really not like Gem, but I did. Who was she to scold my tourist enthusiasm?
Mark unzipped his briefcase. “Julia assigned these to the team captains to hand out.” He took out Daunt notebooks and pens. “We’re to write our letters to Father Christmas.”
“To be burned up in the chimney?” Gem asked. “One of my favorite British traditions.”
I’d have liked to burn up all her ideas in a chimney.
There probably wouldn’t be any presents for me under the tree this year. I was a naughty, naughty girl, resentful of her boyfriend’s grandmother. Seriously regretting the airfare I’d spent to come here. I didn’t deserve presents.
“I don’t write letters to Santa,” said Dash.
Mark tossed a notebook to Dash. “Now you do.”
four
December 21st
I threw the notebook right back at Mark’s face and said, “No. I don’t.”
It was an abrupt response, and it caught all of us by surprise, myself included. I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d just done it.
My body was telling me something, and I was listening to at least a part of it.
You don’t have to write anything to Father Christmas, it said.
Fair enough. Throw back the pad.
You don’t want to be here. You have to get out of here right now.
Wait a sec—what?
Don’t you feel the walls of this cab getting tighter? Isn’t it making your head pound? Why are you sweating so much, Dash? Don’t you think you need to get out of here right this minute?
It was like exams all over again. It felt like exams.
And I was failing.
I was failing because I didn’t want to be here in this car.
I was failing because I couldn’t stand Mark. Because he was, at heart, a jerk.
I was failing because Lily was here in London and I was sure I wasn’t responding the way she wanted me to.
I was failing because I had never seen her Instagram. Not once.
I was failing because I had no idea she was selling raincoats. Or was a darling of social media, if Azra’s reaction was any indication.
I was failing because I thought … she walked d
ogs. I hadn’t known she walked dogs so strangers would see her walk dogs and talk about her walking dogs and buy products related to her walking dogs.
I was failing because Azra and Olivier intimidated me, and that filled me with such resentment that it crowded out everything else when they were around.
I was failing because a reckoning with Keats should be exciting me, but in truth, thinking about Keats depressed me greatly.
I was failing because I couldn’t say any of these things out loud.
You’re the cat on a leash, my body said. And to prove its point, it made my collar tighter and tighter.
I moved to loosen my tie, unbutton my collar.
“What’s your problem?” Mark said, which was like being called a Grinch by Oscar the Grouch.
“Are you okay?” Gem asked, concern on her face.
And Lily—Lily looked confused again.
Another fail, Dash. You shouldn’t be here.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Which, after the fact, I understood was a strange answer to the question “Are you okay?”
“Dash?” Lily asked.
“You cold back there?” the taxi driver called back. “Here, I’ll give you more heat.”
This was the last thing I wanted. Suddenly it felt like we were caught in a cashmere cloud. I sweated some more. My underarms were becoming a lake district.
Gem started to ask Lily all of the questions I should have been asking—when had she gotten in? How had the flight been? How long was she staying? I registered the answers, but not as much as I was registering the sweat, the heat, the pressure on my head, the accelerated beat of my heart. Or maybe my heartbeat was fine. I tried to take my own pulse. Ridiculous.
The taxi arrived at Keats House, just off Hampstead Heath. I leapt for the door, and only when I’d pushed outside did I realize I’d left my grandmother to pay the fare. Not particularly gallant of me.
A white shape in a black night, the Keats museum seemed almost like the ghost of a house, lit by spirits within. I hadn’t expected it to be open so late, but strings must have been pulled, because I could see Azra and Olivier’s team already in the entrance hall ahead of us.
“Dash?”
It was Lily again, at my elbow. From the way she was looking at me, I could tell that I’d missed a sentence or two, staring at the house.
“Present,” I said.
“I hope this wasn’t a mistake. Coming here.”
“No!” I said.
Yes! my body added, turning up the chokehold a notch.
I pressed on, explaining to Lily, “It’s been the most soul-crushing, sleep-deprived week of my life, so if I seem out of it, that’s why. It’s like I have a hangover, in the sense that I’m hanging over a cliff and not sure I have the strength to pull myself back up.”
I should have left it there. But then I added:
“Plus, I had no idea you sold raincoats.”
Lily’s response was quickly lost to history as Mark, our Patron Devil of Perpetual Irritation, interrupted with a blunt “Are you coming in or what?” Behind us, Gem walked over as the taxi drove off.
“That driver asked for my number,” she announced. “I told him it was zero.”
“You’d better be careful,” Lily said. “He’ll think you’re an operator.”
“We’re LOSING!” Mark cried.
“I suppose we should go in, then,” Gem offered.
I wanted to stay outside in the night air for a moment. But I couldn’t find a way to ask for that, not with Gem steaming ahead, Mark just plain steaming, and Lily looking like she was running out of steam because my mood was sucking it out of her.
“Shall we share some Romanticism?” I mustered, offering Lily my hand.
“I think I like romance more,” Lily replied, taking my hand for the short distance to the door. Then we disengaged to go inside.
