Up to This Pointe

by Jennifer Longo

  Vivian looks up and pulls out one earbud. White girl, no makeup, close-cropped brown hair, and huge blue eyes. She extends a hand over the table, and I fumble with the paper cups. “Oh, perfect!” I say. “Would you like some tea?”

  She yanks her hand back. “Get that away from the equipment!”

  Charlotte looks up. “Vivian,” she says quietly.

  Vivian shakes her head. “Please,” she says. “Please keep scalding-hot liquids away from the very expensive and sensitive lab equipment. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  I give a cup to Charlotte, who crosses her eyes at me.

  “You’re biology, too?” Vivian says pointedly.

  I look instinctively to Charlotte.

  “Harper’s here to help with the grant writing, stats—you’re my research guru.”

  Vivian nods. “So when are we going to the rookery?”

  Charlotte frowns. “Oh, Viv, I’m so sorry—you were passed out and exhausted. I didn’t want to wake you. I had to go at Last Plane Out before they black-flagged the road, so Harper and I did just a quick turnaround. I swear, we’ll go again when the summer staff comes.”

  “Oh,” Vivian sighs. “Okay. Did you get it all?”

  “Yes! Thank God, we got everything. It’s all labeled, sealed, ready to go. See, Harper’s already saving us!”

  She nods and turns back to me. “So, not biology—what kind of science do you study?”

  “I’m…all kinds,” I stammer.

  “Luckily, there’s possibly too much work for even the three of us to ever plow through before winter ends, so enough with the chitchat, ladies,” Charlotte says, tossing a box of data my way. “Onward!”

  Vivian shoves her earbuds back in and bends over her work.

  The rest of the day passes in silence. Charlotte for her usual concentration, Vivian for what I fear is pissed-off resentment, and me for trying to not make anyone else mad at me.

  At five-thirty, Charlotte stretches, picks up our empty tea cups, and yawns. “We forgot to eat lunch!”

  Vivian pulls out an earbud. “What?”

  “Friday!” Charlotte says. “Who’s going out tonight?”

  I look up from the notes I’m transcribing. “Sorry?”

  “To the—Oh my God, I was going to say bars. Your mom would kill me! Sorry. Have you been talking to her?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “You should email her. Do it tonight, okay?”

  I nod.

  “You bring a laptop with you?” I shake my head. “Just use the one in here, then, anytime you want. Make sure you stay in touch with her. Promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Vivian? You still talking to your parents every night?”

  Vivian nods.

  “Good girl. Hard as it is to be away from your family, you being here is way worse for them. I guarantee it. And I’m legally in charge of you not dying, so you know. Call home.”

  “Okay,” I say, “we get it—Hold up, there are bars?”

  She’s changing her shoes under the lab table. “Three. I can get you in.”

  My eyes widen. Vivian shakes her head.

  “I’m kidding. Do not tell your parents I said that. I just go to hang out. I don’t even drink.”

  “Sure…,” Vivian drawls.

  “I don’t! Not lately—stupid party when I first arrived. Someone started the whole shots business, and I got so sick….Horrible for your liver. Just don’t do it. So gross.”

  Not to pigeonhole Vivian’s bookish temperament—I’m sure still waters run deep—but I doubt Charlotte’s got anything to worry about with the two of us.

  “There’s tons of other stuff to do. There’re, like, ten different game nights, a book club…We used to have a bowling alley, but that closed….Ooh, movie night!”

  “No thank you.”

  “It’s not always The Shining. Come on! Oh, there’re two gyms if you want to work out?”

  Vivian, earbuds back in, is packing up.

  I shrug. My poor, unused muscles scream their heads off in protest.

  “Okay. Well, take the weekend and explore. There’re classes you can take, really neat history of exploration and biology of The Ice, volleyball, a basketball court. Sun’ll be down soon, too, so we’ll have the party for that. Ooh, and Midwinter Formal!”

  “Formal…like a dance?”

  “Did no one tell you any of this? Oh, Harper, please tell me you brought a dress?”

