“There’s nowhere like this in Chicago,” Erin said. “I mean, there’s a lake. Lake Michigan is a Great Lake, so it kind of looks like ocean, but it’s surrounded by city. And the beaches are tiny. And fake. And, you know, it’s not actually ocean.”
“And no port, of course, if it’s in the middle of the country.”
“Yeah. I hadn’t really thought about ports. I know we have them on the coasts, but that’s all sort of invisible to me.”
Jade nodded.
Cranes unloaded shipping containers from another vessel.
“So, is this what you do for fun?” Erin said.
“I find a bit of fun doing whatever, with whoever else likes doing it.”
It sounded simple, but with college deadlines looming, Erin couldn’t afford to waste time. After applications were in, during those excruciating months of waiting, she’d do whatever she wanted with whoever else liked doing it. Until then, there was too much on the line.
Erin’s unambitious pal said, “Down to Lyttelton, then?”
“Jade, I really don’t think I can make it back up.”
“Tell you what, we’ll ride down to the car and drive to Lyttelton. You lead.”
_________
Leading downhill was easier but colder. At the car, she bundled up while Jade loaded the bike rack.
“Actually, Jade, I’ve kind of seen Lyttelton now.”
“Yeah, but my mum requested chocolates, so we have to go.”
Jade drove over the Port Hills and into a roundabout at sea level. Here was Lyttelton up close.
A working port from a distance was one thing. Up close, the cranes lifted tons of full containers as if they were toys.
And the containers were filthy.
Looking up from the port, rows of colorful old houses lined Lyttelton’s streets. But driving up into town from the port, Erin noticed half the Lyttelton streets were vacant. Enormous craters separated buildings. Children—probably children—had decorated a chain-link fence with paper cups, streamers, and plastic cartons pressed into every hole within arm’s reach. The fence encircled a vacant lot a half-block long.
Up close, Lyttelton was a little ghetto.
Jade parked outside a small store standing between two vacant lots filled with construction debris. Or demolition debris? Erin didn’t know.
Sufficiently creeped out, Erin locked the car doors while Jade ran in for chocolate.
When she returned, Jade threw a white bag into the backseat and handed Erin a small salted truffle. “All set, then?”
THIRTY-FOUR
Headed back toward the harbor, Jade said, “Oh, SeaGlass is open! Can’t miss that. It’s the greatest café.”
The “café” was in a metal shipping container, and it wasn’t alone. The shop next door was in a shipping container painted red. Across the road a restaurant filled a double-wide shipping container. Erin had never seen anything like it.
They walked through an improvised container/plastic door and Jade bellowed, “You’re open!”
An exuberant bearded guy ran around the counter to hug her. “Just three weeks now.”
“Mum will be thrilled. We haven’t been over in a month. She probably just missed you.”
“Stewart’s & Brown is opening in a fortnight. High-Life in October in time for holiday shopping. Tourism is picking up.”
Erin couldn’t imagine Lyttelton as a tourist destination.
“Can I have a flat white?” Jade asked.
“And your friend?”
“This is Erin. Erin? Alistair. Erin’s doing her O.E. from the States.”
“Sweet as! Where ’bout?”
“Chicago. Well, twenty-six miles west of Chicago. Wheaton. It’s quiet and safe. And I’d like a hot chocolate, please.”
Erin stared out the window as Jade and Alistair chatted about their families. If the Wakefields’ neighborhood was bad, Lyttelton was horrid. Worse than Parma. This was squalor. A beautiful Victorian house stood adjacent to an empty pit.
The gorgeous scene—gazing down a hill toward blue water and towering green mountains—was lovely, but upon further examination, it was all a façade.
Alistair left to greet other customers.
“Gorgeous view, innit?”
Sometimes it was as if Jade could read her mind.
“It is.” Erin sipped her hot chocolate. “But what’s up with the shipping containers?”
“It’s a port.”
“Right, I get it.” Erin lowered her voice. “But we are sitting in a shipping container.”
Jade didn’t lower her voice. “Actually, we’re sitting in a café. Alistair!”
He abandoned other customers when Jade beckoned.
“Alistair, tell Erin about SeaGlass. The original one.”
He transformed into a bright-eyed child on Christmas morning.
“Two floors, and the second was floor-to-ceiling windows. Well, almost. We had two spiral staircases—one for guests, one for staff—and the view was astounding. Three-sixty degrees of our beautiful little town. They used to call Lyttelton the Port of Christchurch, did you know?” His face fell. “I suppose they still do, but it’s not the same. Most of the shops, gone. Half the houses, gone. So many of our best people, gone. Not dead, mostly, but friends and neighbors left and won’t ever come back.”
Erin had spent most of June staring in the mirror, and Alistair looked worse than she ever had. He was mourning.
Alistair and Jade stared at the ground, shaking their heads.
Alistair looked out the door’s plastic window, giving no indication of how he’d gone from a 360-degree view to one tiny plastic window in an artificial door.
Erin imagined The Nothing sweeping through The Neverending Story. “But what happened?”
“When SeaGlass came down, we waited years to build a new café. We started small,” Alistair said.
“But what happened?”
They glared at her. A trio of shoppers entered, but Erin desperately needed an answer from Alistair before he left.
“What happened to your cafe and the houses and the shops?”
Jade stood up. “I’ll show her. You go help them.”
One last gulp of hot chocolate and Erin was out in the chilly air with Jade. Across the street and a block away, they stopped on a corner in front of yet another crater. The building next to the pit was missing half its staircase.
Jade jiggled a fence that was clearly marked NO TRESPASSING. Erin suspected she soon would learn New Zealand’s secrets. Jade was a covert wizard. Perhaps only vampires could see the buildings. Or aliens had attacked.
Erin remained at the crater’s rim as Jade walked downstairs to rock bottom.
“It
