The Wonder of Us

by Kim Culbertson

  Riya’s eyes glow. “Yeah, but I’ve never had anything to love the way you love history, nothing I’ve ever felt certain about. Until now. I finally understand.”

  I bite my lip to keep from saying, we’ll see. Instead, I nod and say, “That’s great, Rye. I’m happy for you.”

  I study our feet as they fall in a natural rhythm along the path, hers in bright green Nikes and mine in worn low hikers, and think about the things she listed for my own life—college, a museum job, maybe a professorship someday. I do want all those things. Eventually. I do plan to study ancient history in college. Only lately, I feel like college can’t be too far from home. How can I leave my dad the way everyone else has? I’m just glad we have another year of high school left to figure it out.

  “Oh, wow—look!” She points ahead, where the trail opens up to a railed viewing area with benches, a telescope, and a panorama of Lake Lucerne and the surrounding area. Neel hangs back by the bench. Maybe even solid ground isn’t enough when we’re up this high.

  We let the view melt into us, and I realize I’m holding my breath. Letting it out, I say, “Wow, Will. You didn’t tell us how ugly it would be up here.” Riya and I join the guys at the bench.

  “Feel lucky,” he says, scrutinizing the snowcapped mountains beyond the spread of blue water. “I’m sure there are Swiss who’ve never had the chance to see it so clear.”

  “It looks fake,” Riya insists. “Like the whole country is masquerading as a postcard.”

  Will laughs. “You are not the first to say this.”

  “Expensive, though.” Neel crosses his arms over his chest. “And I’m from London.”

  Pulling a metal SIGG bottle from his backpack, Will takes a long drink. “There is a joke about this.” He motions at the view with the water bottle. “When God was making Switzerland, he asked the people what they wanted from their country, and they said, ‘First we would like mountains to surround and protect us from wars and strife.’ So God made the Alps to protect the Swiss people. Then he asked, ‘What else?’ And they said they would like ‘crisp blue water in rivers and lakes,’ and he made them beautiful lakes and rivers. ‘Anything else?’ he asked them. And they said, ‘Green pastures so our cows can produce sweet milk and we can grow good food,’ and God made the pastures the greenest of green. At the end, God was very tired, and he said to a farmer, ‘There, I have done everything you asked, may I please have a glass of that milk for my hard work?’ And the Swiss farmer said, ‘Certainly; that will be five francs.’”

  Neel and Will nearly double over laughing.

  I glance at Riya, who shrugs. Maybe we don’t know enough about Switzerland yet to get why it’s so funny.

  Neel and Will wander off to read a sign, but I just want to stare at these mountains. I know it makes me a nature dork, but I could sit here for hours, imagining that this view has looked the same for thousands of years. One of my favorite things about history is it doesn’t care a hoot about all of us silly humans trying to figure out the right-now. Oh, wow. Care a hoot. That’s my mom, creeping in. She says things like I don’t care a hoot and What the palm tree instead of their curse counterparts. My stomach knots. I tried calling her last night, but she texted that she was out to dinner “with Rob” and would call me this morning. Instead, though, she sent another text: Missing you! Hope you’re having a great time. Hug Riya for me! And she tacked on about a thousand kiss-heart emojis. Classic Byrd avoidance strategy. I texted her back a picture of our hot chocolates from yesterday and didn’t ask about dinner with Dr. Spits-A-Lot.

  “So, what do we do up here?” Riya fidgets next to me on the bench.

  I motion at the landscape. “You marinate in the view.”

  Her marinade lasts approximately five seconds. “Okay, officially bored. Beautiful view. Well done, Switzerland God! Let’s go find something fun to do.” She pops up and heads back toward the path, and I start to follow her.

  But not before I notice Neel rolling his eyes at her exit. “Attention span of a fruit fly, that one.”

  Even if I sort of agree with him right now, I shoot back, “Well, not all of us can be born fifty years old with a pipe in our mouth, Gramps.” I head off after Riya.

  “I don’t smoke pipes! Smoking kills.”

  Something in his voice catches me and I pause, turning around. He’s teasing me, and his silhouette against the mountains with his hands casually in his pockets sends that same shiver through me I got this morning in the kitchen.

