“Am I seriously that untrustworthy?”
“Rae, darling, you’re eighteen. Of course you’re untrustworthy. So, tell me everything. Where are you right now? What can you see?”
“I’m on a train. I can see an electrical socket.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“The fanciest.” Rae detached her water bottle from the side of her bag and took a long swig. The train went around a bend, and her body swung to the side. For a second, she remembered her fight with Aubrey and felt awful. How could she have lost her temper so quickly? How could she have said all that stuff about Aubrey being selfish?
The next second, she remembered what Aubrey had said first—You’re transforming into this brand-new person, and she’s secretive and she’s mean, and I don’t like her—and Rae got pissed all over again.
“You haven’t sent me any pictures,” her mom said. “I want to see it all—the hostels, the dodgy bars. Don’t leave anything out.”
“I’ll send you some now.”
“Great! I’ll get them printed and you can take them with you to Australia.”
“Uh-huh,” Rae said. But she didn’t want to talk about Australia right now. Her brain felt cloudy, and her life felt so complicated. What would happen with Clara when she left? What would happen with Aubrey? It was a lot to wrap her head around. “What are you doing?” she asked, changing the subject. “Where’s Iorek?”
“Sitting next to me. We’re in the studio.”
Rae lay back on her pillow. “It’s kind of late to be working.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about you. I had this idea for a piece about travel. Maybe a collage? Something about what we imagine a place will be versus what it’s like when we actually get there. Your pictures might inspire me, kid.”
“Mom,” Rae said, “you need to sleep.”
“I sleep! And there’s this wonderful innovation—it’s called caffeine. You should try it sometime.”
Rae’s stomach churned. Was this what her mom would be like next year? Staying up all night, throwing herself into work, clearly drinking a lot of coffee. And what would Rae be like without her? Even now—even during this five-minute phone conversation—she felt hollow with homesickness. She wanted to eat microwaved noodles at her kitchen table and hang out in the studio with Iorek, drawing in her sketchbook. She wished she could forget her fight with Aubrey, and the fact that Clara was one room away but Rae still couldn’t talk to her, and the fact that next year was rushing toward her at an unrelenting speed, never slowing down, never taking a break.
“Rae?” her mom said. “You still here?”
“Yeah.” Rae rubbed her eyelids. “I’m here.”
“Did you get those messages I sent you about Sydney? With the pictures of Bondi Beach? It’s got this art deco architecture, and there’s a pool right there, floating in the middle of the ocean. Check your e-mail and see.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“Okay. Well, pass the phone to Aubrey for a second. I want to say hi.”
“Mom. Everyone here’s asleep.”
Her mom paused for a moment. “Okay, kid. But you know”—her voice went a little quieter—“it’s normal if this trip isn’t going exactly the way you’d hoped. Traveling with friends can be tough. I went with this girl, Annabelle, to Budapest back in ’98, and I thought it would be so much fun. But we drove each other up the wall.”
Rae fidgeted with the corner of her pillow. The train chugged around her like a heartbeat. She wanted to believe that her mom was right—that all this tension was just a side effect of traveling together, of being in all the same places and never getting a moment apart. But the problem was, she’d never needed a moment apart from Aubrey before. Maybe this was about who she and Aubrey were becoming. Maybe they were turning into people who wouldn’t stay best friends.
“I don’t think I can stay awake,” she said. “Can I call you when I get to Florence?”
They said good night and hung up. Rae turned on the tiny reading light above her bed, took the bangles off her wrist, and opened up her sketchbook. There were a few images from Prague she wanted to get down while they felt fresh—the Astronomical Clock and the Charles Bridge and the view from the Vyšehrad. She dragged her pencil across the paper, but her mind kept skipping back to other things—to a square at night, a church, and a girl.
She turned the page and drew the girl instead. A girl standing between buildings so out of focus, they could have been clouds. But she was completely solid. The fabric of her dress fell to her knees, and her collarbone touched the hollow of her neck. The corner of her mouth was pulled into a slight curve—
Gabe opened the door; Rae snapped her sketchbook shut.
