Antipodes Read online

  Claire: Okay. Keep working.

  Erin: I am.

  Claire: We’ll get there. I promise.

  Erin: I know.

  Claire: Bye.

  Erin: Bye.

  Claire often texted to ensure she was on schedule, but this felt to Erin like micromanagement. To justify lying, she told herself she was mature enough to manage her own time. And what Claire didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  Or Erin.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  On Felicity’s birthday, Erin sprinted to the warm side of the house as soon as the Wakefields started moving around, but she backpedaled to her room when she heard Hank, the guitar teacher, wishing Felicity happy birthday.

  Her host family seeing her pajamas was one thing, but the tattooed dropout with amazing eyes was another. She shook her head awake. What is he doing here?

  A half hour later, showered and dressed in her favorite clothes, Erin joined everyone at the table.

  “Morning!” they chorused.

  “Happy birthday!” Erin said.

  “Thanks,” Felicity said. “Coffee’s on,”

  The house looked just the same: no decorations, no tiara for Felicity, no fanfare.

  “What’s the birthday plan?” Erin asked.

  “We got a late start today,” Felicity said. “Once we’re dressed and ready, I’ll head out for a bit.

  “Wait, no sunrise this year?” Hank said.

  “Supposed to be cloudy all the way round.” Felicity explained to Erin: “I like to watch the sunrise on my birthday. Another trip around the sun and all that.”

  Erin smiled. “That’s how I think of birthdays, too! I always wish friends a great new trip around the sun. I don’t get up for the sunrise, though.”

  “Too early for you, Erin?” Hank said.

  “Actually, at home, I get up for swim practice well before the sunrise. I’m saying I wouldn’t get up just for the sunrise.”

  The room froze. Felicity said, “You must not have seen many good sunrises.”

  Sifting through mental imagery, Erin couldn’t recall a single sunrise. Not in Wheaton. Not on vacation. Not in the U.P. “I don’t think I’ve seen one, ever.”

  Everyone turned their attention from Erin to their absolutely fascinating crumpets. Heat crawled up her cheeks.

  Pippa said, “Erin plays the cello. Did you know, Hank?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  Felicity said, “Erin, you know you’re welcome to practice your cello in the living area, right? We’d love to hear you play. Your mother says you’re quite good.”

  Erin shifted in her seat. “I was thinking we might return the cello. I haven’t opened it since I arrived, and I’m enjoying the break.”

  “Okay,” Felicity said. “Perhaps we could we hear you play it, just once?”

  “It’s her birthday,” Hank said.

  She rolled her eyes but could hardly say no to a woman receiving a single present from her family. Had Claire’s birthday ever lacked fanfare, there would be hell to pay.

  “Sure,” she said. “I also bought you a little something.”

  Felicity opened the MAC gift certificate. “How extravagant!”

  “I thought you might like it. It’s something my mom likes … to do on special occasions.” That was a flat-out lie, but Erin couldn’t admit Claire enjoyed spa days monthly. She already felt guilty Felicity had spent hundreds of dollars on an unsightly uniform Erin had no desire to wear.

  After breakfast, Erin tuned the cello, warmed up, and played the second movement of Debussy’s sonata. Her phrasing felt cold, as if she were returning to an unwelcoming house. She pulled the bow over the strings—it was a fine instrument—and swayed a bit in her seat, but she felt nothing.

  Cello really wasn’t her thing. She loved listening—god, she loved listening! Claire had bought four Yo-Yo Ma albums to entice Erin to play, and she loved them; Yo-Yo Ma’s music was gorgeous.

  But Erin was not Yo-Yo Ma. Her heart didn’t belong to the cello.

  Cello hadn’t come easily to her, but she did it, because—again, she needed to be a well-rounded person. At eleven, she’d swapped her guitar for intensive cello lessons to close in on her peers.

  Her heart wasn’t in the music today. It never had been. She couldn’t compel herself to work hard at it anymore, either.

  Erin finished her piece with a flourish and felt only relief.

  “You found a well-crafted cello,” she said to Felicity. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Erin.”