  “Abby!” Riya calls from up ahead on the trail. “Let’s go!”

  I hurry to catch up with her.

  For the rest of the day, we walk across the famous geranium-lined wooden bridge in Lucerne, explore the Old Town with its cobbled streets, and spend an hour in the Picasso and Klee museum making grotesque faces at one another until Neel, his Angry Dad expression firmly back on his face, ushers us outside.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” Will says to Riya as he opens the car door for her, but he’s smiling, his hand resting longer on her shoulder than it needs to.

  When we get back to Zurich, Will and Neel drop us at the flat and head to dinner with another university friend, so Riya and I have the evening to ourselves. It’s the perfect moment to give her the present I’ve been secreting in my bag during the trip so far. I slip the flat package, wrapped in glossy silver paper, out of my bag, and set it next to her on the futon, where she sprawls on her back, scrolling through her phone.

  She sits up. “What’s this?” She tears open the paper, her eyes curiously scanning the laminated back of the handmade book in front of her. “Oh, no way, is this—” She flips it over. “It is!” The cover, hand-lettered with colored markers, reads: The Adventures of Riya the River Fairy and History Girl! by Ms. Riya Sharma-Collins and Ms. Abby Byrd. Our fourth-grade graphic novel we spent the whole year making, all eighty-seven pages of it.

  I sit down next to her on the futon. “I had it bound. And I made a copy for me, too. Ms. Riya Sharma-Collins and Ms. Abby Byrd. We were such fancy fourth graders.” We’re both grinning like idiots at the glossy front.

  “Where did you find it?” She begins flipping through the pages. “I can’t believe this. Oh, do you remember this part? Where we find the Magic Tablet of River Dreams in the Temple of Artemis?”

  I nod with fake gravity. “That was a close one. The river almost lost all its dreams.”

  “Right?! Good job, River Fairy and History Girl!” She closes the book and gives me a teary look, a stripe of afternoon sun through the window lighting her face. “This is the best present of all presents in the entire world of present-giving.”

  I wave her off, a flush of warmth heating my cheeks. “Good thing Riya the River Fairy hasn’t lost her sense of hyperbole.” But she’s right. It is.

  She tucks the gift into her bag and grabs her phone again. “Okay, what to do, what to do. A whole evening without Neel. Let’s go celebrate.” She scrolls through some options. “We could go to a club, or see a play. Or—hey, this looks fun. And it’s so hot today. Want to take a stand-up paddleboard lesson on the lake?”

  “I don’t really like paddleboarding.”

  “You’ve never tried it!”

  “It looks kind of silly. I like kayaking.”

  “Come on. They’re open until eight.” She shows me a website advertising rentals and lessons. “And the instructor looks cute.”

  “What about Will?”

  She ducks her head, overly scrutinizing the website. “What about him?”

  “You two seem like you’re connecting.” She’s avoiding my eyes, which is strange. Riya usually can’t stop talking about a guy when she’s crushing.

  “I think I might love this guy.” She holds out the ad again. He’s not my type, all glossy muscles and board shorts, but he’s clearly gorgeous.

  “I think you love that he’s not wearing a shirt.” I dig through my bag to locate my bathing suit. “But fine. Yes. Let’s do it. Only we don’t need lessons. It’s
standing. And paddling. How hard can it be?”

  An hour later, I find out.

  Every time a big wave comes our direction, I can’t stay on the board and go tumbling into the blue water. Over and over. Riya doesn’t seem to be having this problem. After my tenth fall of the evening, she paddles up to me. “You’re too rigid. You have to roll with the waves.”

  I cling to the side of my board, water streaming into my eyes, the safety strap digging into my ankle. “I am rolling with it. Rolling off. Isn’t it time to return these things yet?”

  “We’ve barely gone anywhere. Get back on that board!” She bobs on her board, relaxed, holding her paddle in both hands, the lake sparkling with evening sunlight around her. She hasn’t fallen in once. When I don’t move, she splashes into the water and swims her board over to mine until she’s peering at me over it. “The water’s so nice.”

  I rest my chin on my board, letting the waves move past me. “It must be nicer when you don’t keep falling into it.”

