The Geography of You and Me

by Jennifer E. Smith

  When he looked up, he was surprised to find that Dad was right beside him. Owen, lost in his own head, hadn’t even heard him come in, and his first instinct was to cup a hand around the postcard. But it was too late.

  “Who’s Nessie?” Dad asked, looking genuinely puzzled, and Owen swallowed back a laugh.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, slipping the postcard into his pocket. “You don’t know her.”

  They walked over to the checkout together, where a girl with a pierced nose and a streak of pink in her hair was beaming at them for no particular reason.

  “And how are you today?” she asked while punching a few things into a computer. “You must be traveling.”

  “We are,” Dad said, smiling back.

  “Where are you off to?”

  Owen handed her a few crumpled bills. “Out west somewhere.”

  “Awesome,” she said, bobbing her head. “I’m from California. Can’t get more west than that.”

  “Not in this country, anyway,” Dad agreed. “Where in California?”

  “Lake Tahoe,” she said. “So it barely counts. It’s just over the Nevada border. But it’s a great place. Mountains. Trees. The lake, obviously.” She held up Owen’s postcard before sliding it into a plastic bag. “This lake here might be a lot bigger, but the color doesn’t even compare. Tahoe is so blue it looks fake.”

  Dad gave Owen a sideways glance. “It sounds pretty nice.”

  “It is,” she said. “You should check it out.”

  “Hey, do you have any postcard stamps?” Owen asked, realizing he’d used his last one in Indiana.

  “I think so,” she said, opening the register and lifting the little tray of bills. She dug around with a frown, and then the too-bright smile returned to her face. “Got ’em,” she said, holding up a little packet. “How many do you need?”

  “Just one,” Owen mumbled, but Dad clapped him on the back.

  “Oh, let’s not kid ourselves, son,” he said cheerfully. “I think you’re going to need more than one.”

  Owen felt his cheeks burn. “I’ll take ten,” he said, unable to look up.

  “Great,” said the clerk. “U.S. or international?”

  “U.S.,” he said, but as soon as he did, a little flash of recognition went through him. Soon, he realized, he would need international stamps. Soon, she’d be an ocean away.

  When they finished paying, they started for the car in silence. Owen was grateful for this, his mind still busy with the idea that he’d soon need a special stamp just to send Lucy a postcard. It was a small thing, he knew. In fact, there were few things smaller. But something about it felt big all the same.

  If you were to draw a map of the two of them, of where they started out and where they would both end up, the lines would be shooting away from each other like magnets spun around on their poles. And it occurred to Owen that there was something deeply flawed about this, that there should be circles or angles or turns, anything that might make it possible for the two lines to meet again. Instead, they were both headed in the exact opposite directions. The map was as good as a door swinging shut. And the geography of the thing—the geography of them—was completely and hopelessly wrong.

  10

  During breakfast on her fourth morning in Edinburgh, just before the start of the fourth day at her new school, a postcard came spinning across the table in Lucy’s direction. She lowered her spoon, watching as it bumped up against her glass of orange juice and came to a stop, the light glinting off the photo: a cornflower-blue lake surrounded by a ring of mountains, like teeth around a yawning mouth.

  “That got stuck in a catalog from yesterday’s mail,” Dad said, sitting down across the table. Mom looked up from her newspaper—the Herald Scotland, which was only a placeholder until she managed to sort out her subscription to the New York Times—and her eyes landed on the postcard.

  “It seems your daughter has fallen for a traveling salesman,” she said to Dad, who was too busy with his copy of The Guardian to respond.

  “He’s just a friend,” Lucy said a bit too quickly, sliding the postcard toward the edge of the table and then lifting the corner to take a quick peek, like a poker player guarding his cards.

  “Well, I think it’s romantic,” Mom said. “Nobody writes each other anymore. It’s all just e-mails and faxes.”

  Dad glanced up. “Nobody faxes anymore, either.”

  “Another lost art,” Mom said with an exaggerated sigh, and he winked at her.

  “I’ll fax you anytime.”

  Lucy groaned. “Please stop.”

  But it was true. There were never any e-mails from him. No letters, either. It was always, always the postcards—several a week, when he was still on the road, places she could track on a map as he’d moved steadily west—but lately there’d hardly even been any of those. Now that Owen and his father were planning to stay in Lake Tahoe—as he’d written to tell her two weeks ago—Lucy understood that the postcard gimmick had probably run its course. She also realized that any mail from him might be slower in coming now that she was all the way in Scotland, almost five thousand miles from the little lake town that straddled the border between California and Nevada. But she’d hoped they’d at least move the conversation over to e-mail. She never imagined the whole thing might just taper off entirely.

  This was the first she’d heard from him in more than a week, in spite of the three e-mails she’d sent, filled with questions about his new home in Tahoe and updates about their move to Edinburgh. She realized he was probably busy with a new school and a new house and a new life, but she was surprised by how fiercely she wanted to know about it all, and how difficult it was to wait and wait amid such crashing silence.