  As Erin packed up the cello, Hank regaled Hamish with a story about Mrs. Wellman, whose cracked foundation he’d finally fixed the previous day, and then everyone moved outside.

  Hamish engaged the garage door to reveal Felicity’s new bicycle and everyone yelled, “Happy birthday!”

  Felicity hugged everyone before strapping on her helmet. “Maybe a wee spin.”

  The woman had no jacket … but away she went.

  “Sweet as,” Pippa said.

  Hamish said, “I’d say she’s happy”

  “How did she used to get to work?” Erin asked.

  “She biked. But this is the bike she wanted. It’s a sweet bike. Light as a feather, carbon fiber. Twenty-two speeds. Took her ages to decide what she wanted. Been in the garage for a week, so she waited patiently!”

  “Where’s she headed?” Erin asked.

  “Probably out to the wop wops and back.” Hamish registered Erin’s confusion. “How do I say it? Way out of the city. Middle of nowhere. Can’t see one house from another. The wop wops.”

  “It’s an affectionate term,” Hank said.

  Pippa giggled. “Hank lives in the wop wops.”

  “And you make an appearance for birthdays?” Erin said.

  He shrugged. “I’m considering changing my surname to Wakefield. They’re my second family, so I had to come ’round for birthday hugs.”

  His crooked grin forced something in Erin’s chest to swell.

  “What’s the plan when she gets back?” Erin asked.

  “Special pudding after tea tonight,” Hamish said.

  A bunch of kids on bikes came up the driveway. “Keen to play?” one asked Pippa.

  “Yes!”

  Hamish held out his arm. “Your uniform clean?”

  “Yes,” Pippa said.

  “Bed made?”

  “Yes.”

  “Room tidied?”

  Pippa hesitated. “My things are tidied.”

  “Cleared for takeoff,” Hamish said.

  Pippa hopped onto her bike and sped down the driveway.

  “Birthday tea at half six!” Hamish yelled.

  Erin wondered where they were going, how Pippa would eat lunch, and what the gang of young cyclists could do for nine hours.

  Leaving Hank and Hamish in the driveway, she retreated to tidy her half of the bedroom and text her new friends that she was free today after all. Everyone was already out for the day, but every single one of them invited her to a party at Satellite Club that night.

  Jade: Happy to give you a lift, if you need.

  Erin: Yes, please!

  Jade: I probably can’t hang much once we get there.

  Jade: I have a thing. Not really a date, but …

  Erin: But WHAT?

  Jade: A crush? A longing?

  Jade: I am seriously grinning as I type that.

  Jade: I don’t want to say anything that might jinx it.

  Erin: Been there, done that.

  Jade: Pick you up at half eight?

  Erin: Sounds good.

  She had until 8:30. The idea of going to a party turned her stomach, but at least she knew Claire and Mitchell wouldn’t be at her throat the morning after.

  Late in the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Erin arrived home to hear her mother screaming in the kitchen, “Valentina is literally airing our dirty laundry for the whole world to see.”

  Living with two lawyers made for constant arguments.

&nb
sp; “Claire,” Mitchell said. “It is obviously clean laundry. And I don’t know why you are so bent out of shape about this.”

  “It is embarrassing. It is rude. It looks like we live in the ghetto.”

  In the backyard, Erin spied four lines stretched from the deck to the back fence. Valentina was an artist in many ways, so the family’s clothes hung in chromatic order, from Claire’s white lacy thongs fluttering near the porch through a laundry ombre ending with Mitchell’s black business socks near the edges of the yard.

  Mitchell said, “Valentina told us to call the dryer repairman, and you didn’t do it.”

  “You didn’t do it either.” Claire spied Erin sneaking in the back door. “We’ll get to you in a minute.”

  “We discussed it, you put it in your calendar, and it didn’t happen.” Mitchell said to Erin: “And because Valentina is responsible to the nth degree—and has been for the last eight years—she washed all our laundry. She returned to her house for laundry line and clothespins and hung everything outside to dry.”