This house wasn’t where Keats had died—that was a room in Italy. But it might as well have been here, because his death at age twenty-five was in the air, on the walls, and in most every word to be read.
My heart started to pound again.
In the lobby there was a life mask of Keats’s face that visitors were encouraged to touch. Such a visage freaked me out. I didn’t want to touch it, or to have him staring at me. I turned away, only to come face-to-face with a life-size bust of the poet.
“We’re looking for the next clue, correct?” Gem asked Mark. He nodded.
The other team had already gone deeper into the house.
“Let’s divide and conquer,” Gem said. This time Lily nodded. Gem headed to the room to our left, Lily to the one on the right. Mark disappeared upstairs.
I walked deeper into the house. I knew I wasn’t here as a tourist—I was supposed to be on a quest—but the more I read about Keats, the more the clouds gathered around me. He watched his mother and his brother die of consumption. Then he himself died of it. Only six years older than me.
I looked at his handwritten poems and felt the words like a barrage.
Youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.
And
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain …
And, in a letter he wrote to the woman he loved,
I have left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends proud of my memory—but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember’d.
And, of course, his epitaph:
Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.
I could feel my body asking
What are you doing?
And it meant: What are you doing, going to Oxford?
And it meant: What are you doing, pretending you’re okay?
And it meant: What are you doing in this room as the walls close in?
The walls weren’t closing in. But it felt like they were, and that was enough. I went to loosen my collar again and found it already open. The sweat was legion now.
You have to get out.
I pictured my father. The righteous nod he’d give me when I came back with my tail between my legs, like he’d known all along that Oxford was a mistake, that believing in books was a mistake, that going my own way was a mistake. I was never going to be a Future Leader. I couldn’t even master Despondent Poet. I was a Once and Future Loser.
You can’t do this.
On the first day of our literature class, the professor had asked us to name our favorite author, and when I’d said Salinger, he’d laughed. “American boys who worship Salinger are as predictable as London rain,” he’d said.
You can’t do any of it.
I thought about Lily, how she’d flown all this way. How I’d basically put our whole relationship in a state of suspended animation so I could follow my foolhardy dream. I heard footsteps on the floorboards above me—probably the other team, but maybe my team was up there too. I was losing track of how much time had passed. I told myself I’d only step outside for a second.
The problem was: My failure followed me. My failure to play along. My failure to be here now for the people who wanted me to be here.
It was as if Keats was taunting me:
You’re alive, and this is what you’re doing with it?
Your youth grows pale, Dash. What do you have left?
I was outside the house. I tried to fill my lungs with the night air. I tried to banish the thoughts from my head. But they were stubborn, and instead of leaving, they jumped on the floorboards inside my head. It was cold, and I kept sweating and sweating. I worried they’d see me out here, out front, so I decided to walk a little farther. Hampstead Heath was right here. I’d only be gone for a few minutes. Gem and Lily wouldn’t even realize.
What am I doing?
I remembered a question my friend Boomer had once asked me: “My throat is sore … do you think I have a sore throat?” In this case, I thought, I am feeling very panicked. And somewhat attack
ed. Does that mean …
I took out my phone and, as I walked into the Heath, I googled Am I having a panic attack?
The web doctors listed some symptoms for me, and I had plenty of them. Which only made me panic more. I checked link after link. For second opinions. Third opinions. Ninth opinions.
“This is not good,” I told the trees.
I considered some of the remedies the internet provided for a panic attack.
Don’t fight it. Acknowledge it.
“But isn’t acknowledging it a way of fighting it?” I asked.
I looked at the next suggestion.
Talk to yourself.
“Already covered,” I said. “Unless you have something to add?”
“No,” I replied. “Do go on.”
Next suggestion: Close your eyes.
I wasn’t sure this suggestion was intended for people hanging out solo in a park that looked like the perfect nighttime strolling ground for Jack the Ripper’s minions. But I did it anyway, making the darkness more personal. This lasted exactly ten seconds, until something stirred in a nearby bush and I opened my eyes so I could at least see the fox before it attacked me.
Breathe through it.
There wasn’t a fox. Or maybe it was still in the bush. But I took the fact that I was thinking of foxes and not myself as a good sign. Only then I realized that I’d started to think again about myself and my dire situation. I breathed in deeply, then sighed it out. Breathed in deeply, then sighed it out.
Ask yourself: Am I hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?
Maybe I should have eaten. Maybe I should have steered clear of Mark. Maybe I should have stayed in New York. Maybe I should have truly napped until the new year.
Picture your happy place.
I was trying to picture the Strand without Mark. I wished he hadn’t brought it up tonight, so I’d have to get through him in order to truly make it my happy place. But it didn’t take me long to get there: Lily and I are in the Rare Book Room, looking at the covers of old pulp paperbacks, reading each other the innuendo-laden cover copy in our most dramatic gumshoe-and-dame voices. It’s just an ordinary hour after school, but it’s everything I love, right there.
