Up Over Down Under

by Micol Ostow

  Eliza was floored, and momentarily rendered speechless. She looked down to make sure that her heart, which was beating a mile a minute, wasn’t actually bursting out of her chest. She took a little breath and tried to play as cool as she could, all things considered.

  “Well, I guess that sounds like a pretty fair deal,” Eliza said with a grin. “I accept, but only because you’re doing a nice favor for me,” she said, reminding him playfully.

  “Great, it’s the week after next on Friday night. It’ll be a ripper!”

  Eliza had no idea what a “ripper” was. But she had a feeling she was going to like it. A lot.

  Chapter Ten

  From: elizarit@email.com

  To: billiesurf@email.com

  Subject: Re: first days

  Hey there—

  How’re you going? (And how’s that for “cultural acclimation,” huh?) Things are great down here—other than the weather, that is. People keep telling me it’s going to get warmer, but so far, no dice. Which makes it all the more difficult to get motivated to spend time collecting soil specimens on the cold, windy beach.

  But I shouldn’t complain about my internship when it sounds like you’ve got your hands full. I spoke to my dad the other day, and he mentioned the new roll-out schedule for Proposition Seven. I can’t believe funding is getting pushed forward by two years! I mean, I’m not, like, some kind of environmental crusader or anything, but I know about the EPA—how could I not, given my dad’s job, and all of the preparation that I had to do for S.A.S.S. Goes Green? He says it’s because other projects are taking priority, but given what a hot issue Chesapeake Bay pollution has become in D.C., I’m still shocked. No wonder he’s got you guys running point on damage control.

  Hang in there!

  Eliza

  Things just weren’t clicking for Billie.

  She was discouraged to have learned that her primary reason for wanting to be in the United States—the chance to work with Mr. Ritter on Proposition Seven—amounted to little more than pushing papers. Today, an e-mail blast. Tomorrow, a snail mailing. All for the sake of letting the public know that money to clean the bay wasn’t going to be available for another two years at the earliest.

  She should have known. His wife did drive an SUV. How could Ritter be anything but a farce?

  From what Billie had read, ever since the Chesapeake Bay had been officially declared dirty water, one of the EPA’s announced objectives had been to fund a massive cleanup. There wasn’t a single classroom in Washington that hadn’t heard about Proposition Seven and the plans to finally clean the bay. But apparently the EPA’s budget for programming had come in lower than expected, and—as Eliza mentioned in her e-mail—other projects were suddenly bumped ahead on the priority scale. Cleaning the bay would have to wait. Which would have been awful enough news on its own, even if it hadn’t meant that Billie’s job now consisted of finding ways to spread the news about the proposition in a positive and enthusiastic light. She felt like a fraud, like a typical government spin doctor.

  At any rate, she would have much preferred to spend her days collecting soil samples, or testing water for contamination. Even if Proposition Seven were progressing full steam ahead, she wanted to get her hands dirty—like Eliza was doing. The girls’ work was meant to be opposite sides of the same educational coin. The two schools had arranged it that way. At the end of the semester, they’d exchange reports on their internship experiences, as well.

  It was almost as though she and Eliza had switched places, and the American was the one who was all hands-on. Not that Eliza begrudged her academic doppelganger a worthy cause; instead, she wished they could somehow be sharing that cause. Couldn’t they be twins instead of shadow sisters? Firing off impassioned e-mails every five minutes wasn’t going to change the world.

  And also, it was pretty clear that Iris was growing weary of Billie’s constant barrage of questions. Her expression darkened every time Billie either raised her hand or started with a timid “excuse me.” It was apparent that Billie was most definitely not excused.

  To her surprise, she hadn’t made any real, close friends since she’d been here, either. Fiona-belle mostly stuck to themselves, which was just as well; they were kind of creepy. Heather seemed to like Billie well enough, but Billie’s internship kept her so busy that they didn’t get as much time together as she would have liked. And Parker, while outgoing, was, to a certain way of thinking, Eliza’s. Even if Billie didn’t know what was going on with the two of them this semester, she felt a bit awkward trying to get to know him better, given his relationship to the girl with whom she’d swapped places.