  Maybe, she told herself, he just wasn’t much of a correspondent. After all, her brothers were in California, too, and though they had a pretty questionable grasp of the time difference—especially Charlie, who’d called more than once in the middle of the night—even they managed to e-mail every couple of days. She supposed it was possible that Owen still didn’t have wireless access, but that seemed like a thin excuse, even to her. Maybe he just wasn’t a big fan of e-mail. It made sense; even his postcards were never very long. Or maybe he was simply a guy who was at his best in person. (That she suspected she was at her best from a distance was something she was trying not to think too hard about.)

  While her parents finished their breakfast, Lucy flipped over the long-awaited card, which said simply:

  Loch Ness = 745 feet deep

  Lake Tahoe = 1,644 feet deep

  Your new monster pal would love it here. I bet you would, too.

  Before leaving for school, she slipped the note into the pocket of her blazer. When she stepped outside the bright red door of the town house, she was met by a wind far too cold and damp for any October she knew, and she felt a small shiver go through her. She shoved her hands deep in her pockets and ran her thumb along the rough edges of the postcard, which was somehow reassuring.

  It was nearly eight by now, but all along the crescent of stone buildings that neighbored theirs, the street lamps were still on, burning little pockets of light into the morning haze. When they first found out they’d be moving to Edinburgh, this was just one of the many things her parents had seemed to find discouraging.

  “I heard there are only five or six hours of daylight in the winter,” Mom said, looking miserable. “They might as well be sending us to Siberia.”

  “It won’t be as bad as all that,” Dad had told her, but Lucy could tell from the set of his mouth that he was only trying to make the best of it. She’d overheard them arguing after he lost out on the position in London. As a consolation prize, they’d offered him some big job in the Edinburgh office, and he’d accepted out of an odd sense of duty, as well as the hope that it might soon lead to better things.

  “Scotland?” Mom kept repeating as if she couldn’t quite believe it, and Lucy tried hard not to laugh at her accent, which had
grown softer after all these years in New York, but which was now suddenly as crisp and precise as if she were speaking to the Queen.

  “I’ve heard it’s nice,” Dad said weakly, and Mom wrinkled her nose.

  “I went once when I was Lucy’s age.”

  “And?” he asked, looking hopeful.

  “And the whole city smelled like stew.”

  “Stew?”

  “Stew,” Mom confirmed.

  Now that they were here, Lucy could sort of see what she meant. There was definitely something heavy in the air, something vaguely soupy, but she only ever caught a whiff of it from time to time, when the winds shifted and the scent of the North Sea—full of salt and brine—drifted inland. She didn’t mind it, though. And she didn’t mind the darkness, either. Just as sunshine and clear skies suited beach towns, the constant rain and perpetual clouds suited Edinburgh, with its stone buildings and churches, its uneven cobblestone streets and the enormous castle that sat high above it all. There was something utterly romantic about it, as if you’d fallen straight into a fairy tale.

  Once she reached Princes Street, Lucy waited for the bus beneath the gaze of the castle, a fortress of stone perched on a cliff above the gardens that separated the old section of the city from the new one. When the bus arrived, she was lucky to find a seat, shouldering in between two women in woolly jackets who proceeded to talk around her in nearly indecipherable accents. On her first day, Lucy had brought along her old copy of The Catcher in the Rye, clinging to that small piece of New York as she rode through the unfamiliar city. But halfway there, she lowered it to watch the buildings whip past the windows, and she’d hadn’t picked it up since. There was too much to see.

  Her school was all the way across town, tucked just behind a huge rounded hill that rose between the city and the sea. The sun had climbed higher now, pushing through the fog so that the world had turned from gray to gold, and when the bus hissed to a stop across the street from the school, Lucy climbed off behind a cluster of younger students, all of them chattering away as they hurried through the gate.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been expecting when she first arrived. She’d been kidding about the kilts and bagpipes in her e-mail to Owen, but there was still a little part of her that half-expected to be greeted by a bunch of red-bearded, plaid-wearing, whiskey-swigging classmates. As it turned out, though, Scottish schools weren’t all that different from American ones—at least not in any of the ways that were important. The uniforms were worse—knee-length skirts and boxy blazers—and the accents of her teachers forced her to pay close attention, straining to find something recognizable inside all those rolling r’s and twisted vowels. But the students were pretty much the same. The boys played rugby instead of football, and everyone talked about sneaking their parents’ whiskey instead of their parents’ beer on the weekends, but these were all small things.

  The only real difference—the only big difference—was Lucy herself.

  She realized it on the very first day, when she managed to get lost. The headmaster had walked her to registration and left her with a faint photocopy of a school map, which she’d promptly misplaced. So after the bell rang for first period and the halls emptied out with impossible speed, she was left standing there with no clue where to go and no one to ask for help. It wasn’t until she wandered around the corner that she found someone.

  He was standing at his locker, leisurely reaching for his books, in no particular hurry despite the empty halls, and Lucy knew right away that she would have absolutely avoided someone like him back home. He was tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and an angular jaw, too handsome to seem approachable. But it was more than that. There was something completely effortless about him, a casual confidence that was unnerving, even from a distance, even without having met him yet.

  He was the type of guy who couldn’t ever be invisible, even if he tried.

