Friends tried to blackmail me into going on last term’s ski trip to Verbier but I stood firm. I’m made of tougher stuff than the average teen. My friends all tell me I go too far, but my broad life experience has proved that you can never go too far. It’s in not going far enough that people come unstuck.
“Elegance is refusal!” I reminded Rosie.
“You do know you’re mad, Octavia, right?”
“It’s my signature stance and a girl does not sacrifice her signature, Rosie.”
We were rudely interrupted by our lunatic teacher. “I will not tolerate chitchat in my class, Miss O’Brien! Turn around or get out!”
Rosie turned back to her laptop. I didn’t have to see what she was doing to know she was composing. That’s what she wants to do when she’s a grown-up-type person. Compose. Vogue has already done a feature on her as the big thing to watch in classical music.
Rosie’s weirdly techie and spends a lot of time in her head deconstructing Bach fugues, but she’s still totally cool and stylish in an iconoclastic fashion refusenik sort of way. Who else could get away with a Mathew Williamson sequined tunic, Myla knickers, boots, a splash of clear nail varnish, a squirt of Fracas, and nothing else, without looking like a tart? No one but Rosie, that’s who, because she’s got that whole cream-skin-and-legs-that-go-on-forever thing going on.
That’s why it’s so off the wall that she’s insecure about her looks. Everyone’s always telling me I’m attractive. If only looks were everything. Mumsy is always saying that all girls my age are beautiful: “Darling, of course you’re stunning, but at your age that’s nothing special.” I wonder if Mumsy thinks anything is special—apart from Papa, of course. She worships him.
Anyway, for some unfathomable reason, Rosie is convinced she’s a pale shadow of moi, which is so not true. She looks like an aristo that hit Portobello Market a bit hard. In fact she’s so stunning, it’s hard to accept what a genius she is sometimes.
All my friends are super directed and bright. It’s a bit disheartening really—their direction thing, I mean. Perdie wants to play polo for England, and Artimis is, like, the most artistic person in the world. She might have the figure and the looks of an artist’s muse, but she’s the demon with the brush.
All I have is a title, and let’s face it, who cares about that when you can’t even afford to meet up with friends for pizza? The days of trading on a title are long gone in Londres. And no, I don’t want to be an It Girl. The very thought makes my brain bleed. I’ve done a few magazine shoots because I get to keep the shoes and clothes. Without freebies my fantasy would be totally over. I also have an old sewing machine and for years I’ve been making most of my own clothes (not that I let on to anyone). Of course, everyone would be madly impressed, but at Queens you need labels. God, I wish I was deep and unfathomable like Rosie—and rich. Seriously though, she has hidden depths where I have shallow puddles. If I didn’t love her so much, I might even be jealous.
Halfway through my download, Mr. Menzies asked me what I knew about Egypt.
“With all due respect, sir, that question seems a bit cheeky. You’ve interrupted me mid-download,” I teased.
Mr. Menzies loves sparring with me. It gives him a chance to show off his authority. Rosie’s always telling me that he hates it, but I can tell he secretly likes it, because he always gives me really good grades, and according to my parents, he heaps praise on me at parent-teacher evenings.
Everybody muffled giggles. My posse—Rosie, Perdie, and Artimis—all looked round and shook their heads in warning.
“With all due respect, Octavia,” Mr. Menzies replied sarcastically, “as earth-shatteringly important as your download may be, when you’re in my class, you’ll pay attention to my lecture. We’re discussing Egypt and I’ve asked for your input.”
“Mr. Menzies, you’re such a learned gentleman. I’m sure I’d only embarrass myself if I started interrupting your lecture with my vapid input. Anyway, the last time I looked, Egypt was in the Outer Zones, and I am nothing if not a girl of principle, Mr. Menzies.”
“You’re on the fast track to being sent to the principal, that’s what you are, missy,” my mad little man riposted. He was looking at me in an explosive sort of way and the classroom had gone quiet. I shrugged. And then he roared. “Right, that’s it! Go and see Mrs. Selecker. You’re an intelligent enough girl, but I will not tolerate your insubordination in my class, Octavia!”