  The rest of the American students were all friendly enough (and incredibly taken by Billie’s accent), but they had clearly settled into their own little bubble of high school existence ages ago and weren’t necessarily looking to take any new stragglers into their cliques.

  She wondered how Eliza was faring at St. Cat’s. People there were generally more outgoing. Or was it just that it felt that way to Billie when she was home, surrounded by everything familiar? Eliza had mentioned talking to Jess and Nomes, so she’d have to ask if they’d become better friends.

  Monday morning proved to be more of the same. D.C. was rainy—she’d had to skip her before-school run, which meant that she was doubly stir-crazy—and Billie’s sandy hair was frizzy from the humidity, clinging to her forehead in unruly waves. D.C. was always humid, no matter what else the weather was doing. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Billie would whine about in general, but each day her hair-style became increasingly mad, until she wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t being mobbed by American fans on a daily basis. Thank goodness for hairpins. She’d be relieved to get home to the Australian climate—even if it was reliably unreliable.

  At least the topic of discussion in her social studies class seemed interesting. Ms. Franklin was just getting the class’s attention.

  “Proposition Seven looks to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay by thirty percent over the next five years,” she began.

  In an alternate reality, Ms. Franklin must have been Billie’s kindred spirit. She was the only person whom Billie had met in D.C. who was as interested in Proposition Seven (as opposed to, say, interested in sending out five million e-mails about why Proposition Seven would have to be postponed) as Billie herself was.

  “Does anyone know how they plan to do so?”

  Poor Ms. Franklin. Billie suspected she was the only one really paying any attention to the teacher.

  Or was she? From the front row of the classroom, Parker hesitantly inched his arm forward. Ms. Franklin nodded at him.

  He sat up straight in his seat. “The EPA wants a cleaner and healthier bay, and is committed to holding polluters accountable and to working with all of our partners to speed up the cleanup. That means using innovative and sustainable tools and focusing on environmental cooperation.”

  Was it Billie’s imagination, or did he turn to her and actually wink?

  She wasn’t seeing things. Parker was grinning at her from across the room. And no wonder. She was the only person in class likely to know that he was quoting directly from the press release that Ritter had sent out the week before. Printing and collating five hundred copies of it tended to leave an imprint on one’s memory.

  Before she could stop herself, she snickered aloud.

  “He’s actually right, Billie,” Ms. Franklin said. “But did you have something that you wanted to share?”

  “Oh, no, of course not…” Billie replied, embarrassed. She hadn’t meant to speak—or, for that matter, snort—out loud. How humiliating. If only she could meld to her plastic seat like a human chameleon. Unfortunately, the seat was a misguided shade of banana yellow, and Billie’s peaches-and-cream complexion stood out all too starkly against it. Between that and the snorting, she figured there was no way to get out of answering Ms. Franklin.

  “It’s just…” she hedged, trailing off uncertainly. She had
to be very careful how she answered this question, after all. The last thing she wanted was to go on record slamming Mr. Ritter, so instead she just jabbered on endlessly like an enormous prat.

  “I guess I just feel like there are some other, more, um, urgent steps that we maybe should be taking right now?” Her voice went up at the end of her suggestion, making it sound like more of a wild guess. Now, in addition to looking like a lunatic, everyone would think for sure that she was a bit mental. “I mean, that sentiment is nice and all, but without funding, the bay doesn’t get clean.”

  Ms. Franklin readjusted her glasses and peered over their lenses at Billie. “True enough, but surely the money has been set aside for equally worthy programs. In which case, what would you have the EPA do?”

  Billie swallowed. “Well, funding is crucial, of course. I certainly don’t mean to imply otherwise. But we can also solicit volunteers for actual fieldwork to help clean the water, until the money to bring in professional teams is available,” she said, trying to project more confidence.