  “My panties are on the line out there,” Claire said.

  “So bring your panties in,” Erin said.

  Claire crossed her arms. “They’re not dry yet.”

  Mitchell sat at the long kitchen table with his open briefcase and a plate of carnitas, one of Valentina’s best dishes. As usual, he ate left-handed with his legal pad pushed far to the right to thwart drips of salsa otherwise destined for his casework.

  He squeezed lime juice onto his carnitas. “Would you have preferred she not do the wash?”

  “You are insufferable. Let’s focus on the other mess.” Claire turned to her daughter. “Why the hell are you half-naked all over the Internet this morning?”

  Erin steeled herself. “I got drunk.”

  “That is obvious, to me and everyone else with a phone.”

  “Let me explain.”

  “This could jeopardize your whole future, Erin,” Claire said. “Everything we have worked so hard for.”

  “No one tagged me in the video,” Erin said.

  “Yet.”

  “Well, let’s lay it all on the line, Mom. I was drinking last night—”

  “At a party, which was supposed to be a sleepover with one friend.”

  “Not my fault,” Erin said.

  “Lalitha just accidentally invited a few hundred friends to the sleepover? And just happened to have alcohol?”

  Go big or go home. Erin blurted, “I’m off the swim team.”

  Mitchell said, “They can’t kick you off without a formal hearing. We’ll fix it. Public drunkenness isn’t the only logical cause of this.”

  Erin bit her lip to stave off tears as she told them (nearly) everything.

  “The Quigleys?” her dad asked.

  “Yes. They moved here from L.A.”

  “They swim fly,” Mitchell said.

  “Yeah.”

  “At Nationals.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, shit,” Claire said. She walked fast circles around the island, her stare vacillating between ceiling and floor, repeating the phrase, “Shit, shit, shit.” Pace, pace. “We’ll get you into a second orchestra.” Pace, pace. “I’ll demand Principal Drouin add more college courses to your schedule next year. We will find something unique that will make Columbia want you.”

  “I know we will,” Erin said. “Look, that’s why I was drinking. That’s why I was upset. You’re having a shitty day. This is my third one in a row. With bonus birthday goodness. I would really, really feel better if I could have my present now.”

  Mitchell and Claire exchanged a glance.

  Mitchell said, “The limo and restaurant are already booked. We have the concert tickets.”

  Claire pursed her lips. “Fine. You can go, but only because we already shelled out the money. And because Ben should not be punished for your bad decisions. When you get home tonight, you’re grounded.”

  “I know,” Erin said.

  “Three months!” Claire said.

  She didn’t protest. Her grounding wouldn’t last; it never did. In a few days, her parents would tire of hauling her around. She could wait it out.

  “‘Thank you for letting us go tonight, Mom,’” Claire said expectantly.

  “Thanks,” Erin said. She waited a beat. “Um, when I said present, I was talking about the other one. Grandma Tea’s ring?”

  Claire pursed her lips again.

  “Mom?”

  “We agreed the date in the city would be your present.”

  Erin tried to regulate her breathing. “Right, yes. But the ring was from Grandma Tea. And Grampa. For my seventeenth birthday. They promised it for years. Even after she died, that was the plan. Grampa promised me again last year.”

  Claire said, “When your Grampa died, the ring became mine.”

  “Are you kidding me with this?” Erin looked at Mitchell, who was suddenly very interested in his carnitas. “Dad, you can’t let her do this.”

  He wiped his hands on his chinos. “Legally, the ring is your mother’s.”

  Erin’s voice quivered. “Don’t lawyer me on this! I know I made a mistake. I told you why I was drinking.”

  “Erin, your father and I agreed after your Grampa died that I would be keeping the ring.”

  Grandma Tea had been Erin’s favorite person and, for a time, her best friend. They understood each other in ways no one else did. When Tea died, it broke Erin’s heart, but she’d held onto the knowledge that a tiny piece of Tea would come back to her when she turned seventeen. “You’ve known you weren’t giving it to me for four months and didn’t tell me?”

  “There was never a good time.”

