He was right—she knew he was right—but he had missed the point. “If you teach Pippa to read music, she’ll be able to learn any song for herself.”
“We’ll get there. All in good time.”
“Got your uniform today, Erin?” Pippa asked.
“I did.”
Pippa told Hank, “She’s going to Ilam, too.”
“Sweet as,” he said.
“Do you go to Ilam?” Erin asked.
He smiled widely again. “I left school at sixteen. Have a carpentry apprenticeship with Blakely.”
That explained his huge biceps and forearms, but learning he was a dropout fizzled the dreaminess of his eyes.
“Want to join us?” Hank asked.
Erin eyed her cello case. What was another day without practice? “Need to have a quick snack and get ready for school tomorrow,” she said dismissively. “Happy practicing, Pippa.”
After a few crackers and slices of cheese, Erin retreated to her room, where she pulled up Ilam High’s website to see girls in her exact uniform. Boys wore shorts and knee socks in warmer weather, so perhaps she’d gotten off easy? She texted photos of the uniform to Lalitha and settled in bed to call her oldest friend.
“I’m no Superman!” Lalitha said when she picked up.
“There’s no Superman here, either,” Erin said. “I do, however, have a tattooed high school dropout in my living room.”
“No!”
“I do. He is teaching my little sister—who is ten, she’ll have you know—guitar chords.”
“Did you step in and show him what’s what?”
“No. I—” Tears welled in Erin’s eyes. “I don’t …” Her voice was a whisper.
Lalitha’s voice was calm and quiet. “You okay, Erin with an E?”
Erin shook her head, unable to speak.
“Did I lose you?”
Kind of.
“I’m here,” Erin whispered through her tears. “I just don’t know what I’m doing here. You saw the photos.”
“Oh, I did. But I’m guessing it’s too soon to ridicule?”
“Much too soon. Their food is weird. Everything is slow—slow traffic, slow talkers, slow walkers. I almost trampled kiwis at the airport.”
“Dillying and dallying and dallying some more?” Lalitha said.
“Exactly. No sense of urgency. So, probably because everyone is so slow, instead of traffic lights, they have huge, terrifying roundabouts. What if I wreck their car?”
“Well …”
“Say nothing. That accident was not my fault. And their car, catch the singular? They have only one.”
“How does that even work?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Maybe they carpool?” Lalitha said.
“I don’t know, but today, my host mom drove me to buy my uniform. We went to the mall. Oh my god. Lalitha, they have Kmart and McDonald’s, but no Banana Republic. The clothes are mostly terrible.” She gasped. “Oh, my god. Lalitha, my white leather pants are to die for.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with my girl?”
“No, they fit me like a glove, and it’s a beautiful matte leather. I promise they are cool. At least something is cool. Li, they have an Aldi-caliber grocery store in their mall. And people dress like it’s 1987. And I’m sharing a room with a ten-year-old who has the stinkiest farts in the world.”
“Worse than Peter McQueen the Pooty Machine?”
“Worse.” Erin cracked a smile remembering their gassy elementary classmate. “But thanks for that.”
“I’m sorry you’re there. I wish you were here.”
“Yeah. Hey, is that Quigley going to call me, or what?”
Lalitha didn’t answer.
“What?” Erin said.
“She’s not that bad.”
“Traitor!”
“I know, right? She’s kind of quiet, really smart. She wore a periodic table of nerds T-shirt yesterday. I sort of think under other circumstances you’d be friends.”
“I’m not sure whether I feel better or worse.”
“Her sisters are hankering to go back to L.A., but she likes Wheaton because it’s quiet.”
Erin scoffed. “Tell her she should transfer to New Zealand. There’s no place quieter.”
FIFTEEN
Monday morning, the last social media posts were hours old—and that was Saturday night in Wheaton.
Good-Time Girl had posted at midnight: “Farewell, winter hols. Back at it tomorrow.”
Maybe she’s at Ilam too.
Claire had sent a to-do list for Erin’s first day of school and reminded her to be in the office fifteen minutes before school started.
Erin checked the weather for a respite from the cold. Her computer knew she was in New Zealand, but she couldn’t bring herself to reset her Google Maps home to Christchurch.
It was zero degrees Celsius. Lalitha had been wrong: six degrees Celsius, or 43 degrees Fahrenheit, was Christchurch’s average July low. That would be all well and good if her house weren’t the same temperature.
After a quick breakfast, Felicity drove Erin and her still-nameless rented cello to Ilam High. They were ten minutes late.
“I’ll fetch you at half two and take you to the pool?”
Erin nodded.
Felicity waved to several students and greeted more by name. “Jade, this is Erin. She’s staying with us until Christmas. Erin, Jade used to mind Pippa when we went out. It’s Erin’s first day at Ilam.”
“Hello,” Erin said. It was a very strange sensation, meeting someone dressed in the same frumpy kilt, the same white blouse, the same tie. Jade wore a ponytail and, despite a questionable complexion, absolutely no makeup. No foundation. Nothing to widen her slightly small eyes.
Jade said, “Want me to show you in?”
“I need to talk to a counselor about my schedule first.”
“I can wait.”
Erin left Jade leaning against the gray exterior and entered Ilam High.
Halfway around the world, Erin’s New Zealand guidance counselor was just as scatterbrained as Mrs. Brown in Wheaton. Their offices were practically identical: multicolored piles of papers, books shoved into every available shelf space, and almost no space for students, let alone Erin’s poor cello.
In bold black ink, a huge poster read:
INTEREST
+
ABILITY
+
CAREER
=
SUBJECT CHOICE
“I’m Penelope. How do you do Erin?”
Erin relaxed immediately; Penelope wasn’t kiwi and hearing Erin pronounced correctly felt like home.
“Based on your records, Erin, you are welcome to our entire curriculum. I’ll walk you through the same as I do with most students near the end of term four. First, let’s talk about what you enjoy.”
Penelope took copious notes as Erin spoke. “I do well in all my