  “Do you hate it?” she asks.

  I lift my head. “This paddleboard? Pretty much, yeah.”

  She sets her paddle lengthwise on the board. “You’re so grumpy. This is supposed to be fun.”

  I sigh, following her lead on the paddle. “I’m just tired. I might have exhausted my trying-new-things limit for the day.” My teeth chatter; the water’s starting to get chilly as the sun slips in the sky. Riya seems like she’s about to say something else, but instead she pulls herself onto her board, waits for me to do the same, and we both paddle into the shore on our knees.

  We’re returning our boards to the guy who rented them to us earlier. Not Mr. Muscles. An older guy in a straw hat. Behind us, someone says, “Riya? Abby? Are you kidding me? Is that you?!”

  We turn to a boy our age, also returning a board. He wears an NYU sweatshirt and board shorts and grins at us from under a mop of wet brown curls.

  Riya recognizes him before I do. “Ian?!” He engulfs her in a bear hug and the light goes on. Ian Campos. Fifth grade comes spilling back, flashes of our shared table in Mr. Waclawski’s room. Ian Campos, the human embodiment of a teddy bear, with a blade-sharp sense of humor and an enormous heart.

  “Ian? What on earth—” I start before he silences me with one of his trademark hugs. It’s a consuming hug, as he now resembles what happens if a teddy bear hits the gym a few hours a day.

  “Wow,” he says, releasing me and taking a step back. “What are the odds?”

  Today, returning paddleboards at a beach on Lake Zurich, we have officially beaten any and all odds. Ian was only at our school for fifth grade before he moved again with his family to upstate New York, and we didn’t stay in touch. But during that fifth-grade year we grew close. It started by bonding over a common enemy: Horrible Noah Stevens.

  I will never forget the first day of school, when Mr. Waclawski gave us our seat assignments. Riya and I couldn’t believe our luck to find ourselves seated at the same table of four, our names side by side in black ink. Then we frowned at the label across from Riya: Noah Stevens. Our spirits dropped. We scanned the room, seeing Noah over by the water fountain. He hadn’t changed much over the summer, still had his trademark blank stare and a low-grade-fever flush to his thin face. We already had a long list of Things That Make Noah Stevens Horrible dating back to first grade when he joined our school, but he didn’t waste time adding to the list as he slid into his seat, giving my brand-new map-of-the-world backpack a swift kick. So much for that peach in my lunch.

  “Did you just kick Abby’s backpack?” Riya demanded. Shrug from Noah. “Say you’re sorry!”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I muttered, inspecting my peach.

  “Yeah, right.” This time he gave her seat a kick.

  “You’re such a Neanderthal!”

  “Don’t insult Neanderthals,” I said, glaring at Noah.

  Noah sneered at Riya, and then said to me, “Okay, sorry—wouldn’t want your bodyguard to do some sort of tomahawk chop on me.” Riya’s fists clenched in her lap. For four years, she had endured this brand of boorishness from Noah. Each time, she would remind him that she was Indian—from India—but that his comments were insulting to everyone. Of course, he ignored her, continuing to make racist jokes that involved whooping and disparaging references to headdresses. Brain-dead jerk.

  Then an angel appeared in the form of a new student seated across from me. Ian Campos. He slid in next to Noah. “Hi,” he greeted us, his eyes widening at Noah’s whooping. “What are you doing?”

  I explained our situation.

  Noah shrugged. “It’s just a joke.”

  Ian stared at Noah, his dark eyes serious. “Not a funny one.” Stricken, Noah shrank in his seat. That year, Ian continued to be popular with the other boys not just because he was twice as big and could throw a football farther than any of them, but because he was simply a good person. To everyone. Even Noah. And, of course, he had the football thing going for him.

  Now Riya fills Ian in on her year in Berlin and our grand tour as they exchange Instagram accounts. “What about you?” he asks me.

  “Oh, Abby doesn’t do the whole social media thing,” Riya tells him. “She doesn’t approve of this sort of modern technology.”

  Ian gives me a look that could be either impressed or weirded out. “Really?” I choose to take it as impressed. “That’s interesting, I guess.” Okay, maybe impressed isn’t the right word.