  “Hey,” she said, walking up to him. “Can you help me find my math class?”

  He turned to face her, his mouth twisted up at the corners. “Maths,” he said, drawing out the s.

  “Math,” Lucy repeated with a frown. “It’s not my best subject, but I’m pretty sure I know the difference between one and two.”

  This time, he laughed. “Here we call it maths,” he told her, reaching for the schedule in her hand and scanning the page. “And you’re on the wrong floor.”

  “Ah,” she said, her cheeks burning. “Thanks.”

  “No bother,” he said, clearly amused, then shut his locker door. “See you later.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe in histories. Or sciences.”

  He squinted at her, but when he realized she was only joking, his face broke into a grin. “Or lunches,” he said, raising his eyebrows as he walked away.

  Standing there alone in the hallway, she couldn’t help smiling. For the first time in her life, she realized there was no hope of blending in. Here, she was the one who was different. She was the one with the accent. The new girl. The object of curiosity. And to her surprise, she found she didn’t mind. Maybe this was why Owen had been so desperate to travel, why she’d longed for it herself without ever really knowing why. It wasn’t just that you got to be somewhere else entirely. It was that you got to be someone else entirely, too.

  Now, as she made her way through the huddles of students—many of them flashing unnervingly friendly smiles in her direction—she saw him standing at her locker. Already, in such a short amount of time, this had become a habit of sorts. Later on her first day, just after fourth period, he’d found her wandering again, and this time he escorted her to class. When the bell rang at the end, she was surprised to once again find him waiting just outside the door.

  “It would be an awful shame if you got lost and missed lunch,” he said with that blinding smile of his, and Lucy let herself be led to the dining hall. She waited for him to introduce himself, and when he didn’t, she finally stuck out her hand a little awkwardly.

  “I’m Lucy, by the way,” she said, and his eyes danced with laughter as he regarded her outstretched hand.

  “I know,” he said, taking it in his and giving it an exaggerated shake.

  “How?”

  “Everyone knows,” he said. “We don’t get a lot of new kids here. Especially not Yanks.”

  “Oh,” she said, her cheeks hot. “And you are…?”

  “Liam.”

  In the cafeteria, he guided her through the lunch line, identifying the various trays of mush. “Neeps and tatties,” he said, picking up a spoon and piling some on her plate, and when she gave him a mystified look, he smiled. “Turnips and potatoes.”

  She sat with him and his rugby friends, who peppered her with questions about New York. They wanted to know if she’d been to the top of the Empire State Building and if everyone in America had a swimming pool and whether she’d ever ridden in a yellow taxi. She felt like a visitor from some alien planet, but there was a warmth to their curiosity, a sense of genuine interest, and for once in her life, she didn’t seem to be wilting under such unwavering attention: instead, to her surprise, she was glowing.

  Afterward, Liam walked her to her next class, and just like that, it became a routine. She was grateful for the company, and more flattered than she cared to admit, even to herself. She’d seen the way other girls looked at Liam, had heard the stories of some of the plays he’d made on the rugby pitch, had watched the effect his easy smile had on teachers and students alike. But still, each time she saw him there, waiting outside one of her classrooms, she felt a pang of guilt, too.

  It was ridiculous; she knew this. In four days here, she’d already spent more time with Liam than she’d ever spent with Owen. He hardly even wrote anymore, and it wasn’t like they’d made any sort of promises to each other. So why did she feel like some small but essential part of her had been left behind in New York?

  This morning, Liam was waiting at her locker again, but even as their eyes met and he lifted
a hand, she couldn’t bring herself to wave. Instead, she felt around in her pocket for the postcard, tracing the edges, a portable reminder of Owen.

  “I have an idea,” Liam said as soon as she was close enough. “Do you have plans this afternoon?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “You probably haven’t gone up Arthur’s Seat yet, right?”

  “Arthur’s what?”

  “Seat,” he said, his eyes bright. “The hills just over there. It’s really famous, and there’s a great view up top. Want to go after school?”

  Lucy glanced down at her loafers. “I’m not sure I’m dressed for a hike.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, flashing a grin. “It’s really more of a walk.”

  After school, Liam led the way, through winding streets lined with little shops that sat beneath the hunched green hills, until the roads opened up into a sloping park, and they picked up a trail that went up, up, up as far as she could see.

  It was, as advertised, mostly just a walk at first, and they talked about their families and their homes and their siblings.

  “Will your brothers come visit, or will you go back and see them?” Liam asked. “Must be a bit odd, being so far apart. My brother moved to London last year, and the way my mum’s been acting, you’d think it was China.”

  Lucy smiled, keeping her eyes trained on the gravely trail. “My cousin’s getting married in San Francisco over Christmas break, so we’ll all see each other then,” she told him. “But I bet they’ll come over here for the summer, too. They’d never miss a chance to do some traveling on my parents’ dime.”

  “You mean 10p,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He glanced back with a grin. “Ten pence. No dimes over here.”

  It wasn’t long before the path grew steeper, and they were soon too winded to continue talking. Lucy’s lungs strained in the sea-heavy air, and her feet slipped on the dirt as the afternoon began to ease into evening.