“You should seriously go out there.” Gabe hopped onto his own bed. He was holding a bag of M&Ms and a soda. “The people in a train dining car at two in the morning are wild. I think this one girl was a musician. And there was a guy in a wrinkled business suit sitting all by himself, just drinking coffee and reading Ernest Hemingway. What do you think his story was?”
“He’s a misogynist?” Rae offered.
“That’s one possibility.” Gabe put his hands behind his head. His expression was dreamy but awake—like he wanted to sleep, but his mind was busy going over so many other things. “Do you think this is what happens as we get older?” he asked. “We start seeing adults more like people. We start wondering what they did in their life and how they got to where they are.”
“I think we just become adults, too,” Rae said. “And then we realize we’re all equally fucked-up.”
Gabe sat up and put his feet on the ground. “I’ve made a decision. What do you think about literature?”
“Like, in general?”
“Like, as a major. For me. I’ve never really considered it before, but—I don’t know. Books are almost like songs, aren’t they? You can read one a hundred times, but every time you get something different from it.”
“Um,” Rae said, “sure?”
Gabe scratched at his chin. Rae wondered if this whole literature thing had anything to do with Aubrey—she was, after all, their resident English major. But whatever. Rae had no desire to ask him about Aubrey or her major or how the hell any of that related to him.
“I might not sleep yet, if that’s okay?” he said. “I feel like listening to music.”
“Go ahead.” Rae kicked off her flip-flops. “I’m not tired, either.”
He uncoiled his headphones and fished through his stuff for a book with a shiny cover he must have bought in Prague. Rae heard the tinny sounds of a guitar and drums—the opening riff of a Joy Division song—coming from his phone. She heard him push around his pillow and prop himself against the wall behind him.
Rae opened her sketchbook again and turned the page. The picture she’d been working on before didn’t seem right anymore, so she started something new. Two girls on a train, sleeping in separate rooms. A thin wall ran between them, but the perspective was from above so you could see them both. One girl’s hair coiled over her sheets as she slept; the other girl sat up with her stuff all around her, a pen and paper in her hand. Graphite stained Rae’s fingers as she worked. Her wrist ached, but she didn’t stop.
Rae had fallen asleep.
Her head was crunched against the vibrating wall; her sketchbook had fallen to the floor. She woke to the sound of the curtains swishing open. Gabe was perched at the edge of his bed, looking at something outside.
“Whatissit?” Rae mumbled. “Are we there?”
“Oh, sorry.” He looked over at her. “I was trying to be quiet.”
She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and picked up her sketchbook. When she sat back up, she could see what Gabe was looking at: the sunrise. Patchwork fields painted red and orange. A moving landscape bathed in gold.
“Rad,” she said, her voice croaky.
“Here.” He handed her a paper cup with a black plastic lid. “I’ve already had two of these. We’re going to ne
ed a lot to get through today.”
She took a few sips of the hot black coffee, her gaze trained on a flock of birds that hovered over the fields. Their forms were distant and smudged, like pencil marks against the sky. Rae stretched out her wrist, which hurt even more than it had the night before. Plus, her neck was stiff, and she knew she had to sit all day on another train from Vienna to Florence. It would be hours until she could have an actual shower and feel normal again.
“She’ll be okay,” Gabe asked suddenly, “won’t she?”
“Who?” Rae yawned. “Aubrey?”
Gabe nodded.
“Of course she will,” Rae said. “This is just her first major heartbreak. She’s having the necessary meltdown.”
“I guess so.” Gabe rubbed his palm over his face and turned back to the window. But now, Rae couldn’t stop staring at him. He looked like he’d slept even less than she had—the sheets were crumpled at the bottom of his bed, and his shoulders were tense, eyes alert. She gripped her coffee as it hit her that she knew what was happening to Gabe—she knew because the exact same thing was happening to her. It had been happening to her all week. All year.