Whoops. I knew then I should have closed my mouth, but part of my whole image is maintaining insouciance while baiting teachers. I started this game when I was five because it made the class laugh and everyone thought I was too cool for school, daring to cheek teachers. Now I just can’t stop. I’ve created this image I can’t escape from. Still, a disciplinary letter home from Mrs. Selecker to Papa and Mama at this stage could be catastrophic for both them and me. I forget sometimes how much I need to be at this school.
I tried smiling sweetly, hoping to reverse his mood.
“Out!” he yelled so loudly the room shook.
I continued to smile at him, as calm as the sphinx. If you ignore cross people long enough, they usually wear themselves out. My madre has worn me out over the years with her patience.
“It’s okay, Mr. Menzies. Let’s just put your outburst down to geogers stress, shall we, darling? I shan’t report you and I’m sure everyone here is prepared to stay mum.” I looked around at my posse and they nodded to show they were prepared to sweep Mr. Menzies’s tantrum under the carpet of life. If the English can do one thing apart from stiff upper lips and stodgy puddings, it’s pretending things didn’t happen. Going on about things is so fret making.
That was when my dear old comrade in argument had a fit. And I mean a proper fit with flailing limbs, eye popping, and speaking in tongues—well, rude language anyway.
“Whoops a daisy!” I cried as Rosie, Perdie, and Artimis all dived out of their seats and restrained him before he managed to throttle me. Seriously, he was definitely about to attack me with his hairy man fists. There goes the stiff upper lip! And my hope that his anger would blow over.
I pretended I wasn’t dying of nerves and made my way to the throne room of our head, with the decorum of a tsarina.
“Darling,” I told Mrs. Selecker, settling myself in the Le Corbusier chaise longue that dominated her office.
Mrs. Selecker looked annoyed when I told her of Mr. Menzies’s inexcusable lack of restraint. “I don’t want to make a formal complaint,” I added. “I just thought you’d best be aware of the situation in case any of the other pupils’ parents wish to lay the case before the school’s governing body.”
Mrs. Selecker stood up and sighed heavily as she propped herself on the corner of her desk, revealing a well-toned thigh. “Is this about the Inner Zone thing again, Octavia? Because Mr. Menzies isn’t the only one losing patience here,” she told me.
She was wearing one of her five Chanel suits; each of them was a different color. She rotated them daily, which was perfectly respectable, but she’d let herself down once again with her shoes and tights. I was about to help her out with a little charitable advice, when she held up her hand in a stop signal. “No one wants to hear it anymore, Octavia. I have spoken to your mother and assured her that the school will cover the cost of your trip. Like it or not, you are to go on this Egyptian trip.”
At her mention of school charity, I pulled a nail file from my pocket and began filing my nails so she couldn’t see the tears banking up behind my eyes. “That’s ever so kind of you, darling,” I told her, “but it’s not an issue of money. This is a matter of principle. Not leaving the Inner Zones is my cause, darling, and without our causes, what are we?”
She spoke to me in her stern voice. “Octavia. Listen to me, and stop ‘darling’ me.”
“Darling?” I cried, aggrieved.
“Octavia, I’m serious. This whole Inner Zone obsession was cute for a while. We all laughed when you proselytized your Zone One stance o
n the Channel Four documentary. I admit I found your argument compelling in a vacuous sort of way. But Octavia, it is not reality.”
“And what’s so fabulous about reality?” I asked her pointedly.
Chapter 3
Salah
Luxor, Egypt
My guys think the only point to school trips is hot foreign girls and getting wasted. But Egypt wasn’t foreign to me. I still thought of it as home.
I think it only hit me how awesome this trip would be when we were circling Luxor and I saw the patchwork of fields that hem the Nile and the ancient city hewn from the desert below.
I hadn’t been to Egypt since I was a kid, when my grandparents were still alive, but I suddenly felt I could taste the sweet bazbooka my grandma used to make. We’d stayed in the Old Winter Palace on our last visit, but I’d spent my time in the gardens, lying under the palm fronds and looking up at the dusky pink sky and thinking of nothing.
I still do a lot of that. Think of nothing. Emptying my mind helps me cope with the craziness of life.
“Hey dude, why so quiet? What are you thinking about?” Sam asked as he put his camera away and put up his tray table for landing.
