Virginia Macgregor - As Far as the Stars

Not yet

I text back.

What’s going on?

She texts back, almost as soon as I’ve sent my message.

Plane’s late

I write back.

And then my phone starts ringing. It’s Mom. Obviously. She wants more information.

I don’t answer.

Because I’m a coward.

Because I can’t face having to explain it all to her: Blake getting on the wrong plane and me having to drive all the way back to DC and that there’s a chance we might not make it for the family breakfast. That if I don’t get some answer soon, we might not make it for the wedding itself.

All the saliva in my mouth dries up. I can’t let myself go there. He’s going to make it. He has to.

Can’t talk

I text back.

She’ll think I’m driving. That will buy me some time.

She sends another message:

Remember we’re having breakfast at Louis’s.

Okay.

I text back.

I’m really feeling sick now.

I should tell her what’s going on but she’ll implode. And then she’ll tell Jude and Jude will fall apart. And Dad will have to deal with it and Dad’s a crisis-avoider so he’ll panic and then go into hiding somewhere, which will make Mom even more mad.

Telling them that it’s even worse than me and Blake being late for the wedding stuff – that his plane’s gone off radar, that no one knows where he is – isn’t even an option.

I screw my eyes shut to block out the world.

This is the last time I’m covering for you, Blake, I say to myself. The last damn time.

I was nine the first time Blake disappeared. The first time I had to lie for him.

He snuck into my room in the middle of the night, his guitar case and a holdall slung over his shoulder.

‘Tell them to let me sleep in.’

I was still asleep myself – it was three in the morning – so I wasn’t registering what he was telling me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Tomorrow morning. Tell them not to disturb me. Tell them I’m sleeping.’

I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

‘Mom and Dad?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Not sure yet.’

Blake’s words didn’t make sense. At age nine this was how the world worked: when you left one place you did so with the express intention of going to another specific location.

So I changed my line of questioning.

‘ Why are you going?’

‘To play.’ He tapped his guitar case.

‘Why can’t you play here?’

‘I need inspiration.’

Blake was always going off to find inspiration. He was always going off period.

I have a restless soul, Air, he’d say, sounding like he was thirty rather than thirteen.

That didn’t make sense to me either, not then.

‘Why can’t you find inspiration here?’ I asked.

He raised his big black eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

‘I need some space, Air.’

He’d said it before. That the music – and the lyrics – wouldn’t come here, at home. I thought that it was a mean thing to say. Like being with us was stopping him from doing what he loved most.

‘When are you coming back?’ I asked.

He shrugged.

‘You can’t sleep in for ever.’

He grinned in that goofy way he had that made me feel warm and happy and like everything was good with the world.

‘For ever? It won’t be for ever, Air.’

‘So why are you taking a holdall?’

‘In case.’

‘In case what?’

‘In case I need some of my stuff.’

I sat up taller. ‘People don’t need their stuff if they’re coming back quickly.’

‘Just cover for me, Air – will you do that?’

‘What if Mom goes into your room and finds out that you’re not there?’

He tilted his head to one side. The gel in his hair had worn off, so long dark strands fell into his eyes.

‘You’re the smart one in the family, Air, you’ll find a way to cover for me.’

Then he kissed the top of my head and walked off to my window – the one that had access to the street below.

‘You are coming back, aren’t you?’ I asked.

I was worried that one day Blake would go so far that he’d get lost – or decide that coming back was too much hassle. He loved Mom and Dad and Jude and me but that didn’t mean he was going to live with us for ever. And he didn’t like DC. Blake was always going on about how he couldn’t wait to be eighteen, how then he could do anything he wanted.

When his body was halfway out of the window, he turned around and smiled:

‘For you little sis?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll always come back.’

He blew me a kiss then pulled his guitar case and holdall through the window.

‘And even if I don’t –’ he went on.

I leapt out of bed, ran up to the window and leant out. ‘Even if you don’t ? What’s that’s supposed to mean?’

He put his fingers under my chin and tilted my face up to the sky.

‘They’re always there, right?’

It was a clear night so although the light pollution in DC was bad, the sky still looked amazing: like someone had pierced a thousand holes in the black canopy of the sky letting the light that lived behind it shine through.

‘Yeah, they’re always there.’

‘Well, so am I – like your stars.’

‘ My stars?’

He nodded.

Blake knew how much I loved them, even then.

When I was nine years old, I’d thought that was a wonderful thing to say: that he’d always be with me, because the stars were always with us too. But when I got older and understood about how old the stars were and the whole light years–distance thing – and the fact that it’s basically impossible to measure the distance between us and the stars – I realised that what he told me that night wasn’t anywhere close to wonderful. He was basically telling me that even if I could still see him, he might be millions of light years away.

Nothing’s been confirmed yet.

Any moment now I might get a text from Blake saying that he got a flight to Nashville after all. Which means that he’ll make it for the family breakfast – that it’ll just be me who misses it. Which won’t be a big deal.

Or that he was late for the flight and got onto one that’s arriving later. Which, depending on his arrival time, will at least give us enough time to get to Nashville for the rehearsal dinner.

Whatever happens, we’d be there for the wedding. And, in the end, that’s all that matters.

Or that bald UKFlyer guy who’s in charge of keeping us up to date will tell us that the plane’s back on radar, that air traffic control got it wrong, and that the UKFlyer0217 has landed. That the passengers are coming through passport control and that, in a few minutes, they’ll be with us.

‘Can I borrow your phone?’

Leda’s head shoots up from my lap. She thumps her tail against my thigh so hard that I put my hand on it to press it down.

I look up too. He’s standing there, the pale, tangle-haired, paper-folding guy. And he’s staring at me, his eyes wide behind his tortoiseshell glasses.

‘My mobile’s out of charge,’ he explains.

Yeah, he definitely sounds English, like Mom and our relatives back in the UK. Mom’s got a bit of a Scottish lilt because that’s where she lived until she was ten and all her family come from there, but mostly she sounds English.

The guy adjusts his glasses and keeps staring at me.

‘Sure.’ I hand him my cell, relieved that I don’t have to keep looking at Mom’s messages popping up.

When he starts swiping at the screen, I notice that his fingers are shaking.