  I wince. She stands and tosses up her hands.

  “It’s Antarctica!” I wail. “What are we talking about, a dress dress? Like prom?”

  “You’re a Scott; it’s his Midwinter celebration! How do you not know this? It’s a formal! Didn’t you read any of the manual?”

  “There was nothing about cocktail attire in there, just articles on hypothermia.”

  “Oh, good grief!” she sighs.

  “Good night,” Vivian practically shouts over her music, then waves to Charlotte, and the door closes behind her.

  Charlotte smiles apologetically. “We’ll work on her,” she says. “She’s very serious.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And a rule follower.”

  “Sure.”

  “Hey, Harp?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really good work this week. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You are a true Scott—born to Winter Over!”

  - - -

  In the dining hall, I fill a glass with ice and water, which I toss all over myself in surprise when someone touches my shoulder.

  “Oh God…sorry!” Aiden says. He starts wadding up paper napkins and pressing them all over my neck and shoulders.

  “Okay,” I say, taking over. “Got it, thanks.”

  He’s laughing, but not unkindly. “I’m really sorry. That’s not right….”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You didn’t come for lunch.”

  “Working. We forgot.” I have no boobs to speak of so I very rarely bother with a bra. And now my T-shirt is wet. I toss the napkins and cross my arms over my chest. “Nice seeing you again,” I say. “Have a good one!” And I run away through the obstacle course of tables.

  “Hold on!” he calls. “I’ve got something for you!” He catches me at the door and puts a foil-wrapped package in my hands. “For later.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I rush to the stairs to end this Girls Gone Wild: Antarctica episode, but he calls out once more.

  “Harper Scott, you going out tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Well, come with me now. Let me show you something!”

  He pulls me by my hand into the kitchen. I shift my free arm to cover my chest. He takes me past prep tables and people cooking, and back near the freezer to a sink beneath a small window. He fills a cup at the sink.

  “This is what happens to hot water in thirty-degree-below-zero air. Watch….” He unlocks the window, shoves it open, and tosses the water out into the orange street-lit air.

  A sparkling cloud of ice explodes from the cup. Powdery shards of frozen water float and dissipate. Aiden smiles, probably just as amazed as he was the first time he saw it happen.

  “Wow,” I breathe. A person cannot deny that magic. Or Aiden’s sincere reverence for it.

  “I’m off work,” he says. “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’re you up to now?”

  “Bed,” I say, arms crossed, still mortified.

  “No! It’s not even eight-thirty. Really?”

  “I’m so tired….”

  “Want to go to movie night? Just started.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Really?”

  “Next time, for sure.”

  “Coffee house? No smoking, no booze.”

  “I don’t know….” Seriously, the whole front of me is soaked. Can he not tell I’m squirming? Maybe not because, to his credit, his eyes never leave my face.

  “Library? It’s right by the laundry and the weight room.
Lots of…books? Or…oh, we could make stuff. You hungry?”

  I don’t think I’ve ever not been hungry.

  I feel so bad. This poor guy—three teenagers on the entire continent, and he’s the only one not currently sulking in his room or humiliated by accidental participation in a wet T-shirt contest. “Honestly, I really will be more fun soon. I’m just still sleepy. Not caught up.”

  “Ohhh,” he says. “Right. California?”

  “San Francisco.” Dad is forever quoting Sartre, this French playwright who was always clarifying that he was, in fact, not French; he was Parisian. We are not Californians, Dad says. We are San Franciscans. Makes it sound like we’re monks, but I know what he means.

  “San Francisco! I’ve been there, on holiday. Lovely. Want to go take a walk? Outside?”

  “Outside in the dark? Where it is so painfully cold, as you have just demonstrated, water instantly freezes?”

  “It’s beautiful out! There’s a moon, not a single cloud, and no telling how many nights like this we’ll have before the sun’s gone. We’re here! Let’s be here! Where’s your friend?”

  “Who?”

  “Vivian. I saw her this morning. What’s she like?”

  “Um. Not sure.”

  I make my way back through the dining room, and he follows.