Here they were at six AM, restless and staring at the sunrise over a place they’d never been before. They were both so awake—and they were both so in love.
21
Aubrey
Friday, July 8
FLORENCE
Home sweet home,” Clara said.
Aubrey put her bag down. Their apartment in Florence had high ceilings with exposed rafters, worn hardwood floors, and a beige couch covered in faded pastel cushions. It was early evening, and after two long train rides, Aubrey’s eyelids felt like cement. She ran her fingers along the back of the couch while Clara and Rae unlocked the shutters. Muted light striped the floor; pigeons outside beat their wings.
“Better, right?” Clara dusted off her hands. “Less depressing?”
“Totally,” Rae said.
In the light, Aubrey began to notice other small details of the apartment: the bits of folded newspaper beneath the dining table’s legs, the miniature washing machine squeezed into the equally miniature kitchen, and the old board games shoved beneath a chipped-glass coffee table. There was a cracked vase filled with wilted lavender blossoms on one of the windowsills. Dust motes bobbed through the air.
The room was eerie and cavernous, as silent as a held breath. It made Aubrey think of an old countryside church she’d visited with her parents when they’d first moved to England. She remembered standing in the dark aisle of it, noticing the trees that moved behind stained-glass windows, feeling hushed and somber and still.
She felt that way now.
Although maybe that was because Jonah wasn’t with them.
The apartment had originally been his idea. He’d texted the listing to her at three AM one night with a series of question and exclamation marks. She’d woken up and messaged him back right away with OMG PERFECT! The apartment itself was run-down enough that, split between the five of them, it wasn’t too expensive. And renting it meant they wouldn’t be stuck in hostels for the rest of the trip. It meant they had three whole nights to live in their own place—to make their own food, hang up their own laundry, and practice living like grown-ups.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Gabe said. He took his stuff up to the low-ceilinged second floor, where there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. Aubrey walked toward the windows. She saw laundry lines strung between buildings and someone watering flower boxes on the balcony across the way. But she felt so removed from it all. Like she was living above it, only skimming the surface.
“I’m going out,” she said, turning to her friends.
Clara and Rae were kneeling on the ground, picking through the pieces of an old Monopoly set. “Where to?” Clara asked.
“Not sure. The Duomo’s near here and the Uffizi Gallery. I don’t want to wait till tomorrow. I want to see something tonight.” She tucked one of the apartment’s heavy keys into her pocket and paused a beat before opening the door, waiting to see if they would offer to come with her.
But they didn’t. Clara took out a metal game piece and placed it on the ground, and Rae did the same. There was something about how they were bent toward each other, the way they were both so focused on the exact same thing—it was like when kids play a game that doesn’t make any sense to adults. It was like they were speaking to each other in code.
Aubrey grabbed her wallet and phone. She opened the door.
The area around the Duomo was a tourist haven: souvenir stands and gelato stalls, cute cafés with outdoor tables, everyone wearing sneakers and wraparound sunglasses. And in the center of it all was the Duomo, a cathedral with a spherical, rust-colored top, like a sun caught in perpetual daybreak.
It was pretty. But also boring. Why had she come here all by herself?
She ordered an espresso at the closest café and took a seat at a table outside. At the table beside her was a family: two teenagers—a boy and a girl—and their parents. They had strong Scottish accents, and the teenagers were arguing while their parents wordlessly shared a lemonade. One year ago, that could have been Aubrey and Chris and their parents. It occurred to her that, in her entire life, she’d never been this isolated before—no family, no friends. Even Rae wanted nothing to do with her now. She was floating alone, without a safety net.
And that, she realized, was why she’d chosen Columbia—not just because it was the school of her dreams or because of its great English-lit program or any of the other reasons she’d always given people. She’d chosen it because of Jonah. Because if she was going to leap into the unknown, she wanted to do it with someone who could at least hold her hand.
