Erin picked the cuticle of her left thumb, parting it from her flesh.
“And you can choose where you go.” Mrs. Brown navigated between several websites and her inbox. “There are maybe ten options left. Let’s see. Moscow. How’s your Russian?”
“Spanish,” Claire said.
“I know,” Mrs. Brown said. “Unfortunately, everyone has been pushed into Spanish when we really should be learning Mandarin. Soon the whole world will need Chinese.”
“So, China?” Erin said.
“No. I was saying that everyone and his brother takes Spanish. So, Spain and Mexico go first. You passed on Moscow. We have Jordan.”
“Absolutely not,” Claire said.
“The Netherlands, Russia, Brazil, Greece.”
“Even with the best tutors, she can’t learn any of those languages in time,” Claire said.
Mrs. Brown returned to her computer. “The only English-speaking countries we have are Nigeria, New Zealand, and Scotland. That one’s Edinburgh.”
“She’s not going to Nigeria,” Claire said.
“Okay. Scotland and New Zealand.”
“Your choice!” Claire raised her eyebrows in expectation.
Senior year somewhere else. Erin could barely catch up, let alone choose. Though everything was broken in Wheaton, she didn’t want to flee.
“How long will I be gone?” she asked.
Mrs. Brown said, “One semester, either way.”
Near England or Near Australia?
Erin had visited London three years ago two weeks before the PSAT, so her memories were of flash cards and root words. She wracked her brain for anything about either country. Australia was hot and England was chilly. New Zealand and Scotland both were full of sheep—or perhaps that was Ireland?
“Do I have to go?”
“You should want to go,” Claire said. “Studying abroad will make you an appealing candidate. Almost no one does this.”
Mrs. Brown clicked her pen as Erin pondered her options. “You should know that New Zealand is kind of wonky because the seasons are opposite. You’d be starting in the middle of the New Zealand school year and would have to leave in mid-July.”
Mid-July was less than two months away, and she already had math at University of Chicago and summer swimming to fill those weeks. Her departure, however—from that viral video, from Ben’s sphere of gravitational pull, from her horrid new nickname—couldn’t come soon enough.
“New Zealand.”
Claire grabbed the doorknob. “Great! I am very late for work. I’ll send you a check and completed paperwork tomorrow.”
Erin stared blankly at Mrs. Brown. Her life had changed in an instant. Again.
SIXTEEN
Students—all of whom wore the same blue blazer—poured past Erin as she walked out the front door of her new school. Jade was waiting in the light drizzle. “All set then?”
Erin nodded slowly.
“Where’s your first class?” Jade asked.
Erin scanned her schedule. “M5?”
“Can I see?” Jade studied Erin’s schedule as they walked around the administrative offices.
Erin had expected the school to loom down a corridor beyond the administrative offices, but Ilam High had no corridors, no metal detectors, and no roof.
Like a tiny college campus, discrete buildings housed specific subject areas. Jade identified the languages building, the literature building, the maths building—all of them circles of classrooms with doors on the outside.
Ilam High was inside out.
A sea of royal blue blazers congregated around doorways and between buildings.
In what seemed like the middle of campus, Jade said, “This is the commons. Tea and lunch here. Toilets there. Fields are just on the other side of the arts building. What’s your sport?”
“Swimming.”
“Oh. Shall I walk you back to M5 then?”
“I can find my way, thanks. I need to stop in the restroom. Toilets.” The word toilets felt ugly in her mouth, as if uttering it invited an image of her sitting to pee.
“Cheers!” Jade disappeared into the sea of blazers and Erin was alone again. No one noticed her because she had become part of the sea. And why introduce yourself to the new girl if you didn’t know she was new?
The patina of mourning marred Erin’s uncertainty. She was here to mourn Ben. And her swim team captainship. And her sense of belonging.
And her skin. Removing makeup with New Zealand paper towels was like exfoliating with sandpaper. No Boscia. No Make Up For Ever for her eyes.
When the bell rang, she called it good enough and retraced her steps to M5, where her tiny, perky calculus teacher wore a synthetic mock turtleneck and pleated slacks.
She handed Erin a textbook. “I’m Donna Weiler. Have you been studying calculus in the States?”
“I have. This year I’m supposed to take a second calculus course at the community college.”
A smile. “Well done. Lovely to have you, Erin. Take any seat you like.”
There was precisely one empty chair: in the center of the front row. Some things are the same in either hemisphere.
Ms. Weiler said, “We have a new student today, from the United States.” A pause. A long pause. “What was your name?”
“Erin. Erin Cerise.”
“Right. Everyone introduce yourselves after the second bell. Now, before the term break, we were discussing the fundamental theorem of calculus. I’d like to move on to separation of variables on page two-nine-three, but wonder whether anyone had any questions about the fundamental theorem before I do that.”
No one did. Separation of variables it was. Erin opened her book and felt comfortable for the first time in days.
_________
Lunchtime hiccupped blazers into the open air again. The drizzle had stopped sometime during Erin’s Italian class, but the benches and concrete weren’t yet dry so she leaned against the math building.
Ilam had a little to-go window with hot lunch options, but most people were eating sack lunches. And they were eating them everywhere—standing in clusters or sitting on damp benches in the commons. Just like in Wheaton, bookworms pored over novels and outcasts stood awkwardly alone.
But at Ilam, musicians played guitars and sang in groups. A gaggle of girls sat in a semicircle comparing bracelets they had hidden under their sweater sleeves.
