life.
‘My dad has a thing about explorers.’
With his tangled blond hair and his pale skin and his rosy cheeks, he looks more like Christopher Robin out of Winnie The Pooh than the rugged coloniser of the New World.
‘Parents dump you with a whole load of shit when they give you a name, hey?’
He blushes. Maybe I offended him. Maybe he likes being associated with Christopher Columbus.
‘I’m Air. As in, Ariadne.’
It’s Blake who nicknamed me Air – as soon as I was born. Because he thought it was a totally cool name. As opposed to the totally nerdy name Dad picked out for me. For my baptism, when I was seven, Blake even wrote a song for me, using all these clever metaphors about breath and air and being in the world.
He looks up at me. ‘Ariadne. The goddess of mazes and labyrinths.’
‘You know?’
Nobody knows. Nobody except my geeky parents who fell in love over Greek myths at Oxford. My geeky parents who were totally pissed at Blake for changing my name basically as soon as they’d given it to me.
‘Home-schooled,’ he says.
‘Sorry?’
‘I was home-schooled until I was sixteen. Dad made me study all the old stuff. Latin, Greek, the myths. He got tutors for me. And when he had the time, he took me to museums. Anyway, that’s how I know.’
‘You were home-schooled in England?’
‘Not really in England. Not really at home, either.’
‘You weren’t home-schooled at home? How does that work?’
He blushes again, which makes his pale grey eyes stand out even more.
‘My dad travels so much that it was either take me with him or put me in a boarding school. I’m in a boarding school now, but I was home-schooled until last year.’ He pauses. ‘Well, away-schooled – I had some tutoring whenever we were in London but most of the time Dad taught me when we were travelling.’ The corners of his mouth go up. ‘Dad and the internet.’
‘Why boarding school now?’
‘So I can get my A-levels and go to university. Dad said it would be easier having the structure of a school to help me through that rather than figuring it out on our own.’
He hasn’t mentioned his mom, which probably means she’s not around in some way and I don’t want to upset him by asking.
‘I’m from England too,’ I say. ‘Was. Lived there until I was four. Which is why Americans think I’m English and English people think I’m American.’
‘I like it – your accent.’
‘It makes me sound like I don’t belong anywhere.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’ He gives me a small, sideways smile.
I hadn’t ever thought of it being a good thing. But perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it’s kind of cool not being locked into one particular place. ‘I guess not.’
‘So how come you lived in England?’ he asks.
‘Mom’s English – well Scottish-English. Dad went to do a semester at Oxford, which is where they met.’
‘Where they fell in love over Greek myths?’ he says.
‘Yeah. Mom was meant to be doing international law but she kept taking all these other classes too. Anyway, Dad ended up loving Oxford so much he stayed for years. They got married. Had kids.’
‘And then you moved to the US?’
‘Mom got a gig at the White House. As an international human rights lawyer.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah. She’s a high achiever.’
‘And your dad?’
‘Classics professor at Georgetown. He still misses Oxford but he’d go anywhere for Mom.’
He looks at me, curious, like my friends sometimes do when I talk about Mom and Dad and how close they are.
He leans back and closes his eyes. Behind his glasses, he’s got these crazily long, light eyelashes. ‘It’s warm out here,’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
A beautiful warm afternoon.
I think about Mom, Jude and Dad working really hard to get things ready for the wedding. And how Mom must be coping with the news that we’re not going to make the breakfast. I picture them sitting there tomorrow morning, staring at two empty chairs and how Mom will be totally freaking out and how Dad will be trying to calm her down and how Jude will be thinking that it’s typical that we’re both off somewhere else without her. She feels left out when it comes to the three of us. All those birth order theories don’t apply to us. Blake’s the middle child but he gets all the attention. Jude’s the eldest but that doesn’t make her feel special – she’s the one who feels like she’s being overlooked. As for me, I’m the opposite of the spoilt and indulged youngest child – I’m the one whose job it is to sort out my brother and sister’s problems and fights.
My eyeballs sting like I’m going to cry, because I know that it’s totally not fair. There are times when Jude’s sulkiness about not getting enough attention has annoyed the hell out of me but if there’s one time that Jude shouldn’t feel left out, it’s at her wedding.
I sniff back the tears.
Leda nestles in closer to Christopher. He sits up and pats her head gently.
‘She yours?’ he asks.
‘My brother’s. I’m babysitting.’
He puts out his hand and Leda puts her head into it like she’s looking for a treat.
‘I love dogs – all animals really,’ Christopher says.
He keeps stroking her. Leda’s tilting her head back so far now it’s like she’s in some kind of trance. He’s totally good with her.
‘Do you have any pets?’
Christopher shakes his head. ‘I was never allowed. Too much moving around.’
He keeps stroking her and I can tell, from how his shoulders drop and his body sinks into itself, that Leda’s making him feel more relaxed too.
‘So, what happened?’ Christopher asks. ‘I thought you needed to be somewhere.’
‘I did.’ I look back at the space where I parked the Buick. ‘They took my brother’s car.’
‘Your brother?’ He frowns and knits his eyebrows together: they’re blond and tangled,