“Wondering what these girls from London will be like,” I lied, because that’s what Sam would like to hear. I knew it was pathetic, but I seriously wanted my boys to get Egypt, Sam especially. Not just because he was my best friend, but if anyone in our group was going to see beyond the obvious, it was Sam. He might goof around and act like all that mattered to him was girls and good times, but that’s all it was. An act.
I wasn’t going to obsess about it. The souls of my friends were too rooted in Manhattan. Every school trip was the same. Last year we’d done Florence, the year before that the UK, and next year we’d go somewhere else. The point of foreign trips to my boys was hot foreign girls and getting wasted. Afterward we always went back to our lives in New York as if nothing had happened, because life outside Manhattan, it just wasn’t real.
As the plane bumped and bounced down on the desert tarmac, we were thrown forward and all the gear from the overhead compartments started flying around the cabin. The guys and I were laughing as we dodged bags. Carol’s screams pierced the cabin, and as we finally slowed to a halt, the Egyptian passengers all clapped and cheered.
Sam grinned. “What are they cheering for? That was the most pathetic landing in the history of aviation!”
“They’re glad to be here, maybe,” I told him.
“Your people are crazy, Salah,” he told me, rubbing the back of my head.
“Thanks, Sam.”
“And you know how much I love crazy.”
• • •
We taxied across the tarmac to the terminal, where a sea of crumpled, grumpy tourists and realistically resigned Egyptians searched for purpose and direction in the chaos. It was hot and dusty and the police in their black woolen uniforms, clutching AK-47s, seemed to be disorganizing rather than organizing the lines.
But within a few minutes, our tour rep swooped down on me and introduced himself as Mustafa. I figured he thought I was the teacher as I was the only one wearing a suit—my father’s influence. My father respects the craftsmanship of the hand-stitched suit. He likes to have the best of everything but never the flashiest. I like that about him. I mean, I’m seriously not into fashion, but I do appreciate the effort of craftsmanship. In a world of technology and labels, where everything is mass-produced for mass consumption, there’s something timeless and comforting about someone going to the trouble to construct and stitch an entire suit by hand.
I pointed out Carol and Ms. Doyle to Mustafa and explained that they were the ones in charge, but Carol’s hippie getup and Ms. Doyle’s army fatigues obviously discouraged him, so he continued to deal with me. We’d fallen into Arabic and he was speaking to me as if I were his senior.
Eventually Ms. Doyle came over. She walked like a lumberjack, her fatigues set off by an enormous fanny pack crammed with high-energy survival foods and other supplies. “I’m Ms. Doyle, the history teacher. Are you Mr. Mohammed from Egypt Educational Tours?” she growled.
Mustafa seemed afraid. I explained to Ms. Doyle that Mohammed would be meeting us at the boat and that Mustafa was just our reception guy. After I’d formally introduced everyone, Mustafa ushered us through the arrivals terminal and customs like we were VIPs.
“I’m liking this country,” Sam announced as we were fast-tracked past the heaving mass of resentful tourists. “This is the first time I’ve gone through customs in another country and not been made to feel like an American criminal.”
“Yeah, these guys are fools, man. We could be anyone,” Yo joked. At seven feet tall, he towered over everybody.
“Hey, I am someone,” Astin reminded him, running his hand over his crew cut and giving Yo a shove into a bunch of jocks. Yo was shoved back by the jocks, and before long there was a whole lot of shoving and Ms. Doyle told us to cut it out.
As far as we were concerned, this was a school trip and Ms. Doyle was going to have to get used to being ignored. Our shoving attracted the interest of two policemen holding hands nearby. It’s a perfectly common thing in Egypt for men to hold hands and kiss one another on the cheek in greeting—for us it’s more acceptable than slapping another guy on the back. The two policemen wandered over and halfheartedly menaced us with their AK-47s. Their hearts might not have been in it, but coming from New York, we weren’t used to being challenged with automatic weapons—be it halfheartedly or otherwise. Suddenly everyone stood at attention, though I could tell by the look on Ms. Doyle’s face that she was wondering how to get her hands on an automatic weapon. I explained to the police that we were only fooling around and that Ms. Doyle was just an American tool and they laughed and wandered off hand in hand.