  Eeep! Had she actually said that out loud—that she was starting to see things from the non-Ritter point of view?

  The classroom was stonily still except for Parker, who’d taken to rubbing his hands together with an almost cartoonish glee. At least she had one ally in the room, Billie thought. Since the look on her teacher’s face was utterly inscrutable at best.

  Ms. Franklin mashed her lips together, her expression still impassive. “Hmm,” she said, finally. “I see.”

  But that was all.

  “Hmm” could have meant many things, but apparently, in this case, “hmm” meant, “Billie, please stay after class.”

  If Billie had been embarrassed before, now she was fairly desperate with panic. She hoped she wasn’t getting into trouble, or getting sent home, and even though neither outcome seemed especially likely, by the time the bell rang signaling the end of class, her palms were slick with sweat and her heartbeat was fluttery inside her rib cage. What if they’d called Mr. Ritter in just to have him feed her a nice kick in the butt for speaking ill of his program? Could you be fired from an unpaid internship that wasn’t even, technically, a job?

  “You wanted to see me, Ms. Franklin?” Billie asked, clutching her heavy stack of notebooks close to her chest defensively.

  “Yes.” The teacher looked up from her grade book. “I was interested in what you were saying earlier in class about Proposition Seven.”

  Billie flushed and ran a hand through her fringe to move it out of her eyes. “It was just…you know, a suggestion. I mean…everybody knows how essential clean water is.”

  “I don’t think everybody does know, Billie,” Ms. Franklin replied pointedly. “If they did, I think we’d see funding going toward cleaning the bay right away rather than two years from now.” At this, Billie could only shrug. True or not, she wasn’t sure what Ms. Franklin was getting at.

  “I know that, through S.A.S.S., you’re working for Ritter,” the teacher went on, leaning forward as though she were sharing a secret, instead of just telling Billie something she already knew. “It sounds to me like maybe you’re getting a little bit frustrated?”

  Billie cast her eyes down onto the floor, toward an invisible point several inches in front of her feet. She didn’t respond. If she made too much of a fuss, or threw too much of a wobbler, would they send her back to Melbourne? She certainly wasn’t ready for her semester to end.

  Sensing her reluctance to spill any details, Ms. Franklin continued. “I can tell that you’re trying to be diplomatic. That’s a good thing. That’s the professional way to be. You obviously know better than to be too squeaky of a wheel at work.”

  If only Ms. Franklin actually knew.

  “To be honest, I think I might already be too much of a squeaker as it is,” Billie confessed. Maybe she really had been starved for a new BFF; she was so appreciating talking freely with Ms. Franklin. “It might be time for me to tone it down at the internship, and decide to just make peace with sending useless e-mails on a daily basis.”

  To Billie’s surprise, Ms. Franklin actually burst out laughing. Now her teacher, the last vestige of her support system, was openly having a laugh at her expense?

  “There are lots of other ways to get your voice heard, you know,” Ms. Franklin said gently as her laughter died down. “Ways that might be more subtle, but also more effective.”

  “Like what?” Billie asked, curious.

  “You could write a piece for the school paper here, maybe an editorial or a human interest piece about conservation. Take a hard look at some of the states that have imposed a clean-water tax and compare it to the budget problems here in D.C. and Virginia.”

  Billie nodded, considering the suggestion. It wasn’t a bad idea at all. “But . . . this being the capital and all…even the school paper must get heaps of submissions about things like the environment, or politics, or . . .” She trailed off. “The environment” and “politics” were all she’d taken in of D.C. since she’d arrived. Those, and museums. Did people write about museums?

  “You’d be surprised,” Ms. Franklin said. “I think, precisely because we’re an arts-based school in a political city, the newspaper tends to shy away from ‘issues’ and lean more toward coverage of the arts—and specifically, student or school projects and exhibitions. Your viewpoint could bring a breath of fresh air to the paper.”

