Prologue
I had always known that I was different. Not the “I have a third eye or an eleventh toe” different but, well…unique. I guess you could say that I never really fit in with other kids my age. By the time I was two, I was reading. Not ordinary picture books, but full-fledged newspaper articles. When I was five my mother bought me my first novel, Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, and from then on I was hooked. I read everything I could get my hands on, including a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica that Mom had bought from a travelling salesman whose main purpose was to fleece innocent housewives.
My mother always seemed to want to encourage my abilities, but at the same time she never thought that I should advance beyond my age. Perhaps that’s why she let me progress like a normal child through school, even though she knew that the content I was being taught was well below my true abilities. In spite of this, my extraordinary academic prowess managed to propel me through high school and I ended up skipping grades ten and eleven. I graduated first in my class with an A+ average and was valedictorian at my high school graduation. I accepted a scholarship from New York University, where I majored in anthropology. After my second year of undergraduate studies I was granted early acceptance into graduate school at Yale, and planned to develop my thesis around urban mythology and legends. Then I decided to defer my acceptance.
This decision was not easy. Mom thought I wanted to backpack through Europe in an attempt to “find myself”, and since she had never limited me in the past, she wasn’t going to start now. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the real reason I wanted to go: to find my father. I had never known him. According to Mom, he’d left before she had a chance to tell him she was pregnant. She explained it away by saying that he’d only been in Vancouver briefly on business and, while they’d had some torrid love affair, it had ended when he went back to London, England. Apparently, Mom didn’t even know his last name so she couldn’t track him down. However, if you knew my obsessive-compulsive mother, you would not believe this. I never told her, but while at home this past summer, I had come across a well-worn picture of my father and mother together, tucked inside one of my mother’s favorite novels: J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I knew the man in the tear-stained picture was my father, not only because of the uncanny resemblance in our features, but also by the loving way my mother was looking at him and, for that matter, the way they were looking lovingly at each other. At that moment, I knew there was more to the story, and I felt compelled to find out. Luckily for me, my obsessive-compulsive mother had written both of their names on the back of the picture, so I at least had his first and last names.
I took one last look around the room in which I had spent most of my formative years. The microscope under which I had dissected spiders was still sitting on the window ledge. The periodic table was front and centre on my cork board and, of course, the 3D globe that I had made for my ninth-grade science project hung suspended from the ceiling over my desk. For the first time it became apparent to me how odd my room looked, and how truly anomalous I was.
The magnitude of this realization did not materialize until the summer I turned nineteen.
Chapter 1
The scene at the airport was unbelievable. Vancouver International Airport has long had a reputation for being a hub of activity, especially after the 2010 Winter Olympics. More generally, Vancouver intrigues the world, especially since it has so many times been voted one of the most liveable cities on the globe. Perhaps it’s the mountains that seem to flank the entire city, or perhaps it’s the diversity and rich culture that the city celebrates. My guess on why people flock to Vancouver is that there’s always something to do here, year round. I mean, where else could you ski and surf in the same day? Plus, the city gets warm weather in the middle of February, when the rest of Canada is in a deep freeze and under at least a foot of snow.
Whatever the true reason for the increase in travellers, there seemed to be a heightened sense of something surreal about the airport that day. A busload of Japanese tourists had chosen to unload at the exact moment that Mom and I pulled into the parking lot. I noticed that the driver of the bus was a short, stocky man with a balding spot shaped like Australia, and for some reason he resembled one of those Chia Pets that you saw on infomercials at two in the morning when you couldn’t sleep. He glared at me as if he was disgusted with something that I had just done, but I saw from the corner of my eye that the object of his contention was an old VW van that had wedged itself into the bus offload area. Two gorgeous but apparently absentminded teenaged girls jumped out and giggled uncontrollably. They must have been seventeen at most. Their shaggy-haired boyfriends dutifully grabbed the girls’ backpacks and proceeded to follow them through the automatic sliding glass doors of the airport. The driver of the VW van, another shaggy-haired boy, recklessly reversed and nearly knocked me over. He turned to look at me, smirked, then hurled the van into drive as he screeched out of the parking lot. In an instant the van disappeared, leaving a cloud of exhaust that could not have been good for the ozone layer. Even though I was rather disgusted by the driver’s lack of respect for others on the road, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw his bumper sticker: “Environmentally Challenged”. The driver of the bus looked away with repugnance and muttered something unrecognizable, in what I imagined was Japanese, then began unloading what seemed like too many bags for the number of passengers that the bus was able to transport. Did people really travel with that much stuff? I looked down at my worn duffle bag and realized that I might not have brought nearly as much clothing as I had thought. A shopping trip was surely going to be in order once I landed in London.
I entered the sliding glass doors through the airport and groaned. My anxiety must have been apparent because my mom immediately grabbed my hand in an attempt to calm me. With all of the excitement over the van I had almost forgotten she was with me.
The check-in area of the airport was like that of all other airports I had frequented. People from different countries waited patiently in line, attempting to check in for their flights. Vancouver’s airport was slightly different in one respect, however; it allowed for a self-check-in process so that you only had to wait in line to drop off your bags. This made for a slightly faster experience. However, the lineups at the check-in kiosks were just as long as those for the counters, so I decided that I might as well just wait for a live ticket agent. The British Airways line seemed to loop around the entire airport, and of course, the Japanese tourists were in front of me. This was going to be a painful wait.
I wished I had listened to Mom earlier when she’d been attempting to rush me. Now I was going to pay for my procrastination.
“Scotia, I’m going to get us coffees. It looks like we’ll be here awhile,” Mom said.
“Sure, Mom,” I answered. A coffee might help calm my nerves.
I watched as Mom wandered off through the sea of people. No doubt, she was heading towards Starbucks or perhaps Tim Hortons, and would return with two venti vanilla chai lattes or two extra-large, double-double coffees. A double-double is the Canadian way of ordering a coffee with double milk and double sugar. Strange perhaps, but that is how we Canucks are. I once heard a New Yorker order his coffee light and sweet—-same result, but in my book not as effective as the double-double. He disagreed.
When Mom had disappeared into the sea of people and was nowhere in sight, I rummaged through my messenger bag and pulled out the picture of my parents that I had successfully managed to hide in my passport folder. How was I going to find this man? And if I did manage to track him down, what was I going to say? I held the picture and studied the image of my father intently. I could see why Mom had been attracted to him. He was unbelievably handsome. His hair was jet black and tousled in this picture, which gave him the “I just woke up out of bed” look. His eyes were a brilliant shade of blue and drew you into the depths of his soul. He had chiseled masculine features, and if Mom had not told me he