Mustafa didn’t find my remarks about Ms. Doyle funny though. He asked me where I was from. A few questions later and he’d worked out who my family was. I could tell from the look on his face that he was processing that I was the son of one of Egypt’s most famous men. I suddenly saw myself as the spoiled rich kid that he clearly thought I was.
“Have we just witnessed gay policing at its best?” Astin asked, nudging me.
I knew he was confused but I couldn’t resist messing with his head. “Wanna hold my hand, Astin baby?” I offered, making a grab for his hand. “We’re finally free to love one another in a totally man-on-man way.” Astin pulled his hand away from mine.
“No, don’t worry, dude. Holding hands is just customary here,” I reassured him.
Astin looked astonished. “You’ve never tried to hold my hand before!”
“Well, when in Egypt, do as the Egyptians do.”
“Maybe not,” he replied, slapping me on the back.
• • •
By the time we’d all piled into the bus, the combination of desert heat and the rhythmic beat of the Egyptian music pumping out of the bus’s stereo sent a party vibe rippling through our group. We all started grooving to the music as we tried to get signals on our BlackBerrys and cells. Yo had reattached his VR visor and was swaying around in his own virtual Egyptian world. He was actually playing a game called Temple Terror: The Pharaoh’s Peril, and he was already on level five. Yo’s view on reality was that it was “all relative.”
Ms. Doyle started speaking to the driver about something, but the guy screeched out of the parking lot, sending her flying onto Carol’s lap. In that moment, seeing the butch Ms. Doyle flailing around on Carol’s lap, I decided I never wanted to leave Egypt.
Our driver had a take-no-prisoners approach to driving. This included weaving his way into the oncoming traffic and taking the other cars by surprise. It was a battle of wills and a war of horns and hair raising for everyone on the bus.
“This is total anarchy!” Astin said as our driver leaned on his horn. “Are we even driving on the right side, dude?”
“It’s all relative,” I told him.
“Hey, check out the donkey,”
Sam called out as we passed a depressed donkey pulling a wooden cart laden with a tired pile of vegetables and two disgruntled guys in galabias arguing. Sam pulled out his camera and started snapping.
Astin replied, “Yeah, you don’t see enough donkeys in New York if you ask me, which, by the way, none of you ever do.”
I wrapped Astin in a headlock and gave him a fake pounding.
Luckily our drive of death ended as we squealed to a halt along the Nile. Small river-cruise boats were docked next to one another. Mustafa pointed out the Nefertiti as ours, but he shouldn’t have bothered. We were already glued to the sight of long-limbed girls in bikinis stretched out on lounge chairs on the upper deck.
As we walked the red carpet leading to the gangplank, Sam waved up to them, whistled, and yelled, “Whoa, baby!” in a bad impression of a British accent.
The jocks yelled out similar cries of desperate longing, but even though we were well within hearing distance and the girls must have seen and heard us clambering to get aboard, none of them so much as waved.
“I’m guessing snooty Brits,” Astin said. “If anyone’s asking.”
“Which none of us are,” Sam pointed out, and we started joking around again, acting as if we weren’t all obsessed with the girls. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth. Even I was mildly curious.
Chapter 4
Rosie
The perfect antidote for an introvert like me was a madder- than-mad friend who drove me up the wall half the time … and made me feel like a princess the rest.
Hell is other people—according to the great French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre, who is not a man I greatly admire. I can’t say I’m a fan of the short, overly opinionated, Champagne-Stalinist type. But still, from the moment we embarked on that school trip, I could see what he meant.
Hell was Octavia. She’s my best friend and I worship her mad little ways—most of the time. Where I am introverted and a bit of a musical swot, Octavia is, well … Octavia is a force of nature. Mostly in an iconoclastic, hilarious way. Like the way she “darlings” teachers. Anyone else would get completely told off for that, but Octavia manages to slip through the punishment noose time and time again. Things always go well for Octavia, and I admire her daring, but sometimes she drives me up the wall. Especially when it comes to boys. Namely the way all the boys I fancy are crazy for her and I end up with their sidekick, which makes me feel like Octavia’s sidekick. She has absolutely no idea I feel this way.
True Love, the Sphinx, and Other Unsolvable Riddles Page 2