  Erin screamed, “I cannot believe you!”

  “Don’t do anything to jeopardize your actual present,” Claire warned.

  Erin was largely unsuccessful at stemming the flow of tears.

  “It’s not even your style,” Erin said.

  Claire crossed her arms. “It isn’t, but I might wear it sometime, and people will like to hear I am sentimental about my late mother’s jewelry.”

  “I would wear it every day. I miss Grandma Tea every. Single. Day.” Anxiety bubbled in her stomach and tears filled her eyes. “I need to go see Lalitha.”

  “Grounded,” Claire said. “Three months. Let’s hope that’s long enough to plug the new gap in your résumé.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  True to his word, Hamish served a delicious dessert. Pavlova was a very light meringue cake with fresh fruit garnishing its crusted top. Felicity praised Hamish and Pippa’s work before devouring a second slice.

  Erin offered birthday wishes one last time before she climbed into Jade’s car for the party.

  Clad in her new white leather pants and a camisole under a black sweater, Erin listened to a nervous Jade talk about who would be there. Erin preferred to hang outside of parties and people watch; her wallflower routine would be even easier here, where almost no one knew her.

  When they emerged from the car, Jade stood before Erin and smiled broadly. “Do I look carefree?”

  “Having known you all of five days, I think you are carefree. I’m not sure you can project that with a smile, though.”

  They walked toward the club.

  “Fair point,” Jade said. “All right. This will be piss easy.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Inside the club, Jade disappeared into the mass of people talking loudly and dancing to clamorous music.

  Erin grabbed a soda and had no luck finding Ruby, Marama, or Summer. Richard, the guy Jade had warned her about, found her, though.

  “Erin, right?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “From America?” Americur. “And you’re a swimmer?” Swimma?

  “I do swim, yes. And you’re Richard.”

  “I am Richard. What’s on for tomorrow?”

  “Some friends are taking me around.”

  “I’d be happy to take you around, show you
our greatest stuff. Do you surf?”

  “I don’t.”

  He beamed. “I am an excellent teacher! Everyone needs to know how to surf. Let’s you and me get out on the water this spring, eh? We’ll get you a wet suit. Take a lunch with us and make a date of it.”

  His sparkling blue eyes were mesmerizing. Without Jade’s warning, she would have agreed enthusiastically.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Not for me. I’m trying to settle in right now.”

  “Not right now, right now,” he said. “Any time at all. I find America simply intriguing. Tell me, do you go to the prom?”

  Junior prom had been one of her best—and last—dates with Ben, an evening she now preferred to forget. She breathed deeply. “I did go to prom, in a gorgeous silver gown.”

  “And will you go again, or is it a once-in-a-lifetime thing?”

  Senior prom could be fun. She and Lalitha would either reenact her birthday date or maintain the swim team seniors’ ritual of going as a pack. Even though she was no longer part of the pack.

  “Whad’ya say? Will you go again?”

  “Probably.” At last, Erin spied Marama at the far side of the room and locked eyes with her.

  “We could nick out and make a date right now, if you like.”

  She grinned at him. “I am so sorry, Richard, I see my friend. I should go.”

  “She’ll wait. What say we try rugby? Or traditional New Zealand food? Or bungee? I’d love to introduce you to kiwi life, and you can tell me about America.”

  Marama steered through the crowd toward them.

  “I should go,” Erin said.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “So nice talking to you!” He kissed her roughly before giving her a little wave.

  Erin loathed unwanted physical contact. Why did guys in every culture think that was okay?

  “Please tell me you didn’t agree to go out with him,” Marama said. “He is bad news.”

  “Yes, I was forewarned.”

  “Thank god. Get you a beer?”

  Erin hesitated. “Actually, Marama, I don’t like beer. I’ve never found an alcohol I actually like.”

  “Me either, but I like the buzz.” Gulping her beer, Marama assessed the room. “I wanted you to meet my climbing friends, but I haven’t found anyone. My brother’s already half in the bag, so you’ll meet him tomorrow. Be nice and loud, would you?”