Okay, okay, she thought. Make a list, Aubrey. Make a list of things you can control.
She tasted her espresso, which was strong and bitter. She imagined being in her bedroom at home, with her desk and her bed and her floral curtains. She imagined sitting on the floor and going through all the books she’d decided to bring to college—Pride and Prejudice and I Capture the Castle and her copy of The Chamber of Secrets, full of the notes she and Rae had written to each other when they were twelve. There were other books—ones about belonging, about leaving, about falling in love. The books she’d chosen to sit on the shelves in her dorm. The books that would keep her company.
Her pulse began to slow; the café seemed to grow quiet.
Gabe pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.
“Gabe!” Aubrey nearly knocked over her espresso. “What are you doing here?”
“Sitting,” he said. His hair was slicked back, like he’d rushed over right after his shower. Like he’d tried to find her as quickly as he could. He picked up a sugar packet and spun it on the table.
“Sitting?” she said. “As in, you followed me here and now you’re sitting, because—because why?”
The daughter of the family at the next table was watching them with interest. But when Aubrey caught her eye, the girl went back to scanning the crowd, her expression sliding into boredom.
“I heard you telling Clara and Rae you were coming here,” he said.
“And you decided to check on me?”
“I decided to come, too.” He leaned into the center of the table. “You said it yourself, Bryce. There’s a lot to see around here.”
A waiter carried a few plates of tomato pasta by Aubrey’s head. She tugged at the sides of her cottony shorts. She wished she’d taken the time to shower and change as well. She wished she didn’t feel like she’d been traveling all day. “This place is pretty crowded,” she said.
“We could leave?” A dimple twitched on the left side of his mouth. “If you want?”
They pushed their chairs back at the exact same time, and, without saying a word, picked a direction and decided to follow it. A moped shot past them and swerved around a corner. They crossed a bridge as the dusky evening crept toward night. Here, the crowds began to fade away and thei
r surroundings slowly transformed. Houses gave way to stretches of stone walls with cypress trees growing behind them. The sound of church bells drifted on the breeze; the cobblestone road was bumpy and uneven. They were walking uphill, which made Aubrey’s muscles strain. But she wouldn’t stop. Gabe took long strides, and she did her best to match them, using each one to leave behind Rae and Jonah and every stupid fight she’d had on every stupid train since she’d left London. She walked until she was completely out of breath, until a few houses began to reappear, all of them painted a bleached yellow. Over the wall running beside them, she saw a miniature Florence laid out below. Red-roofed building after red-roofed building.
“Wow,” she exhaled.
“It’s so—” Gabe said.
“Far away.” She rubbed the side of her face on the shoulder of her shirt. The city seemed impossibly small, like she could reach out and touch the tops of the buildings. Like the evening haze was steam she could wipe away with her fingers.
“You know”—Gabe panted—“I think I kind of remember Florence. I must have come here with my parents when we lived in Madrid. When I was, like, four or something.”
“What do you remember?”
“Mostly Zaida convincing me we should sneak away from our parents. When they found us again, I was crying, but Z played it cool. She told them they should have been more responsible.”
Aubrey felt the corner of her mouth lift. She could imagine tiny Gabe stranded in a crowd of people, gripping his older sister’s hand. But it was also weird to think of him being so young. And even weirder to think that, in a different part of the world, she’d been that young, too. Fourteen years ago, none of her friends had even moved to London yet. They hadn’t known that all their lives were about to collide.
“Do you think you’ll ever live there again?” she asked. “In Spain?”
“My mom would love that,” Gabe said. “She’s pretty worried that she and my dad didn’t take us back there enough. We went for a few summers, and once when my abuelo died, but it always felt really strange. I’d spend every afternoon in my abuela’s house, which was kind of familiar but in ways I couldn’t place. My relatives kept telling me and Z how American we were now.”
The Summer of Us Page 14