  “It’s not that I don’t approve of it. It’s just not my thing,” I clarify, wondering why I’m explaining anything to a boy I haven’t seen in six years. “I think it creates a false sense of knowing people, just seeing flashes of their lives but not really being in them for real, you know?”

  His gaze flicks to Riya for a moment. To me, he says, “Sure, sure. I just like seeing other people’s pictures. I guess I haven’t thought that much about it.”

  My face burns. Noticing, Riya steps in. “I admire her for it. I mean, mostly I end up getting totally jealous of other people’s posts; their lives always seem cooler than anything I’m doing at the moment. I should probably stay off it, but”—she holds up her phone—“screen addict!”

  I smile at her gratefully.

  He holds up his phone. “Well, now we can stay in touch, which is great. You two should be posting pictures of this trip of yours. Then everyone else can be jealous of you.” Ian has a smile that occupies every curve of his face. Right now, he can’t take his eyes off Riya.

  She beams at him. “What are you doing now? Do you want to hang out? Too bad we didn’t get to paddleboard together.” Her eyes slide over his wide chest. Subtle. Straw Hat Guy hears her and quickly locks his rental shack and wheels a rack of boards toward the parking lot.

  Noah looks genuinely disappointed. “Wish I could. But I’m late to meet my mom. It’s our last day here, and we’re heading to the airport tonight for a red-eye. We just finished a weeklong hut-to-hut hike. The lake felt amazing after all that hiking.”

  Riya pouts. “Bummer. I would have really liked to catch up.”

  “I know. Seriously, though,” he says, stepping back and taking us in, “I can’t believe I ran into you two. Riya and Abby. Nice to know some things never change.”

  And I accuse social media of not telling the whole truth.

  At dawn the next morning, Abby and I tiptoe quietly out of the flat. We’d planned to join Will and Neel at a club last night, but we both fell asleep on the futon when we got back from paddleboarding, like ninety-year-old grandpas. We woke to Neel jostling me awake at one in the morning. “I texted you six times!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, sitting up, still dazed from our power nap. “I guess we’re sort of tired.”

  Abby punctuated this with one of her epic yawns that sound like a sick ocean bird. But it had its normal comic effect, too. Hearing it, Neel’s expression softened. “I thought you’d run off again.”

  Nothing remotely that interesting.

  Now we lea
ve a note on the kitchen counter to avoid a Neeleurysm (Abby’s word, which she said is a hybrid of Neel and aneurysm). I include it in the note. Don’t have a Neeleurysm, I write. We’re out for a walk.

  We slip into the quiet of the Zurich morning, walking down the street, until we find our way to a park a few blocks from Will’s flat. Abby stops so suddenly I walk several more feet before I realize she’s not by my side. “I need to tell you something,” she blurts, a pale lilac beanie pulled down over her ears against the chilly morning.

  I eye her warily. After we saw Ian yesterday, she’d been quiet, distracted. Even more so than her normal Abby self. “Okay.”

  She steps aside to let a woman with a stroller pass us. “Do you remember our Skype call at Thanksgiving?”

  Since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Berlin (obviously), we set up a Skype call so I could join her family for a Turkey Day chat. It was almost midnight in Berlin, but before the meal even started, the image just blinked out and they were gone. About a minute later, I got a text from Abby saying that Henry had somehow managed to upend an entire pitcher of gravy onto the laptop, ruining it. I never did get to celebrate with them because no one else had a charged laptop, and Abby said her phone was almost out of power and she couldn’t find her charger. Such a Byrd thing to happen since they all basically live like it’s 1982.

  I nod. “Did you guys ever get that gravy out of your laptop?”

  “I lied about the gravy.”

  I blink at her, confused. “What?”

  She studies a man walking his full-size poodle through an arched entrance of the park. “There was no gravy.”

  “Why would you lie about gravy?”

  Her eyes slide to mine. “I didn’t want to have Thanksgiving with you.”

  Unease ripples through me. “Wait, what?”

  “Look, I’m not proud of this. I wasn’t even going to tell you about it. But then, I don’t know, seeing Ian yesterday, having him say ‘some things never change’ or whatever, I just felt like—”

  “What, Abby?” I push.