Virginia Macgregor - As Far as the Stars

‘A bit male?’

‘All boys.’

‘Wow.’

‘Which is why I’m nervous.’

‘About what?’

He gulps. I watch his Adam’s apple slide up and down his throat.

‘Talking to you,’ he says.

‘Well, you’re doing a better job than most of the guys at my high school.’

The tops of his cheeks go an even deeper red.

‘There’s a lot of rugby too. I’m not so good at that.’

I look at his long, white fingers folding those bits of paper. No, I can’t imagine he’d like to be in the middle of a rugby scrum.

He goes back to folding the paper over and over into all these tiny, intricate folds. Then he puts it down beside him on the pavement, half-made so I can’t quite work out what it is – whether it’s another bird, because there’s a kind of wing, or whether it’s the sail of a ship.

He looks over at the doors to the airport terminal and then glances at his watch.

‘You worried about the plane?’ I say and then I regret it. Of course he’s worried about the plane. The reason he’s out here, sitting with a random girl with a dog on a sidewalk, is because he’s trying not to think about it.

He shrugs.

‘Dad’s planes aren’t usually late.’

It’s a weird thing to say; as if anyone had the power to decide if their plane is going to be late.

‘There’s probably been a mix up,’ he adds.

I think of that floating bit of metal again and how it didn’t look like a mix up to me.

I swallow to ease the dryness in my throat and then get up and start pacing again, craning my neck in the hope that I’ll see Blake’s yellow Buick rounding the corner.

Christopher goes back to folding his piece of paper.

Then I sit down again – a bit closer to him than I intended. Our legs touch. I don’t know whether I should move to give him more space or whether moving will seem rude like I don’t want to sit close to him.

I check my phone. Just more Where are you? And Call me? messages from Mom. Nothing from Blake. I sigh and start biting the side of my nail. I’m jittery but at the same time my body and my brain feel frozen, like I couldn’t get up off this pavement, not in a million years.

I look back down the road. At least when the Buick shows up I can do something. Get behind the steering wheel, start driving, clock up the miles to Nashville so that I have a chance of getting to the wedding on time.

I look back over at Christopher.

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘For what?’

‘For hanging out with me.’

‘It’s better than being in there,’ he says, looking back at the airport terminal. ‘Much better.’

A taxi pulls up a few yards away from us.

Leda barks.

Three people step out.

A woman in a trouser suit, red hair tumbling down her shoulders; as she stumbles out onto the pavement, she gets out a compact mirror and starts applying lipstick.

Behind her, a guy with one of those fuzzy microphones on the end of a stick.

Behind him, a guy with a camera balancing on his shoulder.

I get up and put my hands on my hips. ‘What the hell?’

Leda barks louder.

The woman spots us, puts away her lipstick and her mirror and walks up to us, her heels clacking on the sidewalk.

She stops in front of us, pauses, like she’s settling into a role, brushes a strand of hair over her shoulder and then says:

‘Did you two come to meet the plane?’

‘No,’ I say, quickly, before Christopher has the time to say anything.

If having a mom for a lawyer has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t talk to journalists. Especially to journalists who look like her.

The microphone guy and the camera guy come and stand beside her. They’re pointing their respective pieces of equipment at us.

The woman – the reporter – turns to Christopher.

‘You?’

Christopher looks at me. I shake my head.

The woman’s waiting for him answer.

‘No,’ Christopher says.

She looks at us suspiciously. ‘You two kids don’t want to be on TV?’

Leda’s barking is really loud now, so loud that the woman takes a step back.

‘No, we don’t want to be on TV.’ I yank Christopher away from the reporter.

The woman steps closer. ‘What’s that?’ She looks down at Christopher’s hands – at the paper model he’s holding.

I look down too.

My insides flip.

He made a plane. A paper plane.

Slowly, he scrunches it up into a ball.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says.

The woman shrugs. ‘Come on,’ she tells her guys with the microphone and the camera and then walks off.

I watch her stride through the sliding doors into the terminal building and get a sick feeling at the back of my throat. She’s going to interrogate all those poor people inside. She’s going to make them feel even worse about what’s happening. At least she’s left Christopher alone.

When she’s gone, I sit back down.

Christopher sits down too. He lets out a long sigh like he’s letting out a whole lot of air that’s been building up inside him.

‘Dad would hate that,’ he says.

‘Hate what?’

‘All the fuss. The reporters. They say they want to help but they don’t. They make everything worse.’

‘They don’t help ?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘When he’s not doing his regular job, Dad does charity work: he goes to disaster relief zones, after earthquakes and fires and stuff. He can get there quicker than most people. He goes to deliver supplies. And he says that the reporters focus on the wrong stuff and make people more scared. And when people are scared, bad things happen. Keeping people calm, making people feel safe – that’s what matters.’

It’s weird. Sometimes, when Christopher talks about his dad, I get the feeling that he doesn’t really like him, that they’re not close, but then he says something like that and it’s like his dad’s his hero.

‘I’m sorry—’ he stutters. ‘They get to me, that’s all.’

‘It’s okay, I understand,’ I say. ‘That’s why I told her to get lost.’

He nods. ‘Thanks.’

Leda flops between us.

We sit there, listening to the planes taking off and landing. So many planes. So many people.

Then, all of a sudden, Christopher looks up at me.

‘About your brother – I think it’s going to be okay. UK Flyer has one of the best safety records.’

‘Blake’s not on the plane.’

Because he’s not. He’s not where he’s meant to be. He’s probably miles from the wedding. But there’s no reason he’d be on the plane that’s crashed. That’s not an option.

Christopher doesn’t answer.

Leda shuffles in closer between us.

And for a long while, neither of us say anything.

We just keep waiting.

Chapter Nine

17.32 EST

It takes us over an hour to get the car back. Christopher was right, it hadn’t reached the impound lot yet. When I got through to the state police, I told them that my brother was on the plane that’s gone missing, the one that’s on the news. I felt bad for lying but telling them the truth – that I don’t know where Blake is and that I’d just parked illegally because I was in a rush – wouldn’t have got my Buick back. Anyway, it worked.

I hope the reporter didn’t get any of me on film. Mom always has the news on, especially news from DC, in case she needs to rush back to the White House to give some kind of legal advice. She’ll get so mad if sees me standing at Dulles right now. And if she catches wind of the fact that I’ve been caught up in this whole plane crash thing, she’ll totally flip.

After that reporter left, I went back into the airport terminal to get some food and water for Leda. The TV screen was still showing the same picture of that bit of metal floating on the sea. It turns out that the stretch of ocean is off the coast of Ireland, which they’re saying was at the beginning of the plane’s route. But all kinds of crap gets washed up into the ocean, right? That’s what I want to tell Christopher, who’s been really quiet since the reporter left us.