  Billie grinned. “No pun intended.”

  Ms. Franklin smiled right back. “How can you be sure of that?”

  Ms. Franklin’s suggestion was such a good one that, at lunchtime, Billie went straight to the student activities office. She found it on the third floor of the building, just next to the faculty lounge. It was a dingy room that some kind—and optimistic—souls had obviously seen fit to try to decorate with a smattering of inspirational posters (HANG IN THERE!) and teen magazine pullouts.

  The room was empty save for two people. One was Heather, hunched over in her seat with her back to the door. She appeared to be focused intently on a notepad she held in her hand.

  The other was Parker.

  What were the odds? Billie wondered. Two of the only people she really knew in D.C., and they both worked on the newspaper for which she now wanted to write. This had to be one of those “karmic” moments that people on daytime talk shows always went on about.

  Billie cleared her throat, and Heather whirled around in her seat. Her eyes widened when she saw Billie, and she tapped Parker’s shoulder. The two of them seemed awfully surprised—though not unhappily so—to see Billie in the newspaper office. She took the fact that they were both offering quizzical smiles to be a good sign, and forged ahead.

  “Hi,” she said, waving a tentative hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you guys.”

  “You didn’t,” Parker insisted. Then he took a breath and smiled even more broadly. “Duh. Obviously you did. Don’t worry about it.”

  “What are you doing here?” Heather asked, grinning. “Did you want to get your write on?” She tilted back in her rickety chair and ran her fingers through her mass of curly brown hair.

  “It’s just…Ms. Franklin told me that this was where I should go to sign up for the newspaper?” Billie scanned the room, seeing nothing by way of a sign-up sheet and, in fact, no real signs of life other than Parker and Heather.

  “Yup,” Heather replied brightly. “But you don’t have to literally sign up. I mean, there’s no, like, sheet, or roster, or anything. You just get an article assigned to you.”

  “Okay,” Billie said. “Easy enough. Who does the assigning?”

  “That would be me,” Parker said, standing up. “I’m the editor in chief of the paper. And you”—he added, eyes twinkling—“are suddenly, what, my stalker or something?”

  Billie couldn’t help herself, she giggled. “You wish,” she quipped, then bit her lip nervously. Was she flirting with Parker? Was this what actual flirting was? If so, it left her feeling slightly weird. It was
like she was…spying on Eliza, somehow. The fact that she and Parker seemed to have so much in common made it only odder still.

  “Right,” Parker said, making a goofy face. “Tell me the truth—did Eliza put you up to it? Following me around, I mean?”

  “It was dead simple,” Billie teased. “I recognized you straightaway from the pictures in her room,” she blurted without thinking.

  At this, a slight blush crept up Parker’s neck, spreading across his cheeks until he was fully flushed. “Yeah? She still has those up?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Billie said, waving her hand in an “of course” sort of gesture. She felt a flush creeping up her own neck, though she wasn’t sure exactly why it was happening.

  Suddenly the air in the room had taken on a charge, like electricity. It was as though the mention of Eliza’s pictures, however innocent, had suddenly set everyone on edge.

  “I’ve been e-mailing her,” Parker continued, “but I haven’t heard back yet. I guess she must be busy.”

  Uh-oh. Have I walked into some relationship drama? Billie worried to herself. If she didn’t even have a relationship of her own, the last thing she needed was someone else’s complications. Eliza hadn’t mentioned much about Parker in her last e-mail to Billie, but then again, it wasn’t like the girls were so close that they’d exchange all manner of boy-friendly secrets. Now what? Billie wondered. The room had grown awkwardly quiet. Even Heather was looking like she’d rather be buried in quicksand than caught in conversation with Billie and Parker.

  Billie knew she had to say something. Purely on instinct, she tripped over herself agreeing with Parker enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, the S.A.S.S. programs…they’re murder on your social life.” Not that she knew this from experience, of course. The whole reason she wanted to write for the paper, after all, was because of her complete and total lack of social life.