  “Harper!”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve left my night open, so I’m making alternate plans. There’s a radio in your room?”

  Is there? “I don’t know.”

  “Look in the drawers and such. I’ve heard people leave things behind to lighten their loads. Turn it on in half an hour. Station 104.5.”

  “I will,” I say from the stairwell. “I promise.”

  “Good night!” he calls. Relentlessly cheerful.

  I take a hot shower and wash my hair, ten full minutes until I think of the Adélies and turn it off, guilty. No one else is anywhere around the bathrooms or in the hall. They’re all at the bars, I guess. Silence. It is beautiful.

  In my room I put on my flannel pajamas, comb my wet hair, and lie down. Out the window, McMurdo’s lights make the sky hard to see. I get up and pull open the desk drawers, careful to ignore the letter.

  Aiden was right. A small radio is in a bottom drawer, along with three strings of Christmas twinkle lights all connected, not even tangled. There are some stray tacks in the walls.

  I plug the radio in and tune it to 104.5 and Kurt Cobain is singing Heart-Shaped Box. I climb all over both beds and the chair to string the twinkle lights along the perimeter of the narrow room, where the walls meet the ceiling. I plug in the lights, turn off the desk lamp—heaven. Just enough to take away the shadows and warm the blue-gray color, still dark enough to sleep. I unwrap the foil package.

  Cinnamon roll.

  I put the radio on the chair beside my pillow, crawl back into the millions-of-kittens bed, and pull the blankets to my chin.

  “Well, good evening, McMurdo. Aiden Irish Spring Magically Delicious Kelly with you on a beautiful Friday night on The Ice. (Okay. Mystery solved. Not Scottish.) Here to remind you that climbing Observation Hill while drunk is not only illegal, but also stupid. So let’s not have any repeat performances like those of last week involving two people whose names I won’t mention, but they rhyme with Dave Connor and Jack Dolan. You two nearly got all our Ob Hill night-hike privileges revoked, which would have really pissed me off, as I’m trying to convince a certain lady to embark on said journey before winter’s here for real. So don’t screw it up for the rest of us. (How is he so familiar with people already?) All right. That’s business done. Now to some music for your moonlit Friday night. This one’s for the aforementioned lady. Welcome to McMurdo; welcome all of us fingys to The Ice; welcome to the rest of our lives. It will never be the same, now we’re here. And to the lady: I’m especially glad you’re here.”

  A song begins.

  “Some Flogging Molly for you. This is a ballad called ‘Drunken Lullabies.’ ”

  It is not a ballad. It’s a hard, fast Irish rock song.

  There were no emails waiting for me when I wrote Mom and Dad tonight. Nothing from Kate or Luke. Or Owen. No one.

  I’m okay. It’s okay.

  I fall asleep beneath the twinkle lights, radio on.

  - - -

  Might as well follow the sun.

  “Let’s go,” I tell Aiden the next morning over the silver bins of toast and blueberries. He’s back in the galley kitchen, whisking eggs to scramble.

  “Where?”

  “The mountain,” I say.

  “It’s a hill.”

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  “You found a radio.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m…Can you wait a couple of hours till I’m on break?”

  I look around. Hardly anyone in the dining hall. “Okay. Meet me at nine. Sharp. I’m ready.”

  “Nine o’clock, yes. Okay. At the desk.”

  “Yes.” I drink a glass of iced tea, fill a bowl with oatmeal, and sit alone to eat. I don’t read. I don’t listen to music. I just eat. By myself. It’s something I’m not used to doing, and I think it’s a good skill to learn.

  “Screw it,” Aiden says, striding toward me, pulling off his apron. “Everyone’s hungover. No one’s coming to breakfast. Let’s go.”

  Awesome.

  He runs to his room for his cold-weather gear while I zip my own parka and wrestle into the mittens. Ben is at the desk, leaning on his elbows.

  “Going somewhere?” He yawns.

  “Observation Hill.”

  “Not alone, you’re not.”

  “No, I’ll be with her,” Aiden calls as he rushes toward us, pulling on his own huge parka.

  Ben rolls his eyes. “You’ve got to get supervisor permission. Kids.”

  “Yep,” Aiden says, and produces two legal-length printed documents, both signed in pen. “Found Charlotte in the lab; she’s cool with it,” he tells me. Sure enough, he’s got her signature there on my permission slip. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I really should read the employee manual.

  Ben stamps and shoves both papers in a file.

  “Ready?” Aiden smiles. He pushes the door and holds it open, and a blast of cloudy light and that freezing wind hit me directly in my forehead. But I’ve taken a few preemptive Advil. So the cold can screw off.

  “Okay?” Aiden asks over the wind.

  “Yes.” At the fire station we collect our radios and tell them where we’re going, and we’re off.

  I follow Aiden’s footsteps on a path of muddy tire tracks, past black and red flags, through the buildings of McMurdo, and finally beyond, to the base of Observation Hill.

  “At the summit we’ll be at seven hundred fifty elevation.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re at seventy-nine now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Just might give some people a headache, I mean.” Perfect. Piggyback headaches are the best. We start the gradual ascent. “Do you do a lot of hiking in San Francisco?”

  I’m already huffing a little just keeping up with him. “No,” I breathe. “Not really.”

  The Advil I took is no match for this wind. He can tell.

  “Did you know the Vikings’ image of hell wasn’t fire at all? It was ice. Hel with one L.”

  I stand and breathe the pure, sharp air.

  “Hey,” I pant, “haven’t you only been here, like, a week longer than me?”

  “About that.”

  “How do you know so much?”

  “I’ve been trying to get here for a really long while. Been reading up. Winter Over blogs. Books. Like that.”

  Standing still makes breathing easier, but invites the cold so quickly. The Vikings were onto something.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” he says. “Hiking? It’s just walking.”

  And so we walk. Up the hill. There’s no actual climbing beyond the elevation. It’s just a trail; it switchbacks and rises
pretty quickly, and I keep my head down, one foot in front of the other, for nearly half an hour, so that I do not see where we’re going until we’re there.

  And then we are.

  The wind whips cold and McMurdo lies below the mountain, a Lego town with Matchbox vehicles. But beyond the station…if I had breath left, it would be taken away.

  The Ross Sea, cobalt blue today and choppy, the sweeping curves of ice and snow, a dome of endless white-blue sky. Skuas, penguin egg–stealing brown birds, float on the current of the icy air over the water. All the world is white and blue and gray, still, so strange and resplendent that I’m getting the Adélie feeling once more, the ache of overwhelming beauty I’ve only ever felt while standing backstage in the dark, watching my little kids, watching Kate, myself ready in the wings—until, at last, the music starts. Gradually, quietly swelling and then the cue, the one note signaling movement, into the light, now, go, turn…

  “You’re not a scientist.”

  A statement, not a question, loud over the wind. “No.”

  “But you’re a Scott.”

  “Yes.”

  “You here for school?”

  I shake my head.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “You’re astronomy,” I say.

  “The winter skies here are supposed to be insane,” he says. “But I wanted to come even before I cared about that. I think most people have lives that keep them, more or less…anchored. And some others don’t. But the world’s spinning, and anchorless people tend to fall to the bottom…here.”

  “You have no anchor? What are you, a world-weary sea captain? You’re seventeen! What about your family? School?”

  “Life’s too big to stay in one place forever. After university, I can see being here every winter, spending the rest of the year seeing the world. I mean, the whole planet. All of it.”

  Charlotte’s voice is in my head. Peter Pan living for himself with no responsibilities.

  “Come see this!” Aiden says. He is up on the highest ledge, rocks and sand in the snow, standing beside a tall wooden cross.

  Mom’s got a framed photo of this cross on her bedroom wall; it is featured in the final chapter of every book ever written about Scott. It is the nine-foot-tall memorial the search party erected when they found him frozen with his last three men. It is engraved, I know, with their names, and with the last words of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: TO STRIVE, TO SEEK, TO FIND, AND NOT TO